the Old Granny thread

[sirdanilot]

I believe you could even brine chicken before frying, though of course it's then even more important to thoroughly dry it afterwards. You can also 'brine' chicken in buttermilk before frying, I've heard, though I haven't tried this myself.

[linguoboy]

And, Sirdanilot, to forestall you suggesting I "try something different" or that I might just be "doing it wrong", and knowing as I do that you don't like reading threads or making an effort to engage with the board's community (apparently you don't think there is one?), I will mention that until recently I was a professional chef. I've tried and cooked more variations of chicken meals than I really care to recall. I just think it's bland, and not cheap enough here to justify me using it as a default go-to meat.

I pretty much went off chicken entirely when I was living on my own. During my high school years, my mother and sister were both trying to "eat healthy", which in the spirit of the age (late 80s) meant all skinless chicken breasts all the time. If there's a blander meat out there than American mass-production white meat chicken, I hope I never encounter it. And of course this was not at all helped by my Mom's thoroughly Midwestern seasoning habits (best summed up by Marge Simpson's reaction on seeing a "cute spice rack" at the county fair: "EIGHT SPICES? Some of these MUST be duplicates!) I'd probably still ignore it if not for the fact that my partner does most of the cooking. Part of the reason I frequent the local Indian restaurant I do is that they use all dark meat in their dishes.

What I love about duck and goose is that they basically taste like they're entirely dark meat. Ground turkey is also relatively cheap and widely available. We tend to mix it with ground pork in order to reduce the overall fat content.

[sirdanilot]

White chicken breast is basically not much more flavorful than, say, tofu or mozarella, as far as 'bland protein' goes (at least the kind of mozarella we get here, which is a white, soft ball that comes in a little bag with liquid; american mozarella is different I believe)..Which does not mean it's nasty, it just needs a lot of flavourings to make it good.

[Drydic]

Comparing chicken to tofu while claiming it can be extremely tasty doesn't really help your case any.

[linguoboy]

White chicken breast is basically not much more flavorful than, say, tofu or mozarella, as far as 'bland protein' goes (at least the kind of mozarella we get here, which is a white, soft ball that comes in a little bag with liquid; american mozarella is different I believe)..Which does not mean it's nasty, it just needs a lot of flavourings to make it good.

The main difference being that it's easy to dry out chicken breast when cooking it or make it too tough, something which is impossible to do with tofu or cows-milk mozzarella.

Comparing chicken to tofu while claiming it can be extremely tasty doesn't really help your case any.

Try this. You'll never complain about flavourless tofu again!

[Drydic]

I know and like tofu, I'm just pointing out it's the legendary non-tasting food by itself, which is exactly the problem that Danilot says chicken doesn't have. it's all about the extra ingredients bro, not the plucked white flightless bird.

[Radius Solis]

[And of course this was not at all helped by my Mom's thoroughly Midwestern seasoning habits (best summed up by Marge Simpson's reaction on seeing a "cute spice rack" at the county fair: "EIGHT SPICES? Some of these MUST be duplicates!)

My sympathies. If I were limited to Midwestern habits of spicing and cooking style, I wouldn't be eating chicken very often either.

Ground turkey is also relatively cheap and widely available. We tend to mix it with ground pork in order to reduce the overall fat content.

Ground chicken breast exists too, though many seem unaware of this. It's a little harder to work with, as the raw meat is pretty mushy, but liberal use of breadcrumbs helps. I don't know that I'd want to try using it for chickenburgers, but I do a really tasty chicken swedish meatballs recipe with it.

[linguoboy]

[And of course this was not at all helped by my Mom's thoroughly Midwestern seasoning habits (best summed up by Marge Simpson's reaction on seeing a "cute spice rack" at the county fair: "EIGHT SPICES? Some of these MUST be duplicates!)

My sympathies. If I were limited to Midwestern habits of spicing and cooking style, I wouldn't be eating chicken very often either.

