The General Questions thread - for quick questions, recipe requests, help.

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Goons with Spoons > The General Questions thread - for quick questions, recipe requests, help.

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SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

Turkeybone posted:

Honestly I dont think Ive ever said "hmm do I feel like ribeye or NY strip?" but I base a lot of it on whats available, what looks good, whats on sale.

I'd amplify this and say that this isn't just how I buy steaks, it's how I buy food in general.

# ¿ Nov 17, 2011 04:02

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 09:38

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

Squashy Nipples posted:

True, but you are at a very high level of cooking skills... when you've got a full quiver of go-to recipes, it's easy to make meals out of the best available. Most cooks need a little more planning then that.

Yeah, but there isn't just a whole hell of a lot of improv needed if you decide to buy a ny strip instead of a ribeye, or if the green beans look good today instead of the asparagus.

And really there's a lot of wiggle-room even if you're talking about deciding whether you want to get a steak or, I dunno, pork chops or something. I mean I do tend to keep in mind things like flavour pairings when I'm grocery shopping, but if you just stick to a basic meat protein, a starch, and some vegetables it's pretty tough to put together a bunch of ingredients that are inedible or wildly unpalatable together.

# ¿ Nov 17, 2011 23:40

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

Dominoes posted:

I use cast iron pots and pans for most of my cooking. I notice that I can't put them on my counter/shelves, or I get rust spots on the counter that I can't get off, and of course the oil. I've been using a mat that's meant for use under a drying rack for one, and a cleaning/drying cloth on top of a cutting board and tucked in for the other. The first one slides around, the second works rather well. What do y'all use? Any suggestions? I'm thinking about buying another cutting board and cloth.

I just use paper towels under my cast iron (and between cast iron pans that I store nested/stacked), and I've never had any problems.

I also tend to re-season whenever the seasoning on the bottom of the pans starts to wear off. It tends to burn off a lot more quickly than the rest of the seasoning wears down, but if you keep at it awhile you'll end up with a combination of `normal' black seasoning and a browner seasoning (which is actually brown rust, and is the same kind of oxidation that is called `seasoning' on carbon steel cutlery) that's pretty drat near indestructible, and won't wear and stain the way anything involving red rust will.

RazorBunny posted:

0 to 350 in four and a half minutes. It was amazing.

drat, you keep it cold in your place.

# ¿ Nov 18, 2011 21:41

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

Chard posted:

Would a dash of fish sauce work as a substitute for anchovies in a Caesar dressing?

Not as well as Worcestershire sauce will. Indeed, Caesar Cardini's original recipe does not include anchovies; it does contain Worcestershire.

# ¿ Nov 22, 2011 07:01

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

Irish Revenge posted:

Can anyone recommend an "intermediate beginner" book for learning the basics of cooking and fundamental skills that I'll need to perform most recipes? For instance, I want a book that has Chapter 1 - how to chop poo poo. Chapter 2 - the basics of making sauces, etc. And then that chapter would explain how chicken stock is the base for most soups, how to make a roux, what a mirepoix is, etc. I made a tomato soup this week that was just chicken stock with roasted tomatoes, combined with a mirepoix and some heavy cream, and I realized that I should know how to do that kind of stuff from scratch.

Pick up a used copy of CIA's The Professional Chef. It's a standardised textbook that will take you from the bare basics to general competence.

The major drawback for a home cook is that it the ingredient lists usually serve about 40. But nobody goes to Prochef for the recipes (which are pretty tame and boring anyway). It's a handbook of technique, and it is expressly designed to cover it all, presuming no prior knowledge.

If you want a general, all-purpose cookbook, you probably are looking for Bittman's How To Cook Everything. Most of the recipes are a little on the safe/bland side, but they're a pretty good starting point to understand the basics of just about any dish you can think of.

# ¿ Nov 23, 2011 17:23

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

taqueso posted:

Another option might be the combination of "Ratio" and "The Flavor Bible". The flavor bible tells you which flavors go with what. Ratio tells you what amounts of stuff you should combine together. Taken together, you can invent any recipe you want*. This might be more intermediate-advanced, though.

