This is a delight piece of work, and well worth the research needed to make it.
Sometimes you have to draw a line in the sand about strange low-stakes terminology opinions you’re passionate about.
I had a similarly passionate “what counts as a jumpsuit” debate not too long ago. The key difference in opinions was about sleeve length.
I will begrudgingly call a jumpsuit with short sleeves a jumpsuit, but once it has no sleeves at all it cannot hold the title anymore. Jumpsuits were designed as full body garments for jumping out of planes, fancy dress overalls just aren’t jumpsuits, regardless of the slow bastardization of the term fashion has allowed. There’s no great title for it, overalls shares a similar niche but not quite. Romper also comes close, but requires shorts, not full length legs.
I just wish more places offered beans as an alternative protein option. I ordered a burger yesterday from this new restaurant, and their only veggie option was a “plant-based patty”. And as it turns out, it was a fake meat patty, which tasted gross. I don’t understand why they don’t just offer a bean patty instead - it’d be cheaper, healthier and tastier.
Amen! I try to always prepare from dry beans. Canned beans are never as tasty and cost 10 times as much. The InstantPot makes it take under a minute of work and less than a 40 minute wait. If you can plan 40 minutes ahead there is no reason to bust into cans on the regular.
One of the worst parts of traveling is the difficulty of finding my daily helping of beans.
I just cooked dry beans in my instant pot for the first time this evening! (Well, technically, black-eyed peas).
It was super simple, came out a touch mushy though! This was with 8 minutes of pressure cooking and sitting until depressurization occurred. Do you have a heuristic on cook time?
I have the best results when I rinse dry beans in cold water, put freshly rinsed beans and enough cold water to cover plus an extra inch into the pot, add salt and a few drops of oil, cook on high pressure.
Depending the type of beans and how fresh they are the cooking time and release process is different. For black-eyed peas that are fairly fresh 6 minutes at pressure and waiting 10 minutes after the “keep warm” cycle is best for me. For older peas it can take an extra 1 to 2 minutes.
That’s for creamy mouthfeel. If you want firm ones for salads or whatever I find upping the salt and cooking an extra minute at pressure followed by immediately releasing the pressure and allowing to cool gives the best results.
I tend to buy 25 lbs at a time from the restaurant supply. Those are often extremely fresh and cheap. Like $0.60 per pound ($14-15 per bag). The first two or three batches don’t come out right but they teach me everything I need to know to cook that rest of that bag intuitively.
I don’t care what the classification is, I love beans. I love ‘em canned, I love ’em dried and pressure cooked, I love ‘em baked, I love ‘em on toast, I love ‘em in a chili (don’t @ people with strong opinions about beans in chili), and I love ‘em in a tortilla.
First, thanks for such an enthusiastic, detailed, and entertaining write up! Not to mention educational! I, too, adore beans and eat them alone as a lunch often. May I suggest Rancho Gordo beans, I swear I don't work for them lol but getting to try all the amazing varieties they have has been so delightful!
I looks like when people hear that legumes are not vegetables they assume they are somehow worse. The truth is, legumes are not vegetables, they are better. Legumes are important part of Mediterranean diet which “includes proportionally high consumption of unprocessed cereals, legumes, olive oil, fruits, and vegetables”. Vegetables are good for you but without legumes there’s no Mediterranean diet and it’s proven that this diet has many health benefits. So eat your vegetables but even more importantly, eat your legumes.
Fresh produce in the grocery store is a marketing gimmick. The reason it’s there in the front of the store is to look nice and give you the psychological cue that you have fufilled your obligation to buy healthy things and may now buy what’s in the aisles with less guilt. Similar to how grocery stores don’t profit on rotisserie chickens which you have to walk through the aisles to get to so you will usually end up buying more than the chicken. They may control costs by displaying what loses them the least money, but direct profit from the fresh produce isn’t why it’s there.
Frozen is cheaper and healthier if we’re talking what to buy for nutrition. Fresh is really only fresh locally. Yes, it’s sad that fresh vegetables from your own locality can be unaffordable. The reason for that goes far deeper than the supply chain disruptions from the past few years.
Organic typically has a higher carbon footprint because it requires more land and often even water resources and of course more labour.
