Do we have a cooking thread?

[ET2SN]

I was doing some shopping on Amazon just now and found this:





Zataran's Caribbean Rice mix is awesome but it hasn't been available for a while, at least not locally.
While its sold as a side dish, it makes an outstanding full meal if you add to it. Such as..

I start a couple of cups of water* boiling in a pan and then cube a raw, skinless/boneless large chicken breast**. The chicken gets added to a hot oiled skillet with a dash of salt and a liberal amount of Tabasco sauce (about 6 shakes). While the chicken cubes are frying, add the rice mix to the boiling water. On the package directions, when you are told to reduce heat to a simmer, also add the fried chicken cubes and stir well.

Just before the rice is finished cooking, add about 1 tablespoon of sour cream (for non-north americans, sour cream is the dense, milk-based putty you serve on a baked potato, plain yogurt might also work but I haven't tried it yet).

And that's it. Serve in a bowl like chilli.

Makes a great cold-weather dinner but is also a quick dinner for any time of the year.


*- Its been at least several years since I've been able to buy this stuff. Just follow the directions on how much water to boil. If it calls for butter or oil, you can omit them since you'll also be adding chicken fat later.

**- You want about 1 to 1 1/2 lbs of raw boneless chicken. Fry until the chicken cubes look to be cooked, it will cook fully once you add it to the rice while it simmers.

[Skybird]

Do we have a cooking thread?

I recall we had cooking threads on pizza, pommes frites, and steak. Oh, and waffles.

[mapuc]

Do we have a thread on Gourmet when it comes to cooking ?

Markus

[Mr Quatro]

A lot of food from the island have MSG in it, but not this one ...
Watch out for Greek food though




This one can be microwaved too

[Mr Quatro]

Here's a nice seasoning for any food, but it's expensive $10.95

No msg and made in the USA


U Simply Season Chinese Five Spice - Asian Meat & Pastry Seasoning Mix


U Simply Season Chinese Five Spice - Asian Meat & Pastry Seasoning Mix

[Jimbuna]

Originally Posted by Mr Quatro

Here's a nice seasoning for any food, but it's expensive $10.95

No msg and made in the USA


U Simply Season Chinese Five Spice - Asian Meat & Pastry Seasoning Mix


U Simply Season Chinese Five Spice - Asian Meat & Pastry Seasoning Mix

Whenever the wife sees Five Spice in a recipe she replaces it with something else because the fragrance of that stuff is overwhelming (her words not mine).

[Jimbuna]

Originally Posted by ET2SN

I was doing some shopping on Amazon just now and found this:





Zataran's Caribbean Rice mix is awesome but it hasn't been available for a while, at least not locally.
While its sold as a side dish, it makes an outstanding full meal if you add to it. Such as..

I start a couple of cups of water boiling in a pan and then cube a raw, skinless/boneless large chicken breast. The chicken gets added to a hot oiled skillet with a dash of salt and a liberal amount of Tabasco sauce (about 6 shakes). While the chicken cubes are frying, add the rice mix to the boiling water. On the package directions, when you are told to reduce heat to a simmer, also add the fried chicken cubes and stir well.

Just before the rice is finished cooking, add about 1 tablespoon of sour cream (for non-north americans, sour cream is the dense, milk-based putty you serve on a baked potato, plain yogurt might also work but I haven't tried it yet).

And that's it. Serve in a bowl like chilli.

Makes a great cold-weather dinner but is also a quick dinner for any time of the year.

Here in the UK, Uncle Ben's varieties are quite popular https://www.unclebens.com/rice-products/all

[ET2SN]

Here's my go-to secret seasoning:



Works great on steak, pork, and my infamous Friday Bob-o-burgers.

Not to be used on fish or root greens like spinach , Sazon is a flavor enhancer and not exactly a spice. When things go wrong, they usually turn bitter.

[ET2SN]

Originally Posted by Jimbuna

Here in the UK, Uncle Ben's varieties are quite popular

Uncle Ben's is a great stand-by in the pantry, but Zatarain's is Cajun.
The flavors are much bolder but not over-done.

Here's what I consider perfection in a cardboard box:




At most, I'll add some pieces of bacon or maybe some cubed ham, but it literally needs nothing but water.

[Skybird]

Lets talk of Salmon then. The Germans most preferred fish, mine as well. I now love it, have it 2-3 times a week. Chicken went off the menu card almost completely for it.

In Europe, take Norwegian salmon from aquaculture. Never Southamerican or Asian aquaculture, conditions are bad.

From aquaculture, becasue:
1. natural salmon is under pressure
2. natural salmon has to fight for its living and thus has less oil and thus less taste.

Salmon caught in the wild, gets frozen, transported to Asia, thawed up, gets processed, then gets frozen again, gets shipped back to Europe and then gets sold as either fresh or frozen salmon. Its nutrient content is less, therefore.

Salmon from aquaculture in Norway gets frozen and transported to sales in Europe, it gets frozen just ones, and travells for less time, therefore it contains more nutrients: short time, gets frozen just once, and quicker so.