Yeah, The Flavor Bible is probably the book I turn to the most frequently, but you really need to have the basics down before you use something like it.

# ¿ Nov 23, 2011 17:52

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

traveling midget posted:

Opinion on this Henckels 7" Santoku?

I think santokus are for people who don't realise that they really want a Chinese cleaver. Disclaimer: there are people who are crazy about Chinese cleavers and will bring them up at every opportunity, and I'm one of them.

A Chan Chi Kee #1 small slicer will do everything an santoku will do and give you more blade to do it with. The downside with the CCK, if you consider it a downside, is that it's carbon steel instead of stainless. So you have to wipe it clean after you use it. It'll also develop a patina, which some people don't like the look of. But functionally I can't think of any argument for a santoku over a Chinese cleaver.

Leaving that aside and just talking about santokus, I'm not crazy about any of the big name German brand santokus (Henckels, W�sthof); all their Japanese-pattern kitchen knives are way thicker than they really ought to be. This is most noticeable around the pinch point along the spine of the blade where it meets the handle, but I find it tends to make the whole knife feel clumsier. I used to prefer the European `headsman's axe' school of cutlery design, but changed my mind after trying lighter chef's knives. If I had to buy and use a santoku for some reason I'd probably buy a Tojiro if price was the major consideration, a Moritaka if I was willing to spend a little more, or one of the high-end handmades if price was no object.

# ¿ Nov 27, 2011 00:53

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

Admiral Ballsack posted:

It's 4 kinds of mustard, honey, and mayo

Mustard and honey will last more or less indefinitely without becoming unsafe (although you might have trouble with the emulsion breaking if it sits there too long), but if the mayo is real mayonnaise and so contains eggs it'll go off. If you made the mayo yourself I'd start worrying after about a week unless you low temp pasteurised the yolks, and a couple weeks if you did.

With commercially prepared mayo it'll depend on what's in them and how they're prepared, so I'd treat the best by date on the mayo as an estimate for your emulsion containing it.

# ¿ Nov 29, 2011 02:26

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

Admiral Ballsack posted:

It's made with just regular Hellman's Mayo. Should I freeze some of it?

Mayo really doesn't freeze well. It'll end up separating and you really won't be able to re-emulsify it back into the consistency it was before freezing. It won't be unsafe to consume, but you really won't want to because it'll be a gross mess of lumpy stuff suspended in runny stuff.

Or at least real mayo works that way; I haven't experimented with Hellman's but I assume it'll turn out the same.

# ¿ Nov 29, 2011 02:40

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

Captain Payne posted:

Is there a good way to tell when meat has gone bad? I smell the meat sometimes and it smells a bit funky but I'm not exactly sure what meat is supposed to smell like. There are sometimes brown spots that smell weird where two pieces of meat have been touching each other too. I don't have a freezer right now so I've just been storing everything in the refridgerator.

Smell is a good way to tell when meat has gone bad. If it smells off, toss it.

If your sense of smell is wonky in some way that you don't trust it, you can also usually tell by touch---meat that's going off will start feeling kinda slimy---but this isn't as reliable as smell.

If you're really worried about it, remember to label things when you put them in the fridge.

# ¿ Nov 30, 2011 22:29

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

If I want to make something like a traditional gravy when I'm doing poultry in the puddle machine, could I get away with using cold rendered duck fat instead of schmaltz off a roasted bird? I'm think something like roasting mirepoix in duck fat, adding flour to make a roux, cooking off the flour flavour, adding stock, simmer to reduce to the correct consistency.

Thing I'm worried about is that fat off a roasted bird will presumably contain a shitload of flavour from the roasting that cold rendered fat won't. What I'm wondering is if this is a make or break sort of thing, or if it'll still work. I mean I'm sure it'll mechanically work in the sense I'll get something that looks like a gravy. I'm just worried about the flavour.