Less pesticides, yeah, sure. But those pesticides allow us to grow crops much more efficiently. Everything is a trade-off I suppose, but I am very skeptical that the trade-offs of organic are worthwhile.
I discovered the glory of freezing my excess food instead of letting it go bad and I’ve never gone back. Never again will I experience the heartbreak of an entire block of cheese going moldy. (Important: GRATE THE CHEESE BLOCK BEFORE YOU FREEZE IT)
Once he started doing collabs with Josh Weissman, I think that took it from a bit into something serious. After that, I started seeing a bunch of YouTube cooking channels start using it.
I prefer using things with high glutamate content instead of straight MSG, but I do keep a jar on hand for when food is lacking that something.
I like to cook pasta in MSG-water sometimes. I also tend to use wholemeal pasta, which I think is important (the wholemeal aspect) ^.^. MSG works best for me when I use it with things that already have a decent depth of flavour and/or variety of ingredients ;3. It doesnt work so well if your food doesnt have enough flavour.
Other cool ingredients:
liquid smoke (works really well in a lot of things including vegetarian chilis, but especially i’ve found its good in lentil soups when you also have mint e.g lentil and pea soup, lentil, potato, onion soup, etc. ^.^) - look for the industrial stuff, its like £5 per bottle but you only need 1 or 2 drops for litres of sauce and it will last you months, kinda like MSG. Add it near the end so you don’t evaporate away lots of the flavour, too.
yeast extract - this shit is delicious in tomato sauces and stews and chili, even if in the uk we typically have it on toast ;p, adds a meaty, mushroomy flavour
cinnamon - works amazing in tomato sauces, it sounds weird as fuck but tomato sauce without it tastes like its missing something to me now, its so fundamental to any tomato sauce i make ;3
bonus: yeast extract + mustard makes a really really cheesy flavour in various sauces, and its completely dairy free. I
I’ve tried this once, and I can’t say that I liked the result. I guess that my spice profiles simply doesn’t combo well with cinnamon, since when I use baharat instead (that contains cinnamon) it gets great.
Some of it is probably personal preference too. I really like cinnamon, which might influence why i like it particularly much in tomato sauce ^.^
Typically for tomato sauce I like it quite umami, so I add things like peppers (the fruit/veg and black pepper), soya sauce, salt, MSG, etc., as well as mixed “italian” (i doubt it actually is, but it’s sold as that, and I have limited spice cupboard space) herb and spice mixes (usually with stuff like parsley, basil, etc. in it), as well as sage, thyme, garlic powder, with amounts depending on what I want ^.^
Probably the only time I wouldn’t add cinnamon is if I was using the tonato sauce as a component of a curry, but a lot of that is because it would get diluted out and I don’t think cinnamon goes so well with some curry flavours.
Ehh, liquid smoke is def a lot better for you that actually smoking things, because there is a filtration step that removes a lot of the worse Volatile Organic Compounds that make smoke carcinogenic.
You’re probably right it’s not fantastic though ;p
And damn, idk what i’d do if onions made me ill… I use them in so much. Though i’ve found some ways of making them do make me feel ill , just i rarely make them that way so.
If you’d rather avoid liquid smoke try using smoked paprika instead. Store bought does the job but if you can find the good stuff at a local farmer’s market, it’s worth it.
That’s rather curious to read, when you’re from a chunk of Latin America where MSG was never seen as a big deal - it’s that stuff that you’d sprinkle over rice croquettes, or use in some Asian dishes, and… that it? The only times where I’ve found people claiming headaches were on the internet. (Usually known by the name of a Japanese brand.)
I tend to avoid it though - at least pure MSG is boring. Soy sauce, beef broth, tomato paste, Parmesan, those are usually better - because they’ll give you that savouriness plus other flavours. And it’s outright pointless to sprinkle it over meats, it’s like dropping a bucket of water in the ocean.
And it’s outright pointless to sprinkle it over meats, it’s like dropping a bucket of water in the ocean.
Hard disagree.
I’ve experimented a lot with my meats (I like to bbq steaks and make jerky) and seasonings, and I can definitely notice a huge improvement when I use Accent (pure MSG) over when I don’t, even when it’s the only thing not shared between two pieces of meat cooked together.
Salt + pepper is good.
Salt + pepper + MSG is even better.
Salt, pepper, onion powder, garlic powder and MSG is the GOAT.
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