Gravy's Cooking Thread

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Merkins4Brazil_sl

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Candiarie_sl said:
A friend once told me "tabasco is great, if you want your food to taste like shit and still not be spicy" and I'm inclined to agree. That said, I use equal parts butter and franks for my sauce and maybe some pepper and it turns out pretty sweet. I've used the allrecipes/food.com (don't remember which) hooters wings recipe plenty of times with great success. If you like them breaded, leaving them in the breading overnight seems to really help.

Alton has a video about steaming your wings but I haven't tried it.
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yeah tabasco is rubbish, here we make our own hotsauce - hawaiian chilli peppers, salt, water (sometimes vinegar) in a bottle, let it steep a couple weeks. hawaiian chilli peppers have some serious scovilles, one the size of a small jellybean will make a gallon and a half of chilli con carne pour sweat from your brow.

1939737-714205-little-red-hot-hawaiian-chile-peppers.jpg


Speaking of condiments, Guam has a nice oneFinadene, they serve it on the side with everything, it's there version of Salsa. It's addictive. As the locals say 'gotta slice it thin" when making it.

Also Mae Ploy, sweet, sour and a wee bit of spice. I use it for salad dressing, in tuna salad, over cottage cheese as a component in stir fry sauces. good stuf.

MaePloy_SwtChili25oz.jpg
 
BrutulTM

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My favorite tool for deep frying is a wok. You get a lot more area vs. the amount of oil you use and the sides are high/wide enough to cut down on the mess. I also have one of those little fry daddy gizmos but fuck that, they are just too small unless you're just cooking for yourself. Putting out like 6 wings every 10-15 minutes just doesn't cut it if you're having a party.

Hot sauce should probably be it's own thread in the product review section but I have pretty much narrowed it down to Frank's and Green Tabasco to keep on hand regularly for my own use. There are a thousand good hot sauces though.
 
chaos

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I don't really like a lot of heat. I may be from Texas, but I am not a hot sauce badass. Herdez chipotle salsa is about the limit of heat I will eat, anything hotter is just not enjoyable.
 
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LadyVex_sl

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I made the poor decision of doing a habanero challenge at some local dive. Was myself and a friend of mine; four of us go in, my friend's husband and I walk up and announce our intent. Everyone in the room stares, and now we are terrified. So we back down, ask if we can just try the hot sauce. It was a good choice; it wasn't so much a habanero sauce as a sauce with some habaneros in it plus pure capsaicin - it was fucking scorching. For about 5 minutes I was fine. The next hour was terrible. Within 60 seconds of that first 5 minutes passing I downed 32 ounces of guinness just to quench the fire. Obviously didn't work, and now whenever someone talks about a challenge I break out in hiccups.

And I pride myself on loving spicy stuff.
 
Alex

Alex

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LadyVex_sl said:
I made the poor decision of doing a habanero challenge at some local dive. Was myself and a friend of mine; four of us go in, my friend's husband and I walk up and announce our intent. Everyone in the room stares, and now we are terrified. So we back down, ask if we can just try the hot sauce. It was a good choice; it wasn't so much a habanero sauce as a sauce with some habaneros in it plus pure capsaicin - it was fucking scorching. For about 5 minutes I was fine. The next hour was terrible. Within 60 seconds of that first 5 minutes passing I downed 32 ounces of guinness just to quench the fire. Obviously didn't work, and now whenever someone talks about a challenge I break out in hiccups.

And I pride myself on loving spicy stuff.
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A couple years ago my roommate at the time and I cut a some crazy type of habanero in half and each ate the halves. Awful experience. I too love spicy food but that was pain. My stomach was wrenching all day. I could have easily drank a gallon of milk in an hour. Because I almost did.
 
lurkingdirk

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Last night I procured some fresh, never frozen, local, organic pork chops. Good and thick. Just seasoned them, seared them in a hot pan, finished them in the oven. They were a thing of beauty.

Good meat can make any meal spectacular. The difference between fresh/frozen and organic/steroid enhanced is huge.
 
BrutulTM

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No it isn't. But I'm glad you enjoyed your pork chops.
 
BrutulTM

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Organic has nothing to do with how the pork chop tastes, nor does the presence/lack of synthetic hormones. I also doubt that if you had frozen and defrosted one of those pork chops and then cooked them together that you could tell which one had been frozen. You got some good pork chops, but the reasons you are listing are not the cause of it.
 
lurkingdirk

lurkingdirk

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BrutulTM_sl said:
Organic has nothing to do with how the pork chop tastes, nor does the presence/lack of synthetic hormones. I also doubt that if you had frozen and defrosted one of those pork chops and then cooked them together that you could tell which one had been frozen. You got some good pork chops, but the reasons you are listing are not the cause of it.
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Actually, no. Nothing you just said is true. The process of freezing and thawing pork subtly changes the texture of the meat. I can, with no doubt in my mind, tell the difference between pork chops that have been frozen, and those that haven't.