When I'm smoking poultry and want traditional gravy I usually get a bunch of necks or something and roast them with the mirepoix and get the fat that way. But this past Thanksgiving I got to thinking that I pretty much always have a tub of duck fat in the fridge and I just can't get enough of fuckin' cooking in the puddle machine, so....

# ¿ Dec 3, 2011 00:35

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

Iron Chef Ricola posted:

I've had the full-size model since it came out with no corrosion - I haven't noticed it at all outside of people complaining about the demi.

I've had the demi since it came out and I haven't had any problems with corrosion either. There's a little aluminised grate thing that's gotten darker from oxidation (like you see on old half sheet pans and that kind of thing) but that's about it.

It gets used probably two, three times a week on average.

# ¿ Dec 3, 2011 22:54

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

Semprini posted:

I have to make the soup for the family's christmas dinner, since it was popular last time. It's butternut squash and sweet potato, would it benefit from roasting either or both of them beforehand?

Whenever I'm making butternut squash soup I usually separate the neck from the bulbous body of the squash. The latter gets halved, drizzled with some oil, and roasted with some sage. The neck gets cubed and added to the soup raw. Both end up getting soft enough that you can hit the soup with a stick blender to make it all smooth.

I think this gives the soup some depth, but whether this is important depends on what other flavours are in the soup that might step on it, and how good the squash itself is.

# ¿ Dec 7, 2011 02:31

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

Mofette posted:

With recipes like Chili, Lentil stuff, curry etc. I always put an extra onion and if it calls for Garlic, an extra clove or two. Am I ruining everything? I would just stop but I can't taste the garlic and I just goddamn love onions.

As Kenning and Wiggles have said, this is the sort of thing that it's pretty much always fine to fiddle around with.

I'd actually go a little further and say that you should fiddle around with it. With aromatics like garlic, onions, celery and so on, as wells as with most spices, the amount of `oomph' in them will depend on a lot of things---growing conditions, age of the ingredient, how it was stored, and so on. So no two cloves of garlic are going to have the same amount of `garlicness' in them. So you should pretty much always be willing to sample and adjust as you're cooking to get the flavour you're going for.

# ¿ Dec 9, 2011 00:10

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

For anyone curious about the effect of salt on flavour, make a sauce or a soup or something---something easy to mix together after you adjust an ingredient. Start out with no salt and taste it. Add a little tiny pinch of salt and taste it again, add another little pinch and taste, and so on. What you'll notice is that it goes something like bland, bland, bland, bland, getting better, better, really loving good, too salty. And until the `too salty' stage you really don't notice the salt. Unless you're making salt water or something.

Soups with greens in them---like a broccoli soup or something like that---are really good to try this with. It's like a loving magic trick the first time you do it.

# ¿ Dec 9, 2011 01:15

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

zerox147o posted:

Cornbread!

Cornbread is a good use for bacon grease. So's apfel griebenschmalz---rendered pork fat with bits of browned pork (scraps of bacon or salt pork) with diced onion and apple, used as a spread on dark bread.

# ¿ Dec 12, 2011 03:39

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

Nighthand posted:

I have points on a rewards program that are going to expire, and just inside my point range is this knife set: http://www.amazon.com/Ginsu-Stainless-Steel-Knives-5-Piece/dp/B0017KI4J6/ref=sr_1_24?s=home-garden&ie=UTF8&qid=1323802756&sr=1-24

I don't have any decent knives to call my own, everything is hand me down garage sale poor post-college-unemployment level. So, are those knives potentially worth it?

Short answer: no. The biggest knife in that set is a 6" chef's knife, which is smaller than you really want unless you're Percy Foster or something. And they're Ginsu knives.

If you want inexpensive but not cheap knives, the standard recommendation is for the Victorinox/Forschner chef's knives. The 8" chef's knife will run you around US$25, which is more than that set, but it's actually a hell of a lot of knife for the money, and isn't toy-sized. Throw in a paring knife of the same brand for around US$8 and that's around twice the asking price of the Ginsus, but you'll have all the knives you actually need from that set, and the quality will be better.