Thankfully those years are long behind me now. I only get a taste of them when I visit my sister once or twice a year (and even she's learned to cook with more--and better--spices than what we grew up with).

Ground chicken breast exists too, though many seem unaware of this. It's a little harder to work with, as the raw meat is pretty mushy, but liberal use of breadcrumbs helps. I don't know that I'd want to try using it for chickenburgers, but I do a really tasty chicken swedish meatballs recipe with it.

I would never use ground chicken for anything without mixing it with something. You can use it in meatloaf, for instance, but only if at least half the meat comes from something else and you add some vegetable matter to increase the looseness.

[sirdanilot]

Is stinky tofu comparable to Tempeh?
I have yet to find a suitable cooking method for tempeh. All the dishes I have done with it were like this:

first bite: delicious
second bite: meh
third bite: blargh I'm fed up with it

It seems that tempeh is best cut into thin strips then deep-fried, so I need to try that sometime.

[linguoboy]

Is stinky tofu comparable to Tempeh?

In a word: no.

[Melend]

Almost anything is delicious deep-fried. If the best encomium you can offer for chicken is "it's fantastic when it's fried", people are right to reject your evaluation of it.

Some foods are just inherently blander than others, and chicken is one of them. It can be very tasty when prepared properly - unfortunately, much of the actual flavor of the bird is associated with the fatty skin, which people tend to eliminate.

[linguoboy]

Some foods are just inherently blander than others, and chicken is one of them. It can be very tasty when prepared properly - unfortunately, much of the actual flavor of the bird is associated with the fatty skin, which people tend to eliminate.

fat = flavour. The reason white meat chicken became widely popular in the US is that it's leaner than most other meats while also being relatively cheap. There are ways to overcome its blandness, but they require a certain degree of effort and skill, and too many cooks lack one or both.

By the way, buttermilk, mentioned above, doesn't help at all with the blandness problem. It does, however, solve the dryness problem, which is at least as big a hurdle to fixing decent chicken dishes. (Of course, American buttermilk also suffers from blandness compared to what you find in Europe elsewhere, but that's another issue.)

[Nortaneous]

Jesus, everyone knows that all you need to do with chicken is cover it in Old Bay.

(Maryland allotted all of its not-shit points to cuisine. The whole state is a miserable asphalt shithole full of vast sprawling suburban garbage dumps populated entirely with zombified Washington functionaries and the underclass but at least we have Old Bay and Ledo's! Go buy some Old Bay online and put it on fucking everything)

[hwhatting]

Some foods are just inherently blander than others, and chicken is one of them. It can be very tasty when prepared properly - unfortunately, much of the actual flavor of the bird is associated with the fatty skin, which people tend to eliminate.

fat = flavour. The reason white meat chicken became widely popular in the US is that it's leaner than most other meats while also being relatively cheap. There are ways to overcome its blandness, but they require a certain degree of effort and skill, and too many cooks lack one or both.

Yes, chicken without skin is a chicken wasted. But even if you have to work with skinned chicken breast or leg, all you need to do is fry them with a few ingredients. I normally fry them in a pan with butter or sunflower oil, and then add onions and apples.

[sirdanilot]

By the way, buttermilk, mentioned above, doesn't help at all with the blandness problem. It does, however, solve the dryness problem, which is at least as big a hurdle to fixing decent chicken dishes. (Of course, American buttermilk also suffers from blandness compared to what you find in Europe elsewhere, but that's another issue.)

I am not aware of american vs europe buttermilk differences? We do have two types here: the regular buttermilk, and 'farmers' buttermilk which is actually the real deal. The latter is quite hard to find though (only at health food stores).
As I said, I haven't tried it yet because I never deep-fry (I don't have a deep fryer and I'm not going to do the deep-frying in a pan thing in my filthy little student kitchen without an air refreshment system either), but if I would do the buttermilk thing I'd add spices, salt and maybe soy sauce to the buttermilk, and soak the chicken in it for about a night. That would tackle both dryness and blandness I'd think.

