I suffer from a folksy quickbread curse. Generally I’m dynamite at baking - people have told me I should go into business. I once made a perfect pumpkin cheesecake in my toaster oven. I’m also a pretty good all-around cook, and I love watching/reading stuff like Alton Brown and finding out what basic techniques are and why they work.
But no matter what I do, I can’t make good biscuits or Irish soda bread. My biscuits come out short and flat. Even when I follow Alton’s recipe and handle the dough like his arthritic grandmother did. And my soda bread comes out dry and crumbly for the outer few centimeters, and still raw in the middle. And all this holds true through buying new ingredients and even moving into a new house with different appliances. It’s just me. And it’s especially frustrating because I live in the south, and I’m Irish!
Anyway, another thumbs up for the CI Chicken Tikka recipe. It’s not quite the same as restaurant buffet stuff, but it is pretty damn good. And if you don’t want all the mess and trouble with the sauce, doing the chicken in the marinade/spice rub, then grilling it, produces a wonderful entree all by itself.
Bread dumplings. My grandma (German/Czech) used to make the best ones: light, soft, soaked up gravy and went fantastic with pork roast and sauerkraut. Mine are always dense, thick and you could use them as corks. Ugh. I’ve tried her recipe a thousand times and just can’t get it right. But neither can my mother so I figure that if she couldn’t get it right after years of helping her mother, there is no way in hell I can do it.
Same for her kolachke recipe. Her dough was light. Mine has the consistency of Play-Doh.
This….pains me to admit, but I cannot make steak like I get at a steakhouse. I’ve gotten better meat, I’ve worked on my charcoal technique, I’ve broiled, I’ve pan seared, I’ve done all that I can figure, but my steak is always……not right. Still I get the urge at the store to grab a couple of steaks and say “Yeah, let’s go home, fire up the grill, and ruin these suckers.”
I’m a good baker: I can make scads of different kinds of cookies and brownies, I’ve managed pie on more than one occasion but cake just. doesn’t. work. It always comes out too dry and bready.
And 9 times out of 10 it falls apart when I try and get it out of the pan, no matter how carefully I grease and flour it, or long I let it cool.
I am a huge rice eater as I grew up eating rice with every meal yet I cannot seem to get it right. It is always too mushy for my personal tastes. My mom and dad can both cook rice that has individual and distinct grains. Mine just ends up splitting or being too sticky.
My issue with vegetables is very different. If I cook it on top of the stove, there is no problem. If I make it in the microwave, it tastes awful. Some say that it is the microwave, but I know better. My mom pops veggies in the microwave to save time and they come out tasting better than my stove top treats. Its ridiculous.
I have nothing original to add, but I share your pain on the hash brown and Indian food fronts. Actually, most of my attempts at Thai food are pretty bad, as well. Since I live in the middle of Thai and Indian communities, I just don’t bother. I can get much better food than mine for about the same I’d spend on black mustard seeds and kefir leaves and all the assorted exotic ingredients.
But hash browns and their close cousins, latkes - what the heck am I doing wrong? I’ve tried low heat and medium heat and high heat, cast iron and stainless steel and nonstick, fresh potatoes, frozen potatoes, par-boiled potatoes, raw potatoes, rinsed potatoes, soaked potatoes, russets, reds and golds…and nothing gets it right. 15 year old slingers in diners across the country can make better hash browns than I can, and I’m generally a pretty good cook! :mad:
I used to make crappy hash browns, until I just changed one thing.
Use a lot of oil. A lot of oil, almost as if you were making French fries. When I first tried making them, I was being all healthy and low-fat and only filmed the bottom of the skillet with oil. Once I used more oil, the HBs were much better. Don’t pack them together too tight, and don’t grate them too fine. I use a cheapo Japanese mandolin thingy and shred them into long fine matchsticks. Then I squeeze out excess liquid from the taters in a paper towel and plop them into the hot oil without ceremony. Flip them once to cook the other side. They’ll get a bit crisp and over-browned around the edges, but I think that this is the best part. Too much salt, of course, completes the perfection.
Mrs. Nott struggled for years with this one. Two secrets: Use a cast-iron skillet, with enough oil. Cook the potatoes first, then turn up the heat to brown them.
You can waste a lot of meat trying to master that stuff about poking the steak to see how firm it is. I never got the hang of that. Get a digital thermometer with a probe on the end of a wire. (Taylor Tru-Temp is an excellent timer/thermometer.) Stick the probe in at a 45-degree angle, trying to end up with the point right in the middle of the thickest part. If one steak is thicker, put the probe in the thinner one. Set the temp alarm 8 or 10 degrees lower than the temp you want to end with. The steak will continue to cook after you take it off the fire.
Those thermometer/fork things look like a good idea until you burn your knuckles waiting for the temp to come up.
Try this thread. Beef stew is not difficult once you get the basics down. I think browning the meat properly (DO NOT overcrowd the pan, for one) helps exponentially in the flavor development department.
As for me, I’ve always been very hit or miss with pan fried chicken.
I’ll add that the quality of meat is a BIG factor in good steak. You have crappy cheap meat from the local grocery, and no matter what you do, you won’t have a good, proper steak. All I do is salt & pepper the steak, sear it over the hottest part of the grill, and then let it cook up to medium rare on the other side of the grill. Another technique that works great is searing it in a cast-iron skillet, and finishing it off in the oven.
Oh, they come out okay. Just not GREAT. And I’ve tried tons of recipes and mixes, and all of that. And it’s not the equipment. Other people have made great pancakes using my stove and griddle. I guess I just don’t have the knack.
Like others in this thread have said, I’m a good cook otherwise.
I have to warn you that while this technique works absolutely wonderfully, you will produce LARGE volumes of smoke in your kitchen, which can be especially deadly if you use a lot of pepper (au poivre). Ventilate well or do it outside, lest your smoke detectors get a workout. I tear-gassed my parents inadvertently one holiday before I learned this.
I cannot cook sweet potato fries. They alway come out mushy inside. Sometimes perfect outside, crispy outside, but always, always mushy inside.
If this thread had popped up a few months ago, I would have said white rice (actually any non-risotto rice). I am proud to inform that my wife has now given me her official seal of approval (worth a lot from a Puerto Rican!) and now lets me do rice for visits.
Other than that, I would have to say egg rolls. My stuffings are all over the place from blah to nasty.
I’m a decent cook, but I can’t master french toast. It always comes out with a soggy, raw-egg middle or else I cook it so long it turns to leather. I’ve tried every heat setting, using a griddle, an electric skillet, a cast iron pan, a good non-stick pan - nothing helps. If I feel a craving for it now, I just visit the folks and have my dad make some.
Ogre, I’m right there with you on the bacon. Fortunately, I found a very simple solution - I stopped eating meat.
Look at Alton Brown’s coleslaw method, it works wonders. Like you, I suffered for years from mediocre slaw, but Alton’s technique is wonderful.
As to the refrieds, just use lard and about twice the minced onion you’d think appropriate and they’ll come out nice. For mine, I usually do pintos overnight in the slow cooker with cilantro stems, cumin and salt, then mince 2 yellow onions fine, sweat in 3tbsp of lard or chicken fat, then add the beans and their liquid. A potato masher is your friend here, then cook down for about ten minutes, turn off the heat, cover and let sit.
Too high heat. Try this: put the bacon in a COLD pan, then turn on the heat to medium. You will get much better results that way.
Bacon is the exact opposite of other meats. Other meats you want to sear with high heat. Bacon start with no heat, and work up to medium heat. You will wind up with strips of bacon that taste meaty, and do not shrivel up into little bacon cinders.