Also: holy poo poo, they're still selling Ginsu knives? I thought they went out with the pocket fisherman.

# ¿ Dec 13, 2011 20:47

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

Hed posted:

What does everyone do to clean off their cast iron? AB's recommendation of coarse kosher salt, canola, and paper towels doesn't have enough toughness as our (Brawny) paper towels will break down. I tried using the wire-y produce bags (like onions, citrus, or avocados) but cutting them and keeping them is a chore. Currently the wife heats it up and deglazes with water or something, but this is wreaking havoc on the seasoning coating and I want to come up with a better method. Should I just keep a dirty cloth around and use kosher + oil + elbow grease? It's typically seared beef that we're trying to get off.

I use kosher salt and a regular old kitchen sponge.

If your seasoning is in good shape, you really shouldn't have to be working at it.

# ¿ Dec 18, 2011 00:59

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

The Third Man posted:

What is the best solution for keeping stock on hand?

Freeze it in potions of a pint or so, and thaw as needed.

# ¿ Dec 18, 2011 06:10

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

Flash Gordon Ramsay posted:

Kind of looks like hanger steak to me.

Grain looks funny for a primal of what I'd call a hanger.

It's hard to tell from the photo, but it looks like this line:

...divides the primal into two sections with a layer of fat between them. If that's accurate, then that's a brisket with the cap on.

SubG fucked around with this message at 19:07 on Dec 28, 2011

# ¿ Dec 28, 2011 19:01

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

The Midniter posted:

I would think so, it's going to boil for a long time so instead of going:

Cooked chicken ----> rich stock, chicken depleted of flavor

It would go:

Raw chicken ----> cooked chicken ----> rich stock, chicken depleted of flavor

Stock made out of uncooked meat and bones will be clearer and somewhat fattier than stock made from the carcass of a roasted bird. If you're planning on using it for making soup this is fine (and actually probably preferable). If you're making gravy, I'd go ahead and roast the uncooked bits in a roasting pan with some mirepoix, so you get the warmer colour for the gravy.

# ¿ Dec 30, 2011 22:34

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

Morpheus posted:

So I'm trying to make a recipe, and I want the final product (chocolate balls) to be coated in a hardened shell of eggnog. Nothing crunchy or anything like that, but I'd like the shell to be fairly firm so that it won't drip off. Is this possible to do, and is it possible with store-bought eggnog? If so, how?

Sodium alginate? I haven't actually tried it, but I know that stabilising eggnog is one of the traditional (quote unquote) industrial food uses for sodium alginate.

# ¿ Jan 4, 2012 00:23

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

C-Euro posted:

What sort of blade design should I look for in a bread knife?

I'm not sure what you're asking here. Pretty much all bread knives have the same general blade geometry.

As a practical matter, I'd suggest just buying the longest Victorinox/Forschner bread knife you're comfortable with and/or will fit in your knife block. An inexpensive workhorse. My reasoning here is that you don't really give a poo poo about the details of your bread knife because the only thing you're going to be doing with it is cutting bread. Unless you're head bread-slicer at a large bread-slicing institute, chances are you're not going to be spending long enough doing this at a stretch to care about fiddly stuff like blade balance and so on.

Otherwise I'd offer the general knife advice---go to a store and handle a bunch of them and buy the one whose handle you find the most comfortable.

I reserve the right to take this all back if your question about blade design is something important that I'm being too obtuse to pick up on. But I can't think of any secret kick-the-tires sort of things to look for in a bread knife.

# ¿ Jan 5, 2012 03:14

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

Steve Yun posted:

WELL, according to CI... you should get pointy teeth and not rounded scallops, with the teeth being an average/medium distance apart, slightly flexible and about 9-10 inches if possible.

Which describes the Victorinox anyways.

I don't think I've ever seen a bread knife that that doesn't describe. Have I just been lucky?

