Gravy's Cooking Thread

Vitality · Jun 2, 2014

Uncle Gravy_sl said:
Hehe, yeah I have access. During season, though. All the farmer's markets here only allow produce grown within a 50 or 75 mile radius. So when they have tomatoes, I'll have tomatoes. They will obviously have them sooner than me, though, and I'm glad you said something, because it's time to start going.

In years we don't grow tomatoes, it's usually not a big deal though. We are in rural Missouri, and there are at least 4 farms within a three-mile drive that sell tomatoes roadside.

Yeah babe, I made a date out of it, good way to get some hand picked booty too.

As an infamous lurker on these boards randomly says to me in game, "Just gotta let it cook bro."

Gravel · Jun 2, 2014

Deathwing_sl said:
I would NOT recommend attempting your first batch from fresh tomatoes. Removing tomato skins will kill any motivation to see the sauce through properly. Use crushed canned tomatoes.

Vitality's recipe is a good base. You can go with that or modify it. My wife does practically the same thing, but adds tomato paste, red wine, and a bit of sugar.

Seriously. I think I did that once for Valentine's Day or something. It was miserable trying to get the skins off. Everything you read talks about how you can cut slits in the top and boil/ice bath em and "it's so easy to remove!" Bullshit. It's still a giant fucking pain in the ass.

Edit: Also, throw some pasta water into the sauce (not much, you don't want it to thin too much). The pasta starchiness makes it taste great. It's just another one of those things that tastes awesome made from scratch, but it's too much of a pain in the ass to be worth it.

Vitality · Jun 2, 2014

Get a good roast on it and it's pretty simple

The Master · Jun 2, 2014

Deathwing_sl said:
I would NOT recommend attempting your first batch from fresh tomatoes. Removing tomato skins will kill any motivation to see the sauce through properly. Use crushed canned tomatoes.

Vitality's recipe is a good base. You can go with that or modify it. My wife does practically the same thing, but adds tomato paste, red wine, and a bit of sugar.

Cut an X at the top, put in boiling water, remove, shock in ice, use the edges of the X to peel off. Hardly takes any time at all.

Tomatoes can't be picked ripe and still be sold at the store, they'll go bad. They are ripened with gas or left on the vine... but even that doesn't always result in great tomatoes. Canned tomatoes are picked ripe and then canned. I always used canned tomatoes when given a choice between "fresh" and canned. Unless you got them at a farmer's market or grew your own, you'll get better results. It doesn't help that large commercial farms grow for size and durability, flavor is not a factor. So usually you're better off not skinning them anyway, just buy canned and don't fuss.

Joeboo · Jun 2, 2014

Hell, just buy whatever good local Italian restaurant sells their sauce in your local grocery store. If you live in a city of any decent size, you have much better store-bought options than that Ragu/Prego shit.

If you really don't have any good local options, Newmans Own and the Emeril brand sauces are decent for widely available, store-bought sauce.

Deathwing · Jun 2, 2014

The Master_sl said:
Cut an X at the top, put in boiling water, remove, shock in ice, use the edges of the X to peel off. Hardly takes any time at all.

You've done that how many times? Like asking someone who's never diced an onion to make french onion soup.

lurkingdirk · Jun 2, 2014

Actually the peeling tomatoes with boiling water and shocking them is pretty easy. First time I did it, the skins shucked right off.

chaos · Jun 2, 2014

I have a confession to make: I never make my own sauce. I take canned shit and add a ton of herbs, spices, and garlic. I am shamed.

Silence_sl · Jun 2, 2014

chaos_sl said:
I have a confession to make: I never make my own sauce. I take canned shit and add a ton of herbs, spices, and garlic. I am shamed.

I made it a few times. Pretty much tastes like some jarred stuff. I just load the shit out of jarred tomato sauce with onions, garlic, zucchini, tomato, celery, carrot and some mushrooms sauteed in red wine vinegar and thyme.

Hard to beat.

lurkingdirk · Jun 2, 2014

Erronius · Jun 2, 2014

I didn't have time to make pepperoni rolls this weekend, so I just have dough in the fridge. I tried just throwing a pizza together without any real preplanning and it turned out damned good. Only issue I had was I don't think I let the stone heat up enough (bottom was crisp but white) and I forgot the motherfucking salt in the dough AGAIN. Only took a bite or two to notice, FML. No idea why I keep forgetting to add salt, that's like 3-4 batches of dough in a row.

