Life Skills Thread

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PS, I would love to see some crock pot recipes that are good. I like to get recipes from people, not from companies. If I get them from people who have made them I know that somebody thinks it tastes good, not just that some company made it up to sell something.

I'd love to try your crock pot recipes.

Frances

Rice pot? Is that any different from a rice cooker? I can't find any difference online.

For an electric rice cooker its just:
Take rice cooker, measure out how much rice you want (the bag tends to have how many people various amounts feed), then add water and turn it on and that's all.

For the amounts of water:
Sushi rice: 1 cup rice : 1.5 cups water
White rice: 1 cup rice : 2 cups water
Brown rice: 1 cup rice: 3 cups water (I've never made brown rice, but that's what people I trust say)

Know what I bet you cant cook in a crockpot?

Lobster

Frances

Basically, saute, which means get a little oil in the pan on medium heat (whenever you cook anything new ever, start on lower to medium heat, and work your way up) and when the oil is thin, but not like, smoking, put the chicken in it, make sure you have enough oil for it not to stick, generally you want about 2mm on top of the pan after it thins out, so you generally start out on your pan with like a 3 inch circle of oil, however many spoons it is. OK, so that step is basically done.

For actually cooking the chicken pieces you cut up, again, it's on around medium heat. Basically, you want your pieces to be relatively small, when the pieces are done, they'll be firm, but you don't want them to be either too raw tasting, or too dry and overcooked. For color indicators, basically when the chicken is golden brown, it's done. You can add water too, but water will cut the fat down on the meat, which results in less flavor...sorta. Like a little water won't harm something, but if you, say, cover a hamburger in water completely, it'll taste like rubber. But if you just put around...4-5mm of water in the pan, and time it correctly so that the water is boiled off when your food is ready (you can keep adding water obviously if you need to) the food will taste fine, but you especially with meats don't want to add lots and lots of water, as they'll steal the juices out of the meat.

So basically, now you know how to cook any meat ever. Add spices at will, generally black pepper and salt is good. Seasoning salts, Goya Adobo, and other premixed spices are good to start off with if you're a noob, even when you're more experienced, some premixed spices come in handy for certain things. You don't want to overseason, though, so be careful.

Gordon Ramsey has a saying for cooking "when it's brown it's cooked, when it's black, it's f***ed." That's pretty much the rule for all cooking.

As far as a full curry, it's sorta complex, but imo a good beginner dish to start off with. Basically, you wanna fry your onions first. Always fry onions first to get them nice and golden brown, you're gonna need a bit of oil, and slightly higher heat to do it. I'm still not great at frying onions, as I don't like using lots of oil, but fry them until they're brown, or in my case, I fry them until I'm bored and just feel like adding other stuff. For chicken, if you didn't precook your chicken, you can add your chicken now. You can precook your chicken and save it, that's what most restaurants do. If not, add the vegetables you want in it. Usually mushrooms, bell peppers, I don't know...carrots, broccoli, maybe a bit of cabbage? At this point, you got 2 choices of how to make your curry. Some Chinese places use just water, right, but more Thai curries use coconut milk. Add some coconut milk, and some water, and form a thin layer of sauce over everything, probably about 1cm, and add your curry powder, the amount of coconut milk depends on what you want and how thick you want your sauce. Actually wait, add your curry powder after if using coconut milk. Then you wait til your everything is done cooking, pretty much, when the chicken is firm and the vegetables are cooked to your liking. Then you can garnish it with chopped scallions or basil leaves.

That's how I do it, it's not really like, "perfect" and there's like a billion million different ways to do curries, and different varieties, too, regional, from India to Jamaica, curry's evolved all over the world. What I'd recommend doing is, find a real recipe somewhere, and try to fit it into what I told you. But, the basics of what I told you is sorta how it works. Chinese places can cover up bad cooking, too, by simply adding MSG, which I don't believe you wanna do, but it does work. One obvious thing too I've always had trouble with, salting food, you gotta add enough salt to your food.

Me personally, I prefer Thai red curry sauce. You can make it yourself, but I just buy the sauce in tins at the Asian market, and just do what I told you, get coconut milk, water, throw stuff in a pan, great red curry.

