Learning to Cook - Stove top and oven

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Essentially for any and all sauces: if you know you like the pasta when it has boiled for 10 minutes, take it out at the 9 minute mark and let it finish in the sauce for that last minute. Just whatever your preferred cooking time is for a given pasta minus a minute. Just put them in the sauce straight from the pot with tongs or a spider, no need to strain - a bit of pasta water in the sauce is helpful, as the starch makes the sauce stick to the noodles better.
More pasta sperging: most people use way more water than they need to boil pasta. If your pasta water doesn't work to thicken sauces, it's overly diluted. Use a mid sized saucepan for short pasta shapes or a skillet/saute pan for long ones rather than a big stock pot. Salt the water just enough that you can detect a touch of salt, do not make it "salty as the sea". It's a clever mnemonic but it will make your pasta disgusting.
 
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You can eat as much meat, cheese, and other high fat foods as you want and you won't gain any weight! Jack Scalfani has been doing KETO for years and it's how he maintains his slim figure.
This only works as long as your thyroid, thymus and pituitary gland are all in good working order. As we get older everything breaks down so what works in your youth might not work as you grow older.
 
Does anyone know why my pretzels aren't turning brown? I have hard water so I don't know if it's doing any weird voodoo. I have to buy regular water to get split peas and beans to cook correctly.
 
Does anyone know why my pretzels aren't turning brown? I have hard water so I don't know if it's doing any weird voodoo. I have to buy regular water to get split peas and beans to cook correctly.
Temperature is probably too low. Steam is just part of the process. You also need that blast furnace heat. Your standard kitchen oven is probably not up to the task tbqh.
 
Does anyone know why my pretzels aren't turning brown? I have hard water so I don't know if it's doing any weird voodoo. I have to buy regular water to get split peas and beans to cook correctly.
Temperature is probably too low. Steam is just part of the process. You also need that blast furnace heat. Your standard kitchen oven is probably not up to the task tbqh.
How hard is it, ph-wise? If you’re going classical on the preztels, you might need to spike your water with a reasonably strong base/alkali like lye.
 
I'm considering making a Lutheran Burger this week.


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Oh God, that's a lot of fat.
 
Havent read the thread, will give my own tips and opinions on cooking because aside from going to culinary school / cuisine academy for like 10 classes I have zero fucking background: (10 classes is fuckall to learn anything if you have aspirations to go to one of those cooking classes, except making specific dishes)

Always mind the heat

When you're cooking, always mind the heat, as generally you dont want to cook something as fast as possible, but rather with medium or low heat, to control what you're doing, and to have time to fix mistakes. I think eggs are a prime example of this, because if you cook eggs slowly you end up with nicely cooked uniform egg (goes both for scrambled and sunny side up) whereas if you cook it on high heat as fast as possible, the scrambles become popcorn sized bits, and the sunny side up egg ends up burnt on the bottom by the time you're able to cook the top, or the opposite way around (P.S if you constantly burn butter, add a bit of olive oil into the pan, it'll prevent the butter from burning)

Use spices

You've seen the classic "white people can't cook" memes, claiming people dont use spices; well as far as I've seen from tiktok its true, while the negroes use excess spice. Point is if you want your food to taste good, you need to add herbs and spices. If you are using fresh herbs, don't add them at the start of the cooking process, but rather towards the end. The taste will still be there, while your herbs look alive and not on life support, and you want to use both herbs and spices in moderation, some are stronger than the others, for example if you want to add cumin to something, you usually add a wayward pinch, whlist if you're adding something like thyme or cajun, you can go a litltle bit more haywire without ruining the dish.

Have everything prepared before you cook

You don't want to end up chopping your ham or your vegetables while your oil is getting so hot that the pan starts smoking and sets off the fire alarm. Always prepare things prior to cooking, and have them in separate bowls or plates depending on their time to be added into the dish, i.e if you're going to add ham and peppers at the same time, use the same bowl. If you're going to add onions and garlic at different times, don't put them in the same bowl and try to stop one or the other from going inside the dish.

