Cooking

This recipe is based on one I got from Epicurious many years ago and have been using as my sole muffin recipe ever since. It can be flavored any number of ways. This is my favorite flavor combo.

Ingredients

2 1/4 cups all purpose flour 1 1/2 cups packed brown sugar 1 tsp baking soda 1 egg 1 1/2 cups plain yogurt 1/2 cup vegetable oil 1 tsp lemon extract Dried cranberries or blueberries

Glaze One lemon, zested and juiced 1/3 cup white sugar

Directions

Combine dry ingredients in a bowl and mix well. Stir in lemon zest and dried fruit.

In another bowl, combine yogurt, oil, vanilla and the egg. Beat together until smooth.

Add wet ingredients to dry.

Fill greased muffin tins all the way (will rise nicely) or use cupcake liners and bake at 375 F for about 25 minutes.

Stir together lemon juice and white sugar to make a thick glaze. When slightly cooled, remove from muffin tin onto cooling rack. Use a toothpick to poke holes in the tops of the baked muffins while they are still hot from the oven and slather the glaze on. It will be a messy business but well worth it. When they cool, the tops will be sticky and encrusted with sugary goodness.

You can use whatever extract and fruit you like, add nuts, and/or make a crumble topping. These muffins are moist and light and sweet

I left a package of lightlife smart ground unrefrigerated overnight. The main ingredient is soy protein concentrate, and the packaging looks vacuum sealed. Do you think this is safe to eat?

So I have been working to make delicious focaccia, several attempts and so far I had a great time using a high protein white flour, wholegrain has been okay but less airy, and over night refrigerated rest is a must.

I have attempted to trim the time down to a 4 hour venture and results come out as a finer crum bread which is still very tasty.

Preferably for plain old green cabbage, since I bought half a head on a whim without a plan.

Hey all, things are getting tough out there so I wanted to seek out what your tips are for getting a little more value out of cooking

My tips:

• I throw all my vegetable trimmings into a freezer bag for stock later
• Breaking down a whole chicken can be cheaper than buying specific cuts. This varies a lot depending on the sales.
• Save the drippings in your pan after cooking meats. I put them in containers and label them, then use them for flavouring or roux
• This one will sound weird, but I smell the potatoes at the store. After a while you'll be able to smell a difference in which ones will last longer.

In general I just try and find ways to use up all the bits of food that get discarded.

I'm still only a novice chef, so any of your tips would be greatly appreciated.

I received the Dishoom cookbook for Christmas, I'm trying the Daal first :/. They don't say if I should cover the Daal while cooking. It seems like it would be far too watery with a lid on. They even talk of adding water if it gets low.

Follow-up edit: mistakes were made but ok for a first try. I left it off and simmering for 1.5hrs but it was still pretty watery. I should have started with less water. Then I forgot the cream until after the first bowl... Oops. Thanks for all the tips!

Any idea of what to serve this with. I'm thinking a simple tomato soup.

this is the final product, really the best pasta I ever had.

This isn't your mother's cottage pie, this is an epic two and a half hour culinary quest to conjure the most tastiest comfort humanity has discovered so far.

The pie is layered with beef or veggie mince, then crispy onions soaked with garlic, tomato, and chilli puree, butter soaked mixed vegetables, slathered in a vegetable and red wine gravy, and topped with a cheesy and creamy smooth potato and carrot mash.

My aunt and uncle now lie in a food coma whilst I have shed a single solitary manly tear as I fear this might be my peak, though I will never stop climbing to greater heights of taste!

Title picture shows a large beef mince portion for myself and my uncle. The picture in the body text below shows a small meat-free portion for my aunt.

I used Kenji López-Alt's recipe, but did it in my BGE and smoked it a bit. Here's the final product:

When I do this again, I would make two adjustments. One is that I'll cook it to an internal temp of 175F to make it more tender (Kenji's recipe called for 165 which I feel is too low). The other adjustment l'll make is to crisp/puff up the skin a different way. It was too difficult to crisp evenly using the rotisserie, so next time I may pour hot oil over it or take a Searzall to it instead.