[linguoboy]

I am not aware of american vs europe buttermilk differences? We do have two types here: the regular buttermilk, and 'farmers' buttermilk which is actually the real deal. The latter is quite hard to find though (only at health food stores).

That's the difference. As I understand it, "regular buttermilk" doesn't really exist in Europe. It's our own bastard invention, just like American cheese or flavourless monster strawberries.

[Melend]

Can't yogurt be used as a substitute for buttermilk?

I can't even test it myself, I'm a vegetarian. Irony.

[linguoboy]

Can't yogurt be used as a substitute for buttermilk?

For some applications, yes. I don't recall ever seeing buttermilk-coated raisins, for instance.

[Drydic]

Can't yogurt be used as a substitute for buttermilk?

I can't even test it myself, I'm a vegetarian. Irony.

Then why are you cooking so much chicken?

Also that's vegan, vegetarians don't exclude eggs and milk products (though if your objection is animal products in the yogurt, that's more understandable, but there is yogurt available without those.)

[sirdanilot]

That's the difference. As I understand it, "regular buttermilk" doesn't really exist in Europe. It's our own bastard invention, just like American cheese or flavourless monster strawberries.

I think you are mistaken. Farmers buttermilk (which is, as I said, not at all standard and actually quite hard to find) is actually made from churning butter, while regular buttermilk is made with a culture, a bit like yoghurt. 99% of the buttermilk you will encounter here is this cultured kind of buttermilk. It tastes, well, like buttermilk: sour (the older, the more sour), but with a velvety smooth texture. It tends to get a bit thicker as it ages too. The farmers buttermilk is a bit creamier.
Unlike with normal milk, there is no further fat-percentage distinctions in buttermilk. Most supermarkets will only carry one kind (the cultured kind), and some will carry farmer's buttermilk (though it remains to be seen if it's really the real thing; if I really wanted farmers buttermilk I'd, well, go to a farm).

It's not like we in Europe only eat heirloom, local food. This kind of food is often either expensive, hard to find or both (though at times it's actually quite cheap when in season). I ate this kind of stuff much more when I still lived in my parent's town, though, as we had a huge farmer's market that sells local produce and stuff like that. We also often just drove to a farm and bought things like raw milk, potatoes, asparagus... often friends would give stuff like goose eggs, fruit... But that kind of thing hardly exists in urban environments like the one I live now.

Holland is kind of a shitty country food-culture wise, anyway. There are a handful of really good dishes (most involving mashed potatoes with some sort of cabbage or leafy green mashed into it) or something like beef stew with onions or something, but that's basically it. Most normal food is just: boiled potatoes, boiled vegetables, fried meat. No fun culinary things going on there. Of course what is big, is the restaurant culture and the way we borrow other's people stuff and innovate. But that's to be found in any modern country really. Lastly, some butchered variations of foreign foods are almost a completely new thing in and of themselves: such as various Indonesian dishes which are now almost regarded as Dutch (and will probably not be recognized by native indonesians anymore).

[sirdanilot]

Can't yogurt be used as a substitute for buttermilk?

I can't even test it myself, I'm a vegetarian. Irony.

You mean vegan?

And yeah it depends on what you want to do with it. I won't drink a glass of yoghurt (too thick) while I will drink a glass of buttermilk, for example. I can't make porridge with yoghurt, but I can with buttermilk (we make a kind of porridge with buttermilk and flour for example). Etc.

[Nortaneous]

Flatbread pizza isn't very old granny, but here's how I make it.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Once it's heated, stick the flatbread in for four or five minutes -- until it's about to start hardening at the edges. Take it out, but keep the oven heated. Put on pizza sauce, olive oil, and sambal (chili paste; the sriracha company makes some), then throw on some fish sauce -- about a third of a teaspoon for the size of the flatbread I have, but sizes vary so use common sense. Add mozzarella on top, then stick it back in the oven until the center of the flatbread is hardened.

