Hi, friends!
What’s cooking this week? Anybody excited about a specific takeout or restaurant meal? I’m trying to only eat home-prepped meals for the rest of the month because in early November I’ll be travelling a lot and the combo of “make healthier choices now” and “save money now” will benefit me then.
I’m still getting tons of tomatoes and peppers, so dinners this week are burrito bowls to help use lots of those. I’m ridiculously proud of myself for making brown rice without it turning into a sticky, overcooked mess on the stove.
Tapioca, freezer clean-out, the Louisiana bbq shrimp previously featured in a FYCE, pasta with homemade pesto, and other stuff.
I didn’t feel like cooking so I picked up some pulled chicken from a local BBQ shop. That shoullast a few days.
We have been eating out so much my stomach is a little fucked up & I am hoping I’m not going to get a bout of diverticulitis so I am treading lightly. We had some good Indian food on our trip & went to a nice little Korean place but nothing like the Korean back in Hawaii. This week I have a nice tritip I need to cook, even though the wife is not much of a beef eater. Will probably mostly do salads and veggie curries until my stomach is back to normal. One of my fishing buddies wants to do a shrimp boil this week, we will see if we can pull that off. The local shrimp are not huge but decent size and super sweet.
I’ve got a ton of okra and I’ll be making pakoras and chicken tikka. A ton of green beans, so beans and bacon. I have a ton of leftover stewed mushrooms and cassoulet, so French (mostly) veggie dinner. Beets, tomatoes, salad greens… boy I have a lot of veggies to work through.
Oh I love when I overbuy veggies and then am like wow goddamn now I gotta get through all this yiiiiiikes
that’s a much better outcome than I ever get…
Usually it’s buy any veggies (but when I do, I will probably overbuy…), and then for *reasons* I can’t cook that night, or the next, or… and then I just have a bunch of compost, and it almost always coincides with the week/month that there is a lot of garden/tree maintenance going on, so the compost bin is full, and then I end up stuffing it in my freezer, and forgetting about it.
And then at some point in the future, I buy a fuck ton of sausage/meat/vodka/fruitcake/otterpops because they are on sale, and then I realize I have no room in my fridge, because of the long forgotten frozen compost, and by then, inevitably, it’s leaf-clean-up-time or something, and the compost bin is again full..
I’m going to attempt another FYCE, Stanley Tucci’s zucchini pasta dish. I’ve never deep fried anything before. I plan on using a dutch oven and sunflower oil. Any tips?
I have a food thermometer, what temp should I aim for?
I’m hoping to store the used oil back in the glass bottle once it cools. Do you guys do that? How long does it stay good for?
I’ve deep-fried a few times at my parents’ house. We don’t use a thermometer, just throw in a tester piece of fish/potato/etc and see how it goes.
Because why would we have any sort of planning or critical thinking.
I do a fair amount of deep frying and I don’t have a deep fryer so you should be fine.
The oil should be ideally 165 degrees, not much more and not much less.
165C is a good number. If the thermometer only has fahrenheit, that’s about 330F.
I think the show where they made that used a fairly small pan and they cooked in small batches, which may be safer for a first try than loading a dutch oven with a lot of oil. It will take longer to do multiple batches but may be easier to control and if you mess up a trial run you still have a lot of zuke left.
Try to keep the temp in the 300 to 350 range. Too high and it burns, too low and the food goes soggy. As the temp gets close, moderate the flame/burner so it doesn’t shoot past where you want it.
I don’t usually save oil because it tends to get smelly or bad unless you strain carefully like this.
https://www.bonappetit.com/test-kitchen/how-to/article/leftover-frying-oil
I usually let it cool and pour into a milk carton or big jar and put in the trash. Don’t pour down a drain or flush it away.
If there is municipal composting where you (reader you, not @bluedogcollar), they may allow oil/fat in the compost.
I don’t know how common that is, but I think I’ve seen that advertised for the municipal composting here (SF Bay Area)…
Awesome thanks for all the info!
Heard on Monday Night Football halftime show: “John Gruden insulted a whole host of people, Booger.”
normally id be cooking…buuuut…ive got overtime…bossman decided that everyone working overtime gets compensated with a$5 gift voucher of the general purpose variety for every hour of overtime (on top of the regular money that is)
i figure im going to milk that shit for as long as i can before he walks that back….see if i can buy myself a new tv or some shit using only vouchers by xmas
anyways….as im not going to be home till dinnertime ive no idea whats for dinner….but itll be cooked for me….and that is nice
oh wow… I’d be low-key considering starting a meth habit with an offer like that…
I mean, I wouldn’t, but I’d think about it…
yeah..samesies…luckily not too many of my coworkers are taking the offer (really..its just the regular band of merry idiots taking the overtime) the rest seem to think $5 vouchers arent worth it
i think that means im getting old…. as to me thats 5 whole bucks untaxed and never touched my bank account
thats the good stuff
No cooking for me, I don’t have the time for that. plus, it usually ends up costing not much less than take out, unless I’m going for the super-unhealthy processed instant shit (can of spam, box of mac&cheese, can of corned beef hash, a bunch of eggs, etc.), and even then I still need to clean dishes and such at some point, and… yeah, I just don’t have enough free time for that shit.
So, today is leftover sunday pizza and leftover lunch sandwich from a cafe. Tomorrow will probably be the same. Wednesday/Thursday is too far ahead for me to plan food/takeout. anything beyond that is edging into the “I don’t even know if I’ll still be alive then, so I’m not going to worry about it now” territory.
Meatballs and Sauce via BBTM’s recipe. I just came from my OT shift tonight and made some pasta and put it on. I’m really enjoying it.
FYI, it’s a lot of sauce (almost 2 weeks worth for a single person like me) so half will probably be frozen.