Decided to make fried chicken. We rarely ever eat fried foods, and so I don’t have fancy things like deep fryers. What I had was a large cast aluminum pot.
Filled it about half way with oil, made amazing delicious fried chicken.
I also don’t have a stop top. Use a single eye burner. Needed the burner for something else, so sat the pot on the counter next to the sink.
Moved wrong, knocked the pot into the sink. Boiling oil goes down the drain.
Know what’s at the bottom of the drain? A trap full of water.
Water met boiling oil as I matrix dodged our of the way and a geysey worthy of yellow stone came flying out of the sink, both sides, shooting boiling oil and steam everywhere. Covering the ceiling, the walls, the floor. Even the dog got hit (thank God for long, thick fur!). I had splatter burns on my legs, which was the only part of me not under the counter when it landed. It came up with so much force it threw the pot out of the sink.
Nate From the Internet - https://www.youtube.com/@NFTI
Formerly of TKOR/The King of Random, not a cooking channel but he does food comparison videos and the like.
The Kitchen & Jorn Show - https://www.youtube.com/@kitchenandjorn
Kristin and Jen (formerly of Buzzfeed) typically doing cooking competitions (and food taste tests)
Don't Panic Pantry - https://www.youtube.com/@dontpanicpantry
Featuring Noah Galuten, chef and author and a former host on the youtube channel Tasted (if anyone's memories go back that far lol).
Jun's Kitchen - https://www.youtube.com/@JunsKitchen/
Jun's (from Rachel & Jun) channel where he mostly makes different treats and meals for their kitties. Doesn't post often.
Travel Thirsty - https://www.youtube.com/@TravelThirstyBlog
A non-narrated vlog showing up close and personal the creation of mostly Asian dishes from start to finish in various restaurants and countries. CW: Live sea animals (fish, crustaceans, and the like) are frequently dispatched during videos, viewer discretion is advised for those who do not wish to view it.
Masaru - https://www.youtube.com/@masaru.9268
Masaru, a free dive fisherman and new business owner details his life and adventures in Japan from catching, cleaning, and eating all sorts of different sea life he mostly catches himself. Videos are subtitled perfectly and he puts a lot of production value. Also occasionally does random challenge video series.
I love Emmymade. She seems so nice and upbeat in her videos and she covers so many recipes, most of which are very doable or at least weird and interesting(like her hard times stuff). I also like how normal she is in the kitchen. At this point I dont know how much of it is manufactured to make her more “relatable” and how much are organic kitchen errors but it gives her this very normal enthusiastic person just cooking vibe that I dig.
Ann Reardon is another fave. From her tiny miniature(as in model miniature) house with functional kitchen, to her genuinely good looking recipes, to her popular debunking series. Everything she creates is well researched and well tested.
It also sounds like the harvest is during the autumn/winter, based on the notes on the first one, so they'd be out-of-season now, so I doubt that you could get them grown in California anyway until late in the year. I have no idea whether they ship well, but if so, you're probably stuck looking for imports if you want them prior to that.
If you have an appropriate place to grow them, you might save the seeds from one if you can get one and plant them and have a tree yourself. It sounds like they do grow from seed (not like, say, the Hass avocado).
EDIT: One more trick. It's not as nice an interface for actually shopping as, say, Amazon or the like, but if you want to find something truly esoteric that you cannot find anywhere else, Google Shopping indexes a ludicrous number of retailer sites. My first search there found:
this site is one of my go tos for when i feel like starting a completely pointless argument 😂 just say "did y'all know pop tarts are technically a type of calzone?" & 30 seconds later you're having the dumbest debate known to man with the entire friend group
Somehow i had never seen this video before. Honestly? beats Food Network. Now im off to Amazon to buy a Wok and a Coffee grinder. I need to get bomb at making Pepcorn.
Fast food is shit food so who cares. You can literally get food from a grocer and make it yourself and it’s better.
You don’t have to be a fucking suis chef to make edible and enjoyable food.
You may even be better off ordering something like Hello Fresh, get the meals that taste the best, keep the recipes, and then remake the recipes with grocery food which is way cheaper.
Wendys is one of the reasons 1 billion people are obese and have health problems. Their food is literally shit. I have also worked at Wendy’s btw so I know what their shit is made of. It’s shit.
You know what? Here’s a free recipe to make a good chicken sandwich.
Take a big chicken breast and cut it in half.
Marinate the breast for 20 minutes and up to 24 hours in pickle chip juice.
Take a cup of flour and put salt/pepper/paprika/chili powder/ baking soda(2 pinches) together
You can use eggs to get the flour on the breast but I don’t. Just get the breast all nice and floured up.
Place them in the freezer for 20 minutes to get them stiff and easier to manage.
In the meantime:
Set your pan on about a 4-5 heat and wait for the vegetable oil to get about 345-350. If you don’t have a thermometer, gauge the heat of the oil by the waves it makes. You should be able to see the oil looking “wavy” which means it’s heating up.