# ¿ Jan 5, 2012 03:37

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

Taft Punk posted:

Black pepper syrup -- does it really always include sugar?

Syrups are by definition sugar solutions. If you're just worried about the sweetness you can adjust the amount of sugar against the other ingredients in the syrup, or use a less sweet sugar source (e.g., fruit juice or molasses instead of refined sugar). There are also sugar-free `syrups' made out of Splenda and so forth, but I wouldn't consider those unless you're working around a dietary restriction or something.

In a black pepper syrup I wouldn't worry about the sugar overpowering the flavour if you're using decent quality peppercorns.

# ¿ Jan 5, 2012 05:30

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

dis astranagant posted:

I need some ideas for salvaging a whole lot of frozen minute steaks. I was given a bunch of vacuum sealed steaks between a quarter and half an inch thick and I really don't know what I can do to keep any flavor in them. If I thaw them in the fridge they come out swimming in their juices and are often a pale pink from all the lost beefiness and I have a plastic bag half full of meat juice to deal with. They're supposedly rib eyes and have a fair bit of fat that doesn't really have time to render in the pan.

Losing fluid isn't a problem, and in general has exactly the opposite effect of the one you anticipate---a steak that's been given some time to dry in the fridge will, on average, be more flavourful than a `fresher', wetter steak. You can kinda-sorta fake dry ageing in your fridge by wrapping a steak or roast or whatever in a couple layers of cheesecloth (or something similar that will wick the moisture away from the surface of the meat) and setting it on a rack over a drip tray in your fridge. Assuming the meat's fresh to start out with, you can leave it in there for a couple three days at minimum (you won't get enough ageing to justify the effort otherwise) to about a week. The meat will probably end up looking really funky, but it'll be safe (assuming your fridge is holding around 40 F and you don't have anything nasty growing in it).

That all being said, I don't think I'd bother trying to age a couple of thin breakfast steaks (or whatever you want to call 'em). I'd just thaw them out, leave them sitting on the counter until they're about room temperature, pat them dry, then hit them for around 30 seconds a side (assuming they're about half an inch) on a lava-hot cast iron skillet.

Well, actually what I'd do is bag them and throw them in the puddle machine at about 130 for a couple hours, pull them out, then proceed as above. But if you don't have a puddle machine the above is the next best thing.

Serve them with some creamy scrambled eggs and some toasted crusty bread.

# ¿ Jan 7, 2012 04:07

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

dis astranagant posted:

Nah, this is pretty solidly not the water loss from aging. This is frozen as hell meat losing half it's mass overnight and taking a lot of flavor with it. The liquid is bright red and plenty more puddles up during cooking to the point where the second side refuses to brown.

Yeah, that's almost all water. The giveaway is that it's still running like water in your fridge (assuming your fridge is around 40 F). That's water with a little miscellaneous proteins in there for colouring. I suppose if you really wanted to experiment with it you could simmer that runoff for awhile and then taste it. Prediction: the thinnest, runniest, most flavourless stock you ever had. I'm not actually suggesting this, mind you. Because that's gross.

What's happening is that when meat is frozen you'll get some cells destroyed by water crystal formation. The slower the meat is frozen, on average, the larger the crystals---this is why fish that's being frozen for transport will usually be flash frozen, as this usually won't affect the flesh.

Anyway, this won't appreciably affect the flavour unless something's gone seriously wrong. More likely you'll notice the texture/mouthfeel suffering. But that's not really that much of an issue with a really thin cut of beef like the typical breakfast steak. If the flavour is really terrible, I'd be more willing to attribute that to a) it being a bad cut of meat in the first place, and b) freezer burn or something along those lines.

A lot of the water you're seeing is probably also due to condensation prior to freezing. Unless they're packed really tight (like by layering them with waxed paper or something and then flattened with a weight) there will be air voids in the packaging. As the meat cools during freezing, all the moisture in the air will condense and then freeze on the meat, to end up melting and making a puddle when you thaw it. This is really noticeable with frozen ground beef, for example.