Beer is for scale!

Gravy · Jun 2, 2014

Looks like the crust needs salt.

Hehe, nah that thing looks really good. BTW, your version of the Pepperoni roll needs to be on the front page too. Every time they get mentioned I get excited.

Also, looking over the first post recipes, I still haven't tried that Chicken Chipotle Chili, and it looks so good. Soon.

BrutulTM · Jun 2, 2014

Making sauce from fresh heirloom tomatoes is some retarded hipster shit. Basic marinara sauce is finally diced sauteed onion and garlic, add one can of tomatoes and one can of sauce, let it simmer for a bit, add some fresh basil and parsley, a little oregano if you want and simmer a bit longer. Taste it and add salt and pepper and maybe a tiny bit if sugar if you like.

Canned tomatoes are not the shitty orange things you get in the supermarket. They don't have to come through mechanical harvesting perfectly and get trucked around the country without getting bruised. They are harvested ripe and put in cans immediately. If you want to be fancy, buy the canned tomatoes from Italy, but don't fucking waste really good fresh tomatoes that someone went to the trouble of getting to you in one piece and make fucking sauce with them.

Erronius · Jun 2, 2014

Since my family canned tomatoes when I was a kid, I grew up thinking that for some odd reason storebought sauce (bizarrely enough) didn't have seeds in it but REAL canned tomatoes did. So when we'd make sauce for anything it would have some seeds in it but since I grew up with it I never gave a fuck.

When I moved to NY I got invited over to my roommate's grandparents house for dinner once. When we show up the grandparents and a great aunt I think it was were puttering around the kitchen putting the finishing touched on a huge pot of sauce and what I think was homemade pasta. It bears mentioning here that these folks were Italian enough that the grandparents still spoke some Italian.

So later we're eating dinner and I'm sitting there and I mention how I'd never had homemade pasta sauce before that didn't have tomato seeds in it. I'm assuming that they'd just laugh at me for being a silly Midwesterner but the entire table goesSILENT.It's like they thought I was insulting their sauce even though I wasn't, but I couldn't even mumble out an explanation because it was literally like 2-3 minutes of straight silence before they brought something else up.

My roommate was so pissed off when we got home, he felt like I insulted his grandparents and heritage because I thought that homemade pasta sauce had seeds in it...

The Master · Jun 2, 2014

Deathwing_sl said:
You've done that how many times? Like asking someone who's never diced an onion to make french onion soup.

Hundreds I suppose, but still, it is a basic skill if you're going to use fresh tomatoes and it is like anything else, do it a few times and it is easy. Or you can get a food mill. The skins won't get pushed through.

MAXPOWERS_sl · Jun 3, 2014

A friend provided me with venison/jalape?o/cheese brauts. Going to sous vide them, quick pan sear (no grill at my apt) then throw them on hoagies with green peppers, onion, sharp cheddar and Stubbs BBQ sauce.

jooka · Jun 3, 2014

When I buy canned tomatoes I always go with sauce, no salt or anything else, usually rostad as well. Just straight up tomatoe sauce. Easy to find in organic stores.

And ya, sauce in an Italians world definitely does not have seeds. It was an insult sorta, even if you didn't know

Joeboo · Jun 3, 2014

MAXPOWERS_sl said:
A friend provided me with venison/jalape?o/cheese brauts. Going to sous vide them, quick pan sear (no grill at my apt) then throw them on hoagies with green peppers, onion, sharp cheddar and Stubbs BBQ sauce.

My sous vide sarcasm detector may be broken, but there's no point in doing that to sausage. Sausage is wrapped in a casing that keeps the moisture in. As long as you don't puncture or break that casing during the cooking process, then there's really no difference on what method is used to cook the insides(other than doing something that would add more flavor, like boiling in beer or smoking). It we be about as pointless as sous-vide ground beef.

Soygen · Jun 3, 2014

Sous vide is not necessarily about 'keeping the moisture in'. It's about cooking something from the outside in at exactly the same temp throughout, so you don't overcook the outside of it. Sous vide burgers with a quick sear would actually be really good.

Vitality · Jun 3, 2014

Soygen_sl said:
Sous vide is not necessarily about 'keeping the moisture in'. It's about cooking something from the outside in at exactly the same temp throughout, so you don't overcook the outside of it. Sous vide burgers with a quick sear would actually be really good.

Obviously this ? fuckin non-sousvide pros in here trying to pro it up.

Gravy's Cooking Thread

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