Here's the stir-fry I usually eat for dinner:

Boil some thin rice noodles, strain them, and toss them with a few drops of sesame oil. Fry chopped baby corn and broccoli in peanut oil, then cut some beef into small chunks and add that. Give the beef a minute or two to cook, then add the rice noodles, some soy sauce (dunno how much, since I always eyeball it; maybe a tablespoon?), some fish sauce (I'd guess half a teaspoon but that might be too much), and some scotch bonnet sauce, which really is noticeably better than chili sauce in this. Stir it and cook until the beef is done, then add more sauces to taste.

Also, egg drop soup:

Boil thin rice noodles in beef broth, add sriracha, soy sauce, plum sauce, and a few drops of sesame oil, beat an egg in a separate bowl, pour it in while stirring like hell, keep stirring until the egg looks cooked and a few more seconds after, then take it off heat and serve it. Chives are good in it; shiitake mushrooms, sadly, aren't. No idea as to sauce quantities but at least two tablespoons of plum sauce.

Anyone have a borscht recipe? I have beets and potatoes and no idea what to do with them.

[sirdanilot]

I have never made borscht myself, but I think I have eaten it and it was very good. Can't help you with it, google is your friend.
Something else we like to do with beets though, is beet salad. Boil the beets until tender, skin them (or skin them beforehand, though I like the method of skinning them afterwards), slice them in thin slices. Also slice a (red for prettiness) onion in thin slices. Now toss the beets and the raw onion with a good vinegar, some oil, salt, pepper and bayleaf powder. Don't ask me why, but we always put bay leaf powder in this salad; it was the only reason we had bay leaf powder in our pantry. We also made it with pre-boiled beets, though homemade is obviously best. . I guess you can replace it by just adding a bay leaf or two while boiling the beets.

And I probably don't need to tell you what to do with potatoes. Actually you could make a combined red beet and potato salad, now that I think of it.

[Pressed Bunson]

Sorry, nothing about beets here.

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All copy-pasted directly from my mom's blog because I'm lazy. There are several refrenecs to Sweetling, and, um, that's me...

If a mod could come by and un-break my list format, that'd be great.

Baked Salmon

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We try to periodically do a kid's cook night. I'd like it to happen once a week, but the reality is more like every other week.

Still, it's a great tradition. Not only is it a great learning experience, but it's a real confidence builder for each of my children.

Sweetling and I were at Meijer on Saturday. We were on our way home from a women's self-defense class and had gone in to look for an ink cartridge for our color printer. It was lunch time, and we were hungry, so we decided to swing through the grocery section to look for a few yummy food samples.

Little samples of baked salmon were being given out...along with a 10% off coupon, a little fish-thickness measuring ruler, and a pamphlet on easy, fool-proof fish cooking techniques.

Meijer didn't have the ink cartridge we needed, but at Sweetling's request, a large "family" pack of a salmon fillet weighing 1.3 lbs came home with us.

Baked Salmon

Ingredients:

• salmon
• seasoning of choice

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 450.
2. We lined a rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper. I have no idea if this is necessary, but I didn't want to be scraping fish chunks off the baking tray.
3. Place salmon on tray. (I know this is complicated, but just bear with me.)
4. Season. (I just put out all my seasoning blends and let Sweetling go at.)
5. Bake for 10 minutes per 1 inch thickness. (We baked ours a little longer, because we had never baked fish before and I was worried it would be underdone. It wasn't. In fact, we overbaked ours a tiny bit and it was a touch dryer than it could have been.)
6. Sweetling served her fish with butter noodles, microwaved broccoli and cheese, and homemade corn muffins...

Strawberry Lemonade

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Warning, it can be a bit labor intensive, so I recommend recruiting a couple of children to help. I'm all about free child labor.

