Cooking Experiments

-Mad scientist laugh-

Who here likes to play around in the kitchen, trying weird things to see if you can make them work?

I seem to have an intuitive cooking-sense. I learned some cooking from my mother when I was a kid, from Foods Class in high school, and by watching cooking shows on occasion. Alton Brown is great because he explains the science behind why things work in the kitchen, and I really grasp that. As in, "fat works this way" and "cold and heat have these effects on this substance" is something I can carry beyond a straight-line recipe and apply to other things. And then, there's a lot of trial and error.

If you live alone for a while and have to cook for yourself because groceries are cheaper than takeout and/or you live in Podunk Mc Nowhere, you can learn pretty quick. Scrap-stirfries and the like. The same if you live with someone and you're both poor and need to make do with teaching yourself how to tenderize cheap meat and such.

And, that is why I can taste something and kind of pick out and figure out what's in it and try it myself.

I am currently eating homemade ramen. Not packet-soup like I grew up on, but scratch-soup. Last month, I tried -real- ramen for the first time, from Nom Nom Ramen in Philadelphia. I wrote down the things I saw in it and analyzed the broth from taste. Their website/menu says they boil pork bones for 24 hours. IT IS GLORIOUS!

I decided to try to replicate that, just a little, in regard to a leftover roast chicken carcass we had on hand (one of those quick-meal things picked up from the grocery store we had last week). I've made soup out of poultry carcasses before, remembering how my mom used to do it, and a little bit on the art from Alton. I make turkey-stock every year after Thanksgiving. However, I seem to be the only one who uses it because the man of the house does not like soup unless it's chowder. Anyway, instead of putting rosemary and stuff I usually put into poultry soup when rendering a carcass, I just used onions, garlic, red pepper, black peppercorns and a few mushrooms that I'd gotten for last night's cheap-beef dinner. Rendered it down in the big pot with water for about 7-8 hours, strained it, reduced it a little further...

... and today's lunch? A brick of ramen from one of those ramen packets (from which I'd scavenged the flavoring when I was out of beef boullion, so I just had this brick of noodles), the broth, some black fungus I'd picked up at the local Asian market for stir fries, bits of chicken I'd stripped off the carcass earlier, a little soy sauce, soft-boil and egg...

and it's.... ramen! Not as good as Nom Nom's because they use robust mammal bones instead of leftover chicken that's about to go bad... but, hey.... experiment was a success!

And I do crap like that all the time. Braised steak out of cheap beef, fried potato experiments, even adding things to cookies when I bake (How would cocoa powder be in these sugar cookies?) Experimenting with spices for pork chops... Making my own fajita spice mix.

Sometimes, the experiment fails, and I realize "Crap! Too hot! Too much salt!" but most of the time, I think I'm a pretty damn good cook.

And it's not even fun for me unless I'm experimenting, either. Much more fun than those things where I follow the directions.

I like making mashed potatoes. WEIRD spices.

I tried throwing a bunch of canned vegetables, chicken broth, leftover bratwurst, and a ton of spices in a pot once to make some soup. It was goooooood. Yes, I wrote down the recipe.

Most of those sound pretty great, and I love Alton Brown too.

The only real 'experiment' I've ever tried in the kitchen, though, is seeing just how undercooked meat can be without killing me. I've been lucky so far, especially since I make myself a steak almost every weekend. I like it with a just barely seared outside and red throughout.

Cooking experiments are part of life for every new member of Britain's Army Cadet Force, when they find out how to cook meals from army Ration Packs. A lot of the kids who join up in that organization, and the ones with a naval or airforce flavour, have never cooked anything for themselves before.

My best one was an Arctic ration pack meal I made in a mess tin (sort of topless metal box with a folding handle that you can both cook food in and eat out of and is a bitch to clean) that had chicken curry, nuts, mixed vegetables, raisins, oatflakes and some other stuff. Quite palatable.

I FRICKING LOVE USING FOOD COLOURING FOR EVERYTHING

but no one would eat my blue cake

Which meant more for me

Cake is good.

Blue cake sounds awesome.

I remember when I was a kid, I had the goal to make the ultimate juice drink. Into the blender went several different juice drinks I had on hand (a few Kool-Aids, some other different brand stuff), pineapple juice, a few whole fruits I'm sure...anyway, I blended it all up and tried it.

The Ultimate Result: The most disgusting thing I have ever tasted!

Currently I'm trying various muffin recipes and hoping to get at least one of them to work.

I am no baker, really :(

The additional problem is that, when cooking at home, I often try to use "healthy" substitutes (applesauce, almond meal, various sweeteners instead of sugar etc) without understanding how exactly they work and how the original was supposed to work.

I like to bake with recipes I find online whenever I have the urge to.

The last recipe I used was this one for my school's book club's Halloween party. They were fucking delicious.