Gravy's Cooking Thread

It's nice to see that when me and Ao- or whoever the fuck that was stopped going full retard in the cooking thread that Deathwing was ready to pick up the flag and run with it.

Obviously this thread has gone to shit for lack of internets.

You can experiment with baking a bit, but you need to get the flour/fat/egg/liquid/salt/leavening in the right ratios or it will be a shit show. Because of that it's hard to just improvise when you're baking.

I tend to agree with not using recipes for cooking meat/vegetable dishes and sauces though, or at least not just mindlessly following them. Learn techniques rather than recipes and then experiment. Be sure and taste things before and after you add ingredients. You might fuck it up once in a while but it will make you a better cook. Then when you want to make a dish you can go online, read half a dozen recipes to see how other folks have done it, and go from there.

BTW my Mom makes Mexican lasagna that uses real lasagna noodles. I can't remember the exact details but you layer in seasoned ground beef, refried beans, black olives, and salsa in 3 layers of uncooked lasagna noodles, put sour cream and cheese on top, and bake it. Not exactly authentic or fancy, but it tastes good.

Khane_sl said:

"Who actually follows recipes to cook". Gimme a break. You guys are so lame. This thread is so holier than thou.

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If it's a good recipe then by all means use it. All I'm saying is that learning how to cook is different than learning how to follow a recipe and if you learn how to cook you will be able to tell a good recipe from a bad one and how to make a decent recipe into a good one or adjust it to fit the stuff you have in the house rather than having to go to the supermarket for the exact ingredients. If I'm cooking an Alton Brown recipe I will generally follow it pretty much to the letter because I know that he won't throw a bullshit recipe out there. If I'm looking at random ones on cooks.com because I googled something, it's good to know how to cook so you can evaluate a bunch of different recipes and pick a good one or come up with something on your own using different people's ideas. It's also good to just take an ingredient, look at what you have in the fridge to put with it, and try something out sometimes. It's not rocket science, and I have several things I make that I never read a recipe for but they came out good enough to stay in the rotation and people are impressed when I make them because they haven't had it before.'

This is if you want to be a good cook and not just get some shit on the table.

I think Deathwing has too much angst over Rachel, but she will put making things easy and low calorie ahead of making them good in her recipes and cut corners wherever she can. After all, the name of her show is "30 Minute Meals", and not "Good Eats". Also, ground chicken breast is not the path to deliciousness.

Speaking of pasta, Alton Brown now claims on his podcast that he doesn't do the thing where you boil a big ass pot of water and then add your pasta to it anymore. Somebody called in to the podcast and asked if he would change anything about the old show and he said that in the pasta episode he always said to start making pasta by boiling at least a gallon of water but nowadays he just covers the pasta with cold water and brings it to a boil and then simmers it for 7 minutes. It's faster and according to him comes out better. I haven't tried it and it sounds like blasphemy to me, but the dude knows what he's talking about.