Cooking

With ground beef, do you season the meat before, during, or after sauteeing, or any combination?

#Question

Ingredients

For the Jerk Marinade:

1 cup water

8 to 12 ounces Scotch bonnet peppers (227-340g), stemmed (see notes)

6 ounces (170g) scallions (about 3 bunches), ends trimmed and roughly chopped

4 ounces fresh ginger (113g), peeled and roughly chopped

1/2 medium yellow onion (4 ounces; 113g), roughly chopped 

1 whole head garlic (about 1 1/2 ounces; 45g), cloves peeled 

1/4 cup Diamond Crystal kosher salt (1 1/4 ounces; 36g); for table salt, use half as much by volume or the same weight

1 ounce (28g) fresh thyme sprigs (about 1/4 cup), thicker woody stems removed

2 tablespoons whole allspice berries

2 tablespoons (30ml) browning, such as Grace brand (optional)

For the Jerk Pork:

One 6 to 8 pound (2.7kg to 3.6kg) skin-on bone-in pork butt (bone-in shoulder roast)

Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

2 cups (473ml) jerk marinade (from above)

1 bunch (about 2 loosely packed cups) fresh allspice leaves (or fresh bay or banana leaves), soaked in water for 10 minutes, drained, then bruised with a back of a knife (see notes) 

4 Pimento wood chunks, briquettes, or 2 cups wood chips, soaked in water for 10 minutes then drained (see notes)

For Serving:

16 festivals

Pickled Scotch bonnet peppers

Ketchup

Directions

For the Jerk Marinade: In a blender, combine water, Scotch bonnet peppers, scallions, ginger, onion, garlic, salt, thyme springs, allspice berries and browning, if using. Blend into a smooth puree, (in batches if needed), about 1 minute. (see notes)

In a medium saucepan, bring jerk marinade to a boil over high heat, then reduce heat and simmer until reduced to a paste-like consistency and measures about 3 1/2 cups, about 20 minutes.

Remove from heat and let cool, about 1 hour at room temperature, then refrigerate in an airtight container until ready to use.

For the Jerk Pork: Using a sharp paring knife, Cut through one side of the pork shoulder to the bone, following the length of the bone. Cut around the bone and keep cutting to within an inch of the other side of the shoulder. Open the pork shoulder flat like a book. Cut under the bone and remove it to finish butterflying the roast open. The roast should now be splayed flat and measure about 3-inches thick.

With the pork shoulder butterflied open skin-side up on the cutting board, use a sharp knife to score the skin 1/2 -inch deep and 1- inch apart to create evenly spaced parallel cuts. Flip pork over and repeat on the flesh side.

Season pork lightly all over with salt and pepper. Transfer pork to a large baking dish (9 by 13-inch) or a half-hotel pan. Using gloved hands, rub 2 cups of the jerk marinade all over pork, making sure to get some inside cuts and crevices. Next, rub bruised pimento (or bay or banana) leaves between your hands to release the natural oils, then rub leaves all over the marinated pork on all sides. Cover and refrigerate for at least 12 or up to 24 hours.

For a Charcoal Grill: Light a chimney full of charcoal briquettes (about 6 quarts). When all charcoal is lit and covered with gray ash, pour out and arrange coal on one side of charcoal grate. Set cooking grate in place, cover grill, and allow to preheat for 5 minutes. Clean and oil grilling grate. Cover grill and wait until temperature falls to about 300°F (150°C), adding chunks of wood (or wood briquettes or chips) when at temperature. (Follow here for how to set up a kettle grill with indirect heat as a smoker.) When the wood is ignited and producing smoke, remove pork from marinade, letting excess marinade drip off into pan, then transfer to grill (on cooler side if cooking with indirect heat) skin side up. Cover with the pimento leaves from the marinade, and close the lid. Cook, undisturbed, until the meat begins to caramelize and char on the bottom side, about 1 hour.

Remove the leaves, turn pork skin side down, then reposition on the cooler side of the grill and re-cover with the leaves. Continue to cook, covered, until beginning to char on the now-bottom side of the pork, about 1 hour. (Adjust heat by adding coals and/or adjusting the air vents to maintain grill temperature around 300℉ (150°C).) Add extra wood chunks to coals as needed to maintain smoke.)

