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[QUESTION] What are your favorite spices to use in soups?
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Ok I might get downvoted to oblivion but I use MSG. It enhances the flavors so much that I have stopped going to restaurants.
Edit- I did my research and found no credible source that says MSG is harmful.
Edit2- If you go to a restaurant or order KFC chances are they use MSG as well
Biggest hack? Realizing that humans have been cooking for millennia, and that it's in the best interest of big business to convince you that it's difficult/expensive/extremely complicated.
You don't NEED the fancy equipment every company out there is trying to sell you.
Not everything needs to be gorgeous on the plate, or a whole production to make.
The poorest people in the world cook delicious food every day.
For instance, you don't need NEED a +$150 Japanese chef knife to cook at home. What you need is something that can hold an edge through general maintenance, a whet stone, a kitchen towel to dry off your blade immediately after you hand wash it, and a little bit of patience.
IKEA sells some surprisingly great single construction (steel blade, steel handle) knives, and their single body chef knife is like $25. Just get an honing rod for use before you start slicing, and a whet stone for periodic sharpening (there's TONS of YouTube videos of all the different ways of sharpening your knife), and remember to wash and hand-dry after you're finished. My chef knife cost me barely anything, and I've used it for years and years, and it still slices through a tomato without a problem. Also, I only cook for myself, so I can absolutely 100% guarantee my whet stone will "outlive" me.
Don't be afraid of spices. Use more than you think is necessary. Onion and garlic can make a meal 100x better.
Mandolines are not you friend. They thirst for blood.
Seriously if you get one get a safety mandoline like the once for all brand.
Kevlar glove.
Can confirm.
If you're American, you don't want to have to pay an ER bill when you slice the tip of your finger off, like I did.
Or pair it with a pair of kevlar gloves or similar. But yes, every commercial cook I know says the worst kitchen incident they've seen involved a mandolin.
chicken (or vegetable) broth in lieu of water to cook rice.
I cannot stress this one enough. This turns simple white rice in practically a risotto. And if you REALLY want to make a risotto, you're just three steps away from this.
Bake bacon on cookie sheets at 375 for about 20 minutes. You can make a ton of bacon very quickly, with almost no mess, and all the bacon is perfectly flat. We have a double oven and we can make about 4 pounds of bacon in about 30 minutes this way. :)
Cookiesheet bacon is the best! If you like it crispy it helps to broil it for a minute or so at the end of cooking it.
Does this not splatter all throughout the oven?
Yes and no. A substantial amount of grease will be aerosolized and condense on the interior of your oven when it cools. It's nasty looking and the next three cakes you bake will taste slightly of bacon. You can decide whether that's a bug or a feature.
If I could figure out how to make my electric smoker get to 375F I would only do bacon outside in the smoker as I essentially have to clean the over every time I do bacon in it. And, yes, you can smoke bacon. It's not bad, but it also is a bit more like jerky than the crispy bacon I like. Again - bug/feature territory.
And then save the bacon grease in a jar to add to gravys! I add a tablespoon or so to my sausage gravy for biscuits and gravy and it is freaking delicious. Can also use it to grease a cast iron pan before making a pizzookie for a little extra flavor.
By far my favorite is to have a squirt bottle of water next to my stove. It's great to have throughout the cooking process, especially if you've moved on from Teflon bullshit and are using a pan you pre-heat. To start, you put the pan on the heat and squirt a little water in it. When the water evaporates, the pan is usually in the 350F-400F range. Then when the pan is dry and heated a little more, you can squirt a few more drops in to see if the Leidenfrost effect has taken, uhhh, effect. The way you tell is that the water just dances around on the pan instead of behaving like water normally does, and it's how you know your food won't stick, it is at this point that you add the oil.
