Whatcha Been Eating?
So this has been a really, erm, enlightening day on the board.
how about something hopefully more fun
Five meals ranked from best to worst that you’ve made at home during the pandemic.
1) An absolutely perfect roast chicken - I’ve never salt cured a whole chicken before but by golly was it good
2) Vegetarian green Thai curry with galangal and kaffir lime leaves and far too much capsaicin.
3) Oxtail breakfast hash - pressure cooked and possibly my favorite park of cow
4) Inedibly salty Swedish meatballs. Apparently I have a heavy hand.
5) A glass of curdled milk that didn’t last very long in my body. At least the girlfriend got a laugh out of.
I want to hear what you all have enjoyed and detested. Fire away.
Best: Air fried chicken on a biscuit with fried egg & medium cheddar
Worst: I watched Bear Grylls & ate the head of a rotten opossum.
We love our air fryer. We make chicken thighs in there every now and again, and I used it to fry up some shrimp for a home made po'boy a few weeks back.
Anything and everything in sight. I've stopped wearing pants without elastic waistbands.
Check out Mr. Fancy over here wearing pants.
Bacon and blueberry pancakes several times per week now. Being home to make breakfast is awesome.
I like to do a roast chicken on Sunday and the use the leftovers for easy meals for a couple of days.
I finally repaired my grill, so we're having lamb chops tomorrow. Should be good.
Among the things I've whipped up (and I'm just a mediocre cook who in normal times only cooks once or twice a week):
Home-made deluxe pizza.
Beef stew.
A big batch of chicken soup.
Chili.
White bean chicken chili.
Cookies.
Pineapple-glazed ham.
And lots on the grills, as my primary grill is a Weber Charcoal and my quick-cook one a Weber gas grill.
Beef Stew is mountain man food & I usually have leftovers ready to go in the fridge!
We got a Ninja Foodi & we pressure cook various cuts of mostly lean beef, with a box of beef stock, a bag of frozen mixed vegetables, onion, & a tsp of beef base. Add salt, pepper, coriander, & a couple other of our favorite spices & cook on high (390) for an hour. We steam the potatoes separately so they don't turn to mush & throw them in with celery at the end. We used to slow cook it all for 4 hours, but it is just as tender. Pressure cooking is amazing!
Batch soups, stews, sauces, salsas, etc have been great for me during this.
Excellent to have on hand. And perhaps most importantly, chopping stuff up then helicopter parenting a pot can serve as a hobby for an afternoon.
Braised and buttered single-malt scotch (Highland Park 12), oven-roasted pale ale, and a grilled Spanish tempranillo with balsamic reduction sauce.
It's a good thing that, as everybody knows, alcohol kills off the virus.
And let me tell you, it makes you feel a lot better than Lysol does.
Depends how much Lysol one drinks.
For some strange reason, peanut M&Ms have been my comfort snack in the last few weeks. I've binged on them in ways that I never could have imagined.
Otherwise, we've been experimenting with new dishes on at least a weekly basis to keep the menu interesting. A recent vegetarian curry dish was fabulous and has spurred us to introduce a few additional non-pasta vegetarian options in our lives. I also made some killer pork carnitas for the first time to satiate our familial carnivore instincts.
I find that food reduces the potency of my alcohol so I've been avoiding eating as much as possible.
