And you learn something new every day. Iodide is indeed added as a health benefit, whereas the anti-caking elements are provided by other additives. <a class="postlink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt#Table_salt" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt#Table_salt</a>
Iodide has a thankless job, there when you need it, but never getting any recognition. "I don't need no stinkin' iodide", behold the goiter- Better toss out your wardrobe of turtlenecks if you ever run a deficiency. In regards to sea salt, it does tend to have a fishy taste depending on the quality of the salt. I like the texture for some rubs, but as it's been mentioned, kosher is very simlar. If you want to get super pretentious, you can buy that pink salt that's 99% pure. On the other end of the spectrum, brining salt is practically salt powder. It'll dissolve in cold water, and comes in handy for a number of recipes.
A lot of countries don't have the same easy to get iodide that we do. Goiters are very prevalent in developing countries and the rural areas of some countries. It's really unfortunate because it is so easy to prevent. I mean, look at how much a large container of table salt costs....a buck? Two bucks? And for a single person, that could last a whole year.
Was wondering if anyone here has a good breakfast sausage recipe? I have the casings and am defrosting some venison. Not made a breakfast recipe yet so Im looking for some good recommendations.
It's just getting into winter here, so I am doing lots of hearty stews. Probably not much good for you Americans, but since I understand that all in the Great White North live in igloos and must constantly fend off polar bear attacks, you might get some use out of this. I cook this a lot, but the one I made last night was truly scrumptious. Easy As Fuck Slow-cooked Beef Bourguignon. Ingredients: 1kg cheap beef, diced. I use chuck steak and it comes out fine after 8 hours in the slow cooker. 300g bacon, diced. 600g shallots, sliced. 400g button or chestnut mushrooms. 500ml beef stock. 6 cloves garlic. 800g diced/crushed tomatoes. Bunches of rosemary, thyme, and bay leaves. (Seriously, bunches. I put 5 stalks of rosemary and a whole bunch of thyme in and it worked perfectly, as the other flavours are strong. 1 or 2 tbspn flour. 350ml heavy red wine; technically Burgundy but I use Shiraz as it's what I have. Roast Garlic Mashed Potatoes Bag of potatos. Bulb of garlic. Splash of milk Butter/margarine Method: Bourguignon 1. Heat a very large frypan. Start browning the meat over very high heat. While the meat isn't yet brown, add in the bacon and shallots. Fry for 2 minutes or until beef is almost browned. If you are stoned, forget to add mushrooms at this point. Otherwise add them. 2. Once beef is browned, pour in wine, and add your herbs. If you have a Muslin bag or some other helpful foody device put your herbs in that, otherwise just pick out the stalks after cooking and prior to serving. Bring to the boil while stirring, then pour into slow cooker. 3. Add beef stock, canned tomatoes, and flour to the meat and herb mixture in the slow cooker. At this point, if you have time, I highly recommend putting the slow cooker dish in the fridge and allowing it to sit for 24 hours. The flavour when it comes out is incredible. Either way, once you have slow cooked it, it's ready to go! I just leave this on for 9 hours while I'm at work, and come home to a house that smells delicious and a ready made meal. Method: Roast Garlic Mashed Potatoes. 1. Preheat oven to 375f/180c. Put a square of foil down. Cut top off garlic bulb. Drizzle oil on garlic. Lift up edges of foil to seal the garlic in a pouch. Put in oven for 1 hour. 2. After 45 minutes, wash potatoes, put them all in a microwaveable bowl, cover with gladwrap, and microwave on high for 10/15 minutes or until easily mashed. Seriously, this is the only sane way to cook potatoes, they are indistinguishable from boiled. 3. Mash potatoes. Add milk and butter to taste. Carefully take garlic out of the oven. If stoned, burn your fingers peeling skin from cloves. If not, wait, or lever the skins off with a knife or something. Mash into potatoes. Serve with Bourguignon and consider becoming chef for Jessica Alba.
