A FOOD poll

[El_Josharino]

This morning we went to a local diner for breakfast and I ordered this:


That's a hot beef sandwich, sub chicken fried steak for bread... It was pretty incredible.

[dieblucasdie]

You are my hero

[RoyBiggins]

You are my hero

QFT

[Chet]

just made singapore noodles, with pork tenderloin and shrimp. very very good. gave my spanish housemate some because i made far too much and she said: "wow. you are a very, very good - what do you call them? the man in the kitchen? yes, chef! chef. you are a very good chef."

excellent.

[cold before sunrise]

ooh ooh, so this is how american industry found a way to salvage industrial production waste that used to be used for dogfood, blasted with ammonia gas and sold back to the general consumer as 'fresh meat.' big business is too gross. if you love beef then for the love of god, get a friend, neighbour or family member to go in on an organic side of beef from an organic farmer. it's worth paying a little more to back what few small farms are left, for serious.

[peacocks]

Josh, is there chocolate on there?

Last night I tried to make this white wine garlic sauce for a shrimp and pasta dish. It was ok but I don't think the sauce reduced enough or there wasn't enough flavor in it to begin with.

I sauteed onions in olive oil and 4 tbs butter, then added 2 garlic cloves, then some red pepper, then a cup of pino grigio and let it reduce by half, then put the shrimp in and cooked them til they were done and put the whole thing over angel hair pasta. I sauteed mushrooms on the side because bf doesn't like mushrooms but honestly most of the flavor came from the shrooms and the shrimp.

What can I do better?

[Greg Nog]

How long did you sautée the onions for? I've found that the longer you let them go on low heat (until they brown, and all the complex carbohydrates break down into caramelized sugars), the more delicious the final product is.

My other go-to recipe-improvement is pretty much always "add more salt, and more umami," so I mighta thrown in a dash of worcestershire or somethin.

[YojimboMonkey]

"add more salt, and more umami,"

This is why fish sauce is the secret ingredient for just about anything

Also what Greg said about caramelizing the onions.

[peacocks]

umami.  I hear that word a lot. I don't know what it means. Salty stuff?

I let the onions get clear but not brown, I'll try that next time and let it reduce more maybe.

[Chet]

'pleasant savory taste'

[peacocks]

Yeah, we did not put any salt in it at all, dang. Parmasean cheese made it a bit better. I think I'll try for something creamier next time too.

[Greg Nog]

umami.  I hear that word a lot. I don't know what it means. Salty stuff?

glutamate!  It's in MSG, but it also occurs naturally in all kinds of stuff, like fish sauce, and pizza sauce, and the seaweed they use in ramen broth.  Miso is basically a concentrated hit of pure umami, so I keep a tub of it in my fridge, and if I'm at my wits end about some experimental dish, I just throw some miso in there.  

I think I'd also mentioned in some liquor thread that I love using miso in bloody marys for vegetarians/vegans, where anchovy-containing worcestershire isn't a possibility.

xpost: Parmesan cheese is ALSO high in umami!

[coldforge]

I like Korean 'miso', doenjang and gochujang.

[jess]

Whenever you make food, you need something in it with actual flavor that your tongue registers (sweet, salty, bitter, sour, umami) besides everything else which is odor. If you reduce one flavor aspect (like salt), you will want to compensate generally by increasing another (more acid/sour). People, esp home cooks, often oversalt food IMO because they add too little or entirely disregard acid, which makes a huge difference. I bet some fresh lemon would have also brought a good hit to that pasta and would reduce the amount of salt you'd need to add (though adding some would still be a good call).

[elpollodiablo]

or entirely disregard acid, which makes a huge difference.

This, for sure. I've been keeping mad lemons on hand, and it's amazing what a few quick zests or squirts of lemon juice will punch up.

[peacocks]

oooo, lemon zest. That sounds good!

I always kinda figure garlic is all you need.

[jebreject]

or entirely disregard acid, which makes a huge difference.

This, for sure. I've been keeping mad lemons on hand, and it's amazing what a few quick zests or squirts of lemon juice will punch up.

Oh I thought you guys were talking about something else

[El_Josharino]

Josh, is there chocolate on there?

No way! That's gravy!

[cold before sunrise]

but wait.

edit: now whenever i crave a quick cheeseburger, this beef fatty soft-serve will come to mind:


edit edit edit: it's like a bad dream, or an 80's horror flick:

except i was eating kippered jerky today and suddenly realized the grim reality of what was in my mouth. it's listed as beef in the ingredients, followed by corn syrup solids, but i have the feeling something like this is how zombies will happen.

the story broke this week and has made for a public relations nightmare (big surprise there) so mcdonald's says it'll stop using pink slime filler but since it's been in their products for years and they have such a huge inventory - estimates state the average fast food burger is made of meat from an animal that's been dead for about a year - even if they stopped buying it the day of that announcement the garbage will still be part of the international food system a year from now. loving it? thanks, americans.

[RoyBiggins]

I think that's a photo of chicken mcnugget filler. Not sure, though.

[jm]

McDonalds et al. haven't been using pink slime for years.

[Chet]

It looks like delicious ice cream. hmmmm.

[jess]

Snopes is your friend: http://www.snopes.com/food/prepare/msm.asp

Personally, I don't get why it's a bad thing to use the extra parts of chicken if they can find a way to make them taste good, and making a paste of it doesn't seem any more inherently gross to me than mashing up other kinds of food. Isn't that arguably better than killing more birds in order to just eat the breast meat? Besides, McNuggets totally tasted better when they were made from weird chicken bits (which makes sense, since white meat isn't known for being flavorful).

Of course, if you want to rail against the grossness of factory farming, then I'd think you have a very good point, but it's not like the whole, white meat fast food restaurants use is any better in that respect.

[jm]

Oops!

[Greg Nog]

I don't get why it's a bad thing to use the extra parts of chicken if they can find a way to make them taste good, and making a paste of it doesn't seem any more inherently gross to me than mashing up other kinds of food.

Yeah, I'm absolutely of the same mindset; it certainly doesn't seem any less weird than sausage, which seems to just be MSM on a slightly more macro scale.