I believe she had one of those economy-size jars from CostCo or the like. She must have been really sleepy. :dubious:
For decades, my emulsion sauces sucked so badly I avoided them. Then, 2 things happened. I read Bourdain’s Les Halles Cookbook, and he recommends that you approach emulsion sauces with absolute confidence. They can smell fear.
Then I found a different approach to prepping the sauce that’s made all the difference for me. Here’s the recipe.
In a metal pan over low - med-low heat, beat three warm egg yolks until creamy. add 2 T of lemon juice diluted half and half with water. Whisk until frothy. Add a large pinch of kosher salt and about a teaspoon of white pepper. Total whisk time about two minutes for the whole process.
Whisk in a stick to CLARIFIED butter that’s been cooled to nearly room temp. Start a drop at a time, then drizzle in a steady stream, stopping when you reach the milky solids, until fully incorporated.
That whole, blend in knobs of solid butter thing is for the birds. All my varieties of Hollandaise and Bearnaise have improved geometrically since going the melted butter route.
A double dose of carelessness almost bot me into trouble cooking for my (now) mother in law for the first time.
I’m a hobbyist French and Caribbean cook. If I do say so, myself, I’ve got some game.
My now-wife/then fiancee and I were visiting her family in Montreal. Her mother, an old school Francophone in her early 70s, had only QUITE recently begun to warm up to me. Like, at all.
Figuring the way to the heart is through the stomach, I decided as a hostess gift to make a three course French meal for the mom, the brother, the girl and myself.
The main course was to be beef bourdelaise with duxelles, sided with asparagus in herbed butter.
For whatever reason, maybe it was the small kitchen space in the mom’s apartment, maybe I was over confident because I’d made this dish a kabillion times before, maybe I was suffering from poutine for brains, I didn’t bother to set up my mise en place.
For those who don’t cook, your mise is where you lay out absolutely everything you’ll need to prepare your meal. This serves two purposes: you can lay your hand immediately to whatever tool or ingredient you need, and you make certain you actually HAVE everything you need before you start cooking.
Whatever the cause, I didn’t do it.
I had the beef pulled off to rest and was making the bordelaise sauce when I realized there was no beef stock. Beef stock being the thing that makes beef bordelaise a sauce rather than a red wine roux, I nearly had a frickin’ stroke.
I raced to the panty and found a can of beef broth. Okay, maybe I can salvage this. I rummaged around and found a can of chicken stock. Okay, this could work. I added the broth and stirred it in. A little salty and a little too thick. I added about a quarter can of the chicken stock, then a bit more of the red wine and the drippings from the steak platter.
It turned out one of the best bordelaise sauces I’ve ever done and drew raves.
My two careless mistakes: Beef stock was written on my shopping list, but it was on the list where the paper folded and I didn’t see it. Lesson: Open the bloody list. The second: Not setting up the kitchen properly.
All’s well that ends well, but I’d have been hosed if she didn’t have the stuff in her pantry, and I would have made a bad first meal for my soon to be mother in law who already didn’t like me much. Disaster averted, but only just.
I’m sure I’ve said this one a half-dozen times on here, but it was a lesson to never forget about paying attention.
Coffee cake with cinnamon crumble = good.
Coffee cake with cayenne crumble = not good at all.
You remember that little removable paddle that you’re supposed to place in the bottom of the automatic breadmaker pan before dumping in the ingredients? Me either. Three times, so far.
I laughed until I cried!
Thrifty person that I am, I use my husband’s pickled bologna jars to hold flour, sugar, etc; I used to be proud that I could pull out the right jar & measure out whatever ingredient I needed for a recipe.
That was before I tried to use powdered sugar to thicken a gravy (hey, it looked like flour).
When I decided I needed to label my jars: I taught Childrens’ Sunday School at our church. The Sunday before Christmas, we had a short birthday party for Jesus. I made a cake, & we put candles on it (one candle for each child in class), lit the candles, sang “Happy Birthday” to Jesus, then all blew out the candles. There was always cake left over, so one year I decided to make a coffee cake w/a crumb topping. After I cut & distributed the cake, the kids ate the cake, but left the topping. Why? “It’s kinda chewy, Miss Phil.” I had substituted cornmeal for sugar.
Now all my jars have large, easy-to-read labels.
Love, Phil
I’ll keep that in mind. 
Define “clarified” and “milky solids”. Does it have anything to do with those little yellow squares of, well, solids I see throughout melted butter? My worst results are with completely melted butter.
Yup, that’s the stuff.
What you want to do is melt your butter, then let it sit for a few minutes. All the solids will sink to the bottom. The stuff at the top - golden yellow & clear - is your clarified butter.
It’s easy to make if you put some butter in a 2-cup pyrex measuring cup and melt it in the microwave. Let it sit til the solids come to the bottom, then just pour off the clarified butter. It stores in the fridge just fine.
It’s nice to have around, because it has a much higher burn point than normal butter. You can saute with it without worrying about the butter browning, for example.
Melt the butter. Skim off the thin white stuff on the top. You’ll have a pot of golden oil with thick white stuff in the bottom. Stop pouring when you get to the thick white stuff.
Another thing to keep in mind with emulsion sauces like hollandaise and bearnaise, you can use a little heat with your eggs, but if you use too much, you’ll scramble the yolks and screw things up well and truly. I know that sounds obvious, but you’d be amazed how many people think, “If I can use medium-low, I can use medium.”
Oh, and for all you Hollandaise Sauce people - forget that double boiler stuff, make blender Hollandaise. I use Joy of Cooking’s recipe, but this looks pretty similar.
Super easy. Never breaks.