As mentioned in the Drunk thread, I think I may have finally found my perfect homemade salsa recipe. Chips and salsa has always been tied for my second favorite food ever, but I haven't been really crazy about my homemade salsas to date. Anything vinegar based is friggin' crap (think Tostios and whatnot- gross), and the fresh garden variety is not my favorite- a little too herby for my taste, if that makes any sense. I like more of a restaurant style salsa too, less of a chunky pico de gallo, so this is what I've been striving for. As always when I cook, I don't really measure anything, so I'll guesstimate approximately: 1 28oz can of whole tomatoes with juice 2 cans of Rotel tomatoes 1/4 to 1/2 of a white onion, diced 1 clove garlic, minced 1 jalapeno, finely chopped ~1 cup (I guess?) finely chopped cilantro Juice from 1/2 lime ~1 tbsp salt ~1 tbsp sugar ~1 tbsp cumin (something I've been missing from my previous salsas) ~1 tsp black pepper First of, I didn't just throw everything in a food processor and go to town. Whenever I've done that, I've found that I pretty much just liquify all of the fresh veggies to a pulp, and I didn't really care for that. So this time, The only thing I put in the food processor were the tomatoes. I pulsated them to a nice, smooth consistency, and then poured the tomatoes into a large mixing bowl. From there, I finely chopped my onions, garlic, cilantro, and jalapeno, added them to my bowl, and stirred them in. I squeezed my lime juice, added my seasoning (again, I didn't measure them, just did it to taste), stirred everything together, and then spooned into jars. this made about 3 jars worth, which I refrigerated overnight to let the flavors really mix. I tried it this morning, and it was just what I was looking for. I'm going today to buy more tomatoes and three more jars to make another batch. I'm going to read up on preservatives as well, to see if I need to add anything during the mixing stage to allow me to keep jars in the fridge for up to a year or so, so I can make some extremely large batches.
I'm also going to try my hand at Grilled Fish Tacos tonight, which I've never done before, but it shouldn't be too much trouble. The recipes I've seen call for a flaky white fish, such as mahi mahi or grouper, but I had some amberjack loins in the freezer that needed to be cooked (it has more of a meaty, tough texture) that I'm going to try instead. I've seasoned/marinated the fish two ways: 1) Olive oil, chili powder, cumin, garlic powder, onion powder, cayenne pepper, salt, and black pepper 2) Olive oil, lime juice, chopped cilantro, salt and pepper I cut each of the loins into manageable-sized steaks, put them into some ziplocks with the seasonings above, and threw them into the fridge to marinate all day. This evening, I'm going to grill them carefully (Amberjack is a great grilling fish, in that it holds together very well under the high heats and doesn't break to pieces like a softer, more flaky fish. You want to try to get them right past the point where they turn white- it gets dry and tough if you overcook it, which is very easy to do), them serve them with some corn tortillas, sour cream, sliced avocado, onions, cilantro, and some of my salsa from above. Keeping it very simple. I also have some older, leftover flour tortillas that I'm going to use to try and make my own baked tortilla chips. I'll let yall know how that turns out.
Pro tip: Leftover Johnsonville brats and/or italian sausages are excellent for spaghetti meat sauce, and the hot dog buns are great for garlic bread.
The cilantro amberjack: Spoiler The chili/cumin amberjack: Spoiler The salsa: Spoiler MITCH ALL TOGETHA!: Spoiler FYI- the chili/cumin ones were better, and I will do it that way in the future.
I've been cooking a fair bit at my girlfriends place and I really hate her knife. I would like to buy her a nicer one, but I don't want to spend too much money since she has a bad habit of mistreating her kitchen stuff. I know a decent bit about good knives (Wusthoff, Global, etc) but not too much about middle of the road knives. I'm looking to spend under $50 for just a decent blade. Does anyone have any input? Thanks.
The Perfect Scrambled Eggs Just made these, and they really are the perfect eggs. I went without the creme fraiche (because I didn't have any) and they still came out creamy and delicious. I will never cook them the normal, pan-fried way ever again.
I just made sesame chicken and it is really good. I used this recipe <a class="postlink" href="http://blogchef.net/sesame-chicken-recipe/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://blogchef.net/sesame-chicken-recipe/</a> but made a couple minor changes: -The batter needed a lot more water than the recipe called for -I had to double the sauce amount, the portion made by the recipe did not cover my little chickens. I will be using this batter recipe for all my future Chinese chicken recipes. It just slightly less "fluffy" than the batter on you typically get on sweet n sour chicken. The chicken was more sesame-y tasting than I am used to, but it was tasty. I want to change the sauce a bit too, but I'm not sure where to start. I'll be on the lookout for an alternate on that part of the recipe. Here are some pictures:
I saw these months ago and I've been making them this way ever since. They taste fucking delicious on a slice of warm home baked bread.
Spoilered for pictures, but here is a really simple way to make cheap and easy donuts at home (my mom used to make these for us when we were little, and I was feeling nostalgic over the weekend): Spoiler 1) Start with 1 tin of non-flaky biscuits. Using a bottle cap (or whatever), cut all of your holes and set aside 2) Heat some vegetable oil in a pan, and quickly pan-fry both sides until browned 3) Remove donuts from the pan directly into a bag loaded with powdered sugar and shake to cover. Let cool and enjoy Also, I had planned on baking some tortilla chips, but since I had the oil heated up already, I went ahead and fried these up as well: And finally, I was given this giant monstrosity today by my coworker whose family has their own garden: Yep, its larger than my keyboard- this friggin' thing must weight about 10 lbs. I love zucchini, and my favorite way to do these giant one is to slice them into medallions, coat each side with olive oil and Cavender's Greek Seasoning, and grill them.