# ¿ Jan 9, 2012 02:10

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

kiteless posted:

Now I have a question. I have a friend who's a pescatarian and he wants me to sous vizzle some fish. What should I s-v? I'm assuming something with some texture like halibut, salmon, swordfish, etc. Anything else that's good?

Do shellfish count? Vizzled scallops finished with a quick sear come out bang on perfect.

# ¿ Jan 13, 2012 02:45

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

kiteless posted:

Shellfish counts, but I don't get the deal with scallops. I've had them different ways and they just don't taste like anything to me. Doesn't seem worth the cost.

Do you have a good fishmonger? Bad scallops end up chewy and unpleasant, but good scallops are one of those things that's so viscerally, sensually pleasing that I have a hard time imagining anyone actually disliking 'em.

razz posted:

Can I get a kickass meat lasagna recipe? Preferably one that does not cost tons of money to make.

The recipe in the wiki is from The Silver Spoon and it's pretty drat good.

# ¿ Jan 13, 2012 05:25

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

SatoshiMiwa posted:

I have and am quite happy with the Victorinox chef knife, but am now looking for a bread knife. Is the Victorinox a good choice for a bread knife as well, or should I look elsewhere?

Yeah, the Victorinox/Forschner bread knives are good.

I don't think I've picked up any gear from them that's turned out to be a clunker. I have one of their offset turners and it rocks too, for example.

# ¿ Jan 17, 2012 07:24

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

Flash Gordon Ramsay posted:

They will be crazy mushy. You shouldn't even refrigerate them. I freeze and thaw them when I make banana ice cream though. Hell, you can even puree a frozen banana to make an ice cream like treat.

Bananas like the climate of the very, very tropical equator,
So you should never put bananas in the refrigerator.

Listen to Chiquita Banana, kids.

# ¿ Jan 18, 2012 03:04

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

Dane posted:

I'm making Thomas Keller's braised short ribs, but am a bit stumped. The original recipe calls for 'boneless chuck short ribs', and I'm unable to find out exactly what this cut is. Danish primal cuts are apparently a bit different than US ones, and I've been unable to find a proper description of where, exactly, this cut comes from. Mostly there's just a picture of the whole chuck and an arrow, which doesn't really do much.

Anyone able to help?

Imgur is down, and I apparently don't know how to do attachments. Anyway, the chuck is the front shoulder region. If you're looking at a side of beef, it's the part that's closest to the front and top of the former cow. If you cut a section through the cow to separate the front from the back, and you cut it just after the fifth rib (I think five is the correct number) then the front section would contain the chuck primal on top, and the fore shank and brisket underneath. Divide these, and the bottom third or so of the chuck primal is the chuck short ribs, which would be divided/portioned for retail sale.

Regular old short ribs are further back on the animal. If you took another section off the animal now and made the cut just after I think it's the twelfth rib, then you'd have the rib primal (containing the rib eyes, rib roasts, and so on) on top and the short plate on bottom. The top edge of the short plate is where short ribs come from, and the rest is usally used for ground beef or those pre-cut cubes on styrofoam that you see sold as stewing beef.

# ¿ Jan 18, 2012 22:33

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

Dane posted:

So the chuck short ribs would be - roughly - the front part of what's called "TV�RREB" on this poster? http://www.lettenordiske.dk/OpskriftKategorier/Tips%20og%20tricks/~/media/Images/LetteNordiske/Tips/A4_Okse_LF.ashx

No, that's what I'd call regular old short ribs. The way the primals are segregated in that diagram, what I'd call the chuck short ribs are actually on the shank primal, which is cut higher (so there's more on the shank and less on the chuck) than I'm used to. So the chuck short ribs would be, on that diagram, at the top of the shank. Here, I can't include the image but there's a diagram here that I got out of a GIS that reflects the fabrication that I'd expect. The chuck short ribs are labelled 3 and 4 (upper leftmost primal, labelled Chuck) in that diagram. The regular old short ribs are labelled 1 (in the lower, second from the left primal, labelled Short Plate).

