What Have You Cooked Recently?

[maguyver16]

I cooked parsley with steak and it didn't add too much tbh, next time I'll try rosemary or thyme.

Whatever spices they use for corn actually go REALLY well with potatoes, which i found out by accident



Edit: still alive after it, back to th drawing board fuck man.

 

[Kosher Salt]

I'll be honest, I'm willing to give a lot of leeway to a home chef trying to cook a steak without a grill, but that almost looks boiled. And while it's true there's always a compromise involved in trying to get a decent crust on a steak without cooking it much past my preference of rare, especially for a thinner steak, that looks like it's between medium-well and well done.

Max the Meat Guy recently posted a YT video explaining how to try to get a decent crust in a home kitchen. Be forewarned that if you follow his instructions you are going to set the smoke alarms off though. I disable them before cooking steak. If you don't, don't let the oil smoke at all.

I feel like there's room for improvement, so take this as constructive criticism.

 

[AnOminous]

Max the Meat Guy recently posted a YT video explaining how to try to get a decent crust in a home kitchen. Be forewarned that if you follow his instructions you are going to set the smoke alarms off though. I disable them before cooking steak. If you don't, don't let the oil smoke at all.

My favorite is sous vide, but without it, I like the reverse sear, where you take it to the temperature for just past rare on a meat thermometer, then finish on cast iron with a sear on as high a temperature as you can get without filling the house with clouds of smoke (enough to set off fire alarms is okay though).

Then let it rest and the diffusion will bring it up to medium-rare and it will have a nice sear on it.

A minute to a minute and a half on each side. Don't flip it early. If it's not totally done, at most another 30 seconds on each side.

A nice touch is laying it on the fat strip side if it has one until there's a sear on that and some of the fat is rendered then you can finish it in its own fat.

Other fats are good too, like bacon grease, beef tallow, lard, and duck fat is fantastic if you somehow manage to have access to it.

Some people consider both of these meme methods, so if you feel like the more start with the sear and finish in the oven method, that works too. You'll get smoke either way.

 

[Adamska]

I'll be honest, I'm willing to give a lot of leeway to a home chef trying to cook a steak without a grill, but that almost looks boiled.

That's because he baked it. Baked steak looks like that if you don't then sear it at all. Also it looks more like medium in one half, and leans into medium-well for the other half. That indeed is a consequence of it being a thin cut.

You also don't need a grill to do a decent sear; rip the fucker in a hot as hell iron pan with a good oil or fat that resists smoking and you can get one done. It's harder to do for a thin cut if you bake it and don't want it well done, but it's doable. TBH I can even see just pan frying that steak tbh, since it looks thin enough to do; just blast the crust first and then finish off.

 

[There She Glows]

I cooked parsley with steak and it didn't add too much tbh, next time I'll try rosemary or thyme.

Parsley is a trash herb anyway. The heat you need for a good sear will burn fresh herbs so if you want to introduce those flavors to a steak you're better off doing them in a marinade or reduction sauce. For the reduction after you finish searing your steak using whatever method you take it out of the pan without turning down the heat and pour a liquid like balsamic vinegar or red wine into the pan. Deglaze by scraping off all the good crunchy steak bits stuck to the bottom of a pan with a wooden spoon. Add your herbs and maybe sugar depending on your tastes then bring to a boil. Let it simmer until it's reduced. Now you have delicious sauce to pour over your completed steak.

 

[John Andrews Stan]

All this steak talk has me craving steak Mirabeau, which I haven’t made in many years. If you’re into umami, you’ll enjoy this one.

After searing your steak in a pan, fry drained, finely chopped anchovies in the pan juices until they have melted into a gloriously salty concentrate. Deglaze with red wine and reduce. It’s a perfect partner for the steak.

See also the Sullivan Street Bakery’s anchovy elixir, which can be used as a dipping sauce for meat, as a dip, as a sauce for grains, whatever.

You could also whip up a quick bagna cauda and use it for the same purposes.

 

[AnOminous]

All this steak talk has me craving steak Mirabeau, which I haven’t made in many years. If you’re into umami, you’ll enjoy this one.