Moving on to the actual cooking, let's say you've thrown some chicken thighs in the pan and you've built up a lot of fond (the brown bits that form in the bottom of the pan) and the chicken is almost done, but you're not planning on making a sauce. Deglaze the pan with little squirts of water targeted directly at the fond and rub the chicken thighs over the area where the water is deglazing and suddenly that fond is sticking to your chicken thighs, resulting in a better crust and a cleaner pan.
Speaking of cleaner pan, once you're done cooking and plating and you have a hot dirty pan, squirt enough water in to cover the bottom of the pan and then go eat. When you come back to the kitchen to clean up, the water will have broken down the shit on the bottom of the pan and will steam the sides of the pan, so the pan will wipe clean as easy if all you did was fry an egg.
Finally, I stopped putting milk (of any variety) in my coffee, but I wanna be able to drink my coffee right away and it's too hot when it's made fresh, but I've got a bottle full of room temperature water (all the filtered water in my house comes out ice cold) sitting right there so I can cool it down that way (I brew my coffee pretty strong so watering it down isn't a big deal).
There are still people who don't user probe thermometers. This is the single best cooking tip I can give:
Reverse taring - instead of placing the bowl on the scale and taring before weighing, place your ingredients on the scale and tare, and you can then scoop out and see the negative weight of how much you have used. This is especially helpful if you are trying to weigh an ingredient into a hot pan you can’t just set on the scale
pay attention. stay with what you are cooking as you are cooking it. don't let yourself become distracted. taste as you go. take notes. use unsalted butter. know your equipment and its pros/cons. shop at different stores for the best ingredients. fresh herbs are waaay better if you can swing it.
Boil spaghetti in a small amount of water in a frying pan. You won't need to push the pasta down and you'll have lovely starchy water to finish off your sauce — perfect for something like a carbonara!
Another fun fact, you barely need enough water to cover the pasta and it doesn’t even need to be boiling to be working. If you just slightly more than cover the spaghetti with water it heats up much faster and therefor you are done cooking much faster. No need for a giant full pot.
If you cook by using a cooking recipe you can be creative (within reason). If you BAKE by following a baking recipe stick to the letter!
I teach my kids that cooking is art and baking is science. You have to be precise with measurements in baking, not so in cooking.
Taste as you go and taste everything! Understanding how the components of your meal taste is a great way to make yummy things. It also helps you learn how ingredients manifest in the end result and will help you expand your cooking versatility
Add salt as you cook, not all at the end.
You can make a delicious, calorie dense chicken noodle soup on an extreme budget with canned chicken, chicken broth, and ramen noodle packages. That meal kept me from going hungry on multiple occasions during college.
Mine is, don’t eat anything solid, hold your poop for 3-days. When the redditors arrive why won’t understand, but whatever food you eat will be the best you ever tasted, they also will remain confused about why there is so much karma on your foodporn posts!
This one is a little bit of a hot take, but bottled lemon or lime juice is good for consistency. While fresh will most certainly be better, you may inadvertently juice a bad lemon/lime and potentially ruin a dish. Bottled juices can last a bit longer in the fridge.
If you're making rice without using a rice cooker, the amount of water you need is not quite a direct ratio like the package suggests. You need a 1:1 ratio of rice to water plus an additional quarter to half cup of water depending how firm you like your rice.
When I have to use parchment paper, I crumple the paper ip into a little ball first, then press it out flat into the cooking vessel (sheet pan or loaf pan or whatnot) and it lays flatter/conforms to the pan better without rolling up all over the place rather than trying to just use a pristine sheet of parchment. It really works great.
LPT - go buy a box of half-size sheets from a restaurant supply store. Webstaurant was my go to until they sent their shipping prices into the stratosphere. I buy 1000 sheets at a time and store it with the sheet pans (the box is only a couple inches tall) and it lasts forever. Costs about $50-60 a box iirc which is way cheaper than buying in rolls.
when dicing onions cut radially first, then slice across, it saves you that weird half slice that's traditionally used for dicing onions.
