home cookin'

Those of you who know me know that I spend approximately the GDP of Africa on dining out.

I don't consider myself to be very good at cooking. However, for an adventure, I made this cake and it turned out really well.

Now I want to cook real meals. I'm interested in what sorts of things people here cook for themselves. We're all busy, so what are the easy staples you guys make for after you've worked your ass off earning a paycheck?

I just got back from the grocery store, and I have this idea of doing some sort of coconut almond chicken thing with asparagus and beans, but I don't actually know what I'm doing, so I could use some other suggestions!

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Let me get this out of the way.



There's nowhere I can't reach.

An easy staple for my wife and I is:

1) Clean and wash vegetables
2) Slice up garlic thinly
3) Fry the garlic in a thin layer of oil in a pan until it JUST turns brown around the edges
4) Quickly toss in the veggies and a small amount of water
5) Quickly cover it and let it sit for 30 seconds to 2 minutes (depends on the thickness of the veggies) - make sure not to overcook it or the veggies turn brown and mushy
6) Open lid, turn off flame,
7) add salt or chicken broth powder to taste, stir evenly
8) Serve.

Very easy. We usually do this with asian vegetables like gailan, but you can also do this with broccoli florets, pieces of cabbage, snow peas, etc.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

I made soup yesterday. Fry up some onions, chuck a bunch of water in, a stock cube, a bunch of diced veg and some spices, leave it simmering for as long as you want, eat it.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

I'm lazy as shit when it comes to cooking...but...! There are tasty things even for lazy people like me.

Eggy in a basket is the bomb, and is very filling. Make hole in bread, throw in frying pan, crack egg into it, ta-da. Even better if you just fried a bunch of bacon because then you can use that grease.

Honestly, sandwhiches are damn easy too, and you can always toast the bread, or get the more expensive stuff (its wrapped twice, that way you know its good!).

Also get yourself a slow cooker, and you can prep it in the morning with your choice of stew ingredients, and let it sit for the whole day making something amazingly delicious.

How ya doing, buddy?

I'm a big fan of making stir fries. Buy whichever veggies are on sale that week. Chop them up into the size of piece you'd expect from a Chinese place. Cut up an onion, some garlic, and some ginger. Slice up half a pound of whatever kind of meat you like. Marinade in 1 T of dark soy sauce and 1 T of rice wine (or whatever white wine/vinegar you have). I have a book (Wok Fast) with a bunch of sauces I like, though the easiest is:

1/4 C chicken broth (or water)
1/4 C rice wine
2 T oyster sauce
1 t dark sesame oil
2 t cornstarch
1/2 t sugar
1/2 t ground pepper (or more if you like)

Put a little oil in a wok or large pan, sautee meat on high. Take meat out of pan, put a little more oil in, then throw in your onion. Cook for ~1 min, put in garlic in ginger. When fragrant throw in first veggie, cook 1-2 minutes (if it's a harder one like squash, carrots, or green beans, put 1 T water in the pot and throw a lid over it for 30 second intervals). Put in second, faster cooking veggie. Cook until about done. Put meat back in pan, pour in sauce (mix it prior to stirring in). Cook for ~30 seconds, pour out and devour.

All told it takes maybe 8 minutes of "actual" cooking time, with the rest of it being prep work. Usually makes three nights worth of dinner for two people when eaten with a bowl of rice, so spending 30-40 minutes chopping if you're slow is still a huge time saver vs going out for food.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Thanks RR. That sounds pretty doable. My chicken thing came out pretty surprisingly good. I did not have as much as I thought, so I wound up layering the chicken breasts with the coconut almond thing in between. The chicken is delicious, or novel, at least one of those, and it goes well with canned beans or frozen vegetables. I've made it two days(!) on homecooked meals.

Stop Sign, do you use any meat in that aside from chicken broth? It sounds like it's entirely carbs and fiber.

FELIPE NO

I love to home cook. A few things:

1) Find a day when you can spend about an hour making a huge batch of a dry rub of some sort. Dry rubs tend to last for a very long time, and once its made, takes very little time to apply.
2) Take said dry rub and add it to a piece of meat (steak, chicken, etc) in the morning before work. Place both dry rub and meat in ziploc bag and place in fridge. Takes less than 2 minutes. You don't need to use very much of your huge batch.
3) Once home in the evening, cook with said meat. Will add flavor without any real added time.

There are plenty of simple dishes that are filling and delicious that can help on your path to cooking from home vs going out. Pasta and rice are two of the simplest things to cook and are used in a lot of recipes. Also crockpots make great "I don't have a lot of time for a meal but I want something hearty" cookware. Place veggies and meat in crock pot, turn on low for 10 hours, come home, eat.

Most amazing jew boots

On the subject of pasta and such, if you get time cook up A LOT of it, then divvy it up and freeze. All you need to do is pour boiling water over it and it's ready to go. Learned this the other day, so handy.

Like Tande said, a slow cooker is brilliant, especially at this time of year when you want something warming/comforting.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

What sorts of things do you folks put into slow cookers?

