/ck/ - Food & Cooking

>>3984362
Of course you don't cook it all the way, you ignorant offspring of a syphilitic antelope, but the egg has to set enough not to be slimy.

I didn't look close enough at the pic or I would have seen it was obviously overcooked.

>>3984345
>eggs don't seperate when overcooked
>scrambled eggs
When you overcook scrambled eggs, the water boils out of the protein matrix and condenses in the pan. Watery.

Depends on what you mean by runny.
If it's runny like a raw egg, you didn't cook it long enough after you combined everything.
If it's watery, you cooked it too long and the egg curdled and separated.

First tier:
8-10" chef's knife
cutting board
large cookpot (12 qt at least)
small cookpot (2 qt)
cast iron skillet
wooden spoons, asst sizes
spatula/pancake turner
some kind of measuring tools
sheet pan
mixing bowls

Second tier:
digital scale
small paring knife
large serrated knife
large steel colander
non-stick skillets
"dutch oven" size cookpot
second cutting board (so you have one for meat and one for veggies, to avoid cross-contamination)
casserole/baking dish

Third tier:
meat thermometer
cheese grater
vegetable peeler
board scraper
wire whisk
tongs
metal loaf pans for baked goods
flour sifter
two more of everything listed above

Machinery:
food processor
handheld mixer

>>3983857
Being able to consistently execute a reasonable selection of recipes. Knowing *one* recipe by rote without understanding why it works does not constitute "knowing how to cook".
Having at least a basic understanding of the chemical processes involved, so you can correct if you fuck up.
Enough proficiency with basic kitchen tools (knife, fry pan/skillet, wooden spoon, etc.) so you don't hurt yourself.
Enough familiarity with common ingredients to be able to process them from grocery store to plate. (i.e. know how to peel an onion, brown a piece of meat, etc.)

These things are not the same as knowing how to cook:
>Memorizing more than one recipe
>Sufficient reading comprehension skills to follow package directions
>Having Domino's on speed-dial

>>3983725
Having the ability to process material from your environment into aesthetically and nutritionally pleasing meals makes you less dependent on others for your existence.

If an "enlightened" and "liberated" womyn can't feed herself without help from a man, what does that say about her?

Brown it in the oven, like this:
>Rub oil all over the outside.
>Preheat to 230.
>Cook ten minutes.
>Turn the oven down to 160.
>Cook until it's 60 degrees inside.
>Let it rest ten minutes.
>Post pics.

>>3976953
There is a difference between dominating a market by quality and dominating a market by volume of production. Stupid people tend to miss the distinction and assume that the best of something is the one they see or hear of most often.

>>3976738
Dammit, I forgot the onion. There's also half an onion in the starting slurry. (The other half goes into the gravy.)

>>3976762
Yeah, that's kinda my point. It's "gone bad" in a controlled fashion that both leaves it safe to eat and insulates it against other, more harmful, forms of putrefaction.

Cheese is just fine at room temperature, especially if it's not sealed up. I've seen plenty of cheese go moldy wrapped up tight in plastic in the refrigerator, but in college I kept a 2 lb. block of cheddar on my desk in my dorm room for a whole semester and it didn't spoil.

Unless it has obvious mold or smells foul, it's fine. Humans have been eating all sorts of "spoiled" foods for thousands of years, and we have evolved a complex and highly reliable set of instinctive reactions that let us distinguish by smell between what is "good spoiled" and "bad spoiled".

It's already milk gone bad, how much worse do you think it's going to go?

I make a salisbury steak out of turkey that is very good (according to me and my roommates' taste).

In the food processor goes:
>1 small carrot
>1 celery rib
>2 eggs
>2-4 cloves of garlic
>1 cup bread crumbs (from my homemade WW bread)
>1 tablespoon wrrshrshtrshire sauce (fuck English spelling)
>1 tablespoon soy sauce
>1 teaspoon salt
>1 teaspoon black pepper

Process to a smooth slurry, then blend with 1 pound cheap-ass ground turkey. This makes a fairly soupy batter-like mixture. You can't pat it into shape like beef. Instead, I cook it like pancakes. It makes a nice firm patty, with a good flavor and texture that ought to work quite well on a sandwich.

For the salisbury steak, I simmer the patties in mushroom gravy for about a half hour and then dish them up over egg noodles, but sticking them in a bun instead ought to work just as well.

I put all this in a food processor, blend to a smooth paste, and use it to start my curry.

>1 granny smith apple, peeled
>1 large yellow onion, peeled
>4 cloves garlic
>1 chunk of ginger as big as my thumb, peeled
>1 tsp cumin
>1 tsp coriander
>1 tsp turmeric
>1 tsp garlic powder
>1/2 tsp cardamom
>1/2 tsp paprika
>1/2 tsp black pepper
>1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
>hearty sprinkle of cayenne pepper

>>3964827
>>3964853
>>3964855
Hey, I'm using complete sentences and standard spelling on the Internet. I think that already puts me ahead of the curve.

