I’dd add that the younger and fresher the garlic is, the smoother and mellower the flavour. Old garlic can get too strong and harsh and may end up overpowering the other flavours if you’re not careful.
And kudos on the neckbones! Now you can see how enjoyable it is to create something that genuinely tastes good, there’s nothing stopping you!
Alex - err- Equipoise - I’ll take those questions for $400!
Soaking is the key to easy cleanup my friend! Fill your sink with hot/warm sudsy water and as soon as you’re finished cooking with the dish plop it in the sink. By the time you’ve completed your meal you’ll almost be able to rinse the dish clean. If stuck on bits are still an issue, one of those green scrubby or copper scrubby things will usually clean it right off. I’m the queen of lazy cleaning and never scrub if I don’t have to!
Baked Potatoes: if the recommended cooking temp for your meat is 350 for an hour, you can throw the potatoes in 20-30 minutes before the meat and allow them to cook a little longer at a lower temp and they’ll come out perfect.
Equipoise, sorry I didn’t come back to this one yesterday but redtail23 and Snowcarpet covered off the answers to most of the questions you asked me (thanks, folk). As for the avocados, I guess if you stretch your thumb and forefinger wide apart and then feel the webby bit at the bottom of the ‘v’ they make, it’s close to how a ripe avocado feels, but IMHO the best avocado is a little less soft than that. It still has light resistance but ‘gives’ just a bit. It’ll probably take you a few tries to get the hang of picking the right moment to eat your avocado.
As for baked potatoes, I often can’t be bothered waiting the hour to actually bake them so I nuke them. Depending on size, they’ll take from 6 to 11 minutes in the microwave. A 6-minute one would be about 4-5" long and 3 or so inches wide. I nuke 'em for as many minutes as I think it will take based on size (again, you eventually get the hang of this) and then open the microwave, pick up the potato in my oven mitted hand and squeeze it in the middle. If it gives easily, it’s done. If it’s still hard, it goes back for 1 minute at a time until it’s done. Same goes for sweet potatoes. If you really need the crunchy skin thing (I can take or leave potato skins - usually leave 'em), you can overcook them and then the skin will be quite tasty but the inside does get a little harder.
From the size of your shopping list, you’re looking like you suffer from my problem (‘oh - look at that yummy cauliflower/broccoli/bunch of carrots/etc - I must buy’) and end up with more food than you can realistically eat before it all goes bad.
I’d watch out for the chicken. It’s been my experience lately that chicken is dated too optimistically and goes bad before its sell by date. The hummus should be fine until its date and a little beyond (also a delicious addition to baked potatoes, BTW).
Put the stems of the cilantro in a glass of water and store it in your fridge upright with the plastic over the leaves to keep it fresher longer.
You can always make up a soup or stew of your flagging veggies and freeze it. I’d also freeze the ground beef (unless is was frozen before) or else cook it up and freeze it. I’ve frozen beef for Mexi dishes like chili by cooking it with all the spices, etc. and then stashing it in the freezer in ziplocks.
You can also make a pot of spaghetti sauce with some of the beef and freeze that. I just played with ingredients until I came up with a sauce I love. It involves tinned tomato sauce, tinned stewed tomatoes, garlic, onions, paprika, sometimes oregano (though I’m not all that wild about it in Italian cooking - prefer it in Greek) and my secret ingredient - Worcestershire sauce! You could also toss in some chopped mushrooms and a cup or so of red wine while it cooks. Takes about 45 minutes all told and is yummy (in fact now I’ve made myself hungry for some LOL). Oh and a lot of people like tomato paste in their spaghetti sauce but using one tablespoon of a tin of tomato paste drives me nuts. I suppose you can freeze the rest in one-tablespoon globs but I never do.
Another delicious addition to your baked (nuked) potato is a nice pile of sautéed mushrooms. I like potatoes (can you tell?) - they have the highest score on the Satiety Index and offer nutrients at the cost of not many calories. I think one reason I don’t have weight problems is that I have potatoes as part of dinner fairly often. When I’m home and starved after work, I nuke a potato and two or three veggies and have all with a bit o’ protein (usually cheese or eggs) and whole-grain bread and I’m sated in very short time. But I digress.
