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I like Brie instead of milk if I'm making box Mac.
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# ? Oct 10, 2014 04:24 |
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# ? Apr 27, 2024 20:44 |
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Probably cooking on Saturday for the first time in a year, we'll see soon if I'm posting in this thread.
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# ? Oct 10, 2014 04:37 |
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I have a bag of dried milk I use for things like Kraft Dinner - I keep butter around but I don't drink milk - I assume the expiration date is forever and let's face it the milk isn't doing the heavy lifting here.
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# ? Oct 10, 2014 04:42 |
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If it's just Kraft (which is honestly pretty poo poo to begin with) you may as well just use water instead of milk if you lack milk. Toss a little extra butter or Olive Oil in there adn you're good to go. Let's face it, if you're eating powdered cheese additive mac & cheese, it's not to get a legitimate Mac & Cheese experience. It's so you can punish yourself and eat away your loneliness.
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# ? Oct 10, 2014 05:22 |
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Cream cheese and chorizo instead of milk and butter. It is a waste of money, time and ingredients, but it sure is tasty
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# ? Oct 10, 2014 17:49 |
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Drifter posted:If it's just Kraft (which is honestly pretty poo poo to begin with) you may as well just use water instead of milk if you lack milk. Toss a little extra butter or Olive Oil in there adn you're good to go. Annie's (the brand) is actually pretty great.
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# ? Oct 10, 2014 19:37 |
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Not Mac-N-Cheese related, but I remembered another kitchen fuckup! I spent the summer of 2009 doing ecology and soil science fieldwork in a valley on Ellesmere Island in the Canadian High Arctic next to Alexandra Fjord, at about 79 degrees North latitude. For a week a coworker and I were working on top of the nearest mountain, The Dome, eating canned food and generally living rough. We were helicoptered back down to the valley after about 8 days, and the other people at the "research station" there (a few old but sturdy buildings dating from 1953, no electricity, running water is the river 300 metres away) were spending some time in another valley. So we had the run of the place, and in comparison to the endless canned blandness of The Dome, Alex Lowland had such unimaginable luxuries as "walls" and a freezer (we ate bacon that day. It was amazing). Plus a shower, but that's another story. My coworker went to bed around 9:00pm, but I was hungry and decided to make some Welsh rarebit (i.e. cheese-on-toast). The cooker in the main building was also from the 1950s, and was a big white-enamel propane-driven thing with three separate chambers below a set of 4 burners. The other people had swapped out the propane tank before they left, and had re-lit the pilot light for the stovetop. I turned on the main oven and put some bread in the toaster tray below it - the burner at the bottom of the main oven is directly above this tray, which makes for a decent direct-flame toaster. Normally the toaster is pretty tricky, it will do no damage to your bread for long enough for you to get distracted, then burn it to a crisp in seconds. I was constantly checking my bread, but it wasn't even warm after a few minutes. Hmmm.... what's wrong? I realized the pilot light for the oven had not been lit, there were two separate lights on this old cooker and after swapping the propane tank the other crew hadn't used the oven or toaster so hadn't bothered to re-light the oven. I grabbed the long-necked BBQ lighter and went in through the little round hole for that purpose. Just as a part of my brain woke up to what was happening... Ultimate Mango posted:
My next memory is me standing in the middle of the kitchen and deciding to check to see if I was on fire. A quick check, no flames on me, no flames around the room, I'm not deaf (or dead)... take stock. Years worth of inaccessible crumbs and crud from under the back of the oven were blasted around the floor, the shockwave had knocked a bunch of knick-knacks off of the window ledge opposite the oven (about 15 feet away), and most of the flaking paint on the walls was now flakes on the floor. Also I was missing all of my arm hair, but my beard was not on fire and my eyebrows were intact. The good news was the oven was now lit, and I could toast my bread. Victory! The next day, my coworker told me she heard and felt the explosion through the ground in her tent, about 100 feet away, but had assumed it was part of the movie she was half-watching on her laptop.
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# ? Oct 10, 2014 22:59 |
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The secret ingredient is garlic salt to make blue box Mac and cheese into something not... Terrible. I will admit after a lovely day there nothing like a box of lovely orange noodles and s few hot dogs sliced and pan fried with some mustard on the side.
