Cooking Tips, Tricks, Recipes, & Advice

Harveybirdman This has your name written ALL over it:
http://gizmodo.com/how-to-make-alcoholic-ice-cream-the-greatest-dessert-o-1082162367

How to Make Alcoholic Ice Cream, the Greatest Dessert of All Time
Summer is waning, but remains a punishing, sticky mess. So here's a re-introduction to an old friend, alcoholic ice cream, which originally ran November 18, 2011.

You love booze. You love ice cream. Unfortunately, if you cram ice cream full of alcohol, it won't freeze. If only there were a way... THERE IS! Meet the ladies who cracked the code.

It's Friday afternoon, you've made it through the long week, and it's time for Happy Hour, Gizmodo's weekly booze column. A cocktail shaker full of innovation, science, and alcohol. Boo yah, let's get drunk.

Alcohol flavored ice creams are abundant: Bailey's, Guinness, Jack Daniels, Rum Raisin—they're everywhere. But none of them have any kick. Why? Because alcohol's freezing point is waaaaay lower than water's, which means that it's damn near impossible to get boozy ice cream to retain that lovely, semi-solid form we so adore. So there's no booze in them, which is STUPID.

Thank god for Valerie Lum and Jenise Addison, who figured out how to stabilize the alcohol using gelatin (look away, vegetarians). After countless nights of trial and error these two awesome women who should win Nobel Prizes have come up with a system that will allow you to incorporate a cup of 80 proof booze into a quart of ice cream. That nets ice cream that's approximately 13-percent alcohol by volume. Not bad! The duo came up with 50 recipes for boozy ice creams and sorbets in their book Ice Cream Happy Hour. We quite enjoyed making the frozen White Russian in the video above; here's what you'll need to make it at home:

Ingredients
• 1/2 cup milk
• 2 1/2 cups heavy cream
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 4 egg yolks
• 1 packet (1 tablespoon) gelatin
• 1/4 cup cold water
• 2/3 cup cold (refrigerated) vodka
• 2/3 cup cold (refrigerated) Kahlúa

Oh, and here are a few important notes that didn't make it into the video:
• You want to scald the milk/cream/sugar mixture, not boil or simmer it. Overheating the milk may cause curdling.

• The reason for the tempering is that if you add the eggs to the hot milk too quickly they can cook, which would give you chunks of egg yolks in your ice cream. No bueno.

• Once the custard is made, you have to let it cool and set in the refrigerator for about 8 hours. Patience, my friend (or advanced planning, at the very least).

• The strainer is important, especially when you're transferring the booze/gelatin mix into the custard. Ideally, it won't have solidified much, but there will almost certainly be some very strong-tasting chunks that you don't want to end up in your ice cream.

• This stuff is ready to eat straight out of the ice cream maker, but if you want it to be a little firmer, then you can put it in the freezer for a bit, as in the video.

• You do not need some super expensive ice cream maker to do this. You can get the Cuisinart you see in the video for less than $70 on Amazon.
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This thread needs Food Guy.

My humble contribution. When you scramble eggs, let them set a while before any scrambling. Otherwise you get that art gum eraser stuff from Dennys.
 
A handy dandy volume to mass equivalent chart:

ku-xlarge.jpg
 
http://lifehacker.com/make-the-ultimate-pizza-at-home-with-a-5-diy-brick-ove-1171778006

Make the Ultimate Pizza at Home with a $5 DIY Brick Oven
original.jpg


Pizza stones (or, alternatively, unglazed ceramic tiles) give pizzas, breads, and much more a marvelous crust. Use two layers of pizza stones or tiles and you can turn your oven into a brick oven of sorts.

A pizza stone distributes the heat evenly in your oven, and with the pizza on top of the stone, your homemade pizza will have a great crust. As Instructables user NHLavalanche shows, however, an upper layer helps trap more heat, browning the top of the pizza. Here are some tips if you're using ceramic tiles instead of pizza stones:

You'll need either 2- 12" pieces of UNGLAZED Ceramic quarry tile or 8 pieces of 6" tiles. Again- they ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO BE UNGLAZED. I purchased mine several years ago from a very well known chain (big box) hardware store for 50 cents a piece. That's $4+ tax for the whole thing. ...

