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[QUESTION] What are your favorite spices to use in soups?
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Ok I might get downvoted to oblivion but I use MSG. It enhances the flavors so much that I have stopped going to restaurants.
Edit- I did my research and found no credible source that says MSG is harmful.
Edit2- If you go to a restaurant or order KFC chances are they use MSG as well
Uncle Roger agree with you!
Hahaha true
There is nothing wrong with MSG. It being bad for you is made up by racists.
Don't be afraid of spices. Use more than you think is necessary. Onion and garlic can make a meal 100x better.
Biggest hack? Realizing that humans have been cooking for millennia, and that it's in the best interest of big business to convince you that it's difficult/expensive/extremely complicated.
You don't NEED the fancy equipment every company out there is trying to sell you.
Not everything needs to be gorgeous on the plate, or a whole production to make.
The poorest people in the world cook delicious food every day.
For instance, you don't need NEED a +$150 Japanese chef knife to cook at home. What you need is something that can hold an edge through general maintenance, a whet stone, a kitchen towel to dry off your blade immediately after you hand wash it, and a little bit of patience.
IKEA sells some surprisingly great single construction (steel blade, steel handle) knives, and their single body chef knife is like $25. Just get an honing rod for use before you start slicing, and a whet stone for periodic sharpening (there's TONS of YouTube videos of all the different ways of sharpening your knife), and remember to wash and hand-dry after you're finished. My chef knife cost me barely anything, and I've used it for years and years, and it still slices through a tomato without a problem. Also, I only cook for myself, so I can absolutely 100% guarantee my whet stone will "outlive" me.
That being said, a mandoline can save a lot of time, and a kevlar glove paired with that will save a lot of fingers.
Not exactly a mandoline, but I used to work at a place with a cheese slicer named "Old Nubby." It had blooded the entire team at least once.
Did they ever learn to use protection?
Each one of them did after nubby took its toll
Legend has it the blood was never cleaned off either
Mandolines are not you friend. They thirst for blood.
Seriously if you get one get a safety mandoline like the once for all brand.
Alton Brown recommends a Kevlar glove when using a mandolin.
You can make a delicious, calorie dense chicken noodle soup on an extreme budget with canned chicken, chicken broth, and ramen noodle packages. That meal kept me from going hungry on multiple occasions during college.
Boil spaghetti in a small amount of water in a frying pan. You won't need to push the pasta down and you'll have lovely starchy water to finish off your sauce — perfect for something like a carbonara!
This goes against my intuition of years of making pasta. But I'll try it nonetheless.
Add salt as you cook, not all at the end.
There are still people who don't user probe thermometers. This is the single best cooking tip I can give:
By far my favorite is to have a squirt bottle of water next to my stove. It's great to have throughout the cooking process, especially if you've moved on from Teflon bullshit and are using a pan you pre-heat. To start, you put the pan on the heat and squirt a little water in it. When the water evaporates, the pan is usually in the 350F-400F range. Then when the pan is dry and heated a little more, you can squirt a few more drops in to see if the Leidenfrost effect has taken, uhhh, effect. The way you tell is that the water just dances around on the pan instead of behaving like water normally does, and it's how you know your food won't stick, it is at this point that you add the oil.
Moving on to the actual cooking, let's say you've thrown some chicken thighs in the pan and you've built up a lot of fond (the brown bits that form in the bottom of the pan) and the chicken is almost done, but you're not planning on making a sauce. Deglaze the pan with little squirts of water targeted directly at the fond and rub the chicken thighs over the area where the water is deglazing and suddenly that fond is sticking to your chicken thighs, resulting in a better crust and a cleaner pan.
Speaking of cleaner pan, once you're done cooking and plating and you have a hot dirty pan, squirt enough water in to cover the bottom of the pan and then go eat. When you come back to the kitchen to clean up, the water will have broken down the shit on the bottom of the pan and will steam the sides of the pan, so the pan will wipe clean as easy if all you did was fry an egg.
