#cooking advice

[scrawnym4]

fanart i drew of wheatley dying in a glue trap

[bootleg-nessie]

Not enough people know that vegetables are a human construct

[learningfromlosing]

Cooking time: 18-20 minutes

If you mean 19 minutes just say that

[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.

[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?

[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.

[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.

[redfagdiver]

Ways to sublimate boring instant ramen:

Extra salt and spices (allows you to increase the water amount as well)

Garlic powder

A grease, such as oil or butter

A sweetener, sugar, honey, syrup etc...

Stock cubes (not the whole thing like just a piece)

Garlic powder

Soy sauce and/or vinegar

A cream, preferably coconut milk

Fresh herbs

A lover's blood and tears (any loved one's also works)

Garlic powder

Add any of those that you can if you're tired of eating instant noodles!

[prodgermmath]

AMERICANS!! QUICKLY!!! MOVE YOUR TURKEY BACK TO THE FREEZER!! NOW!!!!!

[bootleg-nessie]

These shits hit harder than the crack epidemic hit low income neighborhoods in the 80s

[the-shrimp-that-fried-rice]

BBQ/steak sauce on rice, thoughts?(This is how I eat my rice)(I am unable to touch shellfish)(I will touch my face and become a pufferfish)

Not a big fan honestly. I think bbq sauce goes better with fries. If ur allergic to shellfish u should still be able to have a lot of different different rice dishes. My favourites are peruvian arroz con pollo, jambalaya (do it without prawns of course), and lamb biryani

[artificial-condition]

We have gotten a flood of baked goods at work for the holidays (very nice) and let me tell you, you can make your cookies be 5x better than most other people’s by just not over baking them. We’ve gotten so many dry and hard cookies that otherwise taste great because they’re over baked. Your cookies shouldn’t look done when you pull them out of the oven!!! For many cookies they should just be starting to brown/set up on the edges and look underbaked in the middle. They’ll cook more on the sheet after you take them out and this will prevent it from turning into a hockey puck :)

[jupitervega]

safeway couponin got me 36 eggs for under 2 bucks which was great until i realized i now had to cook a total of forty (40) eggs 😱

made/ate 3 eggy toasts & 4 fried eggs over easy yesterday (in one sittin! i was a creacher possessed). but now i still got thirty-three (33) eggs to figure out how to use & like. No ingredience whatsoever to make frittata/quiche/anything heavy egg based

(i cannot eat 33 toads in holes. i simply cannot)

google was not helpful. wtf do i do with all these fucken eg

[edgybutnotveryedgy]

I butchered it. I tried to make rice blender bread and i really goofed it fam. If anyone knows why it collapsed please tell me?

It collapsed while baking. I'm wondering if maybe i didn't let the batter rise long enough? This is killing me.

It still tastes good but something went very wrong and i wont be okay until i can figure out exactly what.

[theplotdoctor]

The best way to cook hotdogs is boil them in the hot dog flavoured water... you know, the stuff in the jar.