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DildenAnders posted:I let the rice sit for like 15 minutes after the last batch and while it helped it was still crunchy. Is a crock pot a better rice cooking implement? Absolutely not
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Nov 3, 2019 21:06
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Crock pots are not even close to the best cooking implement for absolutely anything, they're just convenient
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Nov 3, 2019 21:24
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DildenAnders posted:I let the rice sit for like 15 minutes after the last batch and while it helped it was still crunchy. Is a crock pot a better rice cooking implement? What is your process, in detail? I maybe shouldn't have glossed over the 'cook the rice' part. I'll provide more detail. 1 Cup of Rice 1.5 Cups of water In a pot with the lid on, bring the water and rice to a boil. Reduce heat to medium low so it reduces from a boil to a gentle simmer. Let it cook with the lid on undisturbed for 20 minutes. Test for consistency. If it's crunchy and still wet, cook longer. If it's crunchy and bone-dry, add water and cook longer. Try five or ten minute taste test increments. Remove from heat and either fluff it or wait 15 minutes and fluff it The end I was thinking maybe you're cooking uncovered, or maybe you're not bringing it up to temp fast enough, or maybe you're trying to cook it at a rolling boil the whole time. Hopefully something about these steps is something you didn't know? Also, if your rice is REALLY old - like multiple years old - that may cause it to be tough to cook. This probably isn't the problem. Finally, if it's still not working, I recommend getting a SMALL inexpensive rice cooker like this one: https://www.amazon.com/DECKER-RC506-Cooked-Uncooked-Steamer/dp/B016Y8JSK4 If you have an asian grocer nearby, you may be able to pick one like this up for like nine dollars. Get a small one if you get one - big rice cookers don't do well with small batches. A crock pot won't be easier to use to make fluffy rice than a regular pot. It would be easier to make like overnight rice porridge with a crock pot, but that's not what you're aiming for.
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Nov 3, 2019 21:26
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Even a cheapo rice cooker is easier and more consistent than using a pot. It's not cheating, everybody in Asia uses a rice cooker too. I don't think I've made rice in a pot in a decade. You do still have to figure out your water ratio but after that you're good.
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Nov 3, 2019 21:53
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AnonSpore posted:I started portioning tomato paste into 1 tbsp dollops and then freezing them after wrapping in plastic wrap and it changed my life  It took a very embarrassing accident where I needed stitches after trying to extract frozen tomato paste from a previously opened can to get me to start doing this, but it's a thousand percent worth the extra couple of bucks on tube tomato paste (paid back in lack of waste) and minutes of effort to measure (digital scale perfect for this application). Everyone should do this.
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Nov 3, 2019 22:18
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I got a Marcato Atlas 150 kit two weeks ago that included a raviolini maker. That is the one that makes four raviolis along the pasta sheets. It was an absolute trainwreck to use. It looks like the ravioli would stick to one roller, come back around, and then back a huge, squidgy mess. I'm thinking I need to use a very dry dough and rely on the filling to seal the pasta. I wondered if anybody had any ideas about that. I just made bigger ravioli manually from the sheets, but I can appreciate having something to make a bunch of smaller ones if I could get it to work. The price was good even without that since I got some other attachments, so I'm not too bummed about it.
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Nov 3, 2019 23:49
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DildenAnders posted:I let the rice sit for like 15 minutes after the last batch and while it helped it was still crunchy. Is a crock pot a better rice cooking implement? In my experience, crunchy rice can be an indication of too low of a heat. You need it hot enough to cook in the right length of time, otherwise it will be undercooked at the end. You don't want it really going, too fast and it will be more likely to burn on the bottom. I usually aim for a slightly visible stream of steam coming out of the side of the lid or the round hole in the lid. If you got the right amount of water for the cooking time, you'll have to add a bit more if you bump up the heat, the higher heat will evaporate the water faster.
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Nov 4, 2019 01:12
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Tres Burritos posted:So you're saying that tempering does change the flavor or characteristics of chocolate in a significant way? This is ages ago, but I felt compelled to elaborate a little bit. Chocolate is actually fairly complex from a condensed matter perspective. There are 6 crystal phases that cocoa butter can condense into. For high-quality eating chocolate, chocolatiers temper the chocolate to produce more chocolate in phase-V in the bar. That crystal phase has the magical properties that make chocolate so satisfying to eat: the nice snap of the bar when you break off a piece, the glossy surface, and the melting point just below body temperature. Personally I've never tempered chocolate myself, because it has a reputation as a difficult process. The typical way a home-cook would go about it is to melt some chocolate, then introduce some amount of seed chocolate to the mixture, then let it cool after the seed has been incorporated. The idea is that the seed crystals initiate freezing of the melted chocolate into the phase-V of the introduced chocolate. The hard way (but fool-proof if you do it right) is a controlled melting, then cooling and heating to specific temperatures with agitation to remove the wrong phase crystals in the chocolate. This isn't to say that you shouldn't learn to temper chocolate, just that it will take some failed attempts and learning before you get it right. I'd say the tempering is important in judging quality chocolate since it affects the texture and is important in the overall experience of eating chocolate. If the tempering is not done right then chocolate may not have the snap, gloss, and melting that I'm looking for in chocolate.
