Cooking for Dummies/Idiots?

[Mercenary Pen]

Toasted sandwiches, you say? Is that like... A sandwich? You're confusing me here a little bit. Wouldn't the peanut butter get all boily?

Cheese and ham are common fillings (quite often together)- but I've often used it to deal with leftover chilli con carne or bolognese sauce, since it's usually faster than making another lot of rice/pasta.


Can't remember whether it has been mentioned yet or not, but Couscous is pretty handy for the time and complexity of cooking it, at least when you just stick to the basics...

Ratio in metric tends to be 50 grams of couscous to 60ml of boiling water, combine the two and cover for five minutes, then fluff it with a fork and you're done.

The flavour is fairly neutral, so you can substitute it in for rice, and potentially pasta.

[Feytalist]

The flavour is fairly neutral, so you can substitute it in for rice, and potentially pasta.

It tastes like nothing, so it can be used for anything :O

Speaking of which, I had crumbed aubergine at a restaurant the other night. Crumbed with couscous, no less. It was surprisingly good.

[Coidzor]

Couscous. The pasta that's basically rice. But still pasta. But not rice-pasta, that's something completely different.

[Akiosama]

Try this out, too...

How to Cook Everything.

It's a pretty good primer for cooking foods of all types, and the iPhone app is fantastic for this. Gives you ideas for variations, can create a 'shopping list' for you, has breakdowns of common cooking techniques, and has timers built into the recipes for use when you're cooking. And the results taste pretty good, too.

My 2 yen,

Akiosama

[Bhu]

heres a few links for when you get adventurous and mor experienced

http://alaskaoutdoorjournal.com/Depa.../Recipes/Game/

http://www.cookwildgame.com/

http://www.huntingnet.com/cookbook/

http://longsmeatmarket.com/unusual.htm

giggles

[THAC0]

heres a few links for when you get adventurous and mor experienced

http://alaskaoutdoorjournal.com/Depa.../Recipes/Game/

http://www.cookwildgame.com/

http://www.huntingnet.com/cookbook/

http://longsmeatmarket.com/unusual.htm

giggles

I'll have you know that porcupine is actually somewhat tasty!

[Feytalist]

As is tortoise. But you didn't hear it from me.

[arguskos]

As is tortoise. But you didn't hear it from me.

Nah, but you DID hear it from me. Tortoise is delicious.

Haven't managed to score some porcupine yet. Now I really want nothing more than porcupine tacos or something.

[Bhu]

horse, alligator, and rattlesnake are pretty good. Squid and octopus are too but learning to cook them is a massive pain.

[Eldan]

Huh? Neither Squid nor Octopus were ever particularly hard when I did them. For Octopus, you cut the tentacles in small pieces and add them to a sauce. Or, if you have the really small ones, you take them whole. Squid... you cut open the mantle, gut them (watch out for the ink) and fry them in a pan like a filet.

[Serpentine]

<3 kangaroo, crocodile's pretty good, and I think I liked snake that time I had it. I will have chocolate-covered honeypot ants before I die.
Apparently there's a competition between Australian ecologists to see who can eat the most species (usually roadkill)...

edit: I've had a couple of recipes for squid and baby octopus. The latter you can just marinate and then cook hot and fast. The former, there's lots of ways. If you're stuffing it, watch out how big they are and how much stuffing you use: they can get huge, and extremely filling. Another I had recently was a tomatoey squid soup.
I think the important thing for squid and octopus is to cook it fast, so it doesn't get rubbery.

[Feytalist]

I will have chocolate-covered honeypot ants before I die.

Yessss. Every time I see them they look so dang delicious.

And speaking of insects, roasted grasshoppers are really much tastier than they look. Like popcorn, almost.

[Bhu]

Huh? Neither Squid nor Octopus were ever particularly hard when I did them. For Octopus, you cut the tentacles in small pieces and add them to a sauce. Or, if you have the really small ones, you take them whole. Squid... you cut open the mantle, gut them (watch out for the ink) and fry them in a pan like a filet.

When I've grilled molluscs the point at which they're undercooked, and at when they're overcooked seems to be separated by less than a minute. If you overcook quid the only way to de-rubberize it seems to be cooking it another hour.

[Coidzor]

How to Cook Everything.

Hey, I've got that one packed up in my car to move into my new place with.

[Phae Nymna]

You can cook pasta which means you can boil water which means you can cook. Some things. But you can cook.

