#Cooking Advice

[gothiccharmschool]

I have finally mastered poaching eggs in the microwave!

Add about 1.5 cups of water in a glass measuring cup.

Heat the water in the microwave for about a minute. Maybe a minute + 15 seconds.

Crack the egg into the warmed water.

Cover most of the top of the measuring cup with plastic wrap. I leave the spout portion uncovered.

Microwave for 45 seconds. Maybe a minute. (It, of course, depends on the finickiness of your microwave.)

Remove the measuring cup and let the egg sit in the hot water for 10-20 seconds.

Remove the egg with a slotted spoon.

Eat your poached egg with whatever you want! (I'm having mine on avocado toast, because I want to show solidarity with the Millennials or whatever generation it was that were told that was why they couldn't afford houses instead of the real reason of poor wages and rising inflation and fuckery by the upper classes.) (Also because avocado toast is delicious.)

Poached eggs!

[the-shrimp-that-fried-rice]

Ok @adderalltheblue its jambalaya time. This is :

SHRIMP'S JAMBALAYA RECIPE

1. Start with the mise en place as usual.

Dice your trinity (onion, pepper, celery). Then skin and debone your chicken thighs, slice your sausage (i went for smoked chorizo since andouille is hard to find in the uk), and peel and devein your shrimp. For the chicken and shrimp, season them with old bay, smoked paprika, salt, and pepper.

2. Next you should sauté the sausage in a large pot. Don't use too much oil, as the fat in the sausage will render and you can use that. Plus it has more flavour.

3. Then take them out and place the chicken in and sear each side till it's got a nice brown colour to it.

4. Once that's done, the final protein you'll want to cook is the shrimp. Only cook it partially so that it doesn't go rubbery when it gets boiled later on

5. Now its time to move onto the veg. Start by putting in the celery first and sauté it for a few minutes before adding the rest, as celery tends to be a bit tougher than onion and pepper. Adding salt at this point will help the veg cook a bit faster too.

Once its sweated properly, you can add your minced garlic, tomato paste, paprika, and a bit of old bay. Sauté a bit longer, and then add a can of chopped tomatoes.

6. Next you're gonna want to add your washed rice in. I don't know exactly how much i used in cups but it looked like half a rice cooker pot. Then add about a litre and a bit of chicken stock

At this point you can add your proteins again, and they will cook through fully with the rice. The chicken becomes especially tender when it gets cooked like this. Season to taste with more cayenne, paprika, salt, garlic powder, and old bay, and allow it to come to a boil. Once at a boil, lower the heat and let it simmer till the broth has reduced and the rice is cooked.

Finally, once it's done it'll look like this. I like my jambalaya creole style so its a bit more saucy than cajun style. And thats my recipe for jambalaya :) i dont claim it to be authentic or anything but this is just how I've always made mine.

[bootleg-nessie]

Not enough people know that vegetables are a human construct

[netscapenavigator-official]

I feel like there's no good way to cook Bacon.

Like, I tried the oven method, and I nearly started a grease fire.

I tried the microwave method, and I blew up the microwave.

I'm about at the point where I'm gonna have to go back to the ooga booga methods and strike up a fire to cook on. Like, what else do I do???

[scrawnym4]

fanart i drew of wheatley dying in a glue trap

[h0neyfreak]

I’m gonna share another very useful approach to life as an adult with ADHD: cooking and nutrition edition.

The American idea that dinner is “meat/protein with a veggie and a side” and that this is somehow an easy thing to prepare is a lie. That’s so much work. Sometimes I like making a meal that requires a lot of effort but that’s not sustainable for my average weeknight dinner.

I would like to instead introduce you to my world of Sauce Based Cooking. It is predicated on the idea that the “one pan meal” is not a category of recipe but rather a decision made by the chef. There are some deviations (some meals require a pasta pot and/or sheet pan) but that’s still way less than a lot of recipes call for. If it requires a blender, simply close the link and step away.

Rules for Sauce Based Cooking Freedom:

Have more spices/flavorful pastes than you know what to do with. Better than Bouillon and miso paste and curry paste and spice mixes etc etc. You are not running an authentic Tex-Mex restaurant from your kitchen just get the taco seasoning packets.

