Do You Even Cook, Bro?

[4RNR]

Just remembered about the pics

Sent from my moto z4 using Tapatalk

[donlapalma]

OK I decided to get real ambitious this weekend. I'm going to make ramen from scratch. Anybody go down this rabbit hole? If so, do you have a tested recipe that will be good for a 1st time home cook?

[SCCY Marshal]

Prepping for our annual hot mess of a New year's Eve. We don't actually do anything but cook beef stew in the snow and marathon the Three Stooges. The rest of the day is eve more free-form. Whatever foods and champagne or prosecco based drinks.

Food:

- Breaded buffalo pollock chunks.
- Cocktail weenie sized smoke sausages and biscuit dough to blanket them
- Sharp mustard and curried ketchup for above
- Pickled herring in wine sauce
- Pickled herring in sour cream sauce
- Homemade meatballs in sauce which I'll make tonight so they can marinate in the sauce since they're better the next day
- Gin, brandy, lemons, Angostura bitters, sugar cubes, and several bottles prosecco for the French 75s and champagne cocktails
- Homemade beef stew
- Pepperoni, salami, peppered salami, assorted cheese, assorted crackers
- Coffee and tea

Guests:

We never really have any. Decent coworkers and friends who may end up stuck home alone are told they can swing by whenever for however long if they get bored. A few normally poke in at some point and leave fed with some extra food.

[UNM1136]

Was gonna wait till I used it, but I am way too excited....



I got one of these for Christmas. I might add, the only Christmas present I got, and I bought it.

It was delivered today. It was recommended by a Chef I respect, even if he is a CA progressive who may or may not have learned a thing or two after a Twitter mishap where the limits of his tolerence were exposed.

It is huge...it is solid... i am going to break it in this weekend, and cannot wait.

Pizza tomorrow, smash burgers on Saturday.

The instruction manual is OK. The YouTube videos on cleaning warm my heart. The seasoning instructions are inline with current best practices. The pizzas look delicious. I cannot wait.

pat

[UNM1136]

Pizza was a huge success. I seasoned the steel with flax oil for the hour preheat at 500 degrees F.

I bought dough at one of my local chain pizza joints. While waiting I noted that the deck ovens were set to 500 deg F. Took 8oz crimini mushrooms and tossed them in a pan with a few Tbs butter after the foaming subsided. Added a couple of cloves of crushed garlic, salt, black and red pepper. While the manufacturer makes the "perfect sauce" with crushed Italian tomatoes and sea salt, the wife and I for our 28 years together like Hunt's Roasted Garlic and Onion, so that was the sauce. I took half a jar of 505 Roasted Hatch Green Chile into a hot pan with garlic, garlic powder, and salt and drove off the moisture.

I built pizzas. Crust, sauce, a couple slices of provalone, sliced red onion, mushrooms, green chile, pepperoni, block mozzarella. Two family members dove in so fast they burned themselves, but applauded the effort. I did not use the broiler as the manufacturer recommended in his YouTube vids, because to my wife and kids "carmelized" and "blackened" mean "burned beyond edibility".

The crust is super crunchy, yet still chewy. The cheese nearest the edge is bubbled, golden, and crunchy.

I think we have a winner here. More tomorrow.

pat

[JAD]

Golubczi are supposed to be cabbage rolls, but I make it into a one pot and it is super fast and produces good leftovers. It is also pretty atkins.

One head of cabbage, cored and chopped (1-1.5”)
One onion fine dice
Four cloves of garlic minced
Two carrots grated or fine dice
One pound ground meat. I’ve only made it with 93% beef but I’m convinced it would be awesome with lamb
Beef stock
Tomato paste
Two pickles large dice. I pitch the seedy middle.

In a Dutch oven. Season the beef liberally with black pepper, smoked paprika, pensky’s Bavarian seasoning (mostly dry mustard and rosemary), and very little salt. Brown. Reserve.
Using the beef fat and maybe some butter, sauté the onion until almost soft. Add the carrot and let it work a little, like five min, and make a little hole for the garlic. Drop the heat a little and sauté the garlic in, then mix. Put the beef back in. Mix about three tbs of tomato paste with half a cup of stock and add. Use more stock later to loosen things up. Add the cabbage and pickles and stir until well combined. Cover and cook low medium until the cabbage is tender, stirring often, maybe 15 minutes. Serve with a dollop of sour cream on top.

[RoyGBiv]

Pizza was a huge success. I seasoned the steel with flax oil for the hour preheat at 500 degrees F.

