I just want everyone to know that originally I wrote "not actually an NYT link" which I know is grammatically correct. But it felt wrong, because I don't actually read "NYT" as "En Why Tee", I automatically hear it internally as "New York Times". So I'm sticking with "not actually a NYT link" on purpose.
It's supposed to be pronounced en-white, right?
Anyway, I'm pretty sure it's pronounced "nightie" and you're supposed to picture an 80s Blanche Devereaux negligee.
I developed a ridiculously long but fool proof method to cook chicken. I'm not sure if it's worth the time, but it's not hard.
Take a whole chicken and put it in a large (2 gallon or more) ziplock bag with stock, salt, pepper, bay leaf (can add soy sauce and mustard). Stick that in an immersion circulator (aka sous vide stick) and cook for about 6 hours anywhere from 143F to 150F. Dry it out in the fridge uncovered for at least overnight. Then do something like a modified reverse sear. Heat the chicken at about 200 F for a couple of hours until it gets warm. You will lose some juice during this process. Once it gets to around 150 or so internal temperature, take the chicken out of the oven and cover to keep warm. Turn the oven on as high as it goes. Best if you have a convection oven. Slather melted ghee or butter or olive oil on the skin, shove it in the hot oven and wait for it to crisp up. It comes out ridiculously juicy. I did a turkey breast this way only I didn't bring it to temperature on low heat first and I was worried about overcooking the outside to get it warm on the inside. Store bought rotisserie chicken is so good that it may not b worth the time but it was fool-proof. And I want to do a whole roast turkey this way some Thanksgiving.
You should try with a spatchcocked chicken. Much faster cooking.
First, assume a sous vide thingamadoogie. Second, assume space in the fridge for a whole chicken. Third, assume time and advance planning sufficient for overnight drying.
Then test for significance.
Assume a spherical sous vide device.
Yeah. I roasted a spatchcocked chicken with potatoes and onions. Took like 90 minutes total.
To be clear, I started with a room temperature chicken that was already spatchcocked. I have no idea how long it takes if you start with a spherical (relatively) chicken.
I find that doing a whole chicken in a pressure cooker comes out really nicely, and the carcass and the liquid can then be put back on and reduce down to make stock. The flesh is really moist and it's easy to remove it from the bones and then either just serve as part of a roast-type dinner (potatoes, gravy, veg, etc.) or in anything else that calls for chicken. I can often get three decent meals out of one chicken, which doesn't usually happen for me if I just roast it in an oven.
All of the approaches that claim to keep the skin edible (searing it first, etc) don't work for me, though. I just remove the skin at the end and chuck it back into the stock when I cook that up as the skin is never pleasant to eat when pressure cooked..
I find that doing a whole chicken in a pressure cooker comes out really nicely
A recipe that I've learned for Chinese New Year (and only make once a year, but always think I should make more often) is a whole poached chicken.
1) Put enough water in a pot to cover the chicken + 1in (add a little salt and ginger if you want). Remove chicken
2) Bring water to a boil.
3) Add chicken (which will cool water), and bring back to a boil.
4) Lift chicken out of the water (so any cool water in the chicken cavity can run out); return chicken to water
5) simmer for 10-15 minutes
6) cover; let sit for 30-40 minutes
Very juicy and tasty.
There's a one pot homemade hamburger helper recipe on Budget Bytes that's really good (not quick but the noodles cook in the sauté pan). But I can't remember the last time I had the real stuff so I don't know how it compares. Probably the noodle texture is way better.
I also highly recommend their sheet pan chicken fajitas which I love beyond all reason (it might be the sugar in the spice rub).
I just roast chicken absolutely plain usually, and then let the kids put BBQ sauce or whatever on it, on the table. For having zero seasoning, it turns out fine.
I'm so sick of my own cooking.
My beef stew has gotten much worse tasting since I moved to a low sodium diet.
re: 13
Yeah. Doing it in a pressure cooker reminds me exactly of that. I've done a slightly different variation of that poached chicken recipe before (in a venerable Hamlyn chinese cookbook) where, if I recall, it's served with vegetables and some kind of poached pork or ham. The texture is the same.
We finally got an air fryer at Christmas, which has been a revelation. Nothing radical, but it's quicker and easier to clean up, so we make a lot more "roasted meat and veg" recipes, which are easy and tasty with a bit of steamed rice or some couscous, and save a ton of prep and washing up.