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Nov 4, 2019 02:03
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I bought a $16 Panasonic rice maker in 2006 and have used it twice a week since then. It always works fine.
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Nov 4, 2019 02:46
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Yeah all through college I used a like $10 Amazon random rice cooker and it made rice fine every time.
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Nov 4, 2019 03:36
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Eeyo posted:Personally I've never tempered chocolate myself, because it has a reputation as a difficult process. I pretty much do all the cooking in my house, yet my wife has magic powers to melt chocolate using the microwave. I cringe every time, and every time I have all the characteristics of a well-tempered chocolate. I feel like the whole process will turn to poo poo if my wife learns any single extra thing about it.
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Nov 4, 2019 03:45
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I threw out a Hershey's bar the other day because I couldn't get past the graininess and puke flavor of it. How do you gently caress chocolate up so bad?
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Nov 4, 2019 08:01
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i use one of those plastic/microwave rice cookers cause the metal ones are annoying and big and it's always turned out fine for me my q: is there a repository of meal prep stuff here in GWS? I looked briefly but didn't see a specific thread
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Nov 4, 2019 10:38
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spankmeister posted:I threw out a Hershey's bar the other day because I couldn't get past the graininess and puke flavor of it. How do you gently caress chocolate up so bad? Here is a really interesting article about why Hersheys tastes like sick. In essence, its to do with milk preservation and getting it into GIs field rations during the war.
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Nov 4, 2019 12:19
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Scientastic posted:Here is a really interesting article about why Hersheys tastes like sick. Damint, beat me to it. Yeah, not quite puke, but sour milk. It's faint though, I'm pretty sure most of the population can't taste it. Apparently it's quite jarring if you've grown up on Cadbury Dairy Milk.
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Nov 4, 2019 12:38
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Cook rice in the Iranian fashion, if you insist on doing it on the stove. Get you some basmati rice, aged about a year or so. Rinse it well until the water runs clear. This will take several changes of water. Set a large pot of water to boil. For about 4 cups of rice you want like a gallon or so of water. While the water comes to a boil, soak the rinsed rice in room temp water. When the water is at a seething, rushing boil, add a generous bit of salt, and some oil or butter. Drain the soaked rice of its soaking liquid, and dump it into the pot of rapidly boiling water. After about 5 minutes of this rapidly boiling thing, start testing the rice grains. You want them to be somewhat firm but break in half easily when you press down on it. Drain the boiling hot water off in a strainer, and add the fat of your choice to the bottom of that pot. You want to drain it of excess water, but not bone dry. Add the rice back in, and put the lid back on. Turn on the heat to lowest heat, and let the rice finish steaming for like 15 minutes or so. Turn off the heat completely.
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Nov 4, 2019 13:52
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So my brother came over and had some od the rice I made, and he said the texture was "very good", so I guess just the rice on the top of the pot was a bit al dente. Thanks for the advice Fart Store and others, I'll add a little bit more water but otherwise maintain this method. Long term I think I'll get a rice cooker if they're really that cheap and that much of an improvement. I'll be eating fried rice for dinner today! I still have I think 161 servings of rice left in there, does anyone know about the efficacy of homemade rice milk? I like rice milk but this sounds like dangerous territory to wade into uninformed. DildenAnders fucked around with this message at 15:58 on Nov 4, 2019 |
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Nov 4, 2019 15:55
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Close family will never give you accurate signal on how good your food is, if they have any sense
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Nov 4, 2019 16:12
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Squashy Nipples posted:It's faint though It most definitely isnt faint: anyone Ive ever met who isnt American tastes it instantly and hates it. I think Americans are just really used to it, to the point where some prefer it to the taste of what people in Europe say is the superior product.
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Nov 4, 2019 17:52
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Eeyo posted:Chocolate What's are the main factors that determine what structures chocolate forms? Cocoa content? Fat content? It suddenly makes me want to see a phase diagram for chocolate but in my background in metallurgy, phase diagrams are usually binary (at most ternary) and I imagine chocolate is a little more complex than that.. but maybe it's only a couple things that affect the chocolate structure..
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Nov 4, 2019 17:52
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No, phase diagram works fine, this isn't a spin glass or anything http://soft-matter.seas.harvard.edu..._and_nucleation
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Nov 4, 2019 17:57
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bob dobbs is dead posted:No, phase diagram works fine, this isn't a spin glass or anything That's so cool and interesting (though it's technically a TTT diagram). Thanks very much for this.