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cup sugar, divided
• 4 cups water, divide
• 2 cups fresh strawberries, hulled
• 1 cup fresh lemon juice (4 to 5 lemons)

Directions

1. Combine one cup of sugar and one cup of water in a small sauce pan. Heat and stir until sugar is dissolved and mixture is clear. Remove from heat and let it cool.
2. Rinse and hull your strawberries. (Or give this task to an older child to be working on while you are making the sugar syrup.)
3. Put strawberries and one cup cold water in a food processor. Run it till the mixture is pretty smooth. Transfer to a pitcher and stir in 2 more cups of cold water.
4. Cut your lemons in half and juice them. THIS IS NOT THAT HARD, even without a fancy juicer. Check out this video on how to juice lemons with a fork. (And again, grab a couple of kids to help.)
5. Pour the cup of lemon juice and the cooled sugar syrup into the pitcher and stir.
6. You may know chill the mixture for up to 8 hours. (It will need stirred again before you pour it.) OR you can serve it right away.
7. Either way, when you are ready to serve, fill clear glasses two-thirds full with ice. (Yes, the glasses do need to be transparent; this is too pretty to hide behind opaque
plastic.) Then pour your homemade strawberry lemonade over the ice. I like to pop a pretty colored straw in the glasses too. This will make enough to fill 8 glasses.[/*]

Sweet Potato Casserole

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Ingredients:

• 6 whole sweet potatoes ~3 lbs
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1/3 cup milk
• 1/4 cup butter (melted)
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• 2 whole eggs (lightly beaten)

Topping:

• 1/3 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/3 cup chopped pecans
• 2 tbsp flour
• 2 tbsp soft butter

Directions:

1. Boil sweet potatoes for 30-40 minutes. Let cool, peel and mash. (I generally do this the day before. It's just easier. You can store them as is. Or you can mix up the casserole, put it in the fridge, and then bake it the day you need to serve it.)
2. Combine mashed sweet potatoes with sugar, milk, melted butter, vanilla, cinnamon, and nutmeg (ie--everything except the topping ingredients).
3. Spoon into greased 2 quart casserole.
4. Combine topping ingredients, cutting in the butter until crumbly. (I might be guilty of doubling the topping amounts when I bake this. Twice the sweet stuff. Yum. Yum. Knowing that not everyone is enlightened enough to want a dessert item on their dinner plate, the amount given in the recipe above is for the more moderate version.) Sprinkle over casserole before baking.
5. Bake at 350 for 30 minutes (casserole should be steaming hot in center). If you're pulling it out of the fridge to bake it, plan for a 40-50 minute bake time.

Perfect Oven-Fried Bacon

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Here's the key trick:

Do NOT pre-heat your oven.

Once you know that, the rest is super easy.

1. Line two baking sheets with aluminum foil. (Use baking sheets with rims to contain grease).
2. Place strips of bacon on the baking sheets. I found that each baking sheet held about half a pound without any overlapping of strips.
3. Put the baking sheets in the COLD oven. Then close the door and turn the oven on to 400.
4. Bake. The original recipe said to bake for 17-20 minutes. Mine took closer to 30. They are done when they turn a golden brown without being or looking crispy.
5. Take them off the baking sheets as soon as they are done and transfer them to a tray of paper towels. Do this right away. I mean it.
6. Eat. They are juicy, delicious, and reasonably mess free!

Lemon Bars

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Ingredients
CRUST

• 2 cups flour
• 1/2 cup powdered sugar
• 1 cup butter

FILING

• 4 eggs
• 2 cups sugar
• 1/4 cup flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 cup lemon juice

GLAZE

• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 3 Tbs lemon juice

Directions
To prepare the crust:

1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. Mix flour, powdered sugar, and butter in large bowl with electric mixer on low speed for 2 minutes, or until crumbly.
3. Press mixture into bottom of an ungreased 9x13 pan and bake for 20 to 30 minutes, or until lightly brown.
4. Remove from oven, but leave oven at 350.

To prepare the filling:

1. Stir eggs, sugar, flour, and baking powder in a medium bowl until completely combined.
2. Add lemon juice and stir until completely smooth.
3. Pour the mixture over the warm crust and bake for 25 to 30 minutes, until the top is golden brown.
4. Let cool completely.