If you eat meat, you should be buying bone-in skin-on chicken thighs. Not chicken breasts. You can braise a chicken thigh for two hours and it will only get tastier and better. Cooking a chicken breast is stressful and requires a level of precision im not prepared to give to a chicken.

Focus on learning to make tasty BASES. You have learned if you make it and it tastes good to you. Nail down a good cream sauce, perfect your 20 minute marinara, learn a coconut curry, figure out the basic components of a marinade. Add some ground ginger to your chicken soup and thank me later. Then cooking is just beating protein and veggies into submission under your sauces and above your grains.

Don’t try and make ~dishes~. I call this “Zelda cooking.” You need something that you enjoy eating and gives you the nutrients you need to function. Prep vegetables and proteins you like and dump them into a sauce you also like. Add some polenta or bread or rice or couscous or any other grain to soak up the sauce and make it filling and satisfying. 9 times out of 10 it’s gonna work. The only decision you need to make is the flavor profile of the sauce.

Buy the precut vegetables. I know. It feels wasteful. So much plastic. But I promise you it’s way more wasteful to throw out half your groceries and order Uber eats 5 days in a row because you never managed to chop an onion. It’s okay. Precut/frozen vegetables and canned ingredients and prepared food items are going to be your lifeline. I can turn a rotisserie chicken and plastic tub of mirepoix (pre chopped onions, celery and carrots) into a delectable soup with just things in my pantry at this very moment.

Same as above but line the pan with foil. Save yourself a dish.

Add at least one vegetable to everything you cook. This might be controversial but you need fiber. And all sorts of other vitamins and minerals that things like kale and carrots and sweet potatoes have. My go to is canned chickpeas. A jar of marinara plus some canned chickpeas and kale is suddenly a hearty and filling topping for pasta that’s gonna satisfy me way more than just the pasta and sauce. And all I had to do was dump a can and a bag into the pot. That’s not a dish that really exists or has a recipe but it’s Sauce Based and I eat it a lot.

Keep some fortified cereal (most cereal is fortified by default) and trail mix on hand. Sometimes I get in a funk and order a lot of takeout or just eat a lot of carbs and not much else and then get woozy because I’m a little dumb and don’t eat a lot of animal products so all my Nutrients are low and that makes cooking harder. Fortified cereal and trail mix together will have most of the stuff you need to get rid of the lightheaded wooziness (iron and b12 and fats and sugar) in a dense little package that’s easy to munch on while cooking.

Finally, I know online recipes and Pinterest are great and wonderful but get proper cookbooks whenever you can. The first reason is that even with AdBlocker online recipes are a minefield and can be distracting and frustrating and overwhelming which are all things you don’t want when knives and hot pans are around. The second is that you will learn so much about cooking from a proper cookbook and the better you are at cooking the easier and faster it goes. ThriftBooks has plenty as will your local library or even older relatives. Ones like “Cook What You Have” by Christopher Kimball and “The New York Times Cooking No-Recipe Recipes” book and the classic “The Art of Simple Food” by Alice Waters are great.

[learningfromlosing]

Cooking time: 18-20 minutes

If you mean 19 minutes just say that

[ragingstillness]

Recently got capsaicin oil on my lips and nose while cooking with jalapeños and it was a terrible experience. I did ultimately find a way to stop the burning but not until I had tried almost every solution the internet had to offer. So I thought I’d share my knowledge with you all so that when/if it happens to you, you know what works.

Disclaimer: your experience may differ from mine depending on your own body chemistry, how much you got on you, and where on your body you got it

Additional info: make sure that if you got it on your hands then wiped your face (as I did) that you use these solutions on your hands as well so you don’t just irritate your face all over again in your efforts to clean it. The oil also stayed under my nails longer than on my skin so clipping your nails short is the way to go.

Possible solutions:

Cold water: works, but the relief from burning is very temporary. Maybe a second or two from first contact with cold water but then back to burning

Soap and water: decent, as you do want to use a substance with fats or oils because capsaicin oil is fat soluble. However, the amount of washing required would take a lot of time with not much relief in between.

