/baw/ - General Discussion

If anyone hasn't seen them yet, all 6 episodes of How to cook like Heston are on Youtube. He's giving some really great basic tips, based on his research, and even dials it back a bit with his crazy recipes, so you can do most of them at home.
//youtube.com/watch?v=03h5T_tiyx0
//youtube.com/watch?v=3gbgSCV9hbM
//youtube.com/watch?v=ovr1yXqIX8Q
//youtube.com/watch?v=XAZGQql9Dh4
//youtube.com/watch?v=6jjvJS6c3co
//youtube.com/watch?v=F-VsLRVemzk

What should I do with my last Rolo, guys?

>>395446
Put it in ice cream or banana yoghurt? Or a cake, if you're going to have one.

Also, reminder that peanut butter banana sandwiches are a great use of extra hot dog buns.
And that you can just mash up bananas with creamy stuff and nuts and other fruits and it'll be great.

Ask a professional (almost [kinda]) chef anything.

I got a super nice cast iron skillet as a wedding present that I'll be making a project of seasoning tomorrow, and I'll also be making some homemade sea salt caramels.

Oh I guess I'll detail the caramel making process tomorrow, Let's Play-style.

>>395491
What's the most difficult dish you've attempted? How'd it turn out?

Your fortune: Outlook good

>>395494
Hm, the only dishes I've truly absolutely failed on were
>homemade cheese, without cheesecloth
Actually wasn't a disaster, just wasn't cheese. Basically curds and whey. Kinda cottage-cheese-y. Didn't taste bad at all, just looked grody and wasn't at all what I wanted to make.
>chicken piccata with seared/caramelized lemon juice
I was like 15 when I tried to do this. Waaaaay too much lemon, did not account for searing the lemons making the flavor concentrated. Inedible. Possibly caused permanent enamel damage from the overwhelming acidity.
>there was a third when I started typing, can't remember it now
Oh well.

On a whole, I don't find cooking to be difficult. There's tons of room for screwing up and still having it be delicious in most cases. I suppose dishes that involve cooking sugar are the "hardest" because if you blink at the wrong time, it's 310 degrees when you were supposed to stop it at 306 and now it has a burnt flavor that you'll never be able to get rid of, just start over.
That said, cooking with sugar is one of my favorite things. I've always said that if I opened my own place, it'd be a confectionary. I'm good at it.

>>395492
Neat

Your fortune: Godly Luck

Welcome to Cooking With Slowpoke! I'm your host, Cooking With Slowpoke!

Alright. After several minutes of frustrated cutting, I've got an 8x8 pan perfectly and seamlessly lined with parchment paper. Small pan in the back has 1/2 stick of butter, a cup of heavy cream, and a couple teaspoons of soy sauce. Big one up front has 1 1/2 cups of sugar, 1/4 cup each of corn syrup and water, and 1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar. The cream is only on an eye to melt the butter, I don't want anything cooking.

Keep in mind, while I'm taking inspiration from multiple recipes, I'm gonna be making this up as I go, I should be just as surprised with the end result as y'all.

(Edit: apparently my phone's pictures are too big. I'll go ahead and past this, but then make all of the rest of the posts later once I can resize stuff and not have to babysit this pan)

Your fortune: ｷﾀ━━━━━━(ﾟ∀ﾟ)━━━━━━ !!!!

Update: the caramels turned out really soft. Like, "spread out a bit under their own weight on the counter in a 72 degree room" soft. Not sure whether to cook them longer before or after the cream addition to remedy it. Will try adjusting the temps with the next batch and update you guys.

So, this is like a /ck/ general?
Ok then, I'll be doing a lasagna tomorrow for the X-mas dinner with my family.
Wish me luck.

>>395587
Fuck, that looks good.

>>395594
Thanks!

>>396020
Too much of an orange-colored spice? Are you sure they were tomatoes and not oranges?

