:eek: How could they lie to me? How could they lie?
(runs off sobbing)
If you had lived in California in 1998, you would consider that God’s gift to burger eaters. Just sayin’.
The tomato part can get tricky, but I’ve seen it done in Tucson, Arizona of all places. It just takes a big bun and some training, I suppose.
Right! I know that, and YOU know that - Mr2U? He prefers to believe in the big Nicor conspiracy - all of us preheating our ovens so the gas company gets rich. I didn’t say he made any SENSE, just that that’s how he is.
Where are you supposed to thaw meat? We chuck it in the sink, or in a bowl of warm water (still in the package). Is that bad? My SO also admonishes me regularly for using the wrong cutting surfaces for meats/veggies.
I also love tasting raw dough/custard. And have said it before, but I like ketchup on my hot dogs, and dislike mustard, and don’t care what anyone else thinks, it’s me who has to eat it.
I don’t usually do the cat’s paw thing when chopping. In fact, sometimes I notice what I’m doing and sort of mentally dare myself to chop a finger.
I use salted butter.
I don’t use relish in my delicious potato salad. (I don’t care what any of my friends and relatives say, it IS potato salad without sweet relish)
I never flour baking pans - oil is enough for me.
I’ve had a couple of professional chefs tell me that a lower quality butter is used for salted butter and the “off” taste of the butter is masked by putting salt in it. Don’t know how much, if any, truth there is to that but I’ve been buying the unsalted butter since.
The one thing I totally totally ignore is the “Raw Eggs Are POISON!” hype. Actually, no they aren’t.
You’re supposed to thaw meat in the fridge. Yes, it takes longer. The thawing-meat-in-the-fridge method requires you to remember that if you want to cook the roast on Sunday, you need to have it out of the freezer and in the fridge by Thursday. For some people, not an issue. For me, a huge pain in the ass.
Unless I’m trying to thaw a huge turkey or something, most things can be thawed by plucking them in a bowl of water in the sink and occasionally running some warm water over it. 15-30 minutes, tops.
The consensus on the Dope seems to be wooden cutting boards are more hygienic, but I always use a small synthetic cutting board which can be run through the dishwasher or brushed down with a little bleach. I don’t like putting wooden boards in the dishwasher or using bleach on them.
My SO likes nice, handsome wooden/wooden-handled stuff which she WOULD GREATLY PERFER WERE CARED FOR PROPERLY, which basically means gently washing them by hand, carefully drying them and lovingly oiling them after each use. Hah, fuck that! We have separate cooking stuff and she ends up using mine more than her own.
Why don’t you people use the microwave for thawing? 1/2 power for a minute or two - turn it over and another minute or two… works likes a charm! I don’t do it for fish though - put it in a sinkful of water (wrapped of course,) it’ll be thawed before you’re finished prepping.
Sometimes I’ll thaw meat in the sink (I have dogs too!) if I have the time.
I’ve never been able to avoid cooking the edges of whatever I’m thawing. Microwave thawing seemed like a great idea at first, but I gave up on it. Microwaves are great for reheating previously cooked foods though.
Oh, it’s not so much a lie, just an exaggeration that those types of hot dogs are the one and only way to have a hot dog in Chicago. (For example, in my neighborhood in the city, I can’t think of a single place that serves the traditional Chicago-style dog with all the fixins except for the Home Depot.) Certainly, those hot dogs are found in Chicago, in quite a few places, but it’s not necessarily the most common set of toppings found in Chicago, just like deep dish pizza is hardly the most commonly eaten pizza in Chicago. (I grew up in Chicago and did not have my first deep dish until high school. Thin crust is by far more popular, and Chicago has its own indigenous style of thin crust cut into squares.)
Oh, missed this. The buns are not that big at all–just the same size buns as your average hot dog bun.
Here’s a picture.
Here’s a picture of the oldest hot dog stand in Chicago. Notice the toppings on the sign. And here are the actual dogs.
I’ll use the microwave for some things, like stewing meat, or the like - because, like levdrakon says, I can’t defrost things in the nuker without cooking the edges. I suspect that a more modern, or efficient nuker might get around that problem.