Remove the leaves, flip pork, keeping on the cooler side of the grill, re-cover with the leaves, and continue to cook until pork is well charred all over and interior reaches 185°F (85°C), 1 to 2 hours longer, flipping pork and repositioning leaves as needed for even charring. 

Transfer pork to a work surface, discard leaves, and let rest for 30 minutes. Slice pork into thick slices or chop in rough chunks, which is how they serve it in Jamaica.

Serve with festival, pickled Scotch bonnet peppers, and ketchup on the side. 

I'm looking for a sandwich bread recipe with ingredients measured by weight. I have bread flour and whole wheat flour and both pizza and regular Fleischmann's yeast on hand, but no AP flour until I go shopping at the end of the week. If you have a good recipe, I'd really appreciate y'all sharing.

I picked up a bunch of unflavored instant ramen packets with the intention of making my own. I'm a big fan of Korean Ramyun packs and make them often, but they are getting pricy nowadays. Does anyone else in c/cooking do this as well? What are your favorite quick broth recipes?

I'm Korean and grew up eating anchovies in a variety of Korean dishes. Usually tiny ones that are stir fried with seasonings, or dried and salted ones. I use fish sauce, made from anchovies, pretty often in dishes, but I've never really tried making anything with the bigger, sardine style ones. I've been meaning to put some in pasta sauce. I've read they just dissolve as it simmers and adds good flavor. If you cook with anchovies, what are your favorite ways to use them?

Ingredients

For the chicken & marinade:

12 ounces boneless skinless chicken breast (sliced into ¼-inch/0.6cm thick slices)
3 tablespoons water
1 tablespoon oyster sauce
1 teaspoon Shaoxing wine (or dry sherry)
1 teaspoon vegetable oil
2 teaspoons cornstarch

For the sauce:

1/2 cup low sodium chicken stock
1/4 teaspoon granulated sugar (or brown sugar)
1 1/2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 teaspoon dark soy sauce
1 1/2 tablespoons oyster sauce
1/2 teaspoon toasted sesame oil
1/8 teaspoon white pepper

For the rest of the dish:

3 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 cloves garlic (chopped)
4 white button mushrooms (or baby bella mushrooms, sliced)
1/2 small carrot (thinly sliced)
2/3 cup celery (thinly sliced)
6 ounces bok choy (cut into ¾ x 2-inch / 2x5cm pieces)
1 tablespoon Shaoxing wine
3/4 cup mung bean sprouts
1 cup snow peas
1 1/2 tablespoons cornstarch (mixed with 2 tablespoons water)

Instructions

Combine the sliced chicken with water, oyster sauce, and Shaoxing wine. Massage the chicken until it absorbs all the liquid. Next, mix in 1 teaspoon oil and 2 teaspoons cornstarch until the chicken is uniformly coated. Set aside.
In a small bowl, mix together all the sauce ingredients, and set aside.
Heat your wok over high heat until lightly smoking, and pour 2 tablespoons vegetable oil around the perimeter. Spread the chicken in a single layer.
Sear for a few seconds, and then stir-fry the chicken for another 15 seconds, or until it is lightly golden brown and opaque. Remove the chicken from the wok and set aside. (It should be about 80% cooked at this point.)
Turn heat back up to high, and add an additional tablespoon of oil along with the chopped garlic. Once the garlic starts to sizzle, add in the mushrooms, carrots, and celery. Stir fry for 20 seconds and add the bok choy. Give everything a good stir and spread the Shaoxing wine around the perimeter of the wok to deglaze it.
Next, stir up your prepared chop suey sauce and spread that around the perimeter to further deglaze the wok. Use your wok spatula to give everything a quick stir.
Once the sauce begins to simmer, add in your bean sprouts and snow peas. Also add the chicken back to the wok. 
When the sauce gets to a strong simmer or boil, mix up your cornstarch slurry. Drizzle it into the sauce, stirring constantly, until it thickens to a consistency you like. Add more cornstarch slurry mix if you like the sauce thicker. Cook for another 10 seconds to ensure everything is coated with the sauce. Serve immediately with steamed rice!

