What Have You Cooked Recently?

Making vegetable soup for my cold.

Alot of onion and garlic for the immune system.
Also got Carrots, Celery, bell pepper, and habanero, 3 tbsp Chicken bouillon, pinch of salt , black pepper, a bit of dill, and some chopped basil.

Honestly, a soup with just some veggies is pretty good. I really notice the flavor of the veggies more when i don't add meat. But I wish I had some quail meat to add to this.
 
  • Feels
  • Like
  • Agree
Reactions: There Is Light At The End, PhoBingas, Leather Gliscor and 8 others
Meatloaf (BBQ sauce topping supremacy) and twice baked(?) potatoes. I used cooked quinoa as a breadcrumb since not only is it high fiber, it tastes better and results in more structurally sound slices. The potatoes were actually stabbed and steamed in an instant pot for 20 minutes before I scooped them out and made the filling which cuts down on time and leaves the oven free for meatloaf until I need to toss them in to melt the cheese.
 
  • Like
  • Thunk-Provoking
Reactions: beets4borshenko, PositiveMonk, Aiōn and 2 others
HamFan said:
I grew up eating this. Nice Sunday afternoon snack.
Click to expand...

6920668-020a58e91a987c0e75e4abb9063c5e25.webp

So Buttered Cheerios are kind of like Nuts & Bolts, but with all Nuts and no Bolts?
 
  • Thunk-Provoking
Reactions: PhoBingas and HamFan
In my effort to keep practicing gravy/roux I made some gravy for my chicken tonight using wine. Do you guys have any advice for picking wines to cook with? I've heard you shouldn't get low quality wines that you wouldn't drink, the same people say don't buy 'cooking wine' for that reason. I bought a large bottle of inexpensive Chardonnay and I've been using that, but haven't really enjoyed it in anything I've tried to cook with it. I'm very much not a wine guy so I don't really have a feel for the differences in different varieties.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Mesh Gear Fox and Zeftax
PositiveMonk said:
Do you guys have any advice for picking wines to cook with? I've heard you shouldn't get low quality wines that you wouldn't drink
Click to expand...
Table wine is fine. Don't go and spend your money on expensive bottles to cook. Medium quality stuff is fine for reductions. Use specific wines only if the situation calls for (ex: making zabaglione)
 
  • Informative
  • Agree
Reactions: Mesh Gear Fox, Zeftax and PositiveMonk
PositiveMonk said:
It's not nearly as salty. When I first saw it listed as a soy sauce alternative one of the "pros" was that it's lower sodium.
Click to expand...
This is 100% marketing spin. It is not actually less salty. They can get away with saying "No table salt is added" because technically adding hydrochloric acid and sodium hydroxide separately is not adding "table salt" even though the resulting chemical reaction produces exactly that: HCl + NaOH -> H2O + NaCl.

It is really only significantly less salty than soy sauce if you use less of it, as you can see by comparing the nutrition panels... Bragg's Liquid Aminos contains 310 mg of sodium per 5 mL serving, while Kikkoman traditionally brewed soy sauce contains 960 mg per 15 mL serving.
 
  • Thunk-Provoking
  • Like
Reactions: Old English Roast Beef, Lone MacReady II and PositiveMonk
Kosher Salt said:
This is 100% marketing spin. It is not actually less salty. They can get away with saying "No table salt is added" because technically adding hydrochloric acid and sodium hydroxide separately is not adding "table salt" even though the resulting chemical reaction produces exactly that: HCl + NaOH -> H2O + NaCl.