But...that framework there is pretty much how all "Chinese food" sorta works. Your first couple times might suck, but, just practice and it'll assuredly be better the more you do it. PM me if you ever want random advice about cooking a particular thing, I'm not a great chef, but people seem to like the food I cook sometimes, and it's a fun little hobby/special interest of mine I guess. Oh, if you're ever in doubt, youtube has TONS of videos about cooking, step by step seeing pretty much everything, you can pause it and think about it, etc, so youtube, it's awesome.

OMG - BBQ or pulled pork in a crock pot is so easy, cheap and good for all the meat-a-sauruses:

You can cook beef or pork this way - it makes an insane amount of food very cheaply. I make this recipe when the store has a really really good sale on these already cheaper cuts of meat.

You will need a 2 or 3 pound piece of meat - pork shoulder, pork butt, pork loin, beef chuck, beef brisket or beef stew meat. With a knife, cut off any big chunks of white fat if the meat has them. Some white fat is fine but big thick chunks of fat will make it greasy. Cut off the most of any big chunks and throw it away.

You will need 1 cup of a liquid. - If you want it to be barbequed flavor , you will need 1 bottle of your favorite BBQ sauce plus 1/4 cup of water. I use 1/2 cup of soy sauce and 1/2 cup of water with pork. One bottle of beer plus 1/4 cup of water works well for beef. You can play with the flavoring - the general rule; 'straight sauces' like soy, worchester,vinegar, balsamic vinegar - do not exceed 1/2 a cup of these - always dilute them with, at least 1/2 cup of water so your meat isn't too salty, sour or strong. It is fine to use a whole bottle of BBQ sauce since it is already mixed and diluted in the bottle - the added water is to thin it out for long cooking. Gather whatever liquid you will be using and put it aside.

If you like onions and garlic you can add these to the bottom of the pot - slice the onion in half so the root end is cut in two. remove skin and slice off top end. Slice each half into half circles
slices about 1/4" thick - thicker is fine. Spread the onions on the bottom of the crock pot in an even layer. Sprinkle with chopped garlic from a jar. (if you would like to know how to chop fresh garlic, just let me know!) If you are unsure how much garlic you like, start with a heaping tablespoon full of chopped garlic and sprinkle it evenly over the onions. Sprinkle the onions and garlic lightly with ground pepper. (you can skip this is you do not like pepper)

Put your piece of meat on top of the onions and garlic if you are using them or just put the meat in the pot. Pour your liquid around the sides of the meat. Gently stir liquids to mix. Put the lid on your crock pot. Turn crock pot on low. Leave it to cook for at least 4 hours but it can cook all day and be just fine.

When you get home - or hungry - turn off the crock pot. With a pair of forks, carefully lift the meat out of the crock pot and place it in a big bowl. With the forks, poke into the meat and pull it apart - it should pull apart easily. Keeping pulling all of the meat apart until it is the texture you like - some people like big chunks of meat, some like the meat finely shredded like little strings. If you are not sure, try a piece and see how you like it! Once it is all shredded give it all a good stir to mix the sauce/juices around. If it looks dry you can add a little of the cooking liquid about 1/4 cup should do it.

You can put the meat in a roll, over toast, over mashed potatoes, or in soft flour tortillas. Have napkins on hand.

Discard extra cooking liquid, clean the crock pot and, after your leftovers are cool, put them away in the fridge.

I don't think there is a meat lover alive that doesn't like this!

Boy was it hard for me to think of something to contribute.

Here's one: When you lack motivation to do daily tasks, check your hygiene and dress, never try do anything (save breakfast) in the morning till you're fully cleaned and dressed well, it helped me with depression majorly. Staying in sleepwear all day kills you - as does not being clean. Being well dressed, shaved and such gives you new drive.

Wow, that all sounds like a lot of work.

My meals usually go like this:
Take box out of freezer.
Remove meal from box,
poke slits in plastic for venting,
Place in microwave oven,
set cooking time,
wait,
remove from microwave,
wait again for food to cool a bit,
enjoy!

Only a fork is left for washing after.
10000x more efficient

It's just food anyhow, why go to all that trouble.

Great idea for a thread, I'll post a simple recipe which is easy to cook.

Chicken Salad Roll ups Great for parties or social functions and very easy to cook.