Basics that are advisable to master:

Methods and Materials:

Spoiler

Show

HEAT + WATER = BOILING:
-potatoes~
-pasta~
-eggs**
-shrimp*
-rice*

BOILING + STEAMER BASKET = STEAMING:
-broccoli~
-other veggies~
-artichokes*
-whole fish**

HEAT + SOME LIQUID + LID = BRAISING/STEWING:
-pot roast~
-lamb*
-rabbit*
-beef stew~
-minestrone*

HEAT + LOTS OF LIQUID = SOUP:
-chicken noodle~
-turkey noodle~
-cream of random vegetable~
-tomato soup~

HEAT + FLAT OR GRILLED PAN = EVERYTHING ELSE:
-steak**
-burgers~
-pork tenderloin~
-chicken breast~
-salmon**

FIRE + GRILLE = GRILLING/BARBECUE
-beef*
-chicken~
-pork*
-vegetables~
-fruit**

INDIRECT HEAT + AIR = BAKING
-whole chicken*
-good casseroles only~
-shepherd's pie*
-fruit pie**
-bread**
-cake*
-squash~

KEY:
~ = incredibly easy and cannot be overemphasized. use a recipe if you must.
* = it may seem daunting(ish) but it's very easy. follow a recipe to the tee.
** = easy peasy. okay that was a lie. be patient, be neat, and be confident. single asterisk rules apply. build experience and it becomes easy.

More than a Few Last Things:

Spoiler

Show

-When boiling, fill the pot about 5/7ths, give or take a seventh for the volume of your food.

-Steaming can be hot. Be careful.

-The crab and lobster died pretty damn fast, especially if you refrigerated them before hand. Same goes for the crawfish and other crabs you boiled.

-Large, clean, smooth, flat pebbles work great in a pot for steaming. Dump a bunch of WELL WASHED stones FROM THE GARDENING STORE into a big ass pot and fill the water to the pebble tops.

-Wine, vinegar, bourbon, and cider are your best friends for braising with panache. Use them as the recipe says, or in MODEST addition to your liquid. If you wouldn't eat bourbon and broccoli together, don't cook them together.

-If you like the soup that comes from a can, chances are, you can make it at home. Easily. And it will taste better. Use left over roast chicken or turkey for poultry noodle soups.

-I only marked steak a ** because it can be tough learning how to cook steak to certain levels of "done". This could even be a *** or a ~ depending on the cut. Go NYStrip, T-Bone, and Flank. Mind how you cut the flank. Google that BTW.

-Salmon goes from almost perfectly cooked to overdone and kind of overset quickly. Take it slow. Get pieces with the skin on and FOR THE SAKE OF DINGOES leave it on when you cook it. Watch out for bones. That goes pentuple for whole fish.

-Grilling is only as difficult as your grill. Once you get the coals (or gas if you're a square and don't like AWESOME tasting food) going, you're in the clear. Get it going hot, let the coals ash over a bit, and get to grilling. I personally recommend beer can chicken, teriyaki chicken, spice rub chicken, grilled green onions with salt and lime, and grilled half peaches. Pineapple too.

-Soy Vey is a VERY good teriyaki sauce. Dump it in a baking dish or bowl. The whole bottle. Put your chicken parts in. Let them sit for 10 min, turn and let them sit for another 10. Letting them marinate overnight works wonders too.

-Tougher than average grilling- I strongly STRONGLY recommend brining and barbecuing your turkeys. Online guides tell you best how to.

-Mind the time differences for veggies on the grill. Always look up how long you should cook it on the grill and how you should put it on the grill. Tin foil is a miracle here.

-Buy rotisserie chickens from the supermarket until you are confident enough to cook your own. Usually very good if you are in a pinch. Get one fresh, well browned, and with clearly some condensation or liquid at the bottom of the plastic pan. Means it's not too dry.

-Shepherd's Pie is the easiest thing ever. I make mine in a circular casserole with a bottom layer of torn up biscuit dough, then some ground beef and a bit of ground lamb if I can, then a thin layer of mashed potatoes, some peas, some carrots, some corn, then a thick layer of mashed potatoes. Bread crumbs on top, cook for a while, serve. Might want to Google the real time on that...

-Bread is just for LOOK AT ME occasions. Cakes are easy. Use a mix unless it's something special. Always let it cool fully before frosting or icing anything. Use more flour than you thought you ever could when rolling pie dough.

-Squash is super easy and delicious. Acorn squash with some maple syrup, cinnamon, clove, cardamom, and butter is just amazing with some meat pies in fall.

-Try a few wines. Come to keep a few common, affordable, delicious wines, that YOU like. A white and a red. Or more. For cooking at the least, for drinking at the norm, and sharing at the best.

-Stock mid-shelf liquor in your abode. Pick a few of your favorites to buy more of, but one shelf up. Among others, we keep Beefeater, Jim Beam, and 1800 in the cabinet, but we also have Tub, Knob Creek, and some not too terribly price but really wonderful Herradura Reposado. All of these come in handy for SOME cooking exercise, and they do a good job of entertaining when you or the food just didn't turn out right one night.