We want to arrange the tile in the oven in two layers. The base layer will create the amazing crust we want, while the top will help increase the temperature within the pizza's area by creating radiant heat from the stones above. It will also aid in getting a beautiful, lightly burned top crust.

Place the stones into the oven while it is cold and bring up to the highest temperature possible... 500 Degree F is mine. I let the over preheat for about 45 minutes to get the stones very hot.

While you probably won't be able to achieve true brick oven temperatures with this method, $5 is all it takes to get more evenly baked, closer-to-perfection pizza and other baked goods.

Bonus: Hit up the link below for a homemade pizza recipe and other brick oven tips.

Pizza Margherita (and a $5 DIY Brick Oven) | Instructables via BuzzFeed
 
I finally figured out putting baking soda into water while boiling eggs makes it easier to peel the egg shells.

No wonder the people at momofuku were peeling them 10x faster than I was at home.
 
Fwiffo said:
I finally figured out putting baking soda into water while boiling eggs makes it easier to peel the egg shells.

No wonder the people at momofuku were peeling them 10x faster than I was at home.
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Ya, changes the PH of the water.
 
For tarnished flatware, this works a treat:

http://www.ehow.com/how_6977400_do-tarnished-stainless-steel-cutlery_.html?ref=Track2&utm_source=ask

Place a large sheet of aluminum foil on the base of a large skillet

Fill the skillet 3/4 full with hot water, adding 1 tsp. each of salt and baking soda.

Place the stainless steel cutlery into the skillet, and bring the water to a boil. Let the water boil for 5 minutes.

Allow the water to cool, and remove the stainless steel cutlery.

Rinse the cutlery under warm tap water and buff each piece dry with a clean cloth.
 
For reasons I won't go into I have access to an endless supply of frozen pheasants at zero cost. I stuck one in a slightly warm oven at some point yesterday to defrost and completely forgot about it until the evening. Pulled it out and after about 5 or 6 hours extremely slow cooking while wrapped in cling film and it had effectively steamed in it's own juices I guess, and was as tender as I've ever managed to cook one deliberately. Quickly boiled some spuds and sprouts from the garden to go with it and bob's your uncle.
 
ETF said:
For reasons I won't go into I have access to an endless supply of frozen pheasants at zero cost. I stuck one in a slightly warm oven at some point yesterday to defrost and completely forgot about it until the evening. Pulled it out and after about 5 or 6 hours extremely slow cooking while wrapped in cling film and it had effectively steamed in it's own juices I guess, and was as tender as I've ever managed to cook one deliberately. Quickly boiled some spuds and sprouts from the garden to go with it and bob's your uncle.
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I suggest you go into the reasons one would garner access to an endless supply of pheasants.
 
ETF said:
For reasons I won't go into I have access to an endless supply of frozen pheasants at zero cost. I stuck one in a slightly warm oven at some point yesterday to defrost and completely forgot about it until the evening. Pulled it out and after about 5 or 6 hours extremely slow cooking while wrapped in cling film and it had effectively steamed in it's own juices I guess, and was as tender as I've ever managed to cook one deliberately. Quickly boiled some spuds and sprouts from the garden to go with it and bob's your uncle.
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ETF said:
Long story short: I'm a farmer.
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I'm here to educate, and inform.
 
Yeah that's the best. I save the carcasses in the freezer and then when I've got half a dozen or so make a massive batch of stock, which I then freeze in tubs.
 
Harveybirdman said:
Mmmmm. Dijon mustard. Do you use that as an alternative to tomato sauce topping or do you mix it in with the loaf?