Best meal I've made: Enchiladas with scratch Margaritas (squeezed like 30 limes, almost developed carpal tunnel just from that)
Best easy meal: Philly Sloppy Joes last night, super quick and easy
Honorable Mentions: Baked Chicken Parm, Spaghetti Squash, Meatballs and Rice, Shrimp Stir-Fry with Homemade Egg Rolls
Least Successful Meal: Tried my hand at some honey-cinnamon scones, and ended up with scone-shaped hockey pucks. Almost broke my teeth trying to bite into it
please share the recipe for Philly sloppy joes
Ingredients/Instructions in order:
1 small diced sweet onion
1 small diced green pepper
-Saute with olive oil on medium heat for 5 minutes
-Preheat oven broiler (on low if you have that option)
1 lb ground beef
-Add this into pan and saute until browned
2 tbsps each of ketchup, Worcestershire, taco seasoning
1/2 tsp each of salt and pepper (or more or less, to taste)
-Add this into pan once the beef has browned
-Mix until you achieve Sloppy Joe-like texture
1/2 cup chicken or beef broth (I use low sodium but whatever floats your boat)
1 tsp cornstarch
-Whisk this together until cornstarch is dissolved
-Add to sloppy joe mix, turn off burner and let simmer for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally
(End of making the Sloppy Joe meat)
-On a baking sheet, put down some aluminum foil and 6-8 bottoms of whatever buns you prefer (I used some Artisan bakery buns which worked great)
-Put sloppy joe meat on each bun
-Cover with whatever cheese you like (I used sliced pepper jack on some, shredded sharp cheddar on others)
-Place bun tops back on
-Place into broiling oven, watch carefully, remove when cheese and buns start to brown
-Serve! (Did tater tots with mine)
Hope you enjoy!
Smack it up
Flip it
Rub it down...oh,no!
If I could give you 100 points for this, I would.
Chocolate chips
A little off topic - but are Green Eggs worth the price? I have an electric smoker that I get good results with as long as I keep feeding the wood chips. I have a Weber gas grill for grilling duties that is... convenient enough, I guess. Am I missing out on anything without a Traeger or a Green Egg?
I would not eat them anywhere.
Would you eat them with a fox?
I have a rectec so I'm partial to it but I do hear a lot of reviews of people switching from Traeger to Rectec because the Traegers don't have the same lifespan/quality. Their customer service is top notch and I've had mine for 5 years now. Having said that I will never not own one. It is a smoker that is as convenient to use as an oven. I can turn the thing on and only need to attend to it if I want to wrap, mop, or sauce whatever I'm cooking. Disclaimer - they suck at grilling (not sure about the Green Egg) - you will not get enough direct heat on a pellet grill to get a good sear although I think they have a newer model that addresses this. But I just do all my searing stuff on my Weber Kettle and smoking/roasting on my Rectec.
Thanks for highlighting RecTecs! Already researching them and comparing to Tragers.
A Rectec is on my radar for purchase soon. I'm not the guy that wants to trot into Lowes and pickup the cheap consumer grade Pit Boss and OK Joes they sell, because I've had my share of cheapo grills. Unfortunately, it got put on hold when some deck boards rotted out - so had to replace the decking instead of the pellet grill. It's driving me nuts not having it, yet!
It depends, if you're satisfied with what you have and know how to cook on them, then I think you're fine. I haven't been particularly impressed with the Big Green egg, but I have LOVED cooking on Tragers.
There are budget version of both that may be more up your alley if you are dying to upgrade. As for me I am saving up for a Trager as I love cooking on them and I can't really pull off smoking on my gas grill(I know how to do the workaround, but it's just not the same).
It all depends on what you're after. There is no doubt that a kamado grill ("Green Egg" is a brand of kamado) imparts a very distinct flavor relative to a gas grill. Cooking with one is also a much more time-intensive process than gas. There's a pretty meaningful tradeoff where the kamado and the gas are basically inversely related on expediency vs taste. If you can afford both, you then have all the situational flexibility you could want.
I say kamado rather than Green Egg because in my experience, it is very much worth saving the hundreds of dollars getting whatever brand Costco is selling compared to the premium pricing of the Green Egg brand. All grills should be reasonably expected to wear out eventually, and all have individual wear parts that an owner should be prepared to replace over time. My Costco-bought kamado grill has had the big ceramic bowl inside (which holds the charcoal) crack twice (not from misuse) over the last seven years ... in each case I called the manufacturer and they quickly drop shipped me a free replacement, as they had a lifetime guarantee. The stick-on felt lining that creates the "seal" between top and bottom halves wore out over the course of several years, and I was able to replace that with an aftermarket product quite easily and cheaply. I can't imagine those type of things are any more bulletproof on a Green Egg-branded kamado. The basic functionality is exactly the same ... though Green Egg may offer some extra bells and whistles on the margin. Otherwise, you are just paying for brand status. For fire and smoke.