Still not focaccia 😭

I went to a cooking club meetup where we wanted to practice cooking on flame & coals for camping, and I brought this to make. It tasted better than it looks.

As it's a pretty simple dish, I wanted to get a few types of mushrooms to add some flavor variety, and used some oyster, trumpet, lion's mane, and miyatake. Sauteed them till most of the water came off, then added the coined leeks and chopped cabbage. Added a little broth, salt & pepper, and let it cook till the leeks were done.

I mentioned that I wanted to find a recipe that could accommodate vegetarians, and someone replied "this ain't no accommodation, it's good enough to be the main dish!"

High praise from a carnivore!

I have both and wanted to see what difference there was (if any) between them.

Banana Bread w/ dried cranberries and black currants.

Same recipe, same measures in both.

Ceramic pan has a blonde interior, cast iron is black ceramic.

Baked at 350° for 30 minutes, rotated left to right and front to back, then 30 minutes more.

The ceramic baked slightly taller. This may be a function of the loaf pan being just slightly narrower than the cast iron. 5" vs. 5 1/8" (127 mm vs 130.175 mm)

I THINK I shared this recipe before, but I find the pan comparison interesting.

At the 30 minute mark I caught our two youngest cats sitting on the stove trying to figure out where the smells are coming from. LOL. Was not fast enough to get that picture!

INGREDIENTS for blackcurrant banana bread:

3 ripe bananas
60g melted butter (1/4 cup or 1/2 a stick)
150g sugar (2/3 cup)
200g unbleached flour (1 1/4 cups)
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 egg, beaten
1 teaspoon baking soda
150g of fresh or frozen blackcurrants (without defreezing before use) (1 1/2 cups)

PREPARATION of blackcurrant banana bread:

Preheat oven to 350°F (180°C)

If using dried cranberries or currents, soak them in cold water for 30 minutes, dry fruit sucks the moisture out of the bread otherwise).

Mash the bananas in a bowl

Add the egg and butter

Put all the dry ingredients together into a fine mesh sieve or sifter and sift into the bowl

Mix well with a wooden spoon

Bake in a buttered loaf pan until a toothpick stuck into the bread comes out clean, 55 to 60 minutes.

Slice and serve.

I've been sous viding for years but I always struggle with the darn bags floating. I've tried spoons (what a joke, does nothing for me), magnets, clips. It doesn't matter if I'm cooking three pounds of meat or one little vegetable, my bags always want to float up at least enough that some portion of my cook isn't fully submerged. Others report success with these techniques, and I can usually rig something after several minutes of fussing but it's an ugly ordeal every time. What am I doing wrong? Any good videos of a technique that really works?

Made by the missus.

We grew the plant by accident, and while the usual harvest is just a handful at a time, they taste really fresh and great.

Edit: Thanks for the attention to this post. There's a lot of insistence that these are jalapenos and not bell peppers. They are in fact bell peppers, for the following reasons:

1. They're sweet and not spicy.
2. Jalapenos tend to have a more elongated shape.
3. Green jalapenos tend to have a much brighter color.

I'm also in Southeast Asia so our pepper varieties are different.

Hope this helps!

Does anyone have any good deep dish pizza recipes? Specifically for the crust? The craving has struck again for a Chicago deep dish and as there is no deep dish to be found in the land of flat crusts, I am in need of recipe suggestions.

Starting at the beginning of 2023 I started to track every meal I cooked. I continued to do this in 2024. At the end of each year I looked back at everything j made and then ranked them all based on how they tasted to me. Here is the list of everything I made in 2024 and how each tasted to me:

What I made in 2024

If anyone wants recipes for anything in particular in the list let me know. For most of the meals I cooked I followed a recipe online.

My first is this silicon spatula. It's construction isnt just a silicon tip with wooden handle. Its the red silicon for much more of the handle, which I've felt makes it easier to clean and last longer, since gunk isnt getting wedged between the handle and tip. I like it so much I have two.

The second is probably just a spray bottle with water and dish soap. I clean up messes and the stove and countertops with it, and it's incredibly convenient.