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Nov 4, 2019 18:06
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Actual phase diagram is in the references somewhere, sorry
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Nov 4, 2019 18:07
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totalnewbie posted:That's so cool and interesting (though it's technically a TTT diagram). Thanks very much for this. Time-temperature-transformation for the materials science noobs out there. The same techniques that allow gas turbine engines to exist make chocolate shiny and snappy. Having a MatSE degree makes cooking really, really intuitive, which rules.
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Nov 4, 2019 18:55
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Lawnie posted:Time-temperature-transformation for the materials science noobs out there. The same techniques that allow gas turbine engines to exist make chocolate shiny and snappy. Hi5 MSE buddy. Cooking really is just a cousin for our studies. Foods are just complex materials and at the end of the day, there are only a few knobs you can turn to change things (time, temperature, medium (e.g. oil, water, air), etc.). When you control for the relevant variables, you get a consistent product - whether that's a turbine blade or fried chicken.
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Nov 4, 2019 19:27
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If you want a rice cooker on a budget, get the aroma 8 cup: Aroma Housewares ARC-914SBD 2-8-Cups (Cooked) Digital Cool-Touch Rice Grain Cooker and Food Steamer, Stainless, 8 Cup, Silver https://www.amazon.com/dp/B007WQ9YNO/ I had it for 5 years and it worked perfect every time. I used to cook about 20 lb of rice each month. Currently residing with the boyfriend because I bought a fancier model for myself, and hes been loving it too.
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Nov 4, 2019 21:57
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I don't have a rice cooker to compare it to but I use my instant pot as a rice cooker at least 2-3 times a month or more. It took a little bit of trial and error to figure out just the right ratio and times for each type of rice I'd use and you definitely want to unseal and fluff your rice right after its done. Anyways, if you've already got one might give it a go. I use mine as much as a rice cooker as I do a pressure cooker.
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Nov 4, 2019 22:09
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New challenge: this time I'm the proud recipient of a little under 2.5 pounds of fresh local cilantro. Anyone got any hacks for using a ton of cilantro? Can I pickle cilantro?? Worst case I guess I'll freeze most of it for curries
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Nov 4, 2019 22:27
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make cilantro liqueur
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Nov 4, 2019 23:21
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Freezing cilantro is a fool's errand. The thing to do would be to make a cilantro chimichurri and then freeze that if you must.
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Nov 5, 2019 00:13
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Mr. Wiggles posted:Freezing cilantro is a fool's errand. The thing to do would be to make a cilantro chimichurri and then freeze that if you must. Gonna say the same thing.
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Nov 5, 2019 00:16
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Make a bunch of cilantro oil! Blend leaves and tender stems with olive oil and strain through a coffee filter overnight. Garnish everything with it. Hell, stir-fry with it.
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Nov 5, 2019 00:34
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Mr. Wiggles posted:Freezing cilantro is a fool's errand. The thing to do would be to make a cilantro chimichurri and then freeze that if you must. my tentative plan was to food process it a tiny bit with a little water/oil to get it to come together a little and then freeze it in cubes or something like that. chimichurri sounds good too prayer group posted:Make a bunch of cilantro oil! Blend leaves and tender stems with olive oil and strain through a coffee filter overnight. Garnish everything with it. Hell, stir-fry with it. might try this tomorrow barkbell posted:make cilantro liqueur might try this tomorrow
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Nov 5, 2019 01:12
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Cilantro pesto sounds good
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Nov 5, 2019 02:41
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How toxic is the smoke that comes out of an appliance that just died? Asking for a friend
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Nov 5, 2019 07:02
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If I were to guess (and I'm about to) I'd guess it's a low dose of potent toxin(s), but it would probably depend on what kind of appliance too.
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Nov 5, 2019 07:30
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A dehydrator I think it was the fan motor
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Nov 5, 2019 08:01
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That's probably not much mass to burn into toxic smoke. If his pet birds(s) are still alive I doubt anything else will happen
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Nov 5, 2019 08:47
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Steve Yun posted:A dehydrator Youre probably now some sort of superhero. DryMan?
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Nov 5, 2019 15:10
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That Works posted:I don't have a rice cooker to compare it to but I use my instant pot as a rice cooker at least 2-3 times a month or more. It took a little bit of trial and error to figure out just the right ratio and times for each type of rice I'd use and you definitely want to unseal and fluff your rice right after its done. Trial and error was this persons issue in the first place. Thats why were suggesting they get a rice cooker. The instant pot will not get as consistent results as the rice cooker. Theres a reason so much of the world uses one. Most Indians own a pressure cooker and know how to make rice in there. If youre gonna buy a plug in device, get the rice cooker and a real pressure cooker. That sear function on the instant pot is way too weak to pop spices properly, or get water to heat fast enough.
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Nov 5, 2019 17:25
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