You say kamado, I say kamotto
1. A Bourbon Cream
2. Gin Sour
3. Pisco Sour
4. Buffalo Blush
5. Nor' Easter.
Oh, you meant cooking? Mostly been recycling the same recipes I've been doing normally to keep the kids from bitching if I make something they don't like while I save money to buy a Trager(just need my grill to live for one more year).
I did make the Crayfish chowder recipe from The Witcher 3 and it was actually really good. I did add a masala spice when preparing the crawfish that gave it this really nice layer of smokiness. Highly recommended.
Everything.
We've been cooking quite a lot lately, and with the wife having a pregnancy-related sweet tooth we've made a bunch of different desserts. White chocolate bread pudding, cream cheese brownies, french silk pie, peanut butter pie, and red velvet cake. Not the out of the box pillsbury crap. Made everything from scratch, including the frosting. But pretty much every week except for her glucose testing has been dessert sampling.
But for dinner, we try to go a little healthier. Black bean burgers, caprese salads, carnitas (this was a favorite of mine), pollo asado, and tacos maybe 1-2 times a month. BLTs make the list as well. Been eating a ton of avocado. Made short ribs for our anniversary a few weekends ago, and I'll grill steak one weekend every 2-3 months.
Few weeks ago we also made homemade meatball subs. Used ground beef and ground veal and turned out better than I could've hoped for.
Red Snapper has become regular staple...living near Eastern Market helps!
I've been using the smoker a lot more to cook enough food to last for several days.
The best that I made was smoked leg of lamb with smoked asparagus and peppers, both with the same Greek-style rub. The eggs I made with some of the leftovers were also probably the best eggs I've ever made, possibly had.
The worst has to be the parmesan garlic chicken drumsticks that I smoked. They came out looking amazing, but I accidentally left the vent closed for a few minutes and they came out way too smoky. I classified them as edible, but not servable. The season was also not strong enough flavor on its own, so I'm going to try this again in the future considering that the meat was cooked about as perfectly as you can possibly get.
I've been perfecting my brisket and pulled pork. Pulled pork is great because we can freeze 1lb chunks with vacuum seal bags and basically sous vide them to heat them up for other meals. My wife likes to make quesadillas with it, which is absolutely fantastic.
My last brisket was not as good as the one before it, but the chili I made with it this time was better than the last.
I've also been trying to do more with the instant pot that my wife got for Christmas. The best thing I've made in there has been the Jambalaya. Clean up is just so much easier in an instant pot considering that you end up with one pan to clean. I'm looking for other recipes for this if anyone has any good ones. I'm looking for some to-die-for recipes with lots of flavor. Ideally, they wouldn't be rice- or pasta-based, but I'm down for those in general too.
I listed it all out like this because it's hard to separate the original meat from the things we have cooked with it, but here's a rough ordering:
- Smoked leg of lamb & veggies
- Smoked brisket
- Jambalaya
- Pulled Pork
- Smoked parmesan garlic chicken
I have yet to miss a day of drinking in seven weeks. Only about two drinks per day...but still.
Our kitchen is exhausted from being used so much. Running the dishwasher every day vs. once every three or four days.
Had a great Taco Tuesday this week! Who knew you could shred chicken in a standing mixer?!?
I’m eating >3,000 calories or <1,000 with no rhyme or reason. Cooking super elaborate meals or eating cereal for a day out of ennui.
I recently planted a bunch of peppers and herbs but kind of mad at myself for not doing that in March.