Ingredients
1/2 pound chicken, cooked, skinned and deboned
2 tablespoons sunflower seeds
2 tablespoons dried fruit bits
2 tablespoons celery, sliced
1/3 nonfat yogurt
Fresh chilled lettuce leaves
Tortillas

1. Dice chicken and place in mixing bowl. Combine with sunflower seeds, fruit bits, celery and yogurt.
2. Spread a little chicken mixture on a lettuce leaf and roll up tightly in a tortilla. Repeat until mixture is used up.
3. Serve immediately or wrap roll-ups in plastic wrap for later use.

LOL - you scare and amaze me that you can live on food so devoid of any sort of nutrition whatsoever!

The recipes, I think, are for people that want to try something a little less cardboardy with maybe a few remaining nutrients in them and maybe flavor. Flavor is awesome.

It's not just about the flavor either, Microwave food is also full of fat and sodium and is bound to raise your cholesterol levels.

It is kind of amazing when I think about it. I have been living out of drive thru's & microwaves since I was a teenager.
I'm not in "perfect" shape, but I am in amazingly good health considering how I live. I don't have a single thought about nutrition when I choose food, I smoke 3 packs a day, I rarely get any exercise, I visit a doctor about twice a decade. I should be 250 pounds and on my death bed, yet, I'm 160lbs and aside from some carpal & back pain from using the computer so much, I feel just fine. And my immune system works great, I almost never get sick.

I view eating as a necessary chore. I don't really choose for what tastes good, but for what doesn't taste terrible. I snack very little. I just have a set of a few things that make be feel satisfied, I don't think about what's in the food, I pay more attention to how I feel after eating. I stick with what works for me. I experiment very little with food.

Hey, if it's working for you, more power to you. I suppose all of this is for those who are a bit more adventurous gastrically. Cooking can be a daunting task and this thread can show folks that it doesn't have to be. It's a great idea but obviously not the ONLY option.

They're not devoid of nutrition. They often have a lot of sodium added and sometimes are "fortified" with nutrients that probably don't help all that much. They're not healthy but you're not likely to have any nutritional deficiencies living on such food.

Plus, lots of these things have flavor. Anyway, if it wasn't for meals like that there are times I would have probably starved.

I do like cooked meals more than freezer stuff, though.

It's still daunting, but the directions make sense.

Oh, right - "chicken vindaloo." I need to make this.

Also, pupusas.

I mention because the instructions for both online hurt my brain.

Screw it! Let's all go get frozen dinners cause it's much more effecient and taste has no question in this.

Frances

I will have you know using my own super efficiency obsession thought process that what you describe is actually less efficient. My mom has the same rationale, and I had the body fat to prove it doesn't work. Figure you're paying $2-3 for each frozen meal, and each frozen meal is basically one serving.

Off the top of my head, for $2 I can cook a pound of dried beans and a few cups of rice and have enough food to eat continuously for like 2-3 days. For $2 (actually maybe more like $2.50) I can cook a whole medium/large (around 15 inches or so) pizza. Basically, by cooking, you can cook enough for an entire family to eat for the same price as one frozen dinner.

To prove my point and give more advice, http://budgetbytes.blogspot.com/ check out this site, this nice lady here has a ton of recipes, and she gives the cost of every ingredient she uses, cost for the whole recipe, and cost per serving. Lots of really wonderful recipes and she explains things pretty well I think.

As far as it being "just food" do you have anything you care about in your life at all? Nothing is ever as simple as "just" being something. At least in my opinion. I think we should constantly strive to have everything we do the best possible, including food.

I don't know, I'm sorry for sorta personally attacking you on this, but I find your thought process utterly absurd, having to live under it for a long portion of my childhood. I was in such poor health because of my mom doing that to me, just buying frozen food. That's what made me take up cooking, my mother couldn't cook, and I just got so pissed at eating frozen food I knew was killing me, so I had to change it and I learned to cook. It's your kind of thought process that I believe will bring America to it's knees, or already has. I envision in the near future a nation of people starving because the supermarkets run out of Hot Pockets and Lean Cuisine. Basically, I see your thought process as the precursor to this (Idiocracy movie clip.)


I'm sorry for being so harsh, just personally people making choices like that has severely affected me, which is why I'm such an advocate of cooking now.