-For meals with fanfare or flash, I suggest learning the following on your own time: Paella, Gazpacho, Lemon Meringue Pie, Potatoes au Gratin, and of course, everyone's (my) favorite side dish- Risotto.

-Oh and learn to make a good salad. Experiment with spring salad mixes and baby spinach greens, but only use balsamic and olive oil when you start out. Toss in some mandarin oranges and little horizontal slices of hearts of palm. Eventually make your own salads you make up. I like creole tomato quarters with avocado slices, and mandolin slices of sweet onion. Add a little lemon juice.

[Mathis]

I always found it shocking that some people don't know how to cook, or in most cases think they can't cook, it's a lot easier than people realize. I guess this is mostly because I grew up in a house where homemade food was always on the table, every day and I often had to help make some of it.

Anyway, what I wanted to add to this thread is some advice I got years ago and it was probably the best advice I ever got on cooking. Making food is probably one of the most important things you're going to have to learn. THis is because there's two things in life it pays off to be good at, making love and cooking good food. The simplest thing you can do to impress in the kitchen is to pick three, four or maybe even five of your favourite dishes and cook them often. Cook them once a week, atleast once a month and experiment with them and learn how to make them good, unique and yours. By making them yours I mean add something that you really like, personalize the meal. I for example love to add a little honey to sauces I make, or roast chicken in honey and cashews.

Learn to make a few dishes, they don't have to be anything fancy. Just make sure they taste good, invite friends over for dinner and serve your food and ask them what they think, it might just turn into a great social event.

[Coidzor]

So, anyone got any thoughts about what would be a good dish that can flexibly be expanded for having a variable number of guests over for dinner and board games/movie night?

I'm looking to do something to break in the kitchen rather than just ordering take-out, but I can't think of anything that feels thematically appropriate and capable of being flexibly altered in case of issues where instead of, say, 8 peeps we get 12. Or 5.

I have no idea what thematically appropriate would even mean here or why it's suddenly a concern either, come to think of it. Kind of strange and disturbing...

Maybe I should instead be looking at some form of snack that's more filling than popcorn and is robust enough to stand up to prolonged noshing instead? I can't even think of anything like that beyond a bean dip that could kill a yak in a stand-up fist fight, though.

...

*rereads post* Or maybe I just have no idea how to entertain whatsoever....

[Knaight]

You want snacks for a board game night, and things you make yourself. That means small things, but a lot of them. Which means you get to be experimental.

Cup-Quiche. Take a cup, use it as the mold for a small pie crust, put cheese in it, put the main ingredient(s) in it (Spinach for a spinach quiche, broccoli for a broccoli quiche, so on and so forth) and pour the milk-egg mix into it. The best thing about cup-quiche? Its really easy to just grab one from the fridge and eat it if you have left overs.

[Coidzor]

Quiche, you say?

Well, color me intrigued by that. When you say cup though what are you thinking? 1 cup dry measure measuring cup? One of those two-finger width handle tea cups that fit on saucers? A mug?

[Tirian]

I've found a very simple and obvious dessert that is still both scalable and omnomnom -- freshly baked cookies. Just make a batch of standard chocolate chip cookie dough and split them into tablespoon-sized pieces like you normally would, but instead of cooking them immediately, roll the dough into a ball in the palm of your hand, roll those balls in flour to keep them from sticking to each other, and put them all in the freezer to keep for as long as you like can. Then whenever you have company or are making dinner for yourself or whatever, put as many of those cookie balls in a toaster oven for ten or eleven minutes at 425 or so (or more cookies in an oven that's cooling down from the dinner you just baked), give the cookies a minute or two to cool down enough that they don't completely disintegrate in your hands, and finish enjoying them long before they reach room temperature. It's the kind of cooking that I love, because it's a little prep work once and then weeks of delicious desserts for one or two people with no effort at all at dinnertime.

Of course, you can always get fancier with this if your company calls for it. Frex, you can make cookies that are the size of the palm of your hand, squoosh some ice cream between pairs of them once they've cooled down a bit, roll the edges in chocolate chips, and you've got deluxe ice cream sandwiches.

[arguskos]

Quiche, you say?

Well, color me intrigued by that. When you say cup though what are you thinking? 1 cup dry measure measuring cup? One of those two-finger width handle tea cups that fit on saucers? A mug?

They have some fancy name, probably, but think a cupcake cup, but somewhat smaller. Like halfway between a Reese's Cup Mini and a Cupcake. That sorta size. At least, that's the scale I see mini quiche's at usually.

[shawnhcorey]

They have some fancy name, probably, but think a cupcake cup, but somewhat smaller. Like halfway between a Reese's Cup Mini and a Cupcake. That sorta size. At least, that's the scale I see mini quiche's at usually.

Think muffin tray.

[Coidzor]

Think muffin tray.