After searing your steak in a pan, fry drained, finely chopped anchovies in the pan juices until they have melted into a gloriously salty concentrate. Deglaze with red wine and reduce. It’s a perfect partner for the steak.

That sounds like a phenomenal idea.

 

[Nonconsentual Pronouns]

back to th drawing board fuck man.

Please consider only buying steaks with a thickness of one and a quarter inches or greater. You'll always have the capability to create a great sear with the option of giving it just a bit of oven time if it's still too rare for your liking. You've gotten some wonderful advice for making a sauce reduction in your cast iron once the steak is out, if cast iron is your chosen method. Red wine is always a fine choice for deglazing beef for a western style dish. I recommend a cheap merlot or cabernet; you can find them pretty much everywhere. Please don't use white wine with beef; save the chardonnay and moscato for chicken, pork and seafood.

 

[BelUwUga]

Max the Meat Guy recently posted a YT video explaining how to try to get a decent crust in a home kitchen. Be forewarned that if you follow his instructions you are going to set the smoke alarms off though. I disable them before cooking steak. If you don't, don't let the oil smoke at all.

Relevant username, kosher salt has been key in getting a good crust with my steaks in cast iron. Liberally applied to all surfaces, left for at least 30 minutes but ideally overnight. You want full coverage but not enough where many grains are still clearly present when you rub it in. Very important to do the thin sides of the steak for a minute or so first.

rip the fucker in a hot as hell iron pan

I see this advice a lot of places and frankly feel it lead me wrong. I might've just been too literal in reading it as "give 'er all you've got" as far as heat goes. My stove goes up to 8 and I've found just under 4 is pretty solid for getting a good crust and not smoking out the kitchen. I'll do 2:00/1:30 or 2:30/2:00 per-side depending on thickness, the shorter interval being whichever side is down when it goes into the oven at 425F for 3-4 minutes to finish (for thickest tenderloins I can acquire).

Other cooking: I've been trying to eat more greens lately but am lazy enough I've mostly gone with cheap canned collards/turnips. I've found cutting some bacon and halfway cooking it in a small amount of bacon grease before adding the greens really jazzes them up. Not quite as good as the local BBQ joint but a vast improvement from how they come. I also got a crinkle-cutter recently and shoestring-crinkle fries have ruined most others for me.
Edit: just finished cooking tonight, NY Strips instead of the usual but you can see my results. Should've maybe spent another minute in the oven. Fries were a touch too big.

 

[AnOminous]

You also don't need a grill to do a decent sear; rip the fucker in a hot as hell iron pan with a good oil or fat that resists smoking and you can get one done.

If you're really serious about high smoke point, try grapeseed oil. I generally find it too expensive though. Peanut oil is fine if you aren't feeding allergyfags.

 

[Señora Airi]

Made some soup with gnocchi, rotisserie chicken, spinach, and bacon. Turned out well, and I got dinner for the next week.
Also made some caramelized onions with a Sam Adams Oktoberfest reduction. Ended up a bit too sweet, probably will add some red pepper flakes next time to help balance it out.

 

[AnOminous]

A boomer bud gave me permission to raid his tomato garden (before he tills it into the ground for next season),,, which was ridiculously overpopulated. It's now the time where they just fall off the vine and the remainder of his tomatoes either get ploughed under or go to me.

So I got ten pounds of Roma tomatoes. And spent some time peeling them. This is how you do it. Have extremely hot boiling water and extremely cold water with ice cubes in it. Put tiny cuts in the bottoms of the tomatoes. Like you want to unscrew them with a Phillips head.

Chuck them five or so at a time in the boiling water. Count to ten. Take them out, throw them in the ice water. Spend a ridiculously long time doing this.

As annoying as this is, you can then just peel the tomatoes. There's no effort involved, just time. The skin comes right off.

There are people who don't skin tomatoes for sauce. Ignore these retards. They're absolutely wrong. And their sauce will utterly suck.

 

[PositiveMonk]

It's now the time where they just fall off the vine and the remainder of his tomatoes either get ploughed under or go to me.