ETA: Of course, when I’m thawing stew meat, I’m just thawing it enough so that it breaks up before I throw it into the slow cooker - which is another rule I’m sure I’m breaking. 
Okay, then. What a strange thing going on in his head.
I think I’ll keep preheating my oven. Thanks for explaining.
New thread for hot dog talk if anybody’s interested.
I’ve recently learned the trick of taking the casing off of Italian sausages, chopping 'em up, and using that as “meatballs”. Since I’ll neither make homemmade meatballs, nor buy those frozen abominations which taste like bleah.
Works like a charm in the slow-cooker, too.
Partly true - salt does indeed mask poor quality butter. The irony is that it’s the unsalted that will go bad first, since salt helps with preservation… one of the reasons we have salted butter in the first place.
But the real reason why most recipes specify unsalted butter (especially in baking) is that it lets you control how much or how little salt goes into the finished product. Very very very important, especially when dealing with bread, as too much salt will kill your yeast and result in a lumpy rock-hard ball of dough that refuses to rise no matter how long you glare at it and will it to do a Lazarus.
Why yes… I did learn the hard way. 
Hmm… Who shall be the next doper to fall victim to my astral projecting typing skills? Muhahaha!
I agree with the ketchup people. Hot dogs should have relish, mustard, onions and slaw. And be steamed.
But all you raw hamburger people are just begging for a visit from the e. coli fairy. MrsB’s PHD was on e.coli research. That shit’s deadly. I’m just saying…
I never used to. Then chicken sent me to the hospital for three days. Now? Whenever I deal with raw chicken, my kitchen is a biohazard area.
Just some perspective for all o’ y’all who are crowing about the safety of raw meat and raw eggs: Two hundred years ago, raw meat and raw eggs was pretty safe. This, of course, was before meat production was industrialized, before cows were hip-to-hip in a feedlot, guzzling corn slurry and antibiotics while standing knee deep in their own filth. Ditto eggs from chickens crammed five to a cage, instead of freely scratching and pecking their way through open grassland. Fifty years ago, eating these products raw was suicidal. Then we figured that out, and things have gotten comparatively better. But as long as we insist on cheap industrialized food, aggressive regulation will be required to keep it safe.
I was in Italy this past November. Central Tuscany, to be specific. Small village, to be even more specific, staying with my girlfriend’s family in their thousand-year-old house.
The food in Tuscany is heartstoppingly good. The first night I was there, my first bite of true lasagna was literally lifechanging.
And that, as it turned out, was just an average meal.
A couple of days later, the small village was having a huge feast, inviting maybe a quarter of the locals. I was invited, and I begged for time in the kitchen. I learned how to make pasta from scratch, the old way. I watched as porcinis freshly picked from the surrounding woods were slowly simmered into a soupy consistency in their own liquids. I saw how wild boar was slow cooked with herbs and cognac.
Everything was made by hand on the spot. The vegetables were picked from the gardens everybody had in front of their houses. It was all late-fall and winter harvest; they didn’t bother with imported or greenhouse versions of summer crops. The olive oil was pressed in their own orchards. The eggs were collected from the village chicken coop. The boar had been shot a few days before by one of the villagers. Even the grappa was handmade, a couple of miles away.
These were people who knew how to eat. Just because they were from a tiny village with thousand-year-old cobblestone streets, that didn’t mean they lacked discriminating palates; it was some of the best food I’ve had in my life. Everything was local and fresh, and they did that not because it was cheap or easy, they did it because that’s how it tasted best.
Except the potatoes.
The potatoes were freeze-dried, out of a box.
Because that’s how they liked them.
I have no explanation for this. I mean, I was making them American-style drippings gravy (which they’d never had, and wanted to try), and I said, hey, as long as I’m doing this, I’d be happy to make mashed potatoes from scratch (which, I must say, are damn good, light and fluffy).
They declined.
At the table, the instant potatoes were fine, and the Tuscans seemed to enjoy them. They especially liked them with the gravy I made.
Nevertheless, I am still mystified.
