Time-saver: When I was in college, I used to have breakfast waiting for me every morning by putting two packets of instant oatmeal in the coffee-machine carafe and putting no coffee grounds in the filter cup. Set it for half an hour before you wake up, and you’ll find hot oatmeal waiting for you. 'Course, if you also want coffee, you need a second machine.
And a handy rule of thumb: When you’re eating your oatmeal straight out of the carafe with a measuring spoon, it’s time to do the dishes.
[QUOTE]
[li]Never, EVER fry chicken in your underwear.[/li][/QUOTE]
Goes for bacon too. I learned to not make spaghetti wearing socks but no shoes. Picking the pot of just boiled pasta off the stove, I spilled it on my foot. It would have been bad enough barefoot but the cotton sock held the scalding water to my foot.
[QUOTE]
**
[li]Never fry anything marinated in fat-free dressing. It welds whatever was marinated in it to the pan.**[/li][/QUOTE]
This is because when they take out all the fat, they add sugar, to try and make it taste good. When you fry it, the sugar turns into glue, thereby welding it to the pan.
Also, JavaMaven mentioned the pineapple juice for a marinade. Actually, any citus juice (orange, etc.) makes a great marinade for just about any meat. The citric acid breaks down the tough and fibery parts of the meat, making it more tender. Also tomato soup does the same thing.
Also, the grease down the drain thing? DON’T DO IT!! Unless you REALLY want to finance the plumber’s trip to Aruba, of course. Buy some coffee in a 1-pound can. Save the empty can and pour the leftover grease into the coffee can. Store it (with the lid on) in the fridge till it is full, and then throw the whole can away. Depending on how much bacon you eat, it could last for years.
And a crock pot IS indispensible. So easy to throw some chicken and veggies in there in the morning and when you come home, it’s dinner! I put a pork roast in my crockpot in the morning and add a can of tomato soup, about a can and a half of water, some chopped onions, and at 6:00…yummy!!
Yeah, a deep fryer works much better.
Coffee can? Pfagh! Especially in this day and age, when everyone buys their coffee in bags, and cans cost a premium. Get plastic cups. When you drain grease, do it into a cup in the sink (just in case you spill some). Keep the cup in the freezer (makes the grease much easier to handle) and add to it whenever you drain off grease. When the cup’s full, throw the entire solid mass away.
oh … and for god’s sake …
olive oil is not dishwashing liquid … !
thought of another one…
DO NOT use detergent for hand-washing dishes into the automatic dishwasher. You get bubbles leaking out that foam out all over the kitchen and go all the way up to the ceiling.
I’ll go along with the crock pot reccommendation. Makes great chili.
BTW, “Carroll Shelby” chili fixins in the little brown bag ain’t bad at all. Use everything in the bag, including the cornmeal.
Peace,
mangeorge
When someone ask “who eats that?” and you say “I think my ex-wife bought that” and you’ve been divorced for several years, it’s time to let it go. Trash it, food doesn’t make a good keepsake.
Jim
You don’t have to pour grease into anything. Just let it congeal, and wipe it off/out with paper towels last thing before you go upstairs.
Or, alternately, you could put coffee grounds in the filter cup, and kill two birds with one stone.
Another tip–learn to make chili. You’re not a man if you can’t cook chili.
Dr. J
Simple recipe for chili:
Fancy recipe for chili:
(No quantities are given with this recipe. Experiment until you get something you like.)
Brown some meat in a frying pan.
Add onion powder, garlic powder, salt & pepper.
Drain off the grease.
Add 1 can of diced green ortega chilis. (Okay, I lied, but that’s the only hard-n-fast quantity – I promise!)
Add as much of the following stuff you want to the pan, keeping in mind that if it overflows, you’ll have a mess to clean up. Maybe you should’ve used a soup pot?
