buffcreampuff

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[buffcreampuff]

I'm a college student working several jobs & taking a class for summer. My cousin got me a slow cooker but aside from rice idk what to do with it. Recipes online require buying so many little things and I can't make it seem worth it. This is my first time grocery shopping on my own and I'm overwhelmed with how much it costs/is taking even when I just eat the same 2 foods (eggs for breakfast, burger for lunch and dinner) and easy microwave stuff over and over. The closest grocery store is also limited in ingredients. Easy slowcooker recipes that don't require me dropping a bunch of money would be so helpful <3

followers, any ideas for anon?

i would say there might be some variety or things you haven't tried yet if you check out the microwave tag and there is a small slow cooker selection as well. i know groceries are super hard right now and inflation is affecting everyone. i do want to say that it is always okay to go to your local food bank to supplement your pantry/fridge if you're struggling (yes, you are struggling enough if you have to ask am i struggling enough) - everyone deserves to eat! also, a lot of places have seasonal summer free produce programs right now. try googling (your county/town) free produce.

[buffcreampuff]

"Creaming is essential, it's why we're all here"

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I'm trying to make a good pot roast in my crockpot, but after I take it out it gets dry. It's on "low" (whatever that means) for 8 hours. I've tried searing it before and still dry. It's submerged in plain water with some herbs and spices for that time. Am I over/undercooking it? It's a cut with low fat %, is that why?

I love you. I think you learned how to make pot roast from someone on Opposite Day, or perhaps April 1st. The only thing you got right is 'low heat for 8 hours'.

Choose a fatty cut of tough meat. Look for lots of fat marbling on a Chuck roast or Shoulder roast. Tough meat has a ton of flavor, and the fat keeps the meat from drying out. The long cook time on low heat, plus acids will make 'tough' meat into a pull-apart, melt-in-your-mouth glory.

Make sure the meat is completely thawed, NOT frozen.

Plain water and nothing else except herbs/spices is.... not what I'd do. A lot of flavor can come into the broth when you add whole carrots (minus the carrot top!) and quartered onions in there. I'm a fan of adding some big chunks of pumpkin or butternut squash and chunks of turnip as well.

I think using red wine for part of the liquid base, and adding a hearty helping of worcestershire sauce will also help the flavor and making the meat 'melty.' The acid and alcohol will draw more, and different flavors from the meat and vegetables that water alone cannot do. Makes it richer.

For my very best pot roast recipe, which had my wedding guests fuckin' clamoring to get the recipe; I cheat. I'm not ashamed of that fact. For the richest, most face-punchingly meaty tasting broth, go to an asian market (or online) and find a mushroom hot pot soup base. It'll be a thick liquid inside a bag, which you then dilute with water. Use THAT as the liquid base (remember to dilute it!), and add your wine and wocestershire sauce to it, along with those herbs & spices. Your whole face will be blown off with flavor. It's the best.

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i'm not trying to pick a fight, but does it really matter if the vegetables are sliced or diced or minced or cubed if its all going into the same soup?

A sincere and good-faith question is never a reason to fight =)

Yes, it does matter.

Something like bell pepper or tomato (soft tissue, lots of water) is going to cook a lot faster than something like potato or turnup (firm tissue, not much water).

If you had the same-sized piece of bell pepper and potato, and cooked them for the same amount of time, either you'll have a well-cooked bell pepper and an undercooked potato.... or a well-cooked potato and a really overcooked bell pepper.

This is why many recipes which have both firm vegetables like turnip/potato, and soft-flesh vegetables like tomato and bell pepper will ask you to add the firm-flesh ones first, and cook them for a bit, and THEN add the soft-flesh veggies, so that they'll all arrive at their 'well-cooked' state at the same time.

But if you have teeny tiny pieces of potato (diced) and larger chunks of bell pepper (chopped), and start cooking them at the same time in the same pan... because the potato pieces have a lot of surface area exposed to the heat, relative to their total size, they'll cook at about the same speed as the much larger bell pepper.