Is it worth bothering to make sauce with supermarket tomatoes? I wouldn't mind giving marinara sauce a shot, but I'm never happy with the tomatoes I get from the store. The recipe I'm looking at also says canned tomatoes work but like, why bother at that point?

My baked apples stuffed with turkey sausage came out... Well... They seemed to come out as intended but I learned I'm very disgusted by turkey sausage. Not sure what I'm going to do with the remaining half pound. Maybe just cook it in a pan and eat with lots of hot sauce? I think I'd be happier giving this recipe another shot with maybe ground Italian sausage?

I poached some peaches again and they came out amazing. This time I substituted half the water with a cheap Moscato, added a bit of lemon juice and infused the poaching liquid with lemon zest. I cooked the peaches longer than last time which caused the red around the removed pit to come off into the syrup and turn it a beautiful pink color. So I had the idea to run the liquid through my coffee filter to make sure the final dish looked really nice. The coffee filter was a wake up call that it's time to invest more into my kitchen tools.

I also finally got around to trying green beans with sesame oil, as @AnOminous suggested in the recipe thread. Really good.

 

[John Andrews Stan]

I also finally got around to trying green beans with sesame oil, as @AnOminous suggested in the recipe thread. Really good.

I may be repeating myself here, but sesame oil is one of the most underrated pantry staples. The way that fenugreek instantly brings the aromatic quality to Indian food that every good dish needs, sesame oil does the same work for any broadly East Asian food. Cheap, cheerful, and transformative.

 

[Joshua Connor Tomar]

i tried making mayo from demi glace fat, but it just became a peppery garlicy fatty sauce. tastes fine though on chicken.

I have steaks on the horizon

 

[AnOminous]

Is it worth bothering to make sauce with supermarket tomatoes?

No. They're literally evil.

They dose them with ethylene gas, to make them look ripe, while making them able to be transported. So in grocery stores, you can find tomatoes that look like tomatoes, but might as well be wax fruit. They are garbage.

Grocery store tomatoes are fucking GARBAGE.

 

[fresh pair of socks]

Is it worth bothering to make sauce with supermarket tomatoes? I wouldn't mind giving marinara sauce a shot, but I'm never happy with the tomatoes I get from the store. The recipe I'm looking at also says canned tomatoes work but like, why bother at that point?

I use canned tomatoes during winter/spring, and they work beautifully. I usually go for Mutti tomatoes. They are already peeled, so you save some time, too.

I do know some people who add fresh tomato or passata near the end to freshen the sauce, but I don't find it necessary.

 

[The Dog]

Sorry for lack of photos, but I made some really good steak the other night with a bit of a new method. I’m usually a pretty big salt pepper garlic guy, but I decided to spice things up. I got some ribeyes about an inch thick. I then put on some olive oil and worcestershire sauce, and then put on some Pappy’s seasoning blend. I don’t usually use blends but I had some in the pantry so I figured I’d give it a shot. Threw them on a propane grill turned up to the max, two minutes a side and then rested them in aluminum foil in ten minutes. They turned out great with a lot of flavor. I’m a big fan of the typical pan method, but they had a really nice crust on them. Almost a bit too salty, but a lot more interesting than my regular SPG. Tasted just like my Grandpa’s honestly. The fat from the ribeyes definitely caused some flare ups on the grill though.

Is it worth bothering to make sauce with supermarket tomatoes? I wouldn't mind giving marinara sauce a shot, but I'm never happy with the tomatoes I get from the store. The recipe I'm looking at also says canned tomatoes work but like, why bother at that point?

My baked apples stuffed with turkey sausage came out... Well... They seemed to come out as intended but I learned I'm very disgusted by turkey sausage. Not sure what I'm going to do with the remaining half pound. Maybe just cook it in a pan and eat with lots of hot sauce? I think I'd be happier giving this recipe another shot with maybe ground Italian sausage?