I could use one of those, probably, come to think of it. Good for making corn bread rounds for chili-sized servings of corn bread.

[arguskos]

Think muffin tray.

Yeah, like little muffins. Good stuff.

Now I want a warm lemon poppyseed muffin with a pat of butter. Damn you. *shakes fist*

[Knaight]

Think muffin tray.

Exactly. Though you can get away with a 1 cup measuring cup, assuming the pie crust recipe can hold its form well when shaped.

Also, it appears my cup-quiche idea was preemptively plagiarized.

[arguskos]

Also, it appears my cup-quiche idea was preemptively plagiarized.

...how does that even work?

Also, does anyone have any good suggestions for something else non-alcoholic I can make with ginger ale and lemon and/or lime syrup? I have a goodly amount of all three, and want something other than my lemon ale and lime ale (the lemon ale is better, btws).

[Serpentine]

My spaghetti bolognese is easy to scale up or down. Left-overs can be frozen - and actually get better frozen - and if you need to pad it out at the last minute you can just add a couple of cans of beans and cook it for a little longer.

[Coidzor]

...how does that even work?

Also, does anyone have any good suggestions for something else non-alcoholic I can make with ginger ale and lemon and/or lime syrup? I have a goodly amount of all three, and want something other than my lemon ale and lime ale (the lemon ale is better, btws).

Add sherbert, make punch?

[Serpentine]

Green ginger ale: use green/lime cordial, add ginger ale as water - adjust amounts to taste.

Lemon, lime and bitters: add a small amount of lemon and lime syrup, a splash of bitters (e.g. Angostura), and water - soda water if you can get it.

[Yanagi]

Coidzor-

Man, cooking for that many people is *always* a hassle, particularly if you're the cook, the host, and the de facto server. I get a run of visitors in summertime, and bump from meals for one to meals for five to ten. I love it, but it requires planning and quite a bit of physical effort.

The way you're describing things it sounds like it's not going to be a sit-down meal where everyone eats at once, so you've got to pick stuff that can sit around and be reheated. Since you're hosting, but also want to participate, you'll want to be able to get the cooking out of the way before people arrive, so you're doing only the final prep while guests are there.

Echoing Serpentine, your best bet is "a pot of something, some starch, and maybe some fixings."

Pasta sauces, stews, soups, curries...these are tasty dishes that can be brewed up, then fridged or frozen until needed. Basically anything simmered, slow-cooked, or reduced can be done well ahead of time, then "finished off" the day of the event...which works well with dishes to which fresh ingredients are added just before service.

A good place to start is finding recipes for a tomato and a white pasta sauce that you like. Again, they're flexible and durable, and they have the added benefit that you can mix-and-match ingredients to go into the pasta dish with them: almost any mix of meat, veg, et cetera.

For example, my stand-by recipe is red beans and rice, because it's rich and filling, but I can make a basic version that's vegan, then add stuff (usually pork products) that makes it heartier.

Starches--well you've got a lot of options, and they're fairly interchangeable.

Rice reheats well even in a microwave, so can be done in a big batch. It's also easy to make interesting by adding some diced vegetables or spices. The caveat is that different types of rice have variable cooking times and methods, and different qualities of texture, stickiness, and flavor. Pasta...well, I think it's not so good reheated, but it's still "okay," and it can be made fresh as-needed, fairly quickly. The best reheat method is in a pan on the stove with a bit of water or sauce. I will warn that couscous is temperamental--if not stirred while cooking or immediately tossed with a little oil it will turn into a big block. Other grain starches--quinoa, millet, amaranth--all basically serve the same role as rice, and except for a few quirks of preparation can be used interchangeably in recipes.

To say nothing of bread and/or potatoes.

Given a big group of people eating casually, you might want to consider fixing food with a "build your own" component. It's both a time saver and means you can give options if there are people with dietary restrictions or preferences. The taco/burrito bar is the best example: you create the fillings--beans and/or meat--chop fresh veggies, and toast the tortillas a bit. A soup with lots of optional fixings, like pozole or pho, is a less-typical version of the same thing.

An alternate to the stew-pot is something like a casserole or quiche: one can make multiples so there's extras to pop in the oven as necessary (and again--fix earlier and re-heat is your friend). Quiches are especially nice because the basic egg mix is a catcher for any number of other ingredient combos, so you can have a lot of "variety" without the extra work of separate dishes. Also most people think quiches are classy.

Since you'll have roaming people picking at food, the other "course" is a selection of hand foods: chips, vegetable crudites, dips.

One last, but important, piece of advice: you're the one spending and you're the one doing clean-up. Don't pick foods that you won't eat or can't find a use for in your kitchen, because 75% of the time you'll have food left over.

I love to cook. If there's anything specific that interests you, I'd be glad to try and help...even if I don't know it, I'm a fiend for digging up recipes.