So you'll have a dish of combined diced potato and chopped pepper which will start at the same time, AND be finished all at the same time!

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If you're just asking for a soup where you add EVERYTHING at the same time, and just boil away... the cut-shape influences the cook time.

Pieces with a lot of surface area relative to their size (diced, matchstick, sliced, minced) means you don't need to cook it as long. Bigger pieces (chopped) need more total cook time for the heat to penetrate.

Sometimes, recipe-makers will just prefer a certain size and shape of ingredients because it influences the mouthfeel of taking a bite, or because it's visually appealing.

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Chop: Big rough cuts. Each chunk is somewhere between the size of your whole thumb and your first thumb joint. 1-inch by 1-inch

Diced: Smaller cuts. Each piece is roughly the width/length of your first pinkie joint. 1cm by 1cm.

Minced: Cut into teeeeny tiny pieces! Minced garlic is a good reference. Each piece will be about the size of a red pepper flake. About 2mm by 2mm.

Cubed: This is on shape not size. Make it into even square shapes. Cubed potatoes tend to be 'chop' size, while onion cubed tends to be dice size.

Sliced: Again, shape not size. This describes parallel cuts made to create pieces that are quite thin, but still wide or long. Pepperoni slices.

Matchstich: Cut so that the pieces resemble matchsticks! Long, but not very wide or deep.

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How do you thaw different proteins?

Think about what you're cooking TOMORROW, and start thawing meat the day before you need it.

Take the meat out of the freezer and stick it in the fridge overnight. It generally takes about 24 hours for every 4 to 5 pounds of meat.

So, if you're working with a BIG, DENSE cut of meat, or a whole turkey, you may need several days in the fridge.

This applies to all types of meat. Doesn't matter what animal. Doesn't matter if it's ground sausage, bratwurst, or full steaks.

If you want to start cooking and realize 'oh no! My meat is still frozen!' My most heartfelt recommendation is to cook something else today, and move the meat into the fridge to thaw so you can cook it tomorrow.

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If you CANNOT wait, and MUST cook a cut of frozen meat TODAY: I recommend putting it in an airtight & watertight bag, squeezing as much air out as you can, and placing the sealed bag into cold water. use something to weigh it down so it stays submerged.

This will thaw about 1 pound of meat every 30 minutes. COLD WATER!

The cold water lets the ice melt faster, but still slows bacterial growth on the surface of the meat.

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It's possible to thaw meat in a microwave on the 'defrost' setting, or on its lowest power in short bursts until you can poke it and it's thawed (be attentive! Know how to LOWER your microwave's power!), but if you do that you MUST cook your meat right away.

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You can also just.. cook with frozen meat.

It takes about 50% longer to fully cook, you have to be CAREFUL to check the interior to ensure it did cook through, and not ideal if you want to get crispy-golden skin or a good sear, but it's an option.

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DO NOT leave your meat out on the counter to thaw, even if it's still in its original packaging. DO NOT thaw your meat with hot water! This is a recipe for bacterial growth.

[buffcreampuff]

The lack of agreement across brands on what “extra firm tofu” is is, in fact, very high on my list of unimportant problems.

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Source: beth_thefirstyear on Instagram

I have four muffin tips for making bakery style muffins at home.

Tip number one:

Rest your batter for 15 minutes in your mixing bowl after you make it. This is gonna allow the starch molecules to swell and absorb, creating the thicker batter and the thicker batter is known for doming!

Tip number two:

Fill your muffin holes with at least six to eight tablespoons of batter. That’s like a heaping half cup okay. You want them super full so they’re gonna create that dome.

Tip number three:

Kinda goes along with tip number two. You’re only gonna fill every other hole in your muffin pan. And why we do that - that’s so the muffins that are baking can spread and dome without running into their neighbors. Because when they run into their neighbors they get like square edges but we want perfect dome circles.