You need completely melted but not hot - not even really warm - butter. Melted, but room temperature. Hot butter will scramble your eggs instead of emulsify with them.
FallenAngel’s being a little loose with his (her) terms. Properly speaking, “clarified” butter means you melt it and then pour off the clear yellow liquid, leaving behind the white solids in the bottom of your cup. The clear yellow stuff is clarified butter, and if you do that, you can add all of that to your sauce. But FallenAngel, like me, is a lazy cook, and doesn’t do it in two steps. 
Melt the butter and let it separate. You’ll see solid white chunks on the bottom. Let it cool, and then drizzle as directed. As long as you pour slowly, the white chunks will stay on the bottom of what you’re pouring. Stop before you pour out the white stuff, and you’ll have used clarified butter to make your sauce.
I will buy some asparagus tomorrow!
Sir, I find your insinuation insulting! Spatulas at dawn! My Second shall call upon you in the morning.
Generally my idea of cooking is microwaving some ramen, so any story I have will pale compared to most of these, but there was this episode, during which I managed to ruin a newspaper, cause myself bodily harm several times including drawing (a drop of) blood, damage the floor, and terrify a dog…
…while trying to cook scrambled eggs.
Detailed recipe please? I love some good onion soup but the time or two I’ve tried making it from scratch, the results have not been pleasing.
My biggest kitchen goof was the time I made a twice-cooked pork dish from a friend’s recipe. It called for cutting the pork into bite-size pieces and then frying it briefly in oil, letting it cool, then doing it again. No idea why. I thought the pork looked “done” after the first round but the recipe said “twice” so… I wound up with charcoal bits in a sweet and savory sauce. This is the only time I’ve made food that was quite literally inedible.
Earlier experiments, as a teenager, demonstrated that when doubling recipes, one should double all the ingredients. The chocolate chip hardtack was tasty, if a bit rough on the teeth :smack:.
OOohh - wait - I just remembered one relatively recent one.
One of the CIA* cookbooks has a recipe for roast chicken in a salt crust. You mix a whole lot of rock salt with a little water and some beaten egg white, and totally surround the chicken.
I couldn’t find the rock salt at our regular grocery store so I went to a different chain, got the rock salt (in a blue box), made the dish, and the results were fine. The blue box, by the way, mentioned that it was also good for making ice cream and de-icing sidewalks.
Fast forwrd to a year or two later and I want to make the same dish. At our regular grocery, I didn’t see the blue box, but I did see a big plastic bag, which mentioned it was good for ice cream and de-icing.
So I mixed up the egg white / water mixture, tore open the bag of salt… and as I dumped it in, saw that there were bits of gravel or something mixed in. OOPS!
Had to make an emergency run to the other grocery store for the familiar blue box!
*Culinary Institute of America.
Corollary: One should not turn the oven off while in the middle of preparing a meal, either. (Gettysdope attendees were treated to an uneven mixture of overdone and underdone chocolate cookies as a result of that gaffe!).
I was once making a batch of peanut butter cookies from a new recipe. Instead of adding 1/2 teaspoon of salt, I added 1/2 cup. I wouldn’t recommend my version of the recipe.
Sure! Seriously, this stuff is GOOD.
4 lbs yellow onions (NOT sweet onions)
3 tbsp butter
2 cups water, plus extra for deglazing
1/2 cup dry sherry
4 cups low-sodium chicken broth
2 cups beef broth
6 sprigs thyme, tied together with kitchen twine so you can take them out
Bay leaf
Salt and pepper
Baguette and gruyere for cheese topping
Preheat to 400. Take your big heavy Dutch oven and spray it down really well with cooking spray. Chop your onions into crescent pieces (you know, whack the ends off, cut them in half pole to pole, and slice them kind of radially so the pieces end up like little crescents. They should be about a quarter inch wide, but it isn’t fussy. Throw the butter and the onions and a teaspoon of salt into your Dutch oven (it better be big, because this is a LOT of onions), cover it, and stick it in the oven for an hour. Stir and put the lid back on a bit ajar this time and put it back in there for another hour and a half or so, stirring it in the middle (you want to kind of scrape the sides down too.) If you want to you can stick it in the fridge and do the rest tomorrow after this point, but personally I suggest doing the whole shebang the day before because it tastes even better that way.
Now, you do not want to rush this part, because it’s the important part. This step should take from 45 minute to an hour, and don’t assume you’re done until you’re done. Put your pot on the stove and turn it on medium. Cook it, stirring frequently, for 15 or 20 minutes until the liquid evaporates and the onions turn brown. There is going to be a point in this where they turn so brown you think they’re burned - they’re not. You can turn it down a little if you think they really might be burning, though. Once the liquid is gone and the onions are brown, keep going and stirring for 6-8 minutes or until a dark crust forms on the bottom of the pot. Deglaze it with a quarter cup of water, get all that stuff up (make sure it goes in the onions instead of on your spoon), and cook it some more for 6-8 minutes until the water evaporates and you’ve got fond on the bottom again. Repeat the deglazing 2 or 3 more times until the onions are VERY dark brown. Then throw the sherry in and cook until that liquid is gone, too.
Now you can stir in the broths, water, thyme, bay leaf, and a bit of salt, make sure you’ve got all that fond scraped up, and simmer it for 30 minutes. Take out the thyme and the bay leaf and check the seasonings - add salt and pepper if need be.
For the little bread and cheese deal on top, toast some bread rounds in a 400 degree oven, put some soup in broiler-safe bowls, and put the bread and cheese on top - under the broiler for 3-5 minutes and you’re good.
It’s an annoying amount of work just for soup, but I PROMISE you won’t be disappointed.