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Potatoes, beef, some celery root, celery, cabbage. I've even put chick peas in a stew. Just really whatever is lying around.

But potatoes, fuck yeah.

My husband made this amazing breakfast thing that was like...oatmeal and apples and cinnamon in our slow cooker one day. I loved it, but cleaning it out was a bitch. You can get plastic baggies made for slowcookers that make it hella easier to clean up.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

I tend to cook pretty hefty meals in my crock pot. I'll do a slab of meat, like pot roast or pork shoulder, with veggies and have tons of leftovers for the rest of the week. I also like to toss in chili or soup makings. Either way, its easy to cook with, makes delicious food (meat just falls apart when cooked in a crock pot, so juicy oh man), and will provide plenty of leftovers to bring to work for lunch.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

I used to do slow cooker pulled pork sandwiches. I think you may have tried one at my house when Chris and I got married. Here's the recipe. I used to eat it with only a small amount of BBQ sauce.

Also, my sister and I reference this (wicked girly) blog for a bunch of clever slow cooker recipes, but not all of them come out great. Ask me how I know.

This recipe is wonderful and delightfully easy, cheap and quick to make. It's perfect for a nice winter day with some good bread. I add about double the barley in order to make it a more substantial stew (instead of soup) for dinner sometimes. The mushrooms add a really nice meatiness! This one keeps nicely and is a lot better the next day in my opinion.

This one is REALLY good too, but it requires roasting some veggies beforehand, so I'm not sure if that's something you'd want to do on a week night.

We're on a huge naan kick over here... we pick up garlic naan at Trader Joe's and put a thin layer of ricotta cheese on it. We load it up with sliced tomatoes, mushrooms, and onions, top it with mozzarella cheese, and bake it for 10-12 minutes at 350°F. Two naan bread pieces done this way is ample for dinner, and it's wicked good!

I was speaking idiomatically.

Dang, I should get one of those slow cookers.

We cook a lot at home and only eat outside on Friday nights or Weekends. We usually cook dishes that take 30-45 minutes to do (prepare & cook). Most of the time it's meat + vegetables. We try to experiment and come up with stuff with the ingredients that we have. Rice is a staple food for Asians, but we try to minimize eating rice by having food with lots of flavor. Soup also helps to make you feel full without eating too much.

Last night my wife cooked boiled pork and potatoes, sauteed them in onion, garlic, some cabbage, and mixed the a cup of pork broth with corn starch and soy sauce for the sauce, then some salt and pepper. It was lovely.

How ya doing, buddy?

Vemp, do you guys ever have brown rice? I've found I tend to eat less of it, and it has flavor, so it actually adds to the meal instead of just being a flavor sponge.

A great trick I learned from my uncle for an easy curry is to take a can of coconut milk and mix it with peanut sauce. More peanut sauce you add the stronger the flavor. Just stir fry your veggies and meat however you like, mix up the sauce, and add it at the end. You can also add some sriracha sauce to make it spicier if you like.

Edit: The thing I like about the slow cooker is that you can use really inexpensive cuts of meat and still get amazing results. Sass's link is for pork tenderloin, which is usually $8/lb or more. I use pork butt which is closer to $1.50 a pound. Just trim off any excess fat and you get the same mouthwatering results. I'll also say never use Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ sauce in the slow cooker. There's too much sugar and it'll burn making everything taste like ass. Go with a sauce that has more of a vinegary taste than sugar.

FELIPE NO

Originally Posted by RacinReaver

Sass's link is for pork tenderloin, which is usually $8/lb or more. I use pork butt which is closer to $1.50 a pound. Just trim off any excess fat and you get the same mouthwatering results. I'll also say never use Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ sauce in the slow cooker. There's too much sugar and it'll burn making everything taste like ass. Go with a sauce that has more of a vinegary taste than sugar.

Yeah, I forgot to mention I don't use pork tenderloin. I use pork butt, like you, or pretty much anything cheaper in the grocery store. I forgot to mention it... hadn't looked at the recipe in a while.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

RR, yeah we have brown rice here, along with several variations of rice (sticky rice, etc.) Brown rice doesn't taste the same as white rice though, but they say it's healthier than white rice (I'm not sure why). But it's still rice so I'm trying to avoid it as much as I can.

Also, coconut milk is also a pretty nice way to add flavor and texture to your vegetables. I grew up in a town in Philippines where almost all dishes are cooked with coconut milk and chili, so I'm partly biased to it.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

copy pasting from my old CWQ entries, just 4 u Radez~

Carbonara:

Spaghetti with Carbonara sauce. I'd forgotten how easy it was to make, so I might as well share for those unaware. There's of course many way to make carbonara, all of which claim to be the proper way, but we did this.




You'll need to fry bacon. Either fry strips and cut them to tiny pieces or use bacon cubes. What matters that the bacon is A) fried, and B) in tiny pieces.



While that's happening, boil some spaghetti (or whichever pasta of your choice, spaghetti works best). Put salt into the water, but no oil or butter.



