#I'm reheating some mashed potatoes in the oven but I don't want to eat JUST potatoes

[iwanttobepersephone]

How do I make bacon

[copperbadge]

@scifigrl47: King Arthur Baking Company has a new “loaded baked potato” pizza recipe and I kind of want to try it.

Me: CHALLENGE ACCEPTED

@scifigrl47​: Nobody issued any kind of chall -- 

Me: THIS RECIPE IS WRONG

That’s not verbatim how it went down but it’s more or less what happened. I’m sure it’s actually a fine recipe, I have yet to get a stinker from KA Baking, but I don’t like straight un-mashed potato and I didn’t like cheddar as the only cheese on a pizza, so I decided to design my own. 

[ID: A photograph of a pizza baked in a cast iron pan, sprinkled with seasoning, with bacon visible here and there; the two kinds of cheese are both golden-brown from the oven.]

The modified KA Baking pizza recipe I use creates two deep-dish cast-iron crusts, so I made one full-on experimental potato pizza and one relatively normal pizza.

First, I let the dough rise in the pan and then gave it a very light sprinkling of mozzarella cheese. I added my usual pizza sauce to half, and left the other half sauceless. I took cold instant garlic mashed potatoes (I don't want to hear it, instant mash is fast and comes out perfect every time) and sprinkled broken up bits of it all over the pizza, then sprinkled cooked bacon bits over that.

I covered half the pizza with sharp cheddar and half with low-moisture part-skim mozzarella (my pizza cheese of choice), arranged so that there were four quadrants: sauced-cheddar, sauced-mozzarella, unsauced-cheddar, and unsauced-mozzarella.

[ID: Two photos of the same not-yet-baked pizza, one without cheese so the potato and bacon is visible, one with cheese, to demonstrate how it's half-and-half cheddar and mozzarella.]

The other pizza, I used pizza sauce on the whole thing, mozzarella cheese on the whole thing, then half I sprinkled with sauteed diced mushrooms (a personal favorite) and half I dolloped with mashed potato and tomato-onion jam.

[ID: A pizza in a cast iron pan, dotted with red sauce and mushrooms, with chunks of mashed potato here and there, brown at the edges.]

That one'll eat well regardless, I feel.

Anyway, I baked them at 450 for 15 minutes, and the experimental pizza came out of the oven looking fine, so I sliced it and taste-tested each slice.

[ID: Two images of the same experimental pizza; it is sliced in four quarters. In the second image, each slice has one giant bite taken out of it, right at the point, so that it looks like the pizza has a hole in the middle of it.]

I live alone, if I want to take a bite out of every slice of pizza, it's fine.

Anyway, my tasting notes are thus:

-- I still prefer mozzarella to cheddar. Cheddar gets kind of nasty when it melts open like this. Crunchy and oily, not a fan.

-- The bacon bits were either too large or shouldn't be there at all. I'm not a fan of bacon on pizza for texture reasons; the bacon should be a flavoring, I think.

-- It needs sauce. It just does. Mashed potatoes straight onto pizza crust is too much dry stuff at once. The mozzarella helps, but only so much. The pizza sauce, while it did add a nice texture, was not the right flavor for the potato. I think instead of pizza sauce, a bacon-ranch sauce would be ideal, incorporating the bacon flavor without adding too much crunch.

-- A perfectly nice pizza, but like, there's no reason to do this other than novelty. Arguably just making 'tato skins would be easier. Still, it's a fun thing to serve at a party or something.

I did have some leftover bacon so I made a bacon-onion sauce out of sour cream, a tiny bit of milk, the remaining bacon, and a generous spoonful of dried onions.

[ID: A sour cream cup with a fork in it; the cup is about half-full of a sour cream sauce with red and green flecks of bacon and onion.]

I'll try dunking the reheated pizza in it and see how that goes. But I'm willing to call this a qualified success. Eminently edible, and it was fun to do!

[aceofbooks]

Fresh home made corn beef hash?!?!?! That sounds heavenly!

I'm putting all of this under a cut lol. I might come back and clean up the directions, make it look like an actual recipe, but this was all stream of consciousness 🙂‍↕️

I want to learn to make corned-beef from scratch, but I'm a bit intimidated by it, so I usually grab a pre-made slab from the grocery store. I try to buy 4-5 lbs, which usually reduces to about 3-4 lbs. But you can do this with any size over 1 lb, depends on how much meat you'll eat the night before/how much meat you want in the hash/how much you want to put in your freezer(!) for a later date. I boil it in a dutch oven (a big pot also works, I just found that I had to fiddle with the temperature more often throughout the day), on the stove for an afternoon and then have some of that for dinner 😋Directions: put it in the pot with enough water to cover it; bring to a boil; reduce to low and leave covered; needs to reach an internal temp of 145F.

(Save some of the broth so that if you want to reheat the corned-beef and eat it as is, you can re-boil it! It's the best way I've found to reheat leftover corned-beef. Beef broth also works really well, and plain water works in a pinch, but it loses some of the flavor.)

Fair warning, this is a lot of sitting at the stove because you're constantly stirring all the ingredients to make sure they cook evenly. I don't say it, ever, but everything (minus spices) should be chopped to bite sized pieces. The smaller they are, the faster they'll cook, and the more flavor you'll be able to pack onto a single fork, but you don't want to go so small that you end up with an actual literal mash of food.

Pre-heat oven to 425F.

