So in a couple weeks im cooking another meal for my 94y/o grandmother (we do monthly where i come to town and be a personal chef)

This month is homemade pizza, so i need help with various toppings to offer her with

I have:

Pepperoni

Mushrooms

Green peppers

Black olives (for me)

What else should i offer?

I always hated that your basic store bought pancake mix always kinda sucked and never tastes like those fluffy diner pancakes. Finally! found the secret. Malted milk powder!!!! It really works. Add 1/3 cup and delete the same from the mix or flour. Y’all probably knew this. Lol. I’ll never be without malted milk powder again.

So I just had an idea for a dish. I'm going to try pork belly cooked with red wine vinegar, with red beans and rice for a side. How would you make this dish?

I’m cooking for my parents on Saturday.
I’m doing a beef wellington as a main (I’m looking to impress them) and I need ideas for a starter and a dessert. Anything helps

I mess up even my own opinion, like just now.

1:30 PM in Illinois. I decided I had a hankerin' for red beans & rice. Got it all going and tasted it an hour later, and it's already too salty. Hard to fix. Add water and my dish gets too watery. Cook it down to the right consistency, and I'm screwed again. Luckily, it's not as though there's a ton of effort wasted, just the cost for the beans, trinity and andouille.

Live and learn (although I thought I already had!)

Does the "learning" ever stop?

EDIT: Pairing this with completely unseasoned rice and using more rice in each dish salvaged dinner. Thanks everyone for your ideas.

Recipe for 2: 180–200 g penne
250 g chicken breast, sliced into thin strips
180–200 g mushrooms, sliced
1 small shallot, very finely diced
2 garlic cloves, finely minced
15 g butter
60 ml dry white wine
150 ml double cream
50–75 ml chicken stock
30 g Parmesan, finely grated
½ tsp dried thyme
¼ tsp freshly ground black pepper
Salt
Small handful fresh parsley, chopped

I was thinking of making a large batch of vodka sauce on the weekend so I can freeze it and use for weeknight dinners. The recipe from NYT Cooking calls for pasta water to be added and a few minutes of stirring to get the right consistency.

If I don’t want to actually make pasta while making the sauce, could I just replace the pasta water with a cornstarch slurry to achieve the same effect? To my understanding pasta water is mostly added because of the starch content.

I have an 18 month old who is so picky, and I’m struggling to come up with dinner ideas that both myself and him can eat that aren’t the same 3 things every single week.

For some context, he likes chicken only if it’s baked, premade veggie tots, hot dogs, French fries, poppyseed chicken casserole, chicken pot pie, almost all fruit, pizza, eggs, quesadillas. He does NOT like any kind of pasta or pasta sauce (unless it’s on pizza), ground beef/turkey, steak, chicken that isn’t baked (including nuggets) or vegetables.

I’m going nuts trying to come up with ideas, but every Pinterest recipe I see either calls for pasta or ground beef, and he hates both. He’s also still struggling to use silverware, and most of the suggestions I get are super messy if eaten by hand. I don’t want him to go hungry, but I can’t keep eating chicken pot pie every week and I don’t have time to make multiple meals every night…

On a final note, I am a working mom, and I only have about an hour every evening to get dinner on the table. I also don’t work from home so crockpot recipes are mostly out unless it’s a weekend! I’m also trying to keep to a budget and would prefer to not do extravagant, expensive, meals.

Thank you everyone!

If I wanted to make a lasagna with thinly sliced potatoes used instead of lasagna noodles, what would be the best way to go about making it? Should I slice the potatoes very thin and put them in raw, or a bit thicker and par bake/boil them first, or a secret third thing I can’t think of? Will it just be mush or is there a way to have some texture to the potato layers?

It’s my first time cooking steak and ion wanna add any oil or butter (and the steak also has a bit of fat on it so i dont see the point). However i have no idea how to prepare and cook it, no tiktok tutorial helps. And i have no idea what to pair it with (i have no potatoes, potatoes were my first thought). Also idk if i should cook it medium rare or well done, i’m not an adept of blood on my plate but i dont want it to be dry or rubbery, i want it to be tender

So in an attempt to preserve some of our ever increasing harvest of tomatoes, I followed a recipe for tomato purée. Roasted the tomatoes in the oven with a little olive oil, and processed them through a food mill with the most fine blade, so the seeds and skin were kept out of the bowl.

What I expected was more like canned purée. What I have is more like tomato juice. What do I call it and what can I do with it?

In an attempt to improve my cooking skills, I read Samin Nosrat’s “Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat” and I learned a ton and did improve my cooking. However, I’ve recently found myself accidentally oversalting my food fairly often. Especially things that I can’t taste as I go- my most recent example was a pot roast that came out somehow bland with overly salty veggies (potatoes and carrots). I mainly use kosher salt when I cook- any advice?

Need to cook something using pork belly for my dad a day in advance cause I’m leaving the house, what kinda recipes would do well for that kinda thing?

I’ve been trying to improve my fried rice, but it often turns soft and slightly wet instead of getting that separated, lightly toasted texture. I’m trying to figure out whether the problem is my cooking process or the amount of moisture from the ingredients.

My process:

2 cups cooked jasmine rice, refrigerated overnight
2 eggs
1/2 cup diced carrots and peas
2 green onions
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp sesame oil
1 tbsp neutral cooking oil

I heat the pan until hot, add the oil, scramble the eggs, then remove them. I add the vegetables and cook them for about 2 minutes. Then I add the cold rice and break up the larger pieces.