For comparable reasons: frozen vegetable form the supermarket very often has higher content of vitamines and minerals than fresh vegetable in the same supermarket. The frozeh stuff simply did not have as much time for oxidation than the "fresh" ones! Believe it, its true. Only if you get it off the field yourself and immediately cook it, you can run en par with frozen vegetables from the supermaket fridge.

Frozen food like fish and vegetable thus often is much better than its reputation.

Norwegian aquaculture is superior to that in Asia and South America. Less chemicals, better environment management, electronics and lasers (!!) fighting against skin parasites, no use of antibiotics there anymore (instead young fish gets vaccinated). The last controversial chemical agent used for fish food, etoxy-somthing, has been banned in the EU last summer, and was not used in Norway since long time before.

Contradicting info on Omega-3 content. Some sources say wild salmon has more, others say aquaculture salmon has more. Fish food in aquaculture has been reduced in fish meat and has more soy (bad) and plants (okay), but so the Omega 3 content has been decreased (fishes usually do not build Omega 3, they only eat and store it). That the content of Omega 3 in aquaculture salmon has been redcued, is beyond doubt, but how contents compare between wild and farmed salmon is being debated.

You see, some counter-intuitive info there. Many people think wild salmon tastes better, and is healthier, because it lived free. Its not so. It had to work, it has less oil therefore, (had no time to store reserves in body fats) , it got plenty of stress hormones - and higher levels of contamination, because it got around quite a bit! Also, wild salmon is a sin to pay for, its too expensive.

Do not mistake - in Germany - Seelachs with Lachs. Seelachs is just salmon-surrogate fish. The term is historical, used for various codfish species (Dorsch- and Kabeljauartige). But Lachs is a Salmon - a Forellenartige. Therefore, in Germany you have to be on your guard, they sell Alaska-Lachs beside Alaska-Seelachs. Its not the same, its lightyears apart. I now avoid them both, got burned severla times.


Salmon from Alaska is always wild caught, they do no aquaculture there, I read.

I prefer frozen aquaculture salmon from Norway any time, I do not buy wild salmon anymore: taste worse, costs much more. Norwegian aqualaculture, frozen: best taste, best quality, fair price. I now avoid wild salmon, it tastes cheap in comparison, and when it was frozen, often I doubted that it even was salmon.

How to prepare? 2 pieces of 125 gr each: in the pan, mild heat, 2.5 minutes from each side, not more.

Two ways of seasoning it in use over here:

Manually, an oily sauce of a very good, mild olive oil, a bit of lemon juice, salt, black pepper (coarse) and plenty of dill. Simple, but delicous. Matches many fishes.

The other way:

Originally I found this to be the ideal burger sauce. I do not do burgers anymore, but the sauce I kept, for salmon, and only for this. It is the ideal taste for this fish (and no other). Believe it, the taste matches the fish ideally. There is nothing of industrial food taste in this combination, it is a perfect marriage. If I would have giotten it in an expensive restaurant, I would have gotten fooled, I would have bought it.

I prefer Millet to this fish, cooked in salty water with a grated carrot. Cook it together in the same pot, makes it an easier kitchen job.

Final tip for fish: fish from the Baltic not more often than once a month. The baltic is the most heavily polluted (mini-) ocean in the world.


Other fishes I like are Herring in dill-cream, catfish (breaded and deep-fried), Thuna (rarely only these days, its very heavily contaminated since it lives long), and Mackarel. I recently found my way to eating shrimps, with a recipe that was claimed to be used in the South of the US, with use of Sherry, chicken soup and onion and chilli. Can be tricky ove rhere to find good shrimps from a non-c ritical water.

[ET2SN]

If you ever get tired of the way you cook salmon, invest in some of this:





Just lightly dust the filets before cooking.
It adds a bit of a punch.

Way back when, my Mom used to make an incredible New England-style fish chowder. One day, she got her normal box of spices mixed up with some Crab Boil spices and she got upset, like she ruined an entire pot of chowder.

It was awesome, especially since we weren't expecting to get punched in the nose by the heat. It quickly became the new family tradition.

[Skybird]

If you want a kill-the-dragon-double-boot-kick with inrun meteor-impact-kind of experience in your mouth, try this. Hotness is an invention made in Korea. And this is just instant. I tasted Korean cuisine live, original (friend of my Mum), I wished I could die. And I swear I did. You just read an echo from my former mind.




Shin Ramyun. Keeps you speechless, for long time.

Cook with 50-100 ml less water, serve and eat hot.

Just kidding. ^ Don't.

[ET2SN]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Just kidding. ^ Don't.

I was homeported in southern Japan and our skipper would make runs to Korea whenever it looked like we were getting bored.

Good, homemade Kimchi should peel the skin off your lips.

Hot soup is good if it knocks you out of your chair.

[UglyMowgli]

My 2 favorites cooking channel:


Fun and good receipes



https://www.youtube.com/user/foodwishes


This one is for the newbie at cooking


https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCek...k2vWxBo3YiLq2w

[ET2SN]

Ohhh.....no....
Nothing good will come of this and we'll be lucky to survive.






Or, as someone else once said, "The ### is evil and must be punished."