The next evening I get my BIG cast iron (it's at least 12 inches in diameter), do a quick little season on low heat while it warms up. I chop up 1 large onion (yellow or white) or 2 small/medium ones, depends on what I have on hand. That goes in the cast iron on low-medium heat with 1 tbls salted butter (you can also use unsalted butter and just add salt to your preference) with black pepper and like the equivalent of 2 cloves of garlic (I use jarred garlic because I am not deft enough with a knife to mince it myself, so it's more like a HEAPING tablespoon) and I sweat the onions down until they're getting browned on the edges and are mostly translucent.

Move onions/garlic to a separate container and add more salted butter to the pan! Usually 2-3 tbls I think. Chopped up Bell Peppers— at least 2, and you can use whichever you prefer, but I do one of each color: red, orange, yellow, and green, all around the same size. Salt and Pepper to preference. You need to crank the heat up to high, so that you can get a nice sear on the peppers without letting a lot of their water escaping. Mop up the moisture with paper towels as you go—ideally, by the time you're done cooking them, there is no more water sitting in the bottom of the pan.

When the peppers are done and the majority of them are at least partially blackened, move them to a separate container (can be the same container as the onions) and bring the heat down to medium.

This next part is so specific, it's kind of dumb. I use frozen home fries. But I've found that you can't use just any frozen home fries, because if they're diced too small, or they're not effectively pre-cooked, they just turn to mush and gum up the bottom of the pan.

I use these ones specifically. Sometimes I use half a bag, sometimes the whole bag. Depends on how I'm feeling. HOWEVER, I do often have problems finding them in my surrounding grocery stores, so I'm navigating how to make fresh home fries. My plan for next time is using the techniques from this recipe, because I have done that recipe before and the potatoes turned out great. Just need to adapt it. (EDIT: just noticed that that particular post doesn't have the directions, but I have the recipe book it comes from. If I remember, I'll come back to write the relevant instructions here.)

ANYWAY, home fries in the skillet with 2-4 tbls of butters, salt and pepper to preference, and just a crap ton of Parsley. Fresh or dried, your preference. I probably use like 3 tbls or something. Stir frozen home fries until browned and crispy and just generally thoroughly cooked. Stir fresh home fries until ????

Move potatoes to separate container (can be the same container as peppers/onions) and add chopped corned-beef leftovers. This only needs 1-2 tbls of butter on medium-high heat. Pay attention to the pieces you're cutting if you have texture issues. Pieces that are all fat or the majority of it is fat, will not render down and will remain as they are, which is not ideal for me personally. This only needs 1-2 tbls of butter on medium-high heat. Add pepper (not salt!) and parsley (only like 1 tbls this time). You want some browning/caramelizing on the meat, but you don't want to make them crispy. You're really just cooking them long enough to warm them up, and the browning happens very quickly.

Remove from heat. Depending on the size of your container(s), you can either add the meat to the container, or add everything back to the cast iron. It's easier to mix everything together if you can have it all in one big container that isn't the cast iron. If mixing in a separate container, add it all back to the cast iron.

Even everything out. Put in the oven for 15 minutes. Remove from oven and, using a flat spatula (metal is ideal with the cast iron), take sections of the hash and flip them so that you're kind of getting the stuff on the bottom on the top and the stuff on the top on the bottom. Put in the oven for 15 more minutes. If you're my Husband, you will now take the opportunity to make some fried eggs, and the hash stays in the oven for however long that takes.

Remove from oven, serve nice and hot! Husband also likes to add sriracha or another hot sauce to his plate/bowl. Enjoy!

[thefoodarchivist]

Hi so I was thinking about buying a bunch of squash and other veggie and just roasting them in the oven to have during the week....how do I season them for all occasions in one go? How do I store them so they don't get squishy or anything like that? What's the best way to reheat them? Sorry for the questions but I'm gonna try something new to make my diet a bit healthier. 🐹🐭

Hi friend! I do exactly what you describe pretty much every week and roast up a bunch of potatoes/sweet potatoes/winter squash and veggies to keep in the fridge. They last about half a week in the fridge I’d say.

I make up a big tray of Mediterranean veggies like red/yellow/orange bell peppers, courgettes, aubergine, mushrooms and red onion, although you could try adding asparagus, baby corn, carrot, cauliflower or broccoli as well. I would typically use a little coconut or olive oil, black pepper and sea salt the sprinkle with oregano and smoked paprika. Or, other times I might use a splash of lemon juice and cayenne/chilli flakes, or a drizzle of balsamic vinegar and some Herbs de Provence.

Winter squash (golden butternut, kabocha or queen squash are my favourites) just gets chopped up into pieces and baked plain, to use in place of potatoes. You can also just hack the squash in half, remove the seeds and bake it in its skin- which takes a lot longer but the middle then goes all soft and fluffy like mashed sweet potatoes when you scoop it out. Yum!

I keep both roasted veggies and baked squash, once cooked, in glass containers in the fridge and they keep just fine like that. They won’t stay as crispy as when they first come out of the oven I’m afraid but you can just reheat them in the microwave when you want to eat them. They still taste just as great and can be added to salads, rice or pasta dishes, for example. Also great cold in a lunch box; perhaps you could make up a nice meal with hummus, pita bread and your roasted veggies on a bed of fresh spinach for example?

Hope that helps. Hurrah for having a delicious veggie stash! 😋