A few years ago Cook’s Illustrated published a recipe for turkey thigh confit. We figured, what the hell, let’s try it, if we aren’t going to do a ridiculous project like this at Thanksgiving, when will we?
It was incredible. Absolutely worth the work - the turkey comes out almost ham-like. We have done it every year since. It doesn’t scale to larger parties very well, but if you eat meat and have a small group (with 6 you won’t have leftovers), give it a try.
These sound wonderful! Acid is always welcome for me. I like to squirt some lemon on the veggies that show up on the table. Lots of wine in the gravy helps too.
For the past few years I’ve been perfecting a sort of weird pumpkin pie.
I take a pie pumpkin, core out the inside, then rub it with pumpkin pie species and sugar, then roast the whole thing till tender but not falling apart. Then I make a simple Vanilla egg custard on the stove and poor it in to the pumpkin and put it all to the side to set.
The first year i broke the custard, the second the custard came out perfectly, but I found the flesh to of the pumpkin to be a bit bland, so I’m working on ways to flavor the roasted pumpkin a bit more.
Finding a tasty pumpkin is usually the hardest part. The few I’ve tried from this list (with pictures!) were better than the average pie pumpkin I’ve had, but note that the list includes lots that are better for roasting than for pies. Here’s the ones I notice they like most for pies: Blue Hubbard, Butternut Squash (I’ve heard canned pumpkin are actually butternut because the flavor is better), Jarrahdale, Kabocha, Long Island Cheese, and Neck (these are the ones I usually get – we call them Crooknecks in my family).
Microwave or parboil veggies before sauteing on high heat. Lets you get the perfect exterior without having to worry about if they are cooked through. It’s also faster and if you parboil in salted water you allow salt to penetrate deeper into the veg. I especially like this technique for starches like potatoes, as they take a long time to cook and I’m impatient.
You dont have to go full meal prep, there's small things you can do ahead of time to get better results with less time and effort later on. boiling some cubed potatoes for 10 minutes, or sous vide some chicken breast. then when it's cooking time, all you need to do is get some browning on them, they're already cooked through and extra tender.
Also: slow cooker. I gave mine away after I got an instant pot, but as I said, WFH. For people who go to work, a slow cooker is amazing. Throw food in, turn it on, have it done when you are back. Hot early or late doesn’t matter.
find a professional cook book. these books teach you how to calculate recipes and scale them (even in relation to whether something is a side dish or mains, they also include tips on calculating waste/trimmings and what to do with them). check your local library. i think there is a starter course from the culinary institute of America, in German there is “der junge Koch”
Read the article - that’s really not the case anymore. My wife is a baker, and she makes Vegan deserts all the time, I can tell you first hand that when done well, Vegan deserts are every bit as delicious as “normal” ones
I would say it depends on what you are making. Some home vegan baked goods are a fair bit of extra effort to get just right. But honestly, things like croissants are always a pain, which is why I eat them when I got out, versus muffins which I make at home.
I think halloween for me is more sweet treats than savoury, how about cooking up an afternoon tea? You could cut sandwiches into ghosts and pumpkins with some cookie cutters. Make some cute muffins, cakes, etc. Here’s a few I’ve seen.
A big problem with Lemmy right now is of course the lack of activity on small communities. Although it does not address the issue, you might want to test your luck on some bigger community such as !asklemmy.
I actually use GPT-3.5 (the free one) for my meal planning, GPT-4 seemed like it was smarter than it needed to be and it works pretty well - Claude should also work. The trick with LLMs, as always, is to avoid treating them like people and treat them more like a tool that will do exactly what you ask of them. So for instance, instead of “What should I eat for dinner?” (which implies personality, desires, and preferences and can throw it off), you should ask “List meals I can make using (ingredients) and other common ingredients” and then “Write a recipe for (option)” which are both mostly objective questions. You can ask for a particular style, culture, etc too. Also keep in mind its limits, it knows cooking from ingesting millions of cooking blog posts, so it won’t necessarily know exact proportions or unusual recipes/ingredients/combinations.
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)
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!
Pepper is best when fresh, and its an easy way for them to provide an experience for diners where they feel like someone is giving them special care when it comes to their food, if that makes sense. Salt makes no difference freshly ground. Also, at least in the USA, generally no one will be insulted if you ask for salt; is that an experience you have often? And do you have to ask for salt often? Anywhere I eat they just have salt shakers available, it seems odd to me that they’d make people ask
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