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# ? Oct 14, 2014 07:51 |
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Hell, try mixing the mustard in. Turmeric (the primary flavoring in mustard besides vinegar) enhances the flavor of cheese, makes it more intense. Might make it taste a little more like real food.....
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# ? Oct 14, 2014 17:52 |
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Astrofig posted:Hell, try mixing the mustard in. Turmeric (the primary flavoring in mustard besides vinegar) enhances the flavor of cheese, makes it more intense. Might make it taste a little more like real food..... Turmeric is used in mustard as a colouring. The primary flavouring for mustard is mustard. Vinegar is used to temper its spiciness, not necessarily as a flavouring (though it is part of the Dijon taste). However, you should mix mustard into cheese sauces. It's a classic combo for a reason.
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# ? Oct 14, 2014 19:09 |
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Astrofig posted:Hell, try mixing the mustard in. Turmeric (the primary flavoring in mustard besides vinegar) enhances the flavor of cheese, makes it more intense. Might make it taste a little more like real food..... Oh I do the classic mustard powder and hot sauce when making real Mac and cheese, but if I'm going blue box for comfort, I'm looking for a specific flavor profile.
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# ? Oct 14, 2014 19:21 |
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ColHannibal posted:Oh I do the classic mustard powder and hot sauce when making real Mac and cheese, but if I'm going blue box for comfort, I'm looking for a specific flavor profile. Yup....if I am going to break down and have it, then I am having a REALLY bad day. It has to be blue box (never ever any other kind) with Oscar Meyer hotdogs (the cheapy kind with lips etc) cut up and tossed in the mix. So awful for you but for me, sometimes I just need that comfort feeling. My husband just looks at me with a look of disgust when I do this but, sometimes every once in a while you need that crappy food from your childhood, like chicken nuggets etc.
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# ? Oct 14, 2014 19:30 |
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Disco Salmon posted:Yup....if I am going to break down and have it, then I am having a REALLY bad day. It has to be blue box (never ever any other kind) with Oscar Meyer hotdogs (the cheapy kind with lips etc) cut up and tossed in the mix. So awful for you but for me, sometimes I just need that comfort feeling. My husband just looks at me with a look of disgust when I do this but, sometimes every once in a while you need that crappy food from your childhood, like chicken nuggets etc. My comfort food is almost exactly the same, but I use andouille sausage that I briefly fry (or sometimes, if I'm EXTRA lazy, microwave) slices of instead of hot dogs, and I pour a shitload of red pepper flakes over it. The most comforting of comfort food.
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# ? Oct 14, 2014 20:14 |
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Wow, you guys put way too much effort into your bad-day comfort food. Two rules: it has to be something you can eat one-handed, ideally over the sink with either a spoon or just your fingers, and it has to be in a container spelled with three (and only three) letters: BOX, TUB, JAR, JUG, CAN, POT, CUP, MUG. Open 'fridge, move half-rotten whatever out of the way, grab FOOD, eat, cry. That's how you do bad-day comfort food.
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# ? Oct 15, 2014 00:06 |
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For me, bad day comfort food is a high-effort fancy as gently caress meal that I don't share with anyone at all. If I am feeling particularly beaten down, I take alluring photos of it and text them to people who aren't around so they know what they're missing.
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# ? Oct 15, 2014 01:45 |
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bringmyfishback posted:Speaking of vanilla, I make a cheapass version of an Italian soda by dropping some liquid vanilla stevia in plain soda water. The first time I tried, I gave the bottle three hard squeezes. This is not recommended. Always put the flavor in last, and slowly. My favorite silly flavor is Mint Soda. That and a glass of cold-pressed cherry juice cures hangovers and tummyaches! BTW, Do not make cherry juice soda, it explodes and stains. The only way i've seen a cherry soda done right is a Cherry Phosphate, the domain of super antique soda fountains. I found one in a quilt shop once, it was amazing. Oh, Cheerwine's supposed to be Cherry flavored, but I find that really overpowering and oversugary, which is a pity. Do not mix mint and cherry, it tastes weird. Suspect Bucket fucked around with this message at 04:27 on Oct 15, 2014 |
# ? Oct 15, 2014 04:22 |
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My mind quits working whenever I buy those half-sticks of butter. Went to make cookies, they turned into big oily puddles in the oven. Thinking back, I put in 6 half-sticks. THATS THREE STICKS OF BUTTAH gently caress me. I wanted 1-1/2 sticks of butter. I can't think right when I use those dumb things.