Take a few eggs (I used three and it was just about enough for one large serving) and separate the yokes.

People probably have all manner of kitchen tools and contraptions for separating, but so long as you don't puncture the yoke with a sharp egg shell edge, you can just flop the yoke back and forth between two shell halves like so and the egg white will leak out into whatever cup you have under there.



Once the spaghetti is done, get the water out, but leave it in the kettle.



Press butan, put bacon.



With your yokes in a cup, shred quite a bit of parmesan cheese in there. Just enough for it to get a bit thicker. You can also mix them in the cup while you're at it, to see how thick it becomes.



Yoke mix in among the rest, mix it all up with a wooden cooking fork. If it feels too thick or dry (as was the case with us), add a little cream and mix it up some more.



Add plenty of black pepper and mix some more.



Serve to plate, more shredded parmesan on top. Hey presto, the delicious!

some sauce I got no name for:

Chicken sauce with red pepper and bacon!

Previous cooking entries of sorts can be found here and here.





Here's what I'm using. About 400g of honey marinated chicken slices, one whole red pepper or paprika (since it's not really a pepper), bacon, a box (about 200g) of cheddar flavored creme bonjour (which is a kind of unripened cheese here) and some black pepper and sugar. At least I think the sugar is supposed to be there.



You need to fry and slice the bacon into tiny pieces. You can try cutting it before cooking, but this proved stupidly difficult, so I just fried the slices and then cut.



LIKE ZO
Just as long as your end result is akin to this, doesn't matter how you do it.



Cook the marinated chicken well.



Then drop the bacon bits in there as well and stir on the pan.



Chop up ze paprika. Again, this is not a hot pepper, in case you've never seen one. It's not peppery, it's very sweet and lovely. Probably my favorite vegetable.



Open the cheddar flavored soft cheese stuff that the english doesn't have a word for (gg guys) and prepare to dump 'em in a kettle along with everything else.



LIKE ZO

So that's chicken plus bacon, plus paprika plus cheese in there. Add some pepper and just a tiny bit of sugar and stir while heating till the cheese melts and get's all saucy.



If it's a tad too dry, add some cooking cream in there to sauce it up.

Boil yourself some tagliatelle pasta (that's the long, thin kind) and serve.



And how! Delicious and lovely. I'm getting so hungry now ;_;

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by Stop Sign

An easy staple for my wife and I is:

1) Clean and wash vegetables
2) Slice up garlic thinly
3) Fry the garlic in a move out cleaning brisbane thin layer of oil in a pan until it JUST turns brown around the edges
4) Quickly toss in the veggies and a small amount of water
5) Quickly cover it and let it sit for 30 seconds to 2 minutes (depends on the thickness of the veggies) - make sure not to overcook it or the veggies turn brown and mushy
6) Open lid, turn off flame,
7) add salt or chicken broth powder to taste, stir evenly
8) Serve.

Very easy. We usually do this end of lease cleaning brisbane with asian vegetables like gailan, but you can also do this with broccoli florets, pieces of cabbage, snow peas, etc.

hello guys do you use any latest equipment to clean vegetables and fruits. Too many pesticides usage is big cause of worry so how to make our cooking safe?

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

I just rinse my fruits and veg in baby butter before using, that gets them nice and clean

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

I always use the latest equipment. Granted, I never clean said latest equipment, so it'd probably be better to just rinse them in running tap water, but that'd be intelligent.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Proper application of fire reduces the exterior surface of the vegetables to ash, eliminating toxicity and providing a wonderful smoky flavor

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

I don't actually wash anything. I just eat it. I haven't gotten sick once that was attributable to any washable toxins!

:cancer tomorrow:

Oh hey, and an update. I made jalapeno popper stuffed chicken breasts last week and they were delicious. It was really cool. I just bought pre-sliced chicken cutlets, mixed cream cheese, pre-crumbled bacon, diced jalapeno and mexican cheese together and smeared that shit all up in the chicken. Then rolled those suckers up, dipped them in olive oil + lime juice, breaded them and baked them.

I left the jalapeno seeds in, so they tasted like delicious fire.

Q, I was going to make your carbonara but at the time I thought I was dating a Jewish man. It turns out we were not dating, so I will have to make your dish now, because it looked delicious.

(I think the tenses in that last sentence are fine...)

FELIPE NO

I'd say those tenses are fine.

Also, we now have a steamer and a crock pot. So much food cookin' at home. Stephen made some lemon-pepper tilapia with asparagus for the crock pot Friday night, and it turned out pretty fantastic. Get you some foil, some tilapia filets/loins, butter, lemon juice and lemon pepper seasoning, wrap those fish up with the asparagus, and cook on high for about 2 hours. 3 if the fish is frozen.

Deelish.

How ya doing, buddy?

I am slowly learning how to cook instead of throwing my health to the ramen noodle cup or let my boyfriend do all the cooking. I learned how to make Chicken Carbonara, it was super easy and really good.

Jam it back in, in the dark.