Olive oil: the right type of substance but like cold water the relief is temporary

Ice: will numb the burn to an extent. Is also temporary but will last longer than cold water. However, it will do nothing to actually fix the issue, just alleviate the sensation

Milk: somewhat effective. Most effective if you get the oil in your mouth and you drink it, less useful for outer skin contact

Fan blowing air: genuinely a good call. Like the ice it will alleviate the sensation while not fixing the problem but it is a good way to get your concentration back while you try to fix the problem. I used a fan with a spritz function so I could put water on my face then cool it down, gave me a lot of relief

Coconut milk conditioner: while the recommendation is technically to use coconut oil, this is all I had on hand. Pretty much the same as the olive oil. The substance itself is maybe a little more cooling but a huge waste of money for not a lot of relief

Face wash: no relief and no lessening of the issue, not worth the effort.

Aloe: also genuinely a good call. Cools pretty well and when I used it in conjunction with the fan the relief was particularly good. Also the kind of substance you want to be using to dissolve the oil.

Tomato sauce: believe it or not, this is the solution that actually worked. Tomato sauce. I was standing in my bathroom rubbing pasta sauce onto my face then washing it off and repeating. And it worked. What could have lasted 24 hours disappeared completely along with the redness and irritation in maybe two hours. Wouldn’t say it’s a miracle cure, but pretty close. Relief is not immediate during the washing process but you have to keep at it.

I also tried ice cream which may have worked but I tried it after the tomato sauce had already done its job so I can’t really attest to the effectiveness. The internet solutions I didn’t try were submerging my face in a bowl of milk (seemed weird, I’m not a cat, would suck to drown in milk) and vinegar (which just sounds like a bad idea I mean isn’t it slightly acidic?).

Ok I’m done but I hope this helps someone else. The burning wasn’t incapacitating in that I couldn’t breathe or stand up but I was definitely unable to continue the task I was doing when contact happened.

[i-aint-even-bovvered]

one of the biggest anxieties I see online with people who dont cook often is when theyre following a recipe that says "season to taste," because their reaction is "I dont know what it's supposed to taste like!" so let me demystify that for you

"season to taste" does not mean "until it is correct," it means, "until it tastes good to you." doesnt matter if youve cooked before or not. you know when you like or dont like something. eventually, you will know when something needs other spices or something else, but for now, just add things until you like it.

[mariekavanagh]

Really really want to learn to make my own bread, especially after inheriting my grandma's bread-maker, but every recipe I come across online either has very niche ingredients that I can't seem to source or instructions that leave me baffled.

Does anyone have any easy first-timer bread recipes they'd be happy to share?

[the-shrimp-that-fried-rice]

HOW do Peruvians get their rice so good? The rice at my favorite Peruvian restaurant is irresistible, what’s the secret?

The secret is that all peruvian rice is garlic rice.

Basically what u wanna do is you get a pot over a medium flame and put a little bit of oil in. Then you put in about 3 heaped teaspoons of minced garlic and sauté it lightly till its fragrant. Add a bit of salt whilst this is cooking, but only a pinch for now as it'll help it break down. Then you add your washed long grain rice to the pot and mix it with the oil and garlic. This lets the grains absorb a bit of the flavour before being properly cooked. Finally, you add the water. Usually most places use a 2:1 ratio for water : rice but my dad has always done around 1.5 : 1. It keeps the grains loose yet still fluffy.

Hope this recipe has helped :)

[bootleg-nessie]

Of course I feed my dog cheese when I’m cooking. I can’t afford a sous chef, this way he just follows me around everywhere in the kitchen instead

[tato-potat]

how the fuck do you cook turnips

[harveythewendigo]

Pro tip. If you're making homemade Mac and cheese don't use elbow macaroni. Use shell pasta. Trust me I convinced my ma to try it and we have never mad Mac and cheese with elbows since.

[netscapenavigator-official]

I bought some mozzarella sticks to make, and the toaster oven instructions say to cook them at 475°F. Problem is, my toaster oven only goes up to 450°F. Do you guys think it’ll be okay if I cook them at 450°F and just kinda leave them in a little longer and eyeball their doneness, or do I have to bite the bullet and use the big oven?