Not being able to dump a can of cream of mushroom soup into my cooking like a regular '50s housewife has been a real blow.
we make a lot more "roasted meat and veg" recipes, which are easy and tasty with a bit of steamed rice or some couscous, and save a ton of prep and washing up.
Interesting. I don't have an air fryer, and the biggest reason I don't do many roasted meat/veggie dishes is that I don't like cleaning the roasting pan(s).
re: 19
For a lot of them, you can just take the roasting pan and rack out and stick them in the dishwasher. If you use a paper liner, you might not even need to do that, depending on what you cook: take out the liner, give it a quick sponge down with a little soapy water, and done. It still needs to be washed, but it's a lot easier to throw in the dishwasher, and, so far, seems to come out perfectly clean, which isn't the case with roasting pans. Since I often use it to quickly throw together some meat and veg for lunch, and I don't want to run the dishwasher for that, it's fine to just hand-wash. Non-stick and small, so much less hassle than roasting tins.
This seems like another opportunity to praise Ogged's recommendation of The Finest Chilli Recipe In The World (www.everydaysouthwest.com/authentic-chili-recipe-a-k-a-bowl-of-red) which I make as often as I can. The recommended quantity of chilli is about three times the lethal dose for the Selkie, so I've had to change that bit, but otherwise it's terrific.
I put parchment paper under the chicken. Works a treat.
Whole pork shoulder is great for roasting, and cheap too! Use pretty much any spice rub you like. Cook for 12 hours at 250 degrees (covering with foil after first 4 hours). But I'm trying to lose weight this year, so instead I made a Boston cream pie this weekend.
I chop up root vegetables for the bottom of the casserole where the chicken will roast, rub the outside of the chicken with either a) thyme, tarragon, whatever else suits or b) caraway and salt, roast for a while, then take it out and put bacon strips on top, roast the rest of the way. Baste with the good bouillon from the bodega, US bouillon is bad.
The once-a year meal is spatchcocking a turkey.
An occasional prep for me is whole squids, cleaning them is not too bad, maybe 3 min/squid, but best to do outside. then either stuff with tomato, feta, basil, or cut into rounds and grill in a basket with chorizo, chickpeas, anything else suitable in the fridge.
We had a Super Bowl party yesterday for which Amadea made a variety of dips. She wanted to replicate the Applebee's spinach and artichoke dip, so we looked up the various back-engineered recipes people had come up with online and in all of them the secret ingredient turned out to be... Alfredo sauce. She reports that it tasted very much like the real thing. (I think that sort of dip is gross so I didn't try it myself.)
re: 21
Heh. I have a Mexican cookbook (probably best to put that in inverted commas as I'm sure it's neither authentically Mexican or authentically Tex-Mex) that has a recipe for chilli that has absurd quantities of chillis in it. I've only made it once and I had to substitute some of the chilis, but it was of the "24 anchos, 12 arbol, 10 guajillo, 10 habanero" sort of variety. When cooked it was pretty hot, but I've had other foods that were hotter. It was a total faff, though, so I don't think I'd do it again.
The recipe from that link looks simple.
What was the most popular dog food recipe?
7: But then I have to spatchcock it, which requires more skill.
8 and 9: Totally. I bought a small-ish chicken.
You can buy pre-spatchcocked chickens. During the early 2020 meat wars, the only whole chicken in the store was spatchocked, so I bought one and googled how to cook it.
We had a family meeting and everyone decided that I was the most dispensable person, so I did all the shopping. So I kept buying spatchcocked chicken so that I could say "spatchcock". I just said it was the only chicken even though that was only true for that one week
||
Attn (especially, but not only) Doug:
SF was the literature for critically thinking intelligenty in the Soviet Union, whereas today it has become pulp fiction for security guards, expressing the views and aspirations of the non-oppositional majority of the Russian population--the dispossessed, whose discontent has been masterfully channeled into statesponsored patriotic and anti-Western campaigns and geopolitical adventurism.Via Galeotti.
[...]
The idea of "progressing" (from progressory--people from the future communist Earth who interfere with historical processes on more backward planets) was developed by the Strugatskii brothers, Arkady and Boris, who were the most important inspiration for the majority of contemporary writers of this genre.70 However, if the Strugatskiis effectively questioned the right of a "higher civilization" to "progress" their younger brothers, today's authors deny this right altogether because all they see is blatant Western-centric universalism looming behind the topic of "progressing."
My recipe for a properly cooked chicken: Buy one for $4.99 at Costco.
31: oooh, thanks Mossy!