I've made these several times and they're delicious. Also wonderful with baby back ribs!

Edit: added a tag to my title because I forgot it. Shame on me. Lol

I cut 2 slices off, and they were terrible, as the title says. Gummy, flavor not fully developed. Exactly what I want. This is what I want from a sandwich bread. I will slice and toast this for the next few days. Toasting will firm it up, develop Maillard reactions, and allow any liquid to be sponged up. Marinated Pork Belly, pickled Red Cabbage, or both will soak in to the bread without making it soggy.

The point of this is that bread does not have to be beautiful when it comes out of the oven, it just needs to be good when you eat it.

Hey good cooks, I am looking to purchase a good balkan cook book as a christmas present for my sister as she is really into food and has lived and travlled across most of the balkan countries.

Anyone have any suggestions?

Hi, i'm looking for a cheesemaking expertise

I started making fresh cheese not a long ago, and all of them turned good

But lately I'm trying to beat the Cheddar, and it's not really working

I failed my first try because of not enough weight + not small enough curd cubes + high humidity during drying (at the end the cheese got mold all over and inside without drying)

My second try went better, although the curd was a bit spongy and hard to press

(15cm cheese) I did 8kg 12h, 18kg 24h, and around 100kg for 12h more

During this time I noticed that the cheese cloth started smelling weird, like alcohol/yeast, kinda buttery and woody

Now I'm done drying, and i'm tasting the cheese, and it's really not pleasant to eat, it's bitter and sourl, tastes just like spoiled milk

Should I continue and age it, or discard, or something?

Thank you

Double, double Toil and Trouble; Fire burn and Cauldron boil.
and the finished soup:

I'm planning to make my first ever bakery dish for Christmas as a surprise to my family. Do you have decorations that might look funny, cute or maybe something other for a food decoration. I couldn't find any good tiny anime figures, so my best bet are these cats.

Are you growing your own? At least for the greens? They go with everything.

Garlic is self sterile in most cases like Saffron, you grow Garlic from garlic (like most Alliums, many Alliums are not sterile, but still grown from clones). In almost any climate you can grow it. These peeps are trying to revive the wild form. https://hoodrivergarlic.com/

If you have a windowsill and a pot, really just a bit of dirt, delicious garlic can be yours at home.

If you grow just for greens take your smallest cloves, not worth peeling, and stick them in the dirt. If you are growing for bulbs use the most flavorful and disease resistant.

Like Saffron, plant it randomly for future generations , and let it spread, it is not invasive.

Edit: tomorrow is Fajitas night, so some of these will die for the cause. Please pour one out for my dead homies.

Google Bard recently gained the ability to watch YouTube videos and then answer questions about the video. I asked it to watch a video from a maker who doesn’t share the recipes directly in the description (though he links to it), Joshua Wiseman, specifically the Popeyes Chicken Sandwich But Better video. I then asked Bard to give the recipe, which it did, ingredients and steps! I double checked it and it was perfect, including the optional mushroom powder.

I then dropped in a url of a recipe with the ingredients in volume and asked it to covert it into grams, and finally gave it simply text of a recipe and asked it to do the same thing. It did both okay, with errors coming from the websites it crawled for the conversions.

Insane and revolutionary, especially the video transcription. Try it for yourself and let me know your experience.

I tend to go for a NY strip 9/10 times when I'm buying steaks, unless there's some good deal on something else. Or I'll go to Costco and get a big roast and cut steaks out of it. I'm not super picky these days because I always sous vide and torch my steaks and they come out so nice no matter what the cut. Salt and pepper and herbs before the sous vide usually, but every now and then I'll try out a marinade. Sometimes I'll finish with some butter, but usually it's fine without a finish.

But I do find that a NY strip just looks the best to me and has a good ratio of fat to meat for my tastes. Eating out, I may go for a ribeye or something more "premium" but I rarely get steak when I eat out. So what's your favorite cut and how do you cook it?