When it comes to reheating most stuff, I find the microwave is less likely to dry the food out and change its flavour. Try 1 minute at power level 9 for starters for a small dish of food (always use a covered dish) and increase by increments of 1 minute. Stir the stuff after the first couple of minutes. Again, you’ll eventually develop a feel for how long things will take. I also usually use the microwave to cook veggies. I’ll put some cut-up carrots and broccoli in a small casserole (I have a set of small (2-4 cup) lidded casseroles that are invaluable for this) and nuke them 2 1/2 - 3 minutes. I’ll put at most a couple of teaspoons of water in - no more is required. The veggies come out sweet and brightly-coloured and deeelicious.
When you nuke potatoes, wrapping them tight in clear food wrap makes for a more even and less dry potato (it actually steams itself). They now sell them pre-wrapped in a special wrapping for that :rolleyes:
Dry? Mine never turn out dry and I don’t wrap them. I think the trick is to get to know exactly how long each type and size of potato takes. I’m very much against using plastics in the microwave - I don’t like the idea of evidence that
even from supposedly microwave-safe plastics.
I don’t want to let this thread die without thanking Quiddity Glomfuster, Sapo, Adoptamom_II, Book Monster and Lemur866 for your most recent posts. Every post in this thread has been and will be helpful to me.
Season the pan or the chicken? I assume chicken, but since cast iron pans are
“seasoned” I thought I’d better ask. Season it (the chicken) with what? What’s a base line for “a little while”? (2 minutes-ish? 20-minutes-ish?) How long approx. to wait before poking it?
That sounds good (and easy), and I want to try it in the future, but those questions were nagging at me, so I ended up making the chicken leg quarters I had with, oh god this is embarrassing, Shake’n’Bake, which I had sitting in the cabinet. I made them both at the same time because I was worried about the Sell-by date. The SnB had a specific cook time, 45 minutes, though I think they could have cooked a bit longer. The 2nd one sits in the fridge waiting to be re-heated. I’m not even sure how to re-heat it but I’ll try it in the microwave.
The Shake’n’Bake was “New! Improved!” crunchy texture which I loved. Does anyone have any tips to get that crunchy texture without Shake’n’Bake? I do love Popeyes chicken and that’s mainly for the crunchy, but not hard, skin, and the juicy chicken inside. The SnB chicken wasn’t overly juicy (too bad) but it wasn’t dry either. It was pretty good.
I made the sausages using Snowcarpet’s method. I filled a straight-sided skillet with water and got the water to a boil, then put the sausages in (they bobbed a bit). I cooked them for 10 minutes, then I turned the sausages over and cooked them for 10 more minutes. Then I drained out all the water, put in a bit of oil, and cooked them for 10 minutes, then turned them over and cooked for an additional 10 minutes. After all that, I bit into one with glee, thinking I would soon be in sausage heaven. BLAH! My god they were nasty! I don’t think it was my cooking method, I just think that I do not like Macedonian Greek sausage specifically. I ate two of the three because I felt so guilty about spending money on them (I think the 3 were $2.75) but I didn’t even want to freeze the 3rd one to eat later. Yuk. I’ll try again with Italian sausage. Snowcarpet, what uncooked sausages do you buy and eat? I’ve got packages of “Brown’n’Serve” in the freezer, but I know I can do better and probably with much less sodium.
Thanks for all the tips about baked potatos. As I was looking in a cook book for something else, I found a great tip, combining microwave and oven. You put the washed potato in the microwave for 4 minutes (6 minutes for two), then into a 400 degree oven for 15 minutes. It combines the speed of microwave cooking with the advantages that only an oven can give. I tried it and YES, oh Yes indeed, was it good! That’s going to be my perfect world way to cook baked potatos from now on. I had large white potatos and they came out perfectly. I’m not sure how other types of potatos would come out.
I’m going to heat up the other chicken, and I think I’ll take Quiddity’s suggestion of sauteing mushrooms to go on the baked potato. Sounds good.
Thanks again for all the tips, you’ve been most helpful. I’ll revive this thread next time I buy something else out of the ordinary or if I have a specific question.
Oh, wait, I do have a question. I still have 2 corn on the cobs, in their husks. Any tips for cooking them?
Easy. Rip all husks (and silk) off corn. If there’s still a stem, cut it off 'til there’s just a bit left (otherwise it’ll be hard to stick the corn holders in). Boil a pot of water (you need a lot of water, not the 1" in the bottom some people recommend for boiling vegies - you want them to float freely). Toss in a pinch of sugar. When the water’s boiling, pop the corn in and once the water is boiling again, leave it in for about 3 minutes. Even if you’re not ready to eat it right away, take it out promptly so it won’t overcook. As it cooks, the sugars turn to starch and the corn becomes less tasty so that’s why such a short cooking time is recommended.