>>396024
.....I...well...Hmmm. I need to look into this.

Also the pan I was using in the picture is Rever ware. Best pots and pans on the market.
The ones from 80's have a copper bottom and have the date on them. I found these at a Good Will type of place. I got lucky. Also a Cast-Iron Skillet, it needs to be cleaned and re-season it.

>>396020
I actually have that a lot with from scratch cooking. A lot of stuff looks different then you're trained to think of by store bought food.

My Tomato Sauce comes out orange.

My Orange Preserves came out golden yellow.

My Peach Preserves came out dark brown.

You're at the very least not doing anything wrong, but I don't know what you'd do differently to get a more red color, if that matters to you.

>>396194
>My Tomato Sauce comes out orange.
>My Orange Preserves came out golden yellow.
>My Peach Preserves came out dark brown.

Fuckn' nature, man. Make up your damned mind.

>to get a more red color, if that matters to you.
It's just if I use ripe RED tomatoes, I kinda expected a RED sauce.
Nature is ether being weird again or is just being a jerk. Probably the later.

>>396195
Thanks for the tip. I'll try that out on my next batch.

Made some burritos today. Never had any Mexican food before since I live in Germany and I doubt my attempt was very authentic. But man, did I ever underestimate their nutritional heft. I made three and was barely able to finish one. Those refried beans fill you up real fast.

>>396250
>I made three and was barely able to finish one.

Agreed. It's a full meal wrapped up in a flour disk.
Beans (refried or other) always seem to stick to your ribs and fill you up.

Don't worry about being authentic, unless your opening a restaurant in Mexico or if someone is about to kill you unless you can make the burritos.
Oh! Have you tried Nachos yet? They're awesome, but a pain to put together. If you do make them don't you DARE just throw the ingredients on top of the chips like at some restaurants like an animal.
Treat each chip gently and with lots of loving care.

And the German guy again. I'm kinda making all kinds of stuff that I saw in American TV shows and general pop culture. Made a sloppy joe today and man those things are SLOPPY. Also made a Juicy Lucy the other day and will never do so again. Burned my mouth and even some bits of my fingers. That shit is molten lava, except it also keeps sticking to the bits it's burning the shit out of.

Curiosity got the better of me after all the videogame memes and I tried some Mountain Dew for the first time. How can anyone possibly enjoy drinking this? Even sugar water is less unbearably sweet.

>>396850
Caffeine addiction is my guess. I used to drink the stuff all the time in high school; part of my breakfast every single morning was a 24oz of Mountain Dew. I usually had another throughout the day. In college it wasn't as frequent, but it was still a regular thing. (Surprise surprise, I deal with digestion problems these days. I wonder where that came from...) These days if I have more than an ounce or two of the stuff I have bad stomach pain. That's probably undone whatever I liked about the flavor in the past.

Now, Mellow Yellow, that stuff I love. I only have it once a week on average, though, which is probably a reason I haven't overdosed like I did Mt. Dew...

I promised regular /co/ a while back that I'd post this recipe, but I think Teeth&Hunger is as cute as a button, so here's my mother's pizza base recipe:

8 fl. oz. lukewarm water
1 fl. oz. olive oil
1 tsp sugar
½ tsp salt
1 tbsp dried milk powder
1 lb flour
1 sachet of yeast

Put all those in your breadmaker/mixer in that order, then switch it on/mix until the dough is ready. Leave it in a plastic bag containing sunflower oil for 15 minutes to, then knead and roll into 2-3 pizzas, or 1 big ol' calzone, then add toppings. If pizzas, cook for 15 minutes (check often). If a calzone, 20-30 minutes or more (stick a skewer in it every 5 minutes).

>>396850
I enjoy Mountain Dew, but I don't have soft-drinks often (except at work; local soft-drink factory)
I just like really sweet stuff.