Edit

According to this http://www.whattopair.com/meatloaf.a5w Beaujolais is perfectly acceptable to pair with meatloaf. This makes me happy as Beaujolais is probably my favourite wine.
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Beaujolais is adaptable, people thing its a fish or chicken red wine, but its not.

I mix Dijon in. Although, as a topping could work. I like the tomato, though.
 
I got these plantains ,because somebody told me that Hispanics were easily bribed with them and that turned out not to be the case, and I have no idea what to do with them.
 


If you're looking for deliciously crispy pan seared chicken, the folks at America's Test Kitchen suggest that—contrary to what you might think—the key is a cold pan or skillet, not a searing hot one like you'd have for a steak. Here's why. The key is that by allowing the chicken and the pan to come up to temperature together, you have enough time for the chicken to render its fat, cooking the skin nice and crispy without overcooking the rest of the meat. The video above explains pretty nicely, and uses a few chicken breasts as examples. You'll probably need to pierce the skin a few times with a sharp knife to give the fat somewhere to render out, but other than that, there isn't much more to this tip. Do this (and ATK suggests pounding the chicken flat and using a weight or a pot on top to keep them flat, but it's probably not necessary unless you want real evenness) and every chicken dish you make can be served with a crispy, delicious, Maillard-style outer layer
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http://lifehacker.com/a-scientific-approach-to-minimizing-bacon-shrinkage-1557875979

A Scientific Approach to Minimizing Bacon Shrinkage


Bacon is delicious, and keeping it from shrinking when cooking is a popular topic. Instructables user craftclarity wanted a more scientific, rigorous approach to keeping bacon from shrinking, so he put a number of popular tricks to the test. Which was the best? The good old oven.

At the end of the day, the best way to keep your bacon from shrinking when cooking is to cook it low and slow in the oven. Craftclarity tested the rinsing method before baking and frying, complete with some control bacon that wasn't rinsed at all. He also tested whether or not you'd get maximum flavor from your bacon by only baking it for 10 minutes at 365 degrees F (185 degrees C), as all of the tips suggest. It turns out that the water rinse isn't effective—it certainly helped, but claims that it'll keep shrinkage down by up to 50% are exaggerated.

The experiment also (rather predictably) discovered that lower temperatures are fine, as long as you bump up the cooking times. The 10 minute/365 degree cooking time was way too short, and resulted in practically raw bacon. They bumped up the cooking time to a more reasonable 30 minutes in the oven, and compared to the package instructions of 8-10 minutes in a skillet. The control bacon for each experiment went in, followed by the bacon that had been rinsed and then patted dry.

The result? No significant change in bacon shrinkage regardless of cooking method. In fact, if the experiment proved anything, it's that to minimize bacon shrinkage, you should cook your bacon in the oven. There was little size difference between the rinsed and unrinsed bacon, but flavor-wise some of the testers noted the rinsed bacon tasted "drier." That makes sense since you wash some of the delicious, flavor-transferring fat off of the bacon before cooking, which makes it crunchier, but not necessarily better. Bottom line? The oven is your—and your bacon's—best friend. Hit the link below to see the entire experiment; it's worth a look.
 
I saw a TV chef once cook bacon in the oven on a baking tray with a second slightly smaller baking tray on top, squishing the bacon down. It came out perfectly flat . But that's doubling the washing up just to avoid a bit of curly bacon, could never be bothered myself.
 
To put context on the deep fried bacon stuff, the older I get, the more and more grossed out I am watching fat people eat. It's a really disgusting sight.

You think about the gluttony, the instant gratification, and then (and I just can't help this part, sorry) you imagine the massive dumps that person has to take and depending on ass sizing, the inability to wipe.

Full circle, in that instant you see the licking fingers satisfaction in that fat face and realize that you're watching a gross undisciplined roly poly heart disease and diabetes laden porker whose soon going to be a drain on our healthcare system eating with a dirty ass.
 
Probably because there's as many food YouTube channels as there are minutes in a day. I know if I'm bored I'll just watch a few clips at work.
 
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