I’m going to make a pot roast this week for the first time.**
It got me to thinking, every person that calls himself a cook ought to know how to make a list of basic dishes without a recipe: spaghetti, chili, a roasted chicken, meatloaf , scrambled eggs, pancakes, beef and vegetable soup or chicken noodle soup. You should also know how to fry a hamburger, be able to make a basic Thanksgiving dinner (YMMV), and know how to make a roux & make a basic gravy. Some people would argue that you need to be able to make a loaf of bread (I can’t, although I can make a quick bread) biscuits & a cake from scratch. I dunno what else, a decent sandwich, maybe, and definitely a grilled cheese.
What other “basic” dishes should a cook worth his salt (pun intended:smack:) know how to make?
**I’m winging it, I have going to have thyme, rosemary ( both dried unfortunately) peppercorns, beef bullion Cabernet sauvignon , fresh garlic, onions carrots celery, potatoes, etc. I’ll let you know how it turns out
Whatever you like to eat. Doesn’t have to include pot roast if you’re not fond of pot roast.
If your specialities are paella, southern fried chicken, roast pork pot stickers, and cassoulet, and you make those really well, you better serve one of those if you invite me over.
They’re all basically the same. Butter mixed with sugar, add in the dry ingredients. It’s amazing how such a simple formula can make such a wide array of cookies.
Know how to make whipped cream. Whipping cream, sugar, vanilla or mint or whatever flavoring you like (I’ve used cinnamon for a tres leche cake. Yum.) You’ll never buy Cool Whip or Reddi-Whip again.
Bread really isn’t that hard, once you have a warm place to raise the dough. I’ve heard putting it in the oven with the light on is enough. I’ve had great success putting it out on the screened in patio.
My Pot Roast Recipe:
One beef roast
One packet Lipton Onion Soup Mix
Two cans Campbell’s Beef Mushroom or Golden Mushroom soup, undiluted.
Dump all into a crockpot and let it cook 6-8 hours. You will have a falling apart roast that makes its own gravy come dinnertime. If someone is at home, they can add carrots and potatoes to the crockpot the last hour of cooking.
Place a 7-bone roast, with the bone removed, into a roasting pan. Peel russet potatoes and wedge them. Peel and wedge an onion. Slice up a green bell pepper. Peel some carrots and cut them to about 2-inch lengths. Open a can of whole mushrooms and drain. (Remember, this is dad’s recipe. Convenience foods were a thing.) Arrange these vegetables around the meat, keeping them in their own ‘sections’. (I think this was to make it easier to serve the veg separately from each other.) Pour a packet of Lipton’s Onion Soup Mix evenly over the meat. Pour a can of condensed Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup over the meat. Cover with the lid and cook in the oven about 325º for a couple/few hours.
I’ve had better pot roast, without the packet and cans; but this one tastes like ‘home’ to me.
Omelettes!
If you really get cooking at home, you’ll have lots of leftover veggie bits in the fridge by Saturday morning.
Everyone should know how to make an omelette, not just because they’re good and popular, but because that’s where all those leftover veggies go. I have also heard talk of “leftover cheese” but like Nessie and Squatch, have never actually seen this thing.
Chop up whatever you’ve got and add it to the pan after your eggs are mostly cooked.
Sorry, I’m feeling under the weather, I guess I’m just hoping that this won’t turn out to be a: If you don’t have a good corn tortilla, flour tortilla, Navajo Taco AND Frybread recipe, or worse, you don’t even know the difference! You are dead to me, thread.
Nope, nothing like that… just found it odd that I consider myself a pretty good cook, and never made a pot roast before. Feel better, chacoguy… I’ll make you some soup!
Rice. On the stove. Sounds easy but I still mess it up sometimes.
A cooks’ cook should also have at least one signature dish - something they are known for in their sphere of influence and people might cancel other plans so they can to come eat it when it’s in the offing.
Sorry, I’m cranky; I’ve got strep throat and haven’t really eaten for a couple of days.
Ice Cream is what I’m really craving. I have no idea how to make that. Well, I do, but it involves a ball from REI and a beach along a river.
This is not helping.
Possibly the only trick that ever stuck with me from Good Eats is to put dough that needs to rise in the oven and on the rack underneath it place a pan filled with boiling water and close the door. Small warm moist environment that’s perfect for encouraging yeast to go nuts.
There’s no set of particular dishes a cook should know how to make, rather some set of techniques such as the difference between boiling and simmering, searing meat and vegetables in a pan or oven, roasting vs. braising, basic knife skills such as how to chop an onion, deglazing a pan and reducing a sauce.
There are a lot of these skills, which ones you need proficiency at will vary with the types and styles of food you prefer.
Also the oft discussed method of browning a duck, also known as the Mallard reaction.
That’s just superstition. The type of meat you’re using is mostly what determines how it will end up after a long cook, not whether you open the pot or not. I check my stews after two hours every fifteen to thirty minutes to judge doneness. It doesn’t dry out the meat, nor does a moist cooking environment ensure moist meat anymore than a dry cooking environment ensures dry meat.