But whatever. Enjoy your frozen meat, enhanced with hormones.
 
chaos

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Bro, you are empirically on the losing end of this argument. There's really no difference in taste. Or negligible difference. And I very much doubt your claim on freezing changing the texture of meat, but I haven't seen an actual study on that.
 
lurkingdirk

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Say what you like. I can taste a difference, and I've had both fresh and frozen on my plate at the same time. I could tell you which was which.

Perhaps this is my superpower. I've been trying to figure out what my superpower is, after all. I'm "fresh meat man."
 
chaos

chaos

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Some people do have super sensitive taste powers or whatever. It is known.

But the average person, you take the same cut of meat, same quality, freeze one and not the other, they won't know the difference. I know that I can't tell the taste difference between organic/free range chicken and normal chicken. I have never bothered buying that expensive as fuck organic beef. And I've never even seen heritage pork.

I have read that there is a significant taste difference with heritage pork due to them breeding the fat out of pigs over the past 50 or so years. Any taste difference I would probably account to that over any hormones or whatever.
 
lurkingdirk

lurkingdirk

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There may be an issue of training and opportunity, too. Having worked as a chef in very high-end restaurants in Toronto, I have experienced the very best cuts of meat very often. As with wine, if you become accustomed to very good, well crafted wines, it is hard to go to the cheap stuff. However, if the cheap stuff is all you ever get, you're just fine with it.

Now, there's nothing wrong with the cheap stuff; nor is there anything wrong with frozen meat. Both are great, and necessary. I'm not "better" or anything because I have a certain preference, I merely have a preference.
 
chaos

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Yeah I don't doubt that most people don't really have an opportunity to eat the more expensive stuff. I like some food, but it would be difficult for me to justify spending 90 bucks on steaks for my wife and myself. But I can justify 30 or so, and that gets me a good cut that tastes just as good, to me, as anything I could get in a steakhouse outside of DC probably.

Like, people say there is this huge taste difference with produce and eggs. I have tried organic eggs vs normal eggs, there is no difference. There just isn't. If we're arguing health benefits of not ingesting those extra chemicals, well I don't know about that. But pure taste there is no difference. Anyone who has seen Penn and Teller knows that organic produce doesn't taste different, and still has pesticides on it to boot. There is so much marketing and misinformation in the food industry it is hard for a normal person to keep up with what is going on. So I started trying to judge based on sensory perception rather than stickers on the label. Not that you can smell e coli contamination, but damn, what other option is tehre really?
 
mkopec

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The problem is there is no regulation. What stops some store from labeling a regularly grown veggie something as "organic" and charging someone 2x the price? all I know that in the grocery stores I frequent the "organic" isles of veggies seem to be growing, I wonder why?
 
lurkingdirk

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chaos_sl said:
Yeah I don't doubt that most people don't really have an opportunity to eat the more expensive stuff. I like some food, but it would be difficult for me to justify spending 90 bucks on steaks for my wife and myself. But I can justify 30 or so, and that gets me a good cut that tastes just as good, to me, as anything I could get in a steakhouse outside of DC probably.

Like, people say there is this huge taste difference with produce and eggs. I have tried organic eggs vs normal eggs, there is no difference. There just isn't. If we're arguing health benefits of not ingesting those extra chemicals, well I don't know about that. But pure taste there is no difference. Anyone who has seen Penn and Teller knows that organic produce doesn't taste different, and still has pesticides on it to boot.There is so much marketing and misinformation in the food industry it is hard for a normal person to keep up with what is going on. So I started trying to judge based on sensory perception rather than stickers on the label.Not that you can smell e coli contamination, but damn, what other option is tehre really?
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That's the hard truth. People are trying to market "organic" food to those who are into the idea. Expensive shit that is the same as anything else. That's not quite what I'm talking about, though. I'm talking about true, farm-fresh produce, meat, and eggs. That's what I have access too. I am fortunate enough to be in a position where I go to the people who grow the produce, raise the beef, pork, and chicken, and collect the eggs. The eggs in my house are never more than a week old. I'm able to get meat that I actually help slaughter (I get to do this if I want to, it's great). That level of freshness does make a difference.
 
BrutulTM

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A lot of the time people who are selling "fancy" food also raise it organically etc. and people think that the two have something to do with each other. The quality of the meat depends on the genetics of the animal, what it was fed (the actual product, not whether or not there may have been some traces of pesticide residue in their feed), and how fat they are. Organic or non-organic, hormones or no hormones, does not change the taste nor is there any plausible mechanism for how it could.

There is also a placebo effect kind of thing where if you pay a lot for something, and you believe that it is something special, you will probably like it better when you eat it. Freshness makes a difference with eggs, especially if you want to poach or fry them. Meat not so much. In fact meat is better when you age it. We would have to do the blind taste test to see what difference freezing really makes, but sushi restaurants that are not right by the coast claim that frozen fish is better for sushi than fish that takes a couple days to get there and there is not much that is more delicate texturally than raw fish and so if they can use frozen fish for sushi I can't imagine that it makes much difference to a steak.
 
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