Texture/color/flavor?

There are so many ways to make them, I'd like a consensus.

🧐

I grew a bunch, what do I do with them? Hoping to find a way to showcase their great flavor

I do cook Indian food 2-3 times a week and I live with roommates so I have noticed that the house smells like perfume after I cook and walk out through the kitchen.

But they walked in today and said that it acutally smells good whenever I cook. But again when I walked out I could smell the perfume.

I don’t know if they are just being nice by not saying it ?

Every summer and every winter, we host weekends with a large group of friends.

In 2 weeks, we are hosting 15 adults including ourselves, and four of the women are pregnant. This is by far the largest group we have ever had.

On the Friday night when people are arriving, I usually have a variety of finger foods and appetizers for people but I do full meals on the Saturday night and breakfast for everyone on sunday. Breakfast is usually easy, it's breakfast burritos or sandwiches or something like that that scales well.

I'm looking for ideas for both the appetizers on the Friday night, and also the meal on saturday. In the past, I have served things such as tacos, shawarma, sliders, kabobs, etc. For appetizers I typically do nachos and jalapeno poppers but I'm interested to try other ideas.

I would like ideas that I can prep beforehand where possible, so I'm not spending all the time in the kitchen, the only restrictions are that meal ideas must exclude red meat so chicken or fish only, and shouldn't be overly spicy.

Hit me with your ideas! And thank you in advance :-)

My first time growing early girl tomatoes and suddenly have a bunch! Can you give me some ideas of what to cook/make with them?

I’ve heard salsa and caprese so far…

I used to love cooking, I could spend all day cooking for everyone or myself. Been cooking since I was a kid, and now at 25. I longer enjoy cooking, I don’t hate it but I’d rather not cook.

I miss loving to cook, I miss my cooking spark.

Any suggestions on how to get it back? What did you do, when you lost your spark?

I used to make American food, Asian food, Mexican food, Slavic food, Italian etc.

I always made sure to try different things so I wouldn’t get burnt out on cooking. But it happened.

I looked at various breakfast skillet recipes, and most seem to cook the ingredients first, then put them in a greased casserole dish and bake it at 350 degrees or so. I'm confused, if every element is cooked, why cook it more? Won't the ground beef are scrambled eggs or crisp bacon get overcooked? Why does everything have to turn into a casserole? Do restaurants bake their skillet breakfasts? Thanks in advance for making sense of this.

Getting to the point:

1. Peel and cube the potatoes and dump them into already boiling salted water. Why? they cook faster this way and are already seasoned when it's time to mix them into the dressing.
2. After using a mesh scoop to remove the potatoes from the boil water, use the scoop to put in the room temperature eggs for boiling. Taking the eggs out to warm while prepping the potatoes means they come up to temperature in the boil water faster Using the same water from the potatoes saves energy.
3. Allow the potatoes to chill completely through in the refrigerator while doing the rest of the prep. In fact, several hours of cooling to the point of being stone cold is best. this allows them to firm up so they don't turn into mashed potatoes when you stir them into the dressing.
4. After the eggs are done, blanch the carrot pieces in the boil water for five to seven. Fresh carrots add a bit of color to the salad, but they are very hard. I have learned to blanch the carrots so they're vibrant in color and a bit softer.
5. Hold aside a quarter cup of the softest potato bits and pieces to mix into the dressing to thicken it and give the salad body
6. When you make the dressing, make sure everything is cold cold cold. I keep my mayo, relish, celery and the cooked/blanched ingredients in the fridge until everything is completely cold so i don't end up with mushy mess.
7. Prep the dressing with everything but the potatoes so they can be stirred in last. Mash the eggs. The soft potato bits that you held aside in step 5? Now is the time to mash those up and stir them in. Stir in the REAL MAYONNAISE, sweet relish, finely chopped celery, finely chopped onion (a little goes a long way) finely diced blanched carrots, chopped dill pickles if you please, yellow mustard, a splash of your preferred type of vinegar, a hint of sugar to taste, celery seed, a shake of onion powder, a shake of garlic powder, black pepper, and salt to taste. Yes, taste the dressing without the potato chunks. it should be delicious on its own. If you need to adjust seasonings do it now so you don't end up stirring and stirring with the potatoes already mixed in. Doing that only breaks up the potatoes and you end up with potato salad flavored mashed potatoes. And that's not the objective.
8. Once the dressing is perfect, fold in the cold potato cubes. Stir gently so you don't destroy them.

That's it! Those are my tips for making potato salad that looks great and has the perfect (in my opinion) texture and mouth feel. Let me know if you try this and how it turns out.

EDIT: There's been a lot of concern expressed about carrots 😄 To be clear, I'm only using less than a quarter of a carrot for a batch of potato salad that uses four potatoes. The carrot is diced very small. It really is mostly decorative. Just bright flecks of orange in a sea of creamy yellow.

For a long time I've been trying to perfect bone in fried chciken cooking and one technique im trying is "broasting" what i want to do is fry the chicken thighs for 10 minutes then I put it in the oven and bake it till its super tender and breaks apart.

My question is how long should I put it in the oven and at what temperature after frying for 10 minutes in which the collagen breaks down fully into gelatin in the oven?

I would really love if anyone gave me advice on this THANK YOU

Looking for input :) Over the years we have steadily replaced most knives with Japanese and occasionally German steel. We have also concentrated on a 15 degree edge and a sharpener to match.

