The Kitchen: all things delicious and disastrous

Karoo lamb pie can be done with mutton or goat. Also lamb and apricot sosaties work with goat and can marinate forever, if you need to get the meat nicely tenderised. Related: any tika marinade you can use will do wonders, be the meat used for kebabs or curry.

Also, look up Caribean recipes for goat. Get your jerk on!

Caribbean Goat sounds amusing and tasty. Apparently you can somewhat treat it like beef though they suggest marinating it to tenderize the meat.

My three favourite kitchen devices are my toaster oven, my rice cooker, and my slow cooker.

edited 5th Sep '17 11:52:04 PM by TuefelHundenIV

It's surprisingly difficult to find a franks-and-beans recipe that will actually work with plain old non-baked, non-fried canned red beans. Made a decent attempt tonight with ketchup, barbecue sauce, worcestershire, and bourbon, but it came out a little scorched and nowhere near the consistency I was looking for. Any suggestions?

If it's canned beans, the scorching only means the heat was waaay too high. Franks don't need a lot of cooking either.

Needs more liquid maybe too, to make it all sauce up. I'd try adding some stock by 1/3 cupfuls until you reach a good consistency. So, franks first, cut up, into a pot. Then onions chopped. Brown it all together, turn heat to medium low and then add canned beans (drained) ketchup and worcestershire sauce and whatever else. Salt as necessary, and begin adding stock and stirring util it all simmers together. little bit of stock at a time, 1/3 cupful at the most. let it all bubble, then enjoy.

Seconding the too much heat and also possibly not enough liquid in the mix. I kept burning my brown sauces because I had the heat up too much. My white sauces because of too little liquid at first.

edited 26th Sep '17 4:31:46 PM by TuefelHundenIV

I'm thinking about making slow-cooker chili with macaroni. Should I add some extra water for the pasta to soak up, or should it be okay as is?

I would honestly cook the macaroni separately and add at the end. Noodles in slow cooker don't usually work out, and macaroni only takes ten minutes.

Tonight seems to highlight another successful experiment. Using some bamboo steam baskets I cooked a batch of oven ready biscuits. Not only did they turn out but they passed interiors cooked test. They smelled pretty good towards the end. It changed the texture of the biscuits exterior but they seem somehow lighter and fluffier than if I had oven baked them.

This opens up future opportunities now that I know I can use this method to cook biscuit dough.

ooh interesting!

I bet you could make some cool stuff using dough and veggies or meat, like little dumpling pockets.

Ori: I got the idea from suggestions on making easy meat buns and even sweet bean paste buns. This was me testing the feasibility of it before I committed to any experiment. I am going to try making meat buns tonight.

edited 3rd Oct '17 4:03:07 PM by TuefelHundenIV

-researching bamboo steamer baskets- intriiiiguing

I foresee dumplings in your fuuuture. *wiggle fingers*

edited 4th Oct '17 2:45:13 AM by Euodiachloris

In general the buns were a success. I made a gravy like sauce out of remaining broth to dribble on the buns. The contents were pork, peas, and chopped broccoli. Mushed that mix together and rolled them in biscuits.

The process obviously needs some refining as in better stuffing mixes, different sauces, and better bun creation but in general it works.

I feel like with some cabbage, a touch of ginger paste and some soy sauce and things, maybe some pork you could make some really good spring buns.

My biggest hurdle was fitting enough into the bun to make it worth it. I think I need to break out the rolling pin next time to properly flatten the biscuits. My missus thought they were good but wanted a different sauce. So my next go will work at making the dough spread out enough to engulf a proper spoonful of stuff. Sauce is an easy fix as I can just make my Stir Fryish brown sauce with a little thickening into a dipping sauce.

I think the next contents will include some garlic, another chopped meat, and at least one other veggie of some sort minced up for proper stuffing.

Go fusion some time: curry bunnies with mango, brinjal (eggplant) or lime chutney.

I keep getting this image/taste in my mind of a grilled cheese sandwich with macaroni inside, but "cook pasta, then make grilled sandwich" is more work than I would really ever put in for dinner.

Also at the moment, the craving includes chili sauce mixed in with the cheese.

Something more in my reach: tonight I sprinkled some shreded cheddar between the budget cheese-reminiscent sandwich slices in one of my grilled cheese sandwiches, and I was surprised just how much cheesier the result was.

And I still miss the sandwiches I'd order on campus. Grilled ham and cheese with mozarella, provolone, bacon, and mushrooms. Cost one and a half times my whole meal plan lunch allowance, but damn that was good stuff.

edited 22nd Oct '17 8:26:38 PM by TParadox

Those do sound tasty.

My latest stuffed bun experiment kind of flopped and turned into adhoc pizza instead. I made up a stuffing mix of beef cooked in broth with a little left in, spinach, and cream cheese blended in. The idea was to create a large roll with a nice tasty interior. Well the biscuit dough didn't want to keep coherent with the warm mix after being rolled out so I wound up creating a sort of plate with raised edges and topping it with some shredded sharp cheddar. My wife liked it and liked the mix.

I think I need to try a different kind of dough. I am thinking maybe the kind of dough you use to make sour dough rolls would hold up better and be a little easier to make into pouches.

I really need to start keeping track of my recipes. Because I know that I know a ton, but every time I have to make food I'm like, "wait a second, what do I know how to cook?"

Eventually you will hit this really cool spot of knowledge where you know enough about everything to not really need a full-on recipe. You can just kinda throw stuff together and 85% of the time it's not garbage. (Unfortunately, my percentile went drastically down when I had kiddos but that's a whole other ball game)

I'm that way now, like I haven't used a written recipe in forever. But my problem is I'll throw something together, it'll taste great, but then I'll never write it down and forget it forever. And then when there's a night I just want to cook something I already know, my mind goes blank.

I always turn to recipes for cooking times. I do roasts so rarely that I can’t remember for the life of me how long per pound to cook something that isn’t a “low and slow for three hours” ordeal.

Oh that's true, Bur. I do have a hard time with meats and still have to look it up on occasion.

I am similar in that regard as well. I use recipes to reference what I need to do as well as a suggested ingredients list and what I need to do in a general sense.

In terms of 'remembering' recipes, if your phone has a notes app and you have a good feeling, start texting in notes.