How have your Easter feasts been? Just came back from the family.
We had lamb's heart with red cabbage, potatoes and gravy. It's such a rare treat. Just getting some cow or pig heart is already tough. Finding a butcher who sells lambs' hearts is nigh impossible.

>>397320
>lambs heart
Huh, what's it like?

>red cabbage
You lucky anon.

>>397321
It's honestly somewhat chewy, since it's just pure muscle, but the taste more than makes up for it. It's a very pleasant, kinda sweet-ish meat taste.

I've been living in this city for 5 years now and I still can't over the fact how incredibly shitty the farmer's market here is in comparison to the one in my hometown. You don't even have any selection. There's just one potato guy, one fruits guy, one cheese guy, etc.

>>397668
>fruit guy is sick today. sorry folks, no fruit this week

>>397672
Pretty much. Which is why the market is so shitty.

Anyone know anything interesting to do with tuna?

>>398219
Croquettes are yummy, if you mean the canned/pouched stuff

Actually didn't cook today and went out instead. It's been a while since I had a good kebab. That really hit the spot. It's just one of those things that are impossible to emulate at home.

Kitchen Nightmares wasn't lying. It really does take A LOT for a bellpepper to get rancid.

Trying to change my diet. I think I'm gonna have a weekly nuts and berries day, where that's the only thing I eat. Maybe see if I can expand that to like 3-4 days a week over time and then do my exercise on the days where I indulge myself with red meat. I just can't quit steak and bacon completely. It's too good. So this might be a good workaround.

>>398790
Yeah, I did a weekday vegetarian thing for a while. It actually wasn't too bad. The biggest difficulty was in finding variety throughout the week since most restaurants don't have a lot of good, filling vegetarian options. I ended up eating a lot of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

But I started a vegetable garden at home recently and I think if I manage to get it growing well enough I might try again on the weekday vegetarian thing once I have lots of fresh produce to work with.

>>398813
For PBJ sandwiches, I recommend using whole wheat bread, replacing the jelly with raw local honey, and sprinkling in a few oats for texture. Tasty, relatively healthy, and filling. Especially when you cut out bleached flower and processed sugar.

>>398816
Yeah, I always used wheat bread. To be honest it's not even a health thing, I just think wheat bread tastes better than white bread. Haven't tried honey and oats though. Might be worth looking into.

I feel like every yeast dough recipe always adds way too much water. Every single recipe I've tried has the dough sticky as fuck and I need like 1.5x the flour that's in the recipe. Why not forego the whole "add flour until it's no longer sticky" that's always in those recipes and just use the correct amount in the first place?

>>399018
Because it can vary depending on your environment (like your humidity levels).

>>399018
Like >>399019 said, baking has a TON of variables. Room temperature, exact water temperature, dissolved solids content in the water, humidity, altitude, whether the groundhog sees his shadow, etc. That's why no baking recipe can ever be exact, and if you find one that's pretending to be exact, it's lying to you.
I hate baking.

Yo, shrimp chips are pretty dang good actually

Bought 4 pounds of dürüm flatbread today. Not sure what I'm gonna do with it all, but I saw it at the market and thought it would be a neat thing to have. Shawarma will definitely be had with some of it, though.

Brewing doublemint tisane worked out well, it's nice and strong smelling even when diluted with tea.

I'm told that I'm very good at mixing slaw.
All I do is take one or two bags of coleslaw veggie mix from the grocery store along with half a container of slaw dressing per bag,cracked black pepper, celery salt, and any form of vinegar I can get my hands on: Salad or malt, or the stuff in pickle or sweet pepper jars, even a tiny bit of apple vinegar though I prefer not to use more than a cap-full or so of it.

Mix veggie and dressing, put on enough salad or malt vinegar to help stir it along with a bit of celery seed and black pepper to start, then mix well making sure to turn it over a few times and add things to taste. Other than that, just don't stir too much or it'll put air bubbles in it.

>>399261
I was about to make a shitpost about coleslaw being really basic and gay, but I take it back. That actually sounds really nice and I want some.