Clean up while your food cooks

We all know you aren't going to clean it up after its done and you get yourself a plate-full. Get it done while the dish is cooking and you might even have a happy partner or roommate, unless you're a lonely faggot

Know what goes well with what

There are certain things that go well with each other in cooking, for example lemon is a great complementary to white meat fish. Or thyme is a crucial herb in cooking tomato-based dishes (depending on culture of the dish) Also know what 'umami' flavoured things are: Tomatoes, Mushrooms (especially dried), Soy Sauce, Seaweed, Parmesan, Oyster Sauce etc.
Umami flavoured things are sometimes that flavour boost you're looking for in your dish, so if you want to spice up your stir fry, a little bit of soy sauce and oyster sauce go an insane way. (There are giant map charts showcasing what food components are linked to each other, I'll see if I can find it pdf of report in attachments)


Dont be afraid to use alcohol

Wine and Beer genuinely go a long way when you're cooking food; If you have cheap wine at home you can use it to boost your cooking. While cooking your vegetables, instead of using water to deglaze the pan you can use wine instead, by the time cooking is done most if not all of the alcohol will have vapourized, leaving you with the sweet notes of the wine. Using too much white wine can make your dish too sweet, and using too much red wine can make your dish too bitter, so use it in moderation. As for beer, you can use beer in batter, instead of soda water, or do the classic beer can chicken, crack open a cold one, stick a chicken on top (by its arse) and let it cook, use something more on the fruity side though, else you'll end up with bitter or hops chicken

Focus on taste rather than presentation (unless you're cooking for a special night)

Who the fuck cares if it looks ugly? Unless you have some sort of special night, focus on making the dish taste good instead of trying to make it look pretty, i.e adding extra olive oil or heavy cream on top of tomato soup, like sure its going to look pretty but you just ruined the fucking taste of that hour-long labour soup, adding cold ass cream or raw fat into it.
 

Attachments

If you want a good book that gives you a method methodical, almost scientific understanding of what's going on as you cook just about anything, pick up The Food Lab by J. Kenji Lopez-Alt (a good name for a chef because he's the most mystery-meatish guy I've ever seen.) It's the first book I ever read for cooking which left me feeling confident about what was going on with anything I was cooking. It covers pretty well any fundamental you could want, and if you take in what it says you'll be in a great position to just grab ingredients and start making whatever.
 
Havent read the thread, will give my own tips and opinions on cooking because aside from going to culinary school / cuisine academy for like 10 classes I have zero fucking background: (10 classes is fuckall to learn anything if you have aspirations to go to one of those cooking classes, except making specific dishes)
> American
> No experience
> Signed up for hot-food-college degree but didn't attend
> "OK everyone, listen up!"


You don't have to qualify your post by saying you almost attended classes on how to cook. That's the joke. American.
 
> American
> No experience
> Signed up for hot-food-college degree but didn't attend
> "OK everyone, listen up!"


You don't have to qualify your post by saying you almost attended classes on how to cook. That's the joke. American.
1) I'm not American, not that it'd really matter in this context anyway

2) I dont have formal experience, and I don't think you need to have formal experience. That was the entire point of me saying I know jackshit, its to encourage people with no former cooking background or confidence to get in the kitchen instead of ordering takeaway every day of the week, or making lazy sangas

3) I didn't go to "hot-food-college" or took gastronomy in university, it was a course to teach children in the age range of 8-12 to cook, and the rest of the bit saying "dont take cooking classes if you want to actually learn how to cook and not to learn specific dishes" is genuine, because it seems that there is this general notion that if you go to a Chef's cooking lessons for 10 lessons and pay a grandiose of say 500-1000$ that range, you'll become a better cook. If you theoretically knew nothing, it'd be true, other than that, its just an expensive ticket to just watch the guy or gal cook instead of doing it on youtube or those classes they have online for a fraction of the price.

Guess I'll put my entire life story down before I post next time, god damn.
 
Does anyone know why my pretzels aren't turning brown? I have hard water so I don't know if it's doing any weird voodoo. I have to buy regular water to get split peas and beans to cook correctly.
you need to dip them into 5% lye for a short moment. the browning comes from the lye reacting with the dough.
 
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