I poached some peaches again and they came out amazing. This time I substituted half the water with a cheap Moscato, added a bit of lemon juice and infused the poaching liquid with lemon zest. I cooked the peaches longer than last time which caused the red around the removed pit to come off into the syrup and turn it a beautiful pink color. So I had the idea to run the liquid through my coffee filter to make sure the final dish looked really nice. The coffee filter was a wake up call that it's time to invest more into my kitchen tools.

I also finally got around to trying green beans with sesame oil, as @AnOminous suggested in the recipe thread. Really good.

Also, sorry for double posting but I’m thinking you might be able to make some of those little breakfast muffin cup egg bites with the turkey sausage. Just put some scrambled eggs in muffin tins, add in the sausage and whatever you like, and then bake in the oven for a little while till they turn out how you like them. I had some the other day and they were really good. Just an idea.

 

[AnOminous]

I use canned tomatoes during winter/spring, and they work beautifully. I usually go for Mutti tomatoes. They are already peeled, so you save some time, too.

The only important thing is they should be plum/Roma. Generally stuff marketed as "San Marzano" is pretty good but it's questionable how much of that is genuine as they charge a premium for it, but that's almost always good for sauce.

An okay brand you can find pretty much anywhere is Cento. Ragusea seems to like Pastene.

But you can honestly make a decent sauce from even store brand canned. Apparently they don't engage in the kind of fuckery they do with "fresh" tomatoes because there's no need to worry about transport issues with canned tomatoes.

That said, discard the liquid that comes with canned tomatoes even if it looks like tomato sauce. It's nasty. You don't want it in your sauce. Also you might want to thicken the whole thing up with concentrated tomato paste. The paste should be high quality, though.

 

[AnOminous]

Doubleposting because it's partly a recipe post, although I didn't really measure ingredients.

I started with five pounds of Roma tomatoes, the last of the season, from a friend's garden, who was about to plough it under. They were at the phase where they start falling off the vine. He said he was done picking any so I could just take however many I wanted. I picked the cream of the crop, soft but not mushy, basically the perfect state for a sauce.

I scored the bottoms with the tip of a knife in a criscross patern like a Phillip's head, then dropped them about five at a time into boiling water, just for about 10 seconds, then directly into an ice bath. After chilling them, I skinned them. I considered deseeding or coring but they really didn't need it.

Then I refrigerated these overnight (not for any real reason it was just too late to eat anyway and this was the most tedious and labor intensive part of the process.

This morning, I fired up the Dutch oven to about medium, rehydrated some dried shallots, peeled a lot of elephant garlic, and chopped up fresh oregano and basil, and added some kosher salt, then sauteed everything but the garlic for about five minutes until lightly browned, finishing with some Mike's hot honey and the garlic (pressed) and fried that for about another minute.

Then I poured in a cup of cabernet sauvignon and deglazed with a wooden spatula before adding the tomatoes. I'd considered a pinot noir but that seemed a little froufrou. I didn't puree the tomatoes, just crushed them by hand since this makes a great chunky sauce. They mostly dissolve during the cooking process anyway.

Meanwhile, while waiting for the sauce, I separately fried some hot Italian sausage with a sprinkling of anise seeds (I misplaced the fennel), then removed the sausage and deglazed the pan with another quarter cup of wine and a wooden spatula, and reduced that for a couple minutes until it thickened, then added it back to the sausage.

I then portioned it out into Tupperware for the freezer, and added the meat to the one I planned to eat, and served that over vermicelli.

It was so satisfying I immediately had a three hour nap and woke up feeling great.

This is the basic recipe:

https://champagne-tastes.com/gourmet-special-red-wine-pasta/#recipe

I ripped off some prep tips from other recipes and just from my own experience.

I made a lot of substitutions though and didn't really follow the recipe. Specifically at least one of the people I'm giving a batch to isn't really an allium fan and I like lots of that shit, so I used shallots and elephant garlic instead of onions and normal garlic.

I'm not sure what I'd call this. It isn't really a marinara since Italian marinara usually doesn't have wine, but it's pretty marinara adjacent. This recipe would have called for two cups if I adjusted for the amount of tomatoes, but after adding one cup I decided that was fine.