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# ? Oct 15, 2014 18:19 |
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"I'll make drop biscuits for breakfast! I'm sure this gluten-free flour will be fine!"
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# ? Oct 22, 2014 22:40 |
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Runcible Spoon posted:"I'll make drop biscuits for breakfast! I'm sure this gluten-free flour will be fine!" Just add some baking powder, you'll be fine!
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# ? Oct 22, 2014 22:56 |
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Runcible Spoon posted:"I'll make drop biscuits for breakfast! I'm sure this gluten-free flour will be fine!" How many egg whites and how much isocyanate did you use? I find that 3 and 1 mg respectively are needed to make one biscuit relatively fluffy. No, seriously, joking aside. Half of my family is Coeliac and we can't make decent bread for poo poo anymore. It either doesn't rise at all, flows out of the pan to make a brown rice/sorghum/potato starch corium hell in the oven and/or tastes like moldy cardboard.
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# ? Oct 22, 2014 23:53 |
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Missing Name posted:No, seriously, joking aside. Half of my family is Coeliac and we can't make decent bread for poo poo anymore. It either doesn't rise at all, flows out of the pan to make a brown rice/sorghum/potato starch corium hell in the oven and/or tastes like moldy cardboard. These turned out to taste like shortbread cookies without the sugar, fat, or appeal. Surprisingly enough, however, this made them very tasty when smeared with jam. Considering that I was able to salvage the seizure eggs before into a passable Japanese meal, I'm wondering if this means that I have good or bad luck with cooking overall.
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# ? Oct 23, 2014 03:20 |
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Missing Name posted:How many egg whites and how much isocyanate did you use? I find that 3 and 1 mg respectively are needed to make one biscuit relatively fluffy. I've had good results with liberal application of xanthan gum - for gluten-free values of good, ofc. Also, try soft pretzels; something about the compact eggs dough worked out strangely well.
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# ? Oct 23, 2014 10:26 |
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Was doing a seven bag mix of whole wheat at work; I set the water to 175 and turned it on. I let myself get overly distracted by the smaller sourdough mix I'm making. By the time I pay attention to the main mixer again, it's at 160lbs... except that it had actually done a lap around the dial, because it's been broken for two years and can no longer stop, because the owner is a cheapskate. I ended up with ~670lbs. of water. Can you say, "Cream of whole wheat with shortening lumps"? gently caress me. Should never have taken my eyes off of it. Mister Facetious fucked around with this message at 03:48 on Jan 10, 2015 |
# ? Jan 10, 2015 03:46 |
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Mister Macys posted:
Sounds like the making of a lovely gruel. edit: I was looking up the history of gruel, and stumbled on this lovely website http://cookit.e2bn.org/historycookbook/121-gruel.html A bunch of fun old historic recepies. Libum from ye roman times looks super gooood. And there are podcasts! Suspect Bucket fucked around with this message at 05:07 on Jan 10, 2015 |
# ? Jan 10, 2015 04:59 |
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Even thinner than that. I'm thinking Campbell's "Cream of" soup, rather than actual cream of wheat.
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# ? Jan 10, 2015 05:47 |
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Cream of starch.
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# ? Jan 10, 2015 06:36 |
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Apparently cheap grocery chicken contains that much water it turned my creamy chicken korma into watered-down chicken korma soup with tasteless pieces of chicken thigh.
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# ? Jan 10, 2015 17:13 |
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I had some eggs to use up so I tried making lemon curd for the first time last night. Everything seemed to look and taste good, but when I looked at it this morning, I had lemon soup with a quarter inch of softened butter floating on top of it. Not sure what I did wrong. Maybe I didn't get the curd hot enough on the double boiler, so maybe I'll try heating it up again to see if that works before tossing it.