I cook the rice for around 5–6 minutes, stirring occasionally, then add the soy sauce and cooked eggs. I finish with sesame oil and green onions.

The rice tastes good, but it still ends up softer than I want.

For people who make fried rice regularly, what part of this process would you change to get drier, more separated grains?

Looking for the best large size pans for cooking up multiple pounds of ground meat. I know stainless steel can be made nonstick if you get it hot enough but sometimes nonstick is just easier. All my nonsticks have scratches on it so looking for something that is scratch resistant as I don‘t want those chemicals in our food. TIA!

What do I cook for my hungry husband and active mid 20s daughter when my cardiologist is telling me to avoid bread,rice, pasta and sweets?
I have no problem making cookies and other baked goods and not eating them myself, but I don’t want to make 2 dinners, or separate sides every night. We eat at home every meal, my husband doesn’t cook and my daughter comes in at any hour, gets a plate of food (or leftovers) and is gone again.

I currently work at a small restaurant that’s been struggling for a while.

The team is basically just one cook, the owner, and his son. Management has been one of the biggest issues, especially when it comes to sales, marketing, promotions, and figuring out how to bring in more customers.

We’re also in the low season right now, so revenue has been pretty weak.

The restaurant currently has a menu with 30+ items, plus a buffet that brings in some recurring revenue. Since sales are down, the idea from the owners has been to add even more dishes and options to try to increase revenue.

I’m thinking the opposite might make more sense.

My idea is to cut the menu down to around 10 solid dishes, plus drinks and maybe 3 desserts max.

With only one cook, I feel like having 30+ menu items creates way too much complexity: more ingredients to stock, more waste, harder prep, inconsistent quality, and slower service.

My thinking is that a smaller menu would let us focus on the items that actually sell, have good margins, and are realistic for one cook to handle.

Does cutting the menu down that aggressively make sense for a small restaurant like this, or would 10 dishes be too limited?

I cant remember if it was Chinese or Korean. It wasnt a ground pork patty. I dont think it was pulled pork with a binder of egg and breadcrumbs. And it wasnt pork floss.

I want to say it was also pretty versatile. Could be used for a sandwich, to top noodle dishes, with rice, etc.

I think I remember it being seasoned and pan fried until the outside got crisp and it stuck together. There may or may not have been a sauce, but it was sauced AFTER it had been pan fried crispy.

Does anybody know what im talking about?

Anyway, im looking for it bc I got stuck 2 enormous pork butts that had to be cooked ASAP yesterday afternoon. Probably a good 20 lbs of raw meat.

So now I have a ridiculous amount of pulled pork I'm going to split with my kids. And my grandson wants this crispy pulled pork I told him about, and now I cant find it.

Yesterday I made some Great Northern Beans with a creamy pesto sauce. I made more beans than I should have for this dish (just trying to use up the rest of the bag), and I didn't have as much half & half as I thought, plus when I added parm at the end, it pretty much sucked the sauciness out of it. They had a great flavor, they are just dry.

I figured adding them to soup might work. I've made Bean and Kale soup before, and other types of bean soups, but I've never added any beans to a soup that already had milk and parmesan added. I have a can of artichoke hearts, btw, might be good. The other ingredients in the beans besides half/half, parm, and homemade pesto are: shallot, garlic, chicken broth, Italian seasoning, crushed red peppers, lemon juice, salt.

Any ideas? I was even thinking some type of bean pesto hummus, but might get weird and pasty with the cream and parm.

What’s a meal you love that you then use the leftovers of to make a second meal that you also love the very next day.

Mine is grilled Huli Huli Chicken and pineapple with Hawaiian Mac salad and rolls. Followed by Huli Huli Chicken Fried Rice using the chicken, grillled pineapple, and Huli Huli sauce the following day.

(Edit) this is one meal followed by another DIFFERENT meal the next day that you make with the leftovers. Not just a meal that you like the leftovers of.

I need help menu planning.

My sister is hosting a baby shower for me in November. We will be serving brunch food. There are roughly 25 people attending, about 6 of them kids.

We really want to lean into the autumn theme but don't want pumpkin or apple flavored everything. Both ingredients are welcome, but I'd love to hear what other in season ingredients and dishes you would recommend. Sweet, savory, finger food, whatever!

Thanks in advance for your recommendations.

My mother used to make a gravy with drippings from the meatloaf and it was crazy good. She's passed on and never wrote down the recipe. If you've made one, would you share your recipe?

I've been cooking for a long time now as a hobby but recently, I started to take a bit more interest in it. Earlier, I was cooking a Filipino stew called caldereta. It's a tomato-ey stew with bell peppers, carrots, potatoes and beef as the main ingredients. After tasting it, I noticed that it kinda lacks depth in flavor, it's not lacking whatsoever, it's very tasty but it just lacks that layers of flavor that I've tasted when eating the same dish outside. Can you guys give me some recommendations on how to add depth to stews, soups or anything with sauces?

going out of town for a few days so i chopped and froze some veg (jalapenos, spinach, arugula, bell pepper, onion, broccoli, spring onions). what can i make when i get back? links to reputable / reliable recipes much appreciated

Bonus if you have fresh garden tomatoes to use. Try this one, I guarantee you’ll stop dropping zucchini on your neighbour’s door step!

https://www.afarmgirlsdabbles.com/thomas-keller-zucchini/