It is really only significantly less salty than soy sauce if you use less of it, as you can see by comparing the nutrition panels... Bragg's Liquid Aminos contains 310 mg of sodium per 5 mL serving, while Kikkoman traditionally brewed soy sauce contains 960 mg per 15 mL serving.
Click to expand...
I've got both the bottles I have now in front of me, to be clear I'm not looking to argue, I'm happy to accept you're right. But... My coconut aminos is 270mg in 15ml and my soy sauce is 1050mg in 15ml. Just tasting them, the coconut aminos is clearly more sweet to me than it is salty, and the soy sauce is... well salty. It's Nutiva Coconut Secret brand and Target's Market Pantry Soy Sauce. The little disclaimer on the aminos says it's 270mg of sodium per Tbsp and the leading soy sauce is 960mg per Tbsp. I will happily accept my puzzle pieces.
 
souschef said:
Table wine is fine. Don't go and spend your money on expensive bottles to cook. Medium quality stuff is fine for reductions. Use specific wines only if the situation calls for (ex: making zabaglione)
Click to expand...
I didn't say anything else because i was leaving home when i made this post, so i'll elaborate further

Reason i say table wine is fine it's because they're young wines. When you see a sommelier saying that they can taste and smell a variety of weird stuff when tasting a wine you might think it's bullshit, why the fuck would he smell orange on a drink that's made from grapes? Aging casks are made from wood (usually), and there's some choice wood used in some wines that carry over "foreign" flavors. Ex: when some companies will age whisky in sherry casks to give notes of sherry to the product.

A young wine won't acquire a complex flavor because it didn't age on casks, and use simple casks, maybe stainless steel even (i could be wrong as i'm not a wine guy either). You don't need a complex flavor profile for wines when cooking (unless specific). Might give you a result you're not looking for. And since you're gonna use them in cooking, you'll open, close, open, close the bottle for several days so it might oxidize a bit. When you get a good wine you usually drink the whole bottle in the same day, so it's about not wasting good wine too.

So get a table wine you find tasty, one year old. When i use red wine i personally like merlot, it's afordable and give your sauce and stock a nice body. I like them for ragu too.
 
  • Like
  • Informative
Reactions: Mesh Gear Fox, PositiveMonk and Zeftax
souschef said:
maybe stainless steel even (i could be wrong as i'm not a wine guy either).
Click to expand...
Not a wine guy either, but a friend is, and some wines indeed never even see a wooden cask. I agree with merlot being good for cooking, it was my preferred wine for cooking up until very recently too. Nowadays I prefer primitivo, it is not as good as merlot in sauces, but I like it better for drinking. I don't cook with wine often enough to keep an opened bottle in the fridge so I usually just drink the rest of the wine while cooking or while eating the dish.
Edit: Some local "moonshiners" put wooden pegs in their slivovitz to give it woody flavour without needing wooden casks, I'm not sure whether the wine guys do anything similiar, I guess I'll have to ask next time I get a chance.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: PositiveMonk and souschef
Zeftax said:
Not a wine guy either, but a friend is, and some wines indeed never even see a wooden cask. I agree with merlot being good for cooking, it was my preferred wine for cooking up until very recently too. Nowadays I prefer primitivo, it is not as good as merlot in sauces, but I like it better for drinking. I don't cook with wine often enough to keep an opened bottle in the fridge so I usually just drink the rest of the wine while cooking or while eating the dish.
Edit: Some local "moonshiners" put wooden pegs in their slivovitz to give it woody flavour without needing wooden casks, I'm not sure whether the wine guys do anything similiar, I guess I'll have to ask next time I get a chance.
Click to expand...
I've heard from a guy on the industry that there's too much scam going around with barrels, like the sherry ones. He said to me that it's common to use bad quality ones that are basically trash but used anyway to advertise sherry liquor.

Also infusion with wood is indeed a thing, there's a video from Max from Tasting History that he talks about this, it's the bochet one


Jump to 11:08
 
  • Like
Reactions: Zeftax
PositiveMonk said:
I've got both the bottles I have now in front of me, to be clear I'm not looking to argue, I'm happy to accept you're right. But... My coconut aminos is 270mg in 15ml and my soy sauce is 1050mg in 15ml.
Click to expand...
Okay, fair. Just to be clear, I was referring to Bragg's original soy-based liquid aminos, not their coconut liquid aminos. The original liquid aminos is supposed to be an alternative to soy sauce, and it's effectively within a rounding error of the same amount of sodium. I've never had their coconut liquid aminos, but the description calls it an "alternative to teriyaki sauce", so I guess that aligns with the description you gave.
 
  • Informative
Reactions: PositiveMonk
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back