I bought dough at one of my local chain pizza joints. While waiting I noted that the deck ovens were set to 500 deg F. Took 8oz crimini mushrooms and tossed them in a pan with a few Tbs butter after the foaming subsided. Added a couple of cloves of crushed garlic, salt, black and red pepper. While the manufacturer makes the "perfect sauce" with crushed Italian tomatoes and sea salt, the wife and I for our 28 years together like Hunt's Roasted Garlic and Onion, so that was the sauce. I took half a jar of 505 Roasted Hatch Green Chile into a hot pan with garlic, garlic powder, and salt and drove off the moisture.

I built pizzas. Crust, sauce, a couple slices of provalone, sliced red onion, mushrooms, green chile, pepperoni, block mozzarella. Two family members dove in so fast they burned themselves, but applauded the effort. I did not use the broiler as the manufacturer recommended in his YouTube vids, because to my wife and kids "carmelized" and "blackened" mean "burned beyond edibility".

The crust is super crunchy, yet still chewy. The cheese nearest the edge is bubbled, golden, and crunchy.

I think we have a winner here. More tomorrow.

pat

Pics! Pics!

My steel is grill sized, too big for the oven.
I need to try this in the grill eventually.
Thanks for the inspiration

[peterb]

OK I decided to get real ambitious this weekend. I'm going to make ramen from scratch. Anybody go down this rabbit hole? If so, do you have a tested recipe that will be good for a 1st time home cook?

Good luck! I found a great hole-in-the-wall noodle shop featuring hand-pulled noodles when I was working in China, but had no success trying to make them myself.

“Tampopo” might be fun for you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tampopo

[UNM1136]

Pics! Pics!

My steel is grill sized, too big for the oven.
I need to try this in the grill eventually.
Thanks for the inspiration

Dammit. I hate taking pics of food. In cooking school we did A LOT. Food styling and all. Building a portfolio and all.

Here ya go.

Those pizzas cooked in about 6-7 minutes total. Left some browned cornmeal and crisp cheese on the steel. Pulled the steel from the oven. Scraped it with a bench scraper and rinsed it off. Good to go in like two minutes.

Then we started...


I normally roast my bacon on a sheet pan in the oven. I thought I was going to need more weights, but because I started with a cold griddle the bacon didn't curl up much. Because the seasoning was so fresh it stuck a bit, but I could scrape everything up with a metal spatula. No issues.

Scraped the griddle with a board scraper. That much bacon (about 6 oz) filled the trench on the perimeter. Griddled the buns in the bacon grease, then dabbed a paper towel into the trench to sop up as much as I could. Griddled some red onion, and tossed on some green chile, and as it sizzled I added garlic powder and salt. Buns got mayo and green chile on the tops, and the bottoms got lettuce, tomato, onions, and doctored pickles*.



Meat on!


Smash and 60-90 seconds later: meat over!


I literally took that photo, turned off the heat, put 2 pieces of bacon on each patty, a piece of american cheese (I had prepped them by unwrapping before the meat went on), and took them off the griddle. That quick. The 2oz patties were on the griddle less than 3 minutes, total. Eveyone got a double. And here we are...



*Doctored pickles are a trick my granfather showed me. When I open a jar of pickles I add a couple of smashed cloves of garlic, a teaspoon to a tablespoon of whole black peppercorns, and a couple of dried chiles, usually chiles japones, or chiles pequìn. As the days and weeks go by the pickles, sweet or dill get better. And then, when the pickles are gone you can make dill pickle martinis. I learned about them a little before the start of my last dry spell. I lost a couple of weekends after losing track of how many I had consumed and decided to have a dry six months sooner, rather than later. They are delicious! 2:1 vodka and pickle brine, on the rocks, garnish with a picle spear. If you like dirty martinis, you need to try one of these.

Rave reviews from all the picky eaters.

ETA: That last pic needed better light and angle, but all the plates are clean! Sorry!

pat

[UNM1136]

This morning I cooked some bacon on the baking steel. Then dropped on some pancake batter. Then added blue berries. So eachpancake had a strip of bacon on one side, and blueberries on the other.
They weren't pretty unitl the last couple, but they were really, really tasty.

Cleaning the steel was like the night before. Carry it to the sink, scrape it with a steel board scraper, rinse. Put on the fire.

Loving the steel!

Also, I had a chain mail scrubber for my Diskit. This one.

I just got this one, and absolutely love it. The first one is great for scrubbing thermoses, coffee pots, and narrow opening containers. Drop the chain mail sheet in, add water and/or dish soap, and swish. Dump and rinse. Now that I am taking hot matcha tea to work in a narrow mouth thermos, it gets used daily. But the silicone pad in the second one makes scrubbing cast iron, stainless steel, and carbon steel, to include the new baking steel, a breeze...

pat