[ul][li]Stewed tomatoes, tomato paste, and/or sauce.[/li][li]Canned mushrooms[/li][li]Sliced black olives (drained – it’s pretty oily if you don’t)[/li][li]Beans (yeah, purists don’t put beans in their chili, but who’s eatin’ this mess, anyhow?)[/li][li]Cornmeal (I don’t like it, but some folks do)[/li][/ul]
Dissolve a tablespoon of corn starch in a juice glass of water and add it to the mix. (Oops! Another quantity!)
Stir the mess thoroughly, reduce the heat, cover the pan, and let it cook down to a thick, chunky gravy.
Dump it in a bowl and eat it.
For extra fanciness, toast some bread & put it in the bowl first.
For extra, extra fanciness, top it with grated cheese.
Notice you never had to use chili powder?
~~Baloo
Remove your kitchen and install Home Theater system!
If that’s not possible, remember a few quick tips:
1- The barbeque is your best friend.
2- Never fry bacon in your chones.
3- Teriyaki is the BEST marinade(not the nasty sweet sauces, the real thing!).
4- When purchasing garlic, buy chopped garlic, not powder(I’m from the garlic capital of the world…can’t use the powders, it’s against my blood).
5- Good cookware. For the rare times when you do cook, you must have the best cookware and cutlery.
6- Don’t open the fridge. Just keep it closed, it’ll funk the whole house up!
7- Get a separate fridge for beer.
That’s about it for now…
-Sam
Out of milk? Make sure you either have canned (unsweetened) carnation milk (or whatever brand) It can be used for coffee etc. For baking I wouldn’t suggest switching that for milk but buy skim milk powder and mix up as needed if your baking and out of milk. (Or if you don’t have much milk and no money to buy more so you want to save your milk)
I agree soooo much with the crockpot. I have another recipe for chili. (Simpler then Baloo’s even)
Topaz’s Chili
Brown 1 package of ground beef
Chop up 1 medium onion (or 2 small) some green pepper and one or two cloves of garlic. (remember a clove is not the whole bulb it is one piece that you tear off and also remember to take the skin off) Add to the browned meat and cook till the onions are kinda clear.
Dump it all into your handy crockpot and add
1 can tomatoe soup
1 can diced tomatoes
1 can kidney beans
1 dash worschester sauce
Chili powder to taste (Which means you add a little mix it up and take a taste if its not what you want you can add more. Don’t dump a whole ton in at once you cannot scoop it out once its mixed)
Heat and simmer till it is hot all the way through then serve with some grated cheese sprinkled on top and a bun or slice of bread. (Note it also makes great leftovers and make sure you do not leave it on high (if cooking on top of the stove) otherwise it burns to the bottom and its hell to clean off)
Another good and simple recipe:
Tuna/Salmon Rolls
Make 1 batch of biscuits (either from scratch or you can use a mix it doesn’t matter)
Mix one tin of salmon or tuna with mayo (Make sure you remove the bones from the salmon unless you can afford to buy it boneless)
Roll the biscuit dough out flat like you were gonna make a pizza or something. Make sure its not too thick. (Bicuit dough puffs up a lot) Then spread the salmon mix evenly over the dough. Once you have done that take the edge closest to you and start to roll the dough up so it looks something like a jelly roll. Once you have your roll made take a knife and cut it into one inch sections until there is no more to cut. Then you set the peices you have cut onto a cookie sheet. (It doesn’t have to be greased) Cook it in the oven for however long it says to on the biscuit recipe or until golden. Make a can of mushroom soup. Place the rolls on the plates and spoon mushroom soup over them as sauce. Eat and enjoy.
I’m getting hungry as I type this up so I’ll stop now. But if anyone wants to know a good stew recipe (That is pretty easy as well) let me know and I’ll put it up or email me about it.
Get yourself a really really big skillet with a lid. You can cook practically anything in it, and it’s essential for when (not if, when) you make Hamburger Helper[TM].
Do not substitute bologna for eggs in a pancake batter recipe. Even though they are both members of the “protein” food group. Trust me on this one.