>>3964862
Not that anyone is likely to believe this, (not that it matters) but I'm actually in the 98th percentile. I used "most" in the rhetorical sense of a significant supermajority, rather than just the technical sense of "50% + 1". I mentioned it because it was significant.

>>3964783
Is it easier to visualize because of some qualitative difference between the two systems, or because you're just familiar with one system and have learned how to eyeball it?

I'm American, btw, even though I use metric measurements in my baking. I'm smarter than most Americans - most humans, really - and I can recognize a superior system. I didn't used to be able to eyeball a gram of flour, but it didn't take me long to learn. Any system takes some practice in order to be able to use it intuitively.

I'm curious what kind of cooking you do if you think that precise amounts aren't important when you measure by volume.

I'm curious what kind of math you do if you think that a ratio is something that occurs with some types of numerical data and not others.

I'm guessing you've never heard of baker's percentages, which is a system commonly used by professional bakers to express recipes in the form of ratios. By weight.

>>3964695
I do. I want measure everything right in the mixing bowl. I don't want to have to wash a bunch of measuring tools.
Measurements by weight are still given in the form of numbers, which means they are still in a ratio to one another.
Everything is an art until we learn how to do it well enough to express it in numbers, at which point it becomes a science.
If you would rather continue to use inaccurate recipes and outdated techniques, nobody is stopping you. There are plenty of recipes around for your sort. It is profoundly stupid to begrudge others the right to cook better and smarter.

>>3964402
Yes, like most people I know, I have a small digital scale.
If you need to infer a weight, there are plenty of websites with calculators.
If you would rather cling to your inaccurate recipes and centuries old techniques rather than spend $10 to make your baking easier by the power of modern technology, that's your choice. I'll be over here, in the 21st century, not judging you.

>>3964498
Well, I only make 3 lb. of dough at a time, so maybe it matters more with larger batches. Maybe I'm just magic.

>>3963842
True. I used to have a small marble slab that I would refrigerate and use to roll out pastry dough. I miss it. If I ever get the chance to build my dream kitchen, I will definitely have granite countertops. But I will also have cutting boards to go on those countertops.

>>3963832
As both a cook and a carpenter, I find this concept horrifying. Aside from the very obvious sanitation problems, there's no way you could build in enough support structure to withstand heavy chopping without making it absurdly unwieldy. The first time I tried to split open a butternut squash or slice a large block of cheddar it would start to sag, and it would just be all downhill from there until the day it finally gives way mid-prep and sprays my ingredients across the kitchen floor.

>spaghetti everywhere

I actually like the cheap stuff because I find plenty of uses for the +12 Potion of Extreme Flavor (aka fat). I usually put ground meat in stews and braise it to hell and gone so I'm not worried about toughness.

Cheap meat is tasty meat.

I've never heard of this "sage" thing, but I'm skeptical about the claims made for it.
>supposed to not get scratched, not make the knife blunt
When the knife edge touches the board, either the board will give way (scratch) or the knife will (blunt). Those are the only choices.

And if you get a granite or marble cutting board, the ghost of Auguste Escoffier is going to bitchslap your grandmother. If I saw a slab of rock labelled as a cutting board, I would do a 360 and moonwalk straight the fuck out of that store.

We have three cutting boards here: one wooden which we use for vegetables, one plastic which we use for meat, and one bamboo which sits by the bread box. They all work about equally well.

I have baked a hell of a lot of bread, and with every single batch I had to adjust the dough at the end of the mixing time, adding a little more flour or a little more water to get the right consistency. Every. Time. I thought that was just a normal part of making bread. It's actually spelled out as a step in about half the bread recipes I see around the Internet and in cookbooks.

Then I made one batch measured by weight. The consistency was perfect, straight away. I thought, maybe it's a fluke. Sometimes that happens, you just hit the jackpot. But I've been baking bread every week for months now, in every kind of weather, and every single batch comes out perfect. EVERY. TIME.

Turns out that the only reason for having the "adjustment" step in bread-making is because it is impossible to measure flour accurately by volume. If you put in the right amount of stuff, the recipe works better.

Not to mention how much easier it is to measure shortening, brown sugar, or anything greasy or sticky or gloopy. No more displacement, or packing the measuring cup to try to get full measure, or scraping the measuring cup to make sure you get all the stuff you measured. Just tare the scale and dump shit straight in the bowl until it reads right.

My camera crapped out, so I couldn't take any pictures of the cake. Here's one that someone else took. I know someone took a better picture, but she hasn't posted it yet.

A light beer would be better than a dark one. The carbonation provides leavening, and dark beers are more lightly carbonated than light ones.