When it’s hot and ready, place the breasts in the pan for 5-6 minutes. Flipping about halfway through. If there is not enough oil, add more carefully.
When it’s done, stick a thermo in and see if it’s at around 160. It’s done!
Now place it on your brioche, add some hot sauce and sweet pickle chips and you’re done!
Eat a bag salad too because I’m sure you don’t eat enough greens.
Use herbs and spices. Use different spices. I get tired of recipes that use the same 4 flavors over and over, so I look for recipes that use something else. Under-used spices I love: cardamon, rue, sumac. Under-used spices that I can only fit in certain recipes: caraway, mace, fennel seeds.
Get spice mixes for pre-balanced flavors, like Herbs de Provence, Garam masala or Harrissa paste (you can make this yourself, but you should try a few versions to figure out what you’re shooting for).
Maybe these are al old hat to you, but here are some standard examples:
add tarragon to tuna/chicken salad
add cardamon and nutmeg to cooked oatmeal and omit cinnamon
First, I want to make sure we’re talking about sumac and not poison sumac. I originally got it as garnish for my hummus and Baba ghanoush. It works well in lots of Mediterranean recipes. For me, it seems to lose potency when cooked too long, so I generally add it towards the end.
P.S. I make hummus from 1/2 pound dry garbanzo beans cooked for a long, long time. Add 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda near the end to ensure soft, mushy beans. Maybe 15-20 minutes of extra cooking after that, then drain off excess water and let cool. The beans shouldn’t be dry, of course, but not soupy, either. There are vegan recipes that use that leftover liquid, so consider saving it.
In a food processor, add several cloves of garlic, about 3 tablespoons tahini, and a bit of salt (maybe 1/2 teaspoon or less). Add somewhat cooled beans, 1/2 teaspoon sumac, and about 1-2 small lemon of zest and juice OR 1/2 -1 large lemon. You can save some juice to the side for correcting flavor later. Optionally add pine nuts or other flavor agents, like roasted red peppers or parsley. I diverge from the standard hummus by adding a glug of olive oil directly into the mix as well as using it as a topping, so add a couple tablespoons in if you so desire. Buzz repeatedly, scraping down the sides as needed until you have a creamy mix. Correct seasoning as desired, then put in a bowl, create a swirling depression in the middle and sprinkle with sumac, then drizzle with olive oil. Serve immediately or cover and refrigerate. A good olive oil may make it stiffen up in the refrigerator, so if you are going to eat it cold and added oil to the blend, you may want to make it with extra liquid.
My baba ghanous is almost the same recipe, but with roasted eggplant instead of beans, and extra tahini when the eggplants are over-mature, which means darker, more bitter seeds (and which the extra tahinin cuts).
Interesting, never heard of rue. Translated it to German and never heard of Weinraute either :D I’ll have a look at the store the next time. And I’ll also give sumac a try.
Caraway is very commonly used in Germany, but my South African wife does not like it, so I very rarely use it.
I must say I’m a bit lazy with herbs, and I just buy “italian herb mix”.
For other spices, I always have chili (we love hot), pepper, salt, tumeric, all-spice, one hot curry madras mix, and nutmeg.
Depending on the recipe, I also have a lot of different dried chilies, and usually some standard fresh ones (jalapeños and habaneros)
One thing I’d like to recommend you: toasted ground coriander seeds. Toast them carefully over low heat until they release oil, grind in a spice grinder or mortar and pestle. Use for most meat dishes, but also goes into some salads. Widely used in South Africa, especially in their traditional Boerewors, which is why I stock it.
Oh, I bought it as a live plant. We’ve had it in the ground for several years now. Even when the rosemary bush died in the cold, the rue lived on. Our thai hot pepper plant is in a pot and has to come in before it frosts. Of course we always have to buy new basil and cilantro seedlings each year. You can’t stop mint from coming back – same goes for perilla. Anyway, sample links to seeds: earthcareseeds and/or seedneeds.
I’ve had a cactus die from lack of water, my wife is the green thumb person and only grows chili plants ;) we only have a balcony, so not that much space. According to Wikipedia, rue is European, so I still have hopes of seeing it at the store.
I like to cook pasta in MSG-water sometimes. I also tend to use wholemeal pasta, which I think is important (the wholemeal aspect) ^.^. MSG works best for me when I use it with things that already have a decent depth of flavour and/or variety of ingredients ;3. It doesnt work so well if your food doesnt have enough flavour.
Other cool ingredients:
liquid smoke (works really well in a lot of things including vegetarian chilis, but especially i’ve found its good in lentil soups when you also have mint e.g lentil and pea soup, lentil, potato, onion soup, etc. ^.^) - look for the industrial stuff, its like £5 per bottle but you only need 1 or 2 drops for litres of sauce and it will last you months, kinda like MSG. Add it near the end so you don’t evaporate away lots of the flavour, too.
yeast extract - this shit is delicious in tomato sauces and stews and chili, even if in the uk we typically have it on toast ;p, adds a meaty, mushroomy flavour
cinnamon - works amazing in tomato sauces, it sounds weird as fuck but tomato sauce without it tastes like its missing something to me now, its so fundamental to any tomato sauce i make ;3
bonus: yeast extract + mustard makes a really really cheesy flavour in various sauces, and its completely dairy free. I
Ehh, liquid smoke is def a lot better for you that actually smoking things, because there is a filtration step that removes a lot of the worse Volatile Organic Compounds that make smoke carcinogenic.