So, my mom makes a lot of rolled cookies, and got many of her recipies form Land-o-Lakes, which sent recipies reccomending unsalted butter. She used regular butter isntead, and her cookies turned out great, so she stuck with until this year when the groceries were out of regular and only had unsalted.

Going with the actual recipe's reccomended butter type this year, her cookies actually came out sligthly blander and less criply baked than usual, which we see as bad, though the latter might be the oven having something odd about it since the raspberry bars's filling was also runnier. Then again, she also couldn't find raspberry and had to go with blackberry instead, and also went with store brand rather than Smuckers and McCormick. The softer jelly in the bars is actually very nice to eat but lets the pieces fall apart a bit too easily.

Shawarma is the best fast food. Not even close.

Boiled a carrot, froze it, put it through the Yonanas machine I got earlier. Iit also works to use a food proccessor, and there's another device with similar function that I saw in a catalog once. Added ginger, nutmeg, other spices, a small splash of milk. Stirred. Makes about half a bowl per carrot. Tastes nice, a bit like pumpkin pie according to my mom.

>>404184
When Australians come back from London, we all ask the same thing: why don't we have Pret-a-Manger?

Oportos is alright, Nandos is great.

www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/whole-pumpkin-pie-soup-recipe.html

I want to try this on day.



>>404790
I add olive oil to the water when boiling spaghetti, so I don't see a problem with it.

>>404790
You mean morally, or gastronomically?

>>404790
To noodle soups? I see no problem. If you add oil to plain pasta however it's gonna make the sauce not stick to them leaving most of it on the plate and effectly splitting your meal in two steps of eating the plain pasta and then lapping up the sauce you were supposed to eat with the noodles. Which is totally fine, if that's a thing you wanna do.

I might enjoy garlic way too much. My peers are the ones suffering under my addiction.

>>405577
I need more garlic. I know a kid at highschool who believes in garlic pseudo-science and ate it after brushing teeth before school. You smelt chlorine and mould before you heard him. I think he might have pulled his shit together now.

How to make tofu absorb flavours?

>>406115
Press the water out (wrap loosely in paper towels, put between two plates, and put some weight [cans, flour/sugar canister] on top, leave it for 15 minutes), then marinate it in whatever.

Try 2 tbsp hoisin + 2 tbsp vinegar (uuuh mirin is traditional but I think apple cider tastes better here) + 2 tbsp soy sauce + 1 tbsp sugar + 1 huge or 2 small cloves of garlic, minced + teaspoon of red pepper flake. Homemade General Tso's sauce that tastes exactly like the restaurants.

>>406118
Sweet, I'll try it out!

I didn't think to press out the water/juice, so that's probably the main reason it tasted unusually bland last time.

>tfw several of your friends have birthdays on the same month
like, I only have so many safe days, fuck.

>>407424
Whoops meant to post that in the SYM.

>>407738
Nice. Got oregano?

>>407739
I've got oregano, basil, rosemary, sage, two types of thyme, burnet, garlic chives and watercress.

>>407738
Parsley >>>>>>> everything else.

Threat theme?
Reverend Horton Heat - Let Me Teach You How To Eat

… this thread is getting a surprising amount of spam for some reason.

>>419652
Any idea why this thread in particular?

>>419670
I haven't the foggiest idea, and no referers seem to point to the thread either.

Your fortune: Good news will come to you by mail

Unanchoring due to good behavior.

>>419757
>>421070
So it stopped getting spammed by bots?

>>395429
I watch Binging with Babish or 18th Century Cooking videos while eating, are they thread related?

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJHA_jMfCvEnv-3kRjTCQXw
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxr2d4As312LulcajAkKJYw

>>407443
>>407424
...what?

>>421516
SYM = "Speak Your Mind" general thread.
Not many people get a response back from a 4 year old post ;)

>>421535
That wasn't the post I was mainly asking about.