Edit for clarity.

SubG fucked around with this message at 23:42 on Jan 18, 2012

# ¿ Jan 18, 2012 23:39

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

Dane posted:

Thanks, SubG. Now I know! A little worried that I'd have to pay too much though, if it interferes with their regular cuts. Ah well, we'll see.

Then just go for regular short ribs. I assume the reason a recipe would call for chuck short ribs instead is that you're going to be cooking them in such a way that you can get away with using what's usually a less desirable cut of beef.

One of the distinctive things about short ribs is that they have a denser, less bright flavour than most of the `high class' cuts of beef. This is because the meat is shot through with connective tissue. Normally this makes it undesirable for most culinary purposes, as it makes the meat, all else being equal, tougher than most beef is. Braising and---now famously because of Keller's popularisation of the technique---sous vizzling short ribs are ways to get all that rich flavour while rendering the meat tender enough to be palatable.

All of this applies pretty much equally to the chuck short ribs and the regular short ribs. The chuck short ribs tend, on average, to be smaller (being from the first five ribs instead of the large ribs further back on the cow) and have somewhat more connective tissue---there tends to be more sinewy stuff in the meat at the end of the rib, so if you make the ribs shorter, you get proportionally more sinewy stuff. So in general you'd be going to them if you were cheaping out or if you were planning on cooking them longer and wetter than a night with Pr0k's Mom. If the Keller recipe calls for them specifically, that's probably what he's saying---the technique he's describing will work with even the normally least desirable meat.

I really wouldn't sweat it either way. If you were super worried about lowering the proportion of connective tissue in the dish (and therefore lowering the amount of collagen to be converted into gelatine during cooking) you could kick it back up by adding a hunk of oxtail or a piece of cross-shank or something else you'd probably use for stock- or soup-making.

# ¿ Jan 19, 2012 01:41

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

Splizwarf posted:

Wait, I'm confused: boiling is the only way I know how to prepare rice. It's what rice cookers do. Is there a fine point of terminology that I'm missing? How else would you hydrate it? (other than throwing it in soup, which is still boiling it really)

As others have said, steaming is the most common `traditional' method of preparing rice. You can also cook rice in much lower-temperature liquid (so it is neither boiled nor steamed), which is how many rice porridges and things like risotto work. You can also parch rice, which is basically roasting or toasting it either dry or in oil, either by itself or as preparation for finishing the rice some other way (e.g., you usually parch rice in oil before making risotto).

# ¿ Jan 25, 2012 00:47

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

Atticus_1354 posted:

I need some help. I am trying to learn to do some basic baking and started with a beer bread. I used this recipe and got ok results but the bread was kind of dense and not how it came out when a friends mom made it over winter. I did not sift the flour with a sifter but used a spoon to fluff the flour according to my aunts instructions. I have since ordered a sifter and will try again on Friday with that. Now to my question. Was it dense because the flour was not sifted and should I take any other precautions for baking now that I am living at 5000ft elevation instead of sea level? Also I am open to alternate recipes for beer bread. Also, is there a bread thread that I missed?

You're being asked to sift the flour because the recipe uses a volume instead of weight measurement for it. The sifting (in theory) eliminates any packing/settling that might've occurred during storage or transportation. What you really want is a weight measurement, but for home cooking recipes tend to shy away from them.

Anyway. If the crumb is coming out too dense, your problem is probably underleavening. Since the only leavening in the recipe is baking powder, you might try tossing your baking powder and getting a new tin. It tends to lose its oompf after a couple months. Also you might doublecheck to make sure you've been using baking powder and not baking soda. Baking soda needs an acid (classically buttermilk) to start bubbling, whereas baking powder just needs liquid to work. If you subbed baking soda for baking powder in a recipe that doesn't include an acidic ingredient (like your beer bread) you won't get the outgassing which is your leavening process in that recipe.

# ¿ Jan 25, 2012 02:33

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

Flash Gordon Ramsay posted:

I thought beer was the primary leavening agent in beer bread.