1. Ribeye on the grill
2. Chicken with pepper and rubbed sage on the grill.
4. Wings and Pizza from Russo’s right down the street. I have always been a bit of a wing snob. Love wings and could eat them 5 days a week. But I won’t eat most people’s or restaurants wings because they’re not good. Russo’s has great wings and some of the best pizza around.
3. Bacon/Cheddar Burgers on the grill.
4. Lemon, garlic butter and dill baked cod. My wife doesn’t like fish. That’s ok, I ate all three fillets.
You're pretty ambitious. I made a really crappy lasagna, pretty good brisket (I braise mine in the oven), and a birthday cake for the dog, which we didn't let him eat. My favorite go-to meal is spaghetti with parsley, olives and olive oil. I finely chop the parsley and olives together, and I use Barilla high protein pasta. I sprinkle a little parm on at the end. Easy and healthy.
It was job for a long time before I decided working 90 hour weeks on my feet and developing lots of bad habits wasn’t good for me. So I sold out and got a food sales job that is much healthier mentally, emotionally and physically. My chronic plantar facsitis, back problems, anxiety, depression, etc went away almost immediately, that job is not for the weak. Don’t know how my brother still does it.
I just made a pretty mean grilled cheese sandwhich:
Two slices of colby jack cheese
Six slices of pepperoni (in between the cheese)
Dried Basil (in between the cheese)
Not sure if I'll ever be able to eat a 'normal' grilled cheese again
Also made homemade strawberry jam and homemade cinnamon rolls so it's been a good week lol. The homemade strawberry jam is GREAT on vanilla ice cream.
I've all but perfected the grilled cheese because it's one thing my kid will eat regardless of what else is going on. There are so many variations you an do with them...
And homemade strawberry jam cannot be beat. When my mom passed, I split the two cases she had with my brother, only because he saw them when I did. I've tried to recreate her jam and cinnamon rolls, but cannot - I love to bake, but am not good at it. Much better at cooking!
(1): Deep fried batter dipped Cod fish with french fries (will use beer next time with fish)
(2): BBQ ribs via the slow cooker with corn and buttermilk biscuits. Never made ribs before, but real easy and super good.
(3): Slow cooked turkey with mashed potatoes and gravy. Side of mixed veggies.
(4): Egg muffin sandwich w/ cheese and sausage patty. I've become good at cooking the sausage patties without burning them to hell. This is way better than anything I have eaten at fast food restaurants.
The above were all pretty damn good lol
(5) Worst: Overcooked chocolate chip cookies. Dipping them in milk helped soften them, but my stomach still paid the price.
All in all, my culinary skills have improved significantly during this pandemic. Recipe apps and books have been super helpful. Happy eating everyone ?
I've been working on my smoking game since moving into our house. The rump roast I smoked a couple weeks ago was my best yet.
1) whole roast chicken with rice, pine nut and lamb stuffing with gravy from the pan drippings
2) homemade pesto, cream and sun dried tomato pasta (penne, but any pasta works)
3) Pulled bbq chicken sliders (smoked a whole chicken for 3 hours) with cornbread and mashed potatoes
4) an obscene amount of cookies, brownies and cake (both homemade and store bought)
5) pretty much everything else too - i like to eat
Dinner is a rotation of:
Tony Packo hot dogs, sauerkraut and Andy Capp hot fries
Enchiladas
Taco Chili
Taco Salad
No wonder I'm not married.
1. Bean n cheese burrito with habanero Serrano chile All crafted by hand.
2. French toast with maple chile n lots of butter.
3. Brisket chuck burgers.
4.Raisin Bran.
5. Fried farts n pickled assholes.
Tried to re-create Pizza Bob's chapatis today including making the sauce from scratch. My wife has a recipe for Pitas that is supposed to be the original from Olga's that is amazing.
They were delicious.
It’s only neighborly in this time of crisis for you to share that pita recipe
I'm not sure that I can pick a best, I've made some pretty tasty stuff so far- highlights include Pad Thai, homemade ramen noodles, and a couple different versions of pan pizzas. I'm making ricotta gnocchi tonight.