To prepare the glaze:

1. Stir powdered sugar and lemon juice in a small bowl until smooth.
2. Smooth the glaze over the bars, let set for 30 minutes.
3. Cut into 2 inch squares.

Strawberry Cream Pie

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WARNING: This pie needs several hours in the freezer before it can be served. Be sure to fix it well in advance of when you need it. The day before or the morning of works perfectly!

Ingredients:

• 1 (18 ounce) jar strawberry preserves (I used Smuckers)
• 1 (14 ounce) can sweetened condensed milk
• 1 1/2 cups diced, fresh strawberries (see directions)
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• 1 (16 ounce) container frozen whipped topping, thawed, plus additional for garnish if desired
• 2 (8 or 9-inch) prepared graham cracker pie crusts (or homemade crusts)

Directions:

1. Rinse and hull several strawberries. (I think I typically use about 2/3rds of a plastic produce container.)
2. Place the strawberries, a few at a time, in a food processor. Pulse just enough to have tiny pieces of strawberries, but don't puree them. Keep doing this until you have 1 and 1/2 cups.
3. In a large bowl, mix the strawberry preserves, the strawberry pieces, the sweetened condensed milk, and the lemon juice.
4. Fold in the whipped topping.
5. Spoon into two prepared crusts.
6. Freeze for at least 4-6 hours.
7. Take out of freezer 5-10 minutes before slicing and serving. Top with additional whipped cream or fresh strawberry slices if desired.

[sirdanilot]

A couple of days ago I made *THE* best beef stew; Flemish beef stew with beer. It's very easy to make (as long as you make a lot, because you can store it for later).

However, it requires one special ingrediënt: Trappist dubbel beer. You can use Westmalle or one of the other brands. It's worth it using a good one though, you really taste the difference. Regular ol' beer won't cut it. Luckily you can get this kind of beer in most fancy beer stores or even in general liquor stores nowadays.



Ingrediënts
1 kg stewing beef - bad quality is no problem, you just have to stew it longer. Just get the cheapest cut you can find.
2-3 onions
small chunk of butter
3 garlic cloves
1 entire bottle of Trappist dubbel beer
a bit of stock (you can use powder/cube)
dried thyme
note: the following spices aren't all obligatory, just add whatever you have.
paprika powder
a couple of juniper berries
a couple of cloves
1-2 bay leafs
nutmeg (freshly grated would be awesome)
oil for frying the beef
flour to cover the beef
salt
pepper (freshly ground would be swell)

- Cut the beef in chunks of about equal size.
- Cut the onions in strips, the pieces can be quite big because it's going to be stewed anyway.
- Sprinkle a good amount of salt and a bit of pepper, and mix very well with your hands
- Sprinkle some flour and toss the beef very well until it is evenly coated with flour, try not to mix it too much or the flour gets all sticky.
- Heat a good amount of vegetable oil in two pans (one of which will be your stewing pan) on max heat.
- Fry a small amount of beef at a time. That's why we use two pans, goes quicker. It has to be nicely golden brown, then immediately set the beef aside on a plate.
- Remove any leftover oil from the pan, add butter, then add the onions and some salt and fry them on medium heat (if you are very Jewish just fry it in the oil ). Don't clean the pan, we need the brown bits at the bottom !
- Mince the garlic in the mean time, then add it to the onions and stir until fragrant
- Add your spices. Note that nutmeg is only added at the last step, because otherwise it loses its flavour.
- Add half of your beer and try to scratch the brown bits off the bottom of the pan.
- Stir a bit, then add the beef and stir well
- Add the rest of your beer and add your stock
- Cover the pan and simmer it on very low for... a long time. If you have good beef, you could go about 2.5 hours, but it took me almost 4 hours (!) to get my cheap beef tender. Make sure the water level does not get too low, and try to stir every once in a while and scrape the bottom.
-Taste if your meat is very tender and if your sauce is nice and thick. Grate in some nutmeg and taste for final seasoning.

This is usually enjoyed with fries, but boiled potatoes are fine too.