You’re probably right it’s not fantastic though ;p
And damn, idk what i’d do if onions made me ill… I use them in so much. Though i’ve found some ways of making them do make me feel ill , just i rarely make them that way so.
If you’d rather avoid liquid smoke try using smoked paprika instead. Store bought does the job but if you can find the good stuff at a local farmer’s market, it’s worth it.
I’ve tried this once, and I can’t say that I liked the result. I guess that my spice profiles simply doesn’t combo well with cinnamon, since when I use baharat instead (that contains cinnamon) it gets great.
Some of it is probably personal preference too. I really like cinnamon, which might influence why i like it particularly much in tomato sauce ^.^
Typically for tomato sauce I like it quite umami, so I add things like peppers (the fruit/veg and black pepper), soya sauce, salt, MSG, etc., as well as mixed “italian” (i doubt it actually is, but it’s sold as that, and I have limited spice cupboard space) herb and spice mixes (usually with stuff like parsley, basil, etc. in it), as well as sage, thyme, garlic powder, with amounts depending on what I want ^.^
Probably the only time I wouldn’t add cinnamon is if I was using the tonato sauce as a component of a curry, but a lot of that is because it would get diluted out and I don’t think cinnamon goes so well with some curry flavours.
Can you let something sit on the pan for a few days?
are you okay with buying a chainmail scrubber that is maybe 4 bucks? Not required but useful
Sometimes you can just use a napkin to clean it
If you properly take care of a cast iron pan, it will last you a lifetime and it’s super easy to clean. A lot of people might say Teflon. I say no. You have to replace it frequently, even in the restaurant i work in, it’s no bueno.
If you take the 3 seconds of time to wipe out the pan, the cast iron pan will do what you need and then you can give it to your kids lol
The critical part of all these pans (NOT TEFLON) is it heat it up first before you cook.
with cast iron i place my hand near the pan and feel the heat. You’ll get a feel for it. When it’s close you add the oil and wait until it shimmers
with stainless, no oil, heat it up and then take a drop off water and throw it in the pan. It should “skate” across the pan as if it wants to get out. Only then is it ready. If you don’t do this IT WILL STICK.
edit: re: stainless: once it’s hot, add oil and then quickly get to business.
I went with a carbon steel wok to try it out. I’ve only cooked a few eggs in it but it already feels far easier to deal with than cast iron or stainless steel. It’s generally about the same as cast iron but heats up quicker, gives better results because I can control the heat better and cleaning is generally the same.
I'd want the nonstick and stainless/cast iron, personally. Each does things the others don't, and since you're cooking for four, having more than one pan is a good idea anyway: side dishes or whatever. You may not need nonstick, but it does make a lot of things very convenient. Stainless or cast iron for most other cooking - anything high heat at least, anything where you want a pan sauce. That way the nonstick pan gets a break and a longer lifespan, arguably less maintenance overall.
If not: stainless. Lower maintenance than cast iron, will do mostly the same things and stand up to almost anything.
Edit: I think you could learn to cook eggs and fish almost no matter what you use, but I'm not an expert. Supposedly it has a lot to do with just temperature control and using fat properly.
I was heating oil to deep fry some jalapeños. I put the cover on the pan so it would heat faster.
After a few minutes I took the cover off… and the oil instantly burst into flame.
I was fast enough to just drop the lid back on the pan, which killed the fire before it got worse… but yeah, don’t heat oil with a cover on. And have a fire extinguisher in your kitchen, one that’s properly rated for grease fires. Know how to use your fire extinguisher. Do not store it right next to the stove - you need to be able to reach it if there’s a fire.
You can also smother a grease fire by dumping baking soda on it. Do not dump flour on it, flour is flammable.
Flour isn’t just flammable; if it’s dispersed in the air like a cloud, like it probably would be if you hastily threw it into a grease fire, it can even explode.
Specifically, anything that is even slightly flammable (flour is starch, of course) can be violently explosive if it's dispersed into air in the right (wrong?) way. That's partly why water is such a terrible idea in grease fires.
Oxygen starvation seems like the safest bet. Like a huge, metal lid on a pot. I'd personally be skeptical of dumping anything into it at all, because of splashing.
A basic cucumber salad with some onion, tomato and vinegar dressing is always great.
This is my go-to summer salad! Chunks of tomato and cucumber with thin-sliced shallot or red onion, salt and let sit for ~20 minutes to release some liquid, drain and add chopped avocado and your favorite canned bean (I like cannellini), dress with black pepper, olive oil and balsamic vinegar.
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