I use cast iron for nearly everything, it survives a hundred years because it's bulletproof not because it's gingerly handled every time it's removed from it's velvet case. People dragged them around on Chuck wagons, you will not kill it with soap. Worst case it gets a little sticky and now you need to cook some bacon in it.
A splash of acid in your soup or stew at the end really wakes it up.
Never cook rice without at least a couple bay leaves. Ideally you'll cook it in chicken stock as well, add flavour where you can.
The best chicken stock in a jar is Better Than Bullion. Hands down. No contest.
With a splash of oil you can cook eggs even in a sticky cast iron pan.
Always use hand protection of some kind with a mandolin. I've never seen a non-pro chef go without and not fuck up their hand. Even pros lose the tips of their fingers sometimes too.
If you want to recreate movie theater popcorn at home you need the following things:
A whirlypop or other stovetop cooker
Coconut oil, refined
Popcorn kernels, quality varies, find a good brand
Fine salt
"Popcorn oil" - this is butter flavored oil sold next to the kernels
Here's what you do, set up a bowl to dump your popcorn in, throw some salt in the whirlypop with a spoon of coconut oil, and just a tiny glug of the popcorn oil, not much just a tad. Add your kernels, crank the heat to high and start cranking. Do. Not. Stop. The popcorn will begin to pop after an interminable wait. Keep cranking until it either gets hard to crank or the popping slows down significantly. Then quickly dump your popcorn into the waiting bowl. Do not add salt, you already did this, the fine salt will be well distributed this way. Add a bit of popcorn oil. Shake the bowl a bit to distribute, add more if desired etc. Then enjoy your movie theater popcorn.
It took me years to work out how to do it without the Naks oil, which I bought from a local popcorn shop for awhile.
Always keep canned tomatoes in the pantry. Particularly tomato paste. It's a great ingredient that can add a depth of flavor to a variety of dishes.
Whole spices really do make a big difference and it's worth knowing how to use them even if you don't make them part of your everyday cooking. When its time to make a special dish, using whole spicessl that you grind fresh will be worth it.
Use acid in your cooking. Citrus, viniger, wine, yogurt, etc will often upgrade a dish.
Parchment paper/aluminum foil is your friend. Minimize your time scrubbing dishes by minimizing the mess you make when baking food.
Save a cut of pasta water to thicken up sauces.
To get a good sear on a steak in a pan, the pan doesn't have to be super hot, you just have to make sure the contact surfaces are as dry as possible.
If your stew tastes like it's missing something, it's bay leaf.
Don't buy hyperspecialized tools for cooking if you can use more generalized tool for the task with the same amount of effort. You can do a lot with a good chef's knife.
Cut through greasiness with a bit of acid.
Adding a little bit of sugar, but not so much you can taste the sweetness, to otherwise salty dishes will mellow out and enhance the flavor of the dish.
deglazing. it's when you use an acid to pull all the glaze off the bottom of a pan. it flavors the dish and makes cleaning your pan easier.
rice vinegar and red or white wines are favorites
When slow cooking a roast lay it on a bed of potatoes or whatever other sides you want, fill the water to the top of the veggies (or taters) then soak the roast in your sauce of choice. Gravity and heat will help the sauce work into the veggies giving them a nice flavor. The roast pretty much always comes out perfectly moist and you get amazing veggies out of the deal.
You don't need to slave over a stove for 3 hours to get caramelized onion. Here's what you do. After slicing the onion, get the pan up to a medium heat with a splash of oil. Toss in the onions and add a bit of salt to make them sweat. Once they start to dry out, go golden at the edges, and even stick to the pan a bit, add a splash of water. You do have to stir continuously for this method as well, but it takes much less time. Do this process a few times where you add water, cook it until its dry, another splash of water, cook it until it dries out again, etc. Sometimes I'll even alternate in a splash of white wine for fun. You should have beautiful caramelized onions in 30 min with this method.