Finally, I stopped putting milk (of any variety) in my coffee, but I wanna be able to drink my coffee right away and it's too hot when it's made fresh, but I've got a bottle full of room temperature water (all the filtered water in my house comes out ice cold) sitting right there so I can cool it down that way (I brew my coffee pretty strong so watering it down isn't a big deal).
on the pan test, I just run a bit of water onto my hand and flick droplets off my fingers. My reason is that I absolutely LOATHE having anything plastic near the stove. I've had far more mishaps involving errant plastic containers than any other.
Besides, If my hand bacteria can make it into the water and survive a 300+ degree pan, it deserves to outlive all of us.
I'll echo the other comment about deglazing with other flavorful juices to make a better pan sauce (even if it's not going to be a sauce), since I just prefer it that way. BUT, a splash of water into a pan sauce that's simmered for too long WILL restore its glossiness and re-thin it.
Taste as you go and taste everything! Understanding how the components of your meal taste is a great way to make yummy things. It also helps you learn how ingredients manifest in the end result and will help you expand your cooking versatility
pay attention. stay with what you are cooking as you are cooking it. don't let yourself become distracted. taste as you go. take notes. use unsalted butter. know your equipment and its pros/cons. shop at different stores for the best ingredients. fresh herbs are waaay better if you can swing it.
If you cook by using a cooking recipe you can be creative (within reason). If you BAKE by following a baking recipe stick to the letter!
Bake bacon on cookie sheets at 375 for about 20 minutes. You can make a ton of bacon very quickly, with almost no mess, and all the bacon is perfectly flat. We have a double oven and we can make about 4 pounds of bacon in about 30 minutes this way. :)
chicken (or vegetable) broth in lieu of water to cook rice.
I cannot stress this one enough. This turns simple white rice in practically a risotto. And if you REALLY want to make a risotto, you're just three steps away from this.
Four steps is still a lot more than three steps.
Mise en place! Clean as you go.
You don't need to slave over a stove for 3 hours to get caramelized onion. Here's what you do. After slicing the onion, get the pan up to a medium heat with a splash of oil. Toss in the onions and add a bit of salt to make them sweat. Once they start to dry out, go golden at the edges, and even stick to the pan a bit, add a splash of water. You do have to stir continuously for this method as well, but it takes much less time. Do this process a few times where you add water, cook it until its dry, another splash of water, cook it until it dries out again, etc. Sometimes I'll even alternate in a splash of white wine for fun. You should have beautiful caramelized onions in 30 min with this method.
Always keep canned tomatoes in the pantry. Particularly tomato paste. It's a great ingredient that can add a depth of flavor to a variety of dishes.
Whole spices really do make a big difference and it's worth knowing how to use them even if you don't make them part of your everyday cooking. When its time to make a special dish, using whole spicessl that you grind fresh will be worth it.
Use acid in your cooking. Citrus, viniger, wine, yogurt, etc will often upgrade a dish.
Parchment paper/aluminum foil is your friend. Minimize your time scrubbing dishes by minimizing the mess you make when baking food.
Grilled cheese hack: assemble the sandwich open-faced on a baking sheet and place under the broiler for a few minutes until the cheese is melted and bubbling and slightly browned, then close it up and cook it like normal in a covered skillet on medium heat with butter. The cheese will be completely melted and (more importantly) it will stay melted while you're actually eating the sandwich, and the browning on the cheese adds a big flavor component.
I used to make them the normal way just in a skillet, and even if the cheese was just barely melted it would cool off and re-solidify before I started eating it. And often I would burn the crust just trying to get the cheese melted.
If you're making rice without using a rice cooker, the amount of water you need is not quite a direct ratio like the package suggests. You need a 1:1 ratio of rice to water plus an additional quarter to half cup of water depending how firm you like your rice.
Mine is, don’t eat anything solid, hold your poop for 3-days. When the redditors arrive why won’t understand, but whatever food you eat will be the best you ever tasted, they also will remain confused about why there is so much karma on your foodporn posts!