You can make beer bread that's leavened only with beer. It'll come out really loving dense, though. If you want a more typically bread-like crumb, you have to add additional leavening agents---like the baking powder in the recipe Atticus_1354 linked. Since his beer bread came out dense despite having additional leavening is what lead me to conclude that the additional leavening didn't do its work.

# ¿ Jan 25, 2012 02:49

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

Jignx posted:

I'm craving for crab and I'm gonna go to the market to get some fresh Dungeness crabs, any recommendations for recipes?

I usually cook them asian wok style but I'm looking for something easier like a boil.

I'd just steam 'em (call it about 7 minutes a pound) and serve the meat with butter. Dungeness crab has good flavour by itself, unlike say king crab (and other related crabs sold as king crab) which usually profits from the addition of other flavours.

If you're getting them whole and aren't squeamish about the rest of the animal, you want to save at least the fat (that's the yellowish stuff) and the liver (that's the greenish stuff. from a lobster this is called `tomalley'; I don't know if there's a different term for it from a crab). This stuff can be used to flavour gumbo or stock (the gut is good here, too, and less useful otherwise). You can also eat it directly. Fried is common. So's just sorta blended together with a little stock and rice wine (usually served in the shell kinda like a shot of liquor or a raw oyster). I've also had it shirred eggs in something kinda in between an omelette and a custard.

# ¿ Jan 27, 2012 22:53

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

Harry Potter on Ice posted:

I was going to do this with the leftover baguette I had and a cheese grater! Seems more efficient and easier (than going to the store)

Breadcrumbs you make yourself, like croutons you make yourself, are almost always better than the ones you can buy, with only a few exceptions. Breads with dense, moist crumbs don't make very good breadcrumbs in general---so I wouldn't try making breadcrumbs out of challah, for example.

If you're stuck buying them, I'd get panko instead of breadcrumbs for most kinds of breading, unless you're fretting over `authenticity'. They'll hold up a lot better than most breadcrumbs to oil and so forth. I wouldn't use panko when you're going for a fine, herbed coating, like if you're doing a rack of lamb or something.

# ¿ Jan 28, 2012 04:01

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 09:38

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

The Macaroni posted:

The Sriracha won't really go "bad" (i.e. rot) but it will definitely lose its zing faster when not refrigerated.

It'll also gradually lose some of its colour, for whatever that's worth.

a handful of dust posted:

In the Bread Bible she says never to add salt until right before kneading, since it supposedly kills yeast. The Bakers Companion says it doesn't really matter when you add the salt, and usually has you mix all the dry ingredients together at once, before adding liquid and mixing, kneading, etc.

Killing your yeast off with the salt is one of those things that theoretically could be a problem but in practice I just wouldn't worry about. A high concentration of salt will definitely kill yeast or impede its growth, but any loaf of bread you'd be willing to eat won't have that much salt in it. So apart from mixing your yeast and salt directly together or something like that, I wouldn't really sweat it. If your bread is rising appropriately, that's all you really need to worry about.

a handful of dust posted:

Most of their recipes don't mention an autolyse, either, whereas Beranbaum gives almost every dough in her book a 20 minute rest before kneading.

Whether or not you want to autolyse your bread depends on what kind of bread you're trying to make. In general you'll get a more open crumb with dough that's been autolysed, so if that's what you're going for, autolysing is almost always a good idea. It's also a good idea with sourdough or other breads that have a strong starter, as the levain will be acidic enough that it will affect gluten bond development.

But it really isn't a question of right or wrong, unless you're just trying to reproduce a specific bread (and so your `success' or `failure' is denominated entirely in terms of similarity rather than whether or not it's any good on its own merits). My advice is that you do a couple of loaves each way and see which way you prefer. Pretty good approach to cooking in general, for that matter.

# ¿ Jan 30, 2012 16:50

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Goons with Spoons > The General Questions thread - for quick questions, recipe requests, help.

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