Filling:

• 6C nectarines + plums, pit removed and cut into chunks (approx. 4 of each fruit depending on how big they are)
• 1/2c sugar
• 2tbsp corn starch
• 1/4tsp salt
• Optional: 1 piece stem ginger, diced finely

Topping:

• 1.5C oats, divided
• 1/2C brown sugar
• 1/4tsp salt
• 1tsp cinnamon
• 1/2tsp ginger
• 1/4C butter

Preheat oven to 350F.

For the filling, whisk together the sugar, corn starch, and salt. Mixed in the fruit and toss to evenly coat.

For the topping, melt the butter in the microwave in a microwave safe dish (should take about 30sec or so). Meanwhile, in a spice grinder, high powered blender, or food processor, grind 1C of the oats (reserve the last half cup) with the salt and spices. Combine the ground oats + spices, whole oats, brown sugar, and melted butter. The mixture should be crumbly.

Add your filing to a baking vessel that just holds the fruit filling (I use a pyrex baking dish). Evenly sprinkle the topping onto the filling. Place the baking vessel onto a sheet pan in case any liquid pours out.

Bake for 1hr. Let rest for at least half an hour before serving.

P.S. I usually like to include weights, but I haven't weighed the ingredients for this yet. I'll come back and update this when I get around to doing this.

P.P.S. This recipe works with all kinds of fruit. For less juicy fruit, reduce the amount of corn starch OR add liquid (lemon juice or wine are borh nice additions). Add 10-15 min of cooking time for frozen fruit. The spices can be switched up, and nuts or seeds can be added to the topping. It's quite versatile.

My wife and I rarely cook turkey for Thanksgiving. This year we're coming Cornish hens. In previous years we've cooked duck, leg of lamb, and rib roast. It's not that we don't like turkey, but there are lots of other things that I think I'd prefer eating.

Are you cooking something other than turkey this year? Or maybe preparing your turkey in a non-traditional way?

1/2 c. buckwheat
1 c. unbleached flour
6 Tbls. buttermilk powder (It’s what I have, 🤷‍♂️ ).
1/2 tsp. Salt
1 Tbls. Sugar (To make this sweeter, add another tablespoon of sugar)
1/4 c. & 2 Tbls. Ground pumpkin seeds.

Soften 1 +1/4 tsp. yeast in 3/4 cup warm water. Mix all ingredients with 1 Tbls. melted butter. Will be fairly moist, but after sitting for one hour, it will stiffen up and then can be formed into a ball and covered with oil. Let sit for another hour. (If you're patient enough, let sit in the fridge overnight, 😆 ).

Divide and create 8 or 6 balls from the dough. (Depending on how big you want the flatbread to be). Fry on each side over low medium heat for about a minute on each side.

I bet this would be good with custards or fruit based desserts, as well as sweet savory foods. (And that's my next task...What to try with these? 🤔. I tried with honey, meh, and butter, good).

I bet ground sunflower seeds, peanuts, cashews, or filberts would taste good in this as well.

Grinding up 1/4 c. of pumpkin seeds in a mortar at the moment, and I thought it'd be kind of interesting to get a little input, :wink:

Flours I have on hand.

Unbleached
Rye
Amaranth
Almond
Rice
Buckwheat

Liquids

Roasted pumpkin
Almond milk
Heavy cream
Eggs
Butter Milk

Other

Yeast
Molasses
Sugar
Baking powder

I'm aiming for a skillet fried flatbread. Preferably not a pancake.

So let the thinking commence. :grin:

The past few weeks maybe even over a month, I’ve had no luck getting a box of Morton’s kosher salt. Anyone else having problems getting it? In the southeast us if that matters.

Okay, so I was making chicken soup from stock I had made using a (lightly,) browned carcus and neck. just before dumping the the dumplings into it, the stock's color was a nice light brown. I added about 1/4 cup of lemon juice, turned my back for 30 seconds after a stir and it turned it an almost milky-off white. Eventually it deepened to this:

It's delicious, and tastes as expected, I'm just curious as to what happened in the broth's chemistry?

Seasoned with salt (duh), a sprig of thyme, some ginger and garlic, (just a hint of ginger,) black pepper, lemon zest (which was added with the torn chicken,) and white wine deglazed the pot from browning the dark meat.

The stock was from garlic, onion, celery, carrot and maybe ginger scraps cooked with the chicken carcass..