Tip number four:

You’re to bake your muffins at a high temperature initially. That’s gonna be 425*F for the first seven minutes. And then keep them in the oven and lower the temperature to 350*F for the remaining bake time. Starting the muffins off at a high temperature initially allows the muffins to rise rapidly and it sets the outer surface of the muffin, producing a dome shape.

There you have it. My four muffin tips for creating bakery style muffins.

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Do any of u have decent recipes that are like 5 ingredients (not including spices) and take 45 mins or less to prepare i gotta stop eating sandwiches for dinner

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Hey, are you a broke motherfucker trying to save money on groceries and attempting to plan for having food in the house at the end of the month? Do you have a good system for storing frozen meat? If you don't, here's how I do it:

Large Bastard called me when I was at the plasma center (we're broke motherfuckers!) to tell me that Aldi had nearly expired pork chops (use or freeze by tomorrow) for 50% off, so I told him to get 4 packs.

I keep my freezer pretty full with homemade stock, frozen meat, frozen veggies, frozen fruit, and g-free bread, so I can't just stick the big packages of pork chops directly in the freezer, and besides if I do, the pork chops will freeze to each other and then I'll have to thaw the whole mass of them if i want to cook them, which will increase thawing time.

So what I do instead is make an accordion of waxed paper and fill it with pork chops.

This ends up saving a ton of space, and means I can choose to thaw 8 pieces or 1 piece or however much I need at a time.

3 packs stored this way are smaller than 1 pack from the store.

The final accordion of meat gets wrapped in a layer of waxed paper, then put into a freezer bag with the air pressed out, and now if I don't have cash for groceries I've still got something to eat.

This is also the way that I save meat that is close to its spoilage date that I won't be able to cook before it goes bad. If you stick a family pack of chicken breasts in the freezer, you have a family pack of chicken breasts to thaw. If you put them into little waxed paper envelopes, you've got single serving packets that you can easily toss into a soup or bake from frozen.

This is ALSO pretty much the technique I use to freeze banana slices when my bananas are going brown and I'm not in the mood to bake, only I freeze them on a cutting board before breaking them off and sticking them in a bag when they're frozen.

Freeze wet stuff in individual pieces, not big chunks, so you don't have to break up big chunks to use your frozen food.

I know this probably seems pretty obvious to a lot of people, but it wasn't obvious to me until a couple years ago because nobody ever showed me how to do it and I didn't grow up in a family that cooked a lot.

[buffcreampuff]

If you have some leftover Brie from your fancy cheese party or whatever you should put it on toast with some strawberry preserves.

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Hi Luke! Do you have any favorite recipes you'd like to share? I wanna try something new!

ooh!!! if it's for cooking, I love maangchi's dubu jorim, super easy and super good! you can put bok choy with it too! I like this halloumi bake with rice as well, you can make it with feta too and any kinda beans you like! and if you wanna bake something these shortbread cookies are one of my favourites! you can make them any shape! ^__^

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My signature dish is deviled eggs. They’re always a hit at family parties. One problem: I suck at peeling the shell off the eggs. Every once in a while, I’ll get lucky with a batch that are easy to do. Usually, I either need my mom’s help or it takes really long. Any tips?

After hard-boiling and letting it cool down;

Crack the shell a little on the counter, then fling it into a lidded jar with about an inch of water.

Shake vigorously.

Now the peel will slide right off =)

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how do i know if the eggs in my fridge have gone bad, or will soon?

Float 'em.

As an egg 'goes bad', gasses start to build up in the egg. That sulfur smell.

An egg that sinks to the bottom of the water is still fresh, but an egg that has 'rotten' gasses will float.

If it kinda gently bounces and slooowly sinks to touch the bottom while standing on end, that egg should be used ASAP, because it'll go bad soon.

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https://www.instagram.com/p/CvEpIdzSydO

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snarkybutdelish: roasted kabocha squash, garlic and sundried tomato soup (blended with stock and a dollop of cream cheese) + spinach and mozz sourdough grilled cheese, some chilli oil, fried crispy basil leaves