You will save a tremendous amount of time and dishwashing-liquid expense if you are willing to eat straight out of the pan and re-use your pans/plates/utensils. It’s still a good idea to let your cookware soak between uses, though, and to rinse your pan off before you put it back on the stove (even if you’re going to be making the same thing you had last night).
If you have a self-cleaning oven, you can use it to remove baked-on scum from most all-metal pans, cookie sheets, and utensils. Be warned, though: At a high enough temperature, aluminum can ignite. (Aluminum powder is used as the main fuel in the Space Shuttle’s solid rocket boosters.)
Never add water to acid, only add acid to water. It’s true in chemistry class, and it’s true in the kitchen.
While big ol’ blocks of cheese cannot survive freezing, grated cheese can. Use this fact to your advantage when planning your long-term storage needs.
On one episode of The Partridge Family, Reuben Kincade quipped, “A bachelor is never without his can-opener.” Take these words to heart.
Kraft used to package their macaroni-and-cheese cheese powder in stand-alone blue containers. (They looked like those tall, thin containers of parmesan cheese powder.) They no longer do this, however. You will have to get your popcorn cheese powder by discarding the macaroni.
“Slow cooking” oatmeal takes the same amount of time to cook as “instant” rice. It also goes well as a side dish with chicken breast.
If you want to make real nachos (with real shredded cheese, not that Velveeta crap), make them in the broiler. Heating them from above melts the cheese without burning the chips. WARNING: Watch them very closely. The time between “done” and “burned” in the broiler is less than 20 seconds.
Do not microwave your hot dog buns to warm them up. It will only dry them out. Instead, lay a rack (or a few discarded chopsticks in parallel) across the top of the pot you’re boiling your hot dogs in, place the buns one-at-a-time face down on the rack, and steam the buns while the hot dogs cook.
Do not replace the filter cartridges in your built-in water purifier without first locating your main water valve and turning it off. If you don’t, once the filter cartridge clamp is removed, the water pressure will be so high it will be physically impossible to push the cartridge back down into place.
If you forget number 12, the place to look in the yellow pages is “carpet restoration.” (After you look up “emergency plumbing services,” of course!)
The big-fat-rubber-band trick is somewhat helpful for unscrewing a stubborn metal lid, but so is putting the lid under hot water for several seconds. If worse comes to worst, though, try punching a small hole in the lid to let some air in – many of these food jars are vacuum-packed.
[Edited by UncleBeer on 08-02-2000 at 11:17 AM]
Drat. My kingdom for a {/i} tag!
Done. «UncleBeer»
[Edited by UncleBeer on 08-02-2000 at 11:18 AM]
A long, LONG time ago, DoctorJ said:
Here’s my hint, which was actually published in the paper by hint czar Heloise:
If you have a tupperware container of something that’s been in the fridge so long you can’t even tell what it is (we’re talking “could be meat…could be cake”), and you’re afraid that if you open the container, the toxic fumes will take you out before you can dump the contents and plunge the tupperware into soapy water, just sling the container into the freezer overnight. The next day you can pop the frozen horror out into the trash…no fuss, no muss (well, not much), and no smell.
BTW, if you make fish, or shrimp, or anything that generates garbage that will soon start to REALLY stink, and trash day is days away, the freezer has got your back for that too.
Now that’s a Renaissance man for ya… invents the Shelby Cobra & markets his own brand of chili fixins.
(not the same guy, I’m sure!)
Actually, it IS the same guy. Raced at Le Mans and gave the world the Dodge Omni GLH (for Goes Like Hell), automotive folk hero Carroll Shelby.
My tip: When you buy milk with an expiration date (like 10 NOV), write the year on it too. Saves a lot of confusion later.
Well I’ll be damned. That’s pretty stinkin’ cool.
I wanna be like that…
Now all I have to do is come up with the software equivalent of the Cobra, and then market my own line of sex toys!