"pulp fiction for security guards"
Boris Akunin thought the same about post-Soviet detective novels, so he set out to do better and created a character who by all accounts is widely beloved. He also sold books by the millions and got his stories adapted into at least two movies and a tv series. Of course Akunin lives in London now.
Anyway, thanks for pointing me toward this paper and the podcast!
Lots of Russians live in London from what I've heard. Speaking of Russians and food, I remember a local priest telling the story of how he was really excited to be getting borscht for dinner until he saw that it was just beets. Before the internet, you couldn't easily check stuff like that.
35: which is why I'm not sure it's worth the time.
Last year at Tim's physical, is PCP asked him where he got his COVID bivalent booster. When Tim said Costco, the doctor launched into a paean about the wonders of the Costco rotisserie chicken and how much bigger the are than everyone else's while still being cheap.
I cannot remember what name I used to post on this blog...
Anyway, the thing that cracks me up about NYT recipes is that they always get 4 stars.
Everyone is so discriminating...They will be touting how great it is and then it only has 4 stars. On every other website like Gourmet or Cooking Light or whatever they get 5 stars but NYT readers are hard to please!
I sometimes put apricot jam on my chicken. With butter. I don't know why but it seems to work.
I have lost my cooking mojo. It went away and never came back.
I cannot remember what name I used to post on this blog...
Anyway, the thing that cracks me up about NYT recipes is that they always get 4 stars.
Everyone is so discriminating...They will be touting how great it is and then it only has 4 stars. On every other website like Gourmet or Cooking Light or whatever they get 5 stars but NYT readers are hard to please!
I sometimes put apricot jam on my chicken. With butter. I don't know why but it seems to work.
I have lost my cooking mojo. It went away and never came back.
38: I was going to say something about Russian borscht and Polish borscht, but I couldn't remember which was which but when I looked it up on Wikipedia it turned out I was nearly guilty of Ukraine erasure, and that moreover it turns out there are green borschts and white borschts and cold borschts and thin borschts and so, in conclusion, I realized I never really tasted borscht at all.
i am unreasonably smitten with our fancy new swiss pressure cooker, wish i'd gotten it years ago rather than years of pining & flirting. fast, fun, & basically awesome.
i would not use nonstick coated cookware, likely a very unpopular position among those with families to feed & not enough time. pfas are really bad news & i do not trust at all that the 3ms of the world after engaging in a multi decade big tobacco type cover-up are suddenly being honest about the safety of their newest iterations of prior poison.
Cooking was a lot more fun early in the pandemic. Plenty of free time. We relied on CSAs and the outdoor farmer's market more, so that provided variety.
Now? The kid's old enough to be assertive about her tastes, she knows what's available, and she doesn't like most of the recipes that I do. We don't have the time to do anything interesting anyway. 3 weekly activities for the kid plus occasional fun stuff for the grownups. On the nights when anything is going on, "cooking" is something straight from the freezer to a pan, or simply takeout. I don't know how people with more than two kids do it.
I guess we have a cheap pressure cooker (Instant Pot). It's fine if you want to make chicken and rice. That's all I've ever tried it for.
We do have a Costco, but we've still never joined.
This is behind the paywall, but I bet you can all find a way!
41: If you can recover your Unfogged name and start posting here again, maybe your cooking mojo will return.
I guess not everyone is as into the arts as I am.
40: If you need a new pseud, Hundekot Attacke is available.
Where are the Wry Cooters of yesteryear?
The idea of "progressing" (from progressory--people from the future communist Earth who interfere with historical processes on more backward planets) was developed by the Strugatskii brothers, Arkady and Boris, who were the most important inspiration for the majority of contemporary writers of this genre
Contact Section was an idea lifted from the Strugatskys??
Desserts are my absolute favorite to make;probably my most requested recipe is for vacuum cleaner cookies. (Probably named for the shreds of coconut, family lore is that my Dad always made them disappear like he was vacuuming up). Similarly I bake breaks about weekly - my latest "hack" is dividing the loaf in half for two smaller loaves, which is better for maintaining freshness of the 2nd half of the bread, and fits better in the toaster.
On the chicken front, I most often turn to "french chicken", which is just a whole roast chicken with olive oil, salt, and herbs de Provence smeared between the skin and meat. I make a bed of potatoes and garlic cloves on the bottom of a dutch oven, then set the chicken above the veggies and let it roast for 60-80 minutes. The potatoes and garlic are super flavorful by the end, since they pick up the flavored chicken juices.