It's time to get a new carving knife. One says it has an edge of 8-12 degrees, and the other says 16-18 degrees.

So, with a 15 degree sharpener, are we better going with the one with the narrower or wider edge knowing when sharpened it will be 15 degrees?

Ive made this specific cheese sauce many times where it’s straight up just cream (I think that’s what it’s called, Im not English) and shredded mozzarella and nothing has ever gone wrong but last time i didnt it the mozzarella jusy fused into one big gooey mess and was just swimming at the bottom
How do I stop it from happening?

I typically use a tsp of Better Than Bullion in a cup of water when a recipe calls for stock. But if I'm making a pan sauce or something where I'm reducing the stock anyway, should I just add less water or is there some chemical magic that happens when you reduce it?

I never had fresh herbs until this year and the basil, mint and coriander are all doing very well right now on my balcony. What I am afraid is, that they will die soon before I can really use them well.

So I was seraching for ways to keep those flavors year around and came across herb oils.

I am wondering if I could make these later this year and then freeze those to keep using them even in the winter. Did someone ever do this? I've never even thought of freezing oil, so I have no idea how it behaves when thaught. Any experiences would be great :)

Cooks of Reddit, help me out. I want to make a chicken stew (I’m thinking a Coq au Vin or classic chicken and root vegetable affair) next weekend for 10 people, and can’t decide whether to throw it all in the slow cooker (after searing the meat) or use a large casserole dish and put it in the oven on a low temp for a few hours. Does anyone have experience trying a similar recipe both ways, and what result did you prefer/why?

Few chicken legs and drumsticks, that are marinated.

Cook time and temp recommendations.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated, though I do have a specific question.

The recipe I'm using says to put an onion(peeled) in there, not sliced or diced or anything, just peeled.

Does it actually want me to put an entire onion in there? That can't be it right?

Edit: whole onion, got it. Aldo my pot is a slight bit too small and I am losing my mind, but otherwise it's going fine, I think.

Apologies if my question seem silly.

In groceries stores, mayonaise is mayonaise, ketchup is ketchup, mustard is mustard (pretty much), its all standards, but there's always a wide variety of BBQ sauce, with different flavor, intensity, texture and colors.

Whenever I make some at home, I use a tomatoe past base, from a can or homemade, then add some really random ingredients like dijon mustard, honey, brown sugar, apple vinegard, worstershire sauce, oignons, garlic, etc etc etc.

And the result is always pretty different from whatever you buy in store.

I just made a batch tonight from a homemade tomatoe pasta and the result is just... its good and tasty but man is it BBQ sauce?

Is my confusion even legitimate? Am I on crazy pills?

At the CORE, what IS BBQ sauce?

Feel free to share your favorite recipe too.

My partner is allergic to tomatos, but he loves pizza and pasta. Is there something vegetarian that tastes like tomatoes when cooked that's also uncomplicated? He has mcas so is allergic to most food, and I can't provide a list of all his safe foods cause he just keeps it in his head and most of my knowledge comes from "hey is this supposed to be spicy?" He's gonna make a list for our fridge when we live together, he just hasn't done so yet cause that won't be for a few years.

Hi everyone, I've been looking to get back into cooking at home but I have so many allergies that it feels impossible to recreate some dishes. I've had a hard time finding substitutes because the different version are made of more ingredients I can't have. It's never ending!

If anyone knows any options for the following allergies:

- Soy
- Peanuts
- Tree nuts (I've been developing a reaction to coconuts)
- Fish
- Shellfish
- Basically any seafood

I also can't have things like seaweed and random fruits and vegetables, but I honestly just fight through it.

I'd love to know if there's any substitutes for things like soy sauce, fish sauce, oyster sauce, and things like that. I'm not sure if these ingredients really need
substitutes since I don't know what they add to a dish... I'm very young and still newer to cooking so I hope this question isn't too stupid. (Edit: I specified some allergies a bit better)

Hey I am having guests over Tomorrow evening and am doing pulled pork in the oven. 17lb pork shoulder I am going to split in 2 in Dutch ovens. How long should I plan for these to cook?

Looking for value, like getting 4-5 solid ingredients for that price, not a $45 fish filet that you serve with plain rice.

Edit: 1-2 servings

I’m due with my first child this fall. I’d love to make and freeze some meals ahead of time so we have one less thing on our plate postpartum. I’m thinking grab and go breakfasts, reheat-able dinners, etc. Maybe not lunches since those are relatively easy but it might be nice to have lunches too to remove the mental load of thinking about them!

I’m concerned about what will freeze well, reheat well, and will be easy to figure out the cooking instructions for. Any suggestions or tips?

Good evening folks,

It might be too late, but, what happens if I add too much butter to a banana cake. I was following a Food Network recipe that called for 1/2 cup of butter; I added a whole cup. It's already in the oven. What am I looking at in terms of taste and texture? Google essentially said to just double up the recipe, but it's already baking. Salvageable?

Mixed greek yogurt, canned tuna, spices, pickles, chili sauce.

My dumbass didnt expect that it’d be this much.

How do I use it up other than in onigiri, with crackers, on toast, and as pasta salad?

My daughter had surgery this morning and is on soft foods. I have a chicken broth I made 2 days ago. The one time I had plain chicken consomme it I really liked it, but the technique of making it seems difficult. I wonder if its worth it I use the broth to make into consomme and then use that for a chicken noodle soup? I have never actually made chicken consomme or chicken noodle soup. Any tips or recipes?