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# ? Jan 23, 2015 14:35 |
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Lemon curd is an emulsion, and if you don't do it right it breaks and the fat and the water separates. You need to temper the eggs into the curd. Heat up the lemon-sugar-butter mix and add a spoon or so of the hot mix to the eggs and blend. Then carefully add the eggs to the hot mix, stirring and watching for breaking. You want to cook lemon curd slowly, or you will get scrambled eggs, butter mess and lemon sludge.
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# ? Jan 23, 2015 15:00 |
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I used a method that heated the eggs, sugar and lemon over a double boiler to slowly bring it to temperature/thicken it, so I don't think egg-tempering was the issue. Maybe I just didn't whisk it enough/fast enough.
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# ? Jan 23, 2015 15:51 |
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That isn't tempering. An egg/butter/water emulsion breaks easily, and by heating everything together you barely gave it a chance to form.
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# ? Jan 23, 2015 20:32 |
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I suck at cooking. 1. Drunk and hungry, had frozen shrimp. Take bag out and place in a bowl and try to microwave it. About two minutes later lots of smoke, a ruined bowl, and a smell that took six months to get rid of. 2. Made a roast, left it in the crock pot while I was at work, came home and went straight to bed. Wake up a few hours later to a dry crockpot with a burnt piece of meat. 3. Trying to make girlfriend a birthday cake. Doing ok until I need to add salt. Tea spoon, table spoon same thing right? She takes a bite, spits it back out. Very salty cake.
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# ? Jan 25, 2015 01:33 |
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I was working in this kitchen once, really busy in the season. We used to make everything from fresh, every day, as we had literally no room for storage, and, gently caress, it's nicer that way. So every day I've got about four hours of prep to do in about three hours. Best hope service starts slow on your section or you are hosed. I'm making a standard-issue Tarte Au Citron. I've hosed up the pastry slightly, and it's cracking in the oven. Not much, but enough to gently caress it all up. So I take it out, and egg wash it generously, hoping that if I crank the oven up, it'll form a seal. I give it a few minutes, and take it out. It's looking good. So I pour the filling in, and put it back in the oven. It's leaking. I am now officially In The poo poo. I take it out, and pour the filling into a bowl, then throw the case back into the oven, hoping that for gently caress's sake, surely the lemony custard left on the pastry will now seal it, if given some heat. Science, right? I give it another few minutes in the oven, and then take it out and pour the filling back in. At this point, I am so far behind that service is completely hosed for me, and the chances of me having a break in my 14 hour day are minimal. I look at the tarte, and shock loving horror, it's still leaking. I go to pull it out of the oven, and, because I'm so angry, I catch my arm on the oven, burn myself, and tip half of the filling all over the bottom of the oven. So now I am A-Grade hosed. I now have to clean my oven, make pastry, rest pastry, blind-bake the case, make a new filling, and bake a tarte au citron in 40 minutes and I still have lots of other prep to do. I act like a complete idiot, rage out, and throw the case (still in the tin) into the K.P. section. As it flies, it spins hot lemon custard all over the head chef's section and mise en place, then explodes against the KP's wall, completely making GBS threads up the dish pit. I didn't get fired, thank gently caress.
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# ? Jan 31, 2015 23:44 |
I used to have a roommate that would throw whatever was at hand across the room whenever she'd get mad. Don't loving do this regularly, it's a great way to make everyone in your life hate you.
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# ? Feb 2, 2015 17:19 |
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Don't overcrowd your cookie sheet
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# ? Feb 14, 2015 04:57 |
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Once my roommate decided that she could substitute butter in chocolate chip cookies with olive oil. It came out of the oven as cookie... bark? Cookie bark with a weirdly umami flavor that was glued to the pan. I still ate it because cookies.
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# ? Feb 14, 2015 07:19 |
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Olive oil biscuits are a thing and can be delicious.
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# ? Feb 14, 2015 10:02 |
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Steve Yun posted:Don't overcrowd your cookie sheet A delicious board game.
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# ? Feb 14, 2015 17:01 |
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Steve Yun posted:
With some planning and some deft cutting just out of the oven, that could be kind of neat.
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# ? Feb 15, 2015 01:54 |
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# ? Apr 27, 2024 20:44 |
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Well I got a lot of hexagon cookies now if that's your thing
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# ? Feb 15, 2015 02:56 |