As a general rule I've found enormous zucchini like that don't taste particularly good. But, if you must try something, try fritters. Shred the zucchini and squeeze out most of the water. Add an egg and some flour and mix it around until it is the right consistency, salt and pepper and fry them in oil for a few minutes per side. Obviously, I don't measure anything either, but this is a pared down version of a recipe from Ina Garten from one of her cookbooks. This is also one of those recipes that is so basic it just screams to be messed with.
Anyone have a rule of thumb that they stick to in regards to keeping used cooking oil? I did a simple google search to see what people were saying about this but would like to hear y'all's thoughts on this. Basically, I like to deep fry food on occasion. I don't do frozen food (one link warned of water crystals messing with the oil). I've been messing with Chinese dishes lately so usually the food is battered in some way. Since I fry in a sauce pan with an inch or so of oil, I cannot afford to throw out the oil each and every time. So...rules of thumb? Do you use it x amount of times? Judge by the color? What if I fry once a week...how long is used oil like this good for? Do you strain it, and if so, with what do you use to strain it? I use vegetable oil, if that makes a difference.
Alright, so I've gotten to the point where I have my salsa recipe where I want it to be, and have bought a shit load of jars to make and store enough to last me, oh, maybe 2 weeks or so (around 12 jars- I told yall, I eat the hell out of salsa). Up to now, I have been just pouring it into the jars, tightening the lids by hand, and then refrigerating until I want some- no jar really lasts more than a week in the fridge without me eating it. But I want to make enough to store for longer periods of time, which means that I'm probably going to have to do the whole boiling-seal method. I have a couple of questions about this process, and Google is not helping- just a bunch of links of "How to do this" and none of "Why we do this". All I really want is to not to give someone a jar, and then have them open it a week later to find it all moldy. So, if anyone has any experience, help me out: 1) If I don't do the boiling-seal, how long will these last in the fridge? Is it really that bad to just seal by tightening the lid really well and then keeping at a cool temperature? 2) If I do go with the sealing, do I still need to refrigerate, and if not, can I gain a longer shelf-life refrigerating rather than storing in a cabinet? 3) I've read that you can't reuse the lid on these jars (not the screw-down part- the lid part that the screw-top goes over). Why is that? 4) Any other jarring tips you can share, feel free. EDIT: I'm not using any preservatives in the salsa, as from what I've read, the acidity of the tomatoes and lime juice is enough.
This is not something you want to fuck around with and get botulism with because of the other shit in the salsa besides tomatoes. This largely depends on the PH of the food. Although I don't have experience with canning yet because I don't have any space to store it, a book that has been indispensable for me even aside from the canning is the Encyclopedia of Country Living which gives great info regarding canning methods, equipment, and general procedures. Depending on how you canned the food, it can still be eaten years later but at the cost of quality. Find the book here: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.amazon.com/Encyclopedia-Country-Living-Fashioned-Recipe/dp/0912365951" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.amazon.com/Encyclopedia-Coun ... 0912365951</a> Alternatively if you're a cheapskate, I can scan the 30 pages in the book on canning for you and email them to you.
Last night I did all of my prep work for my tuna ceviche dinner tonight. My best friend who I normally fish with gave me a couple of nice loins of blackfin tuna (smaller than yellowfin, but tastes exactly the same) that he caught this week, and I've wanted to make a ceviche for real instead of my bastardized version from a while back. Also, StumbleUpon has made me a big fan of certain websites that post pictures of the entire cooking process, like Crepes of Wrath (link is actually to the recipe that I making for The Wife tomorrow night) and Noble Pig, so I'll do the same here. Spoilered for Images: Spoiler First, I diced up some mango, red pepper, red onion, jalapeno, garlic, and cilantro and mixed them in a bowl with some capers I had to clean the fish by removing the skin and blood line Next, I tried to cube up the tail as uniformly as possible Towards the end, I noticed that I was now left with two pretty nice looking steaks, so I decide to not dice these, and instead marinate them and serve them grilled just as a little side I marinated these in sesame oil, soy sauce, and sriracha, and am refrigerating them until this evening Finally, I mixed the cubed tuna with my chopped veggies, and then added 2 limes and 2 oranges worth of juice, plus some of my fruity hot sauce I posted about a while back. a little salt and pepper, refrigerated over night, stirred this morning, then back into the fridge until tonight I'll post the finished product tomorrow, along with my Tacos de Barbacoa (The Wife has been craving these for a while, I've never know what they are, but they look amazing so I'll give 'em a shot)