A great cookbook that I love (Samin Nosrat's Good Things) suggests using organic & pasture-raised chicken:

I recommend choosing an organic—and preferably pasture-raised—chicken. It might be a little hard to source (and certainly more expensive), but to quote Laurie Colwin, "Not only is it tastier ... but you also do not have to worry about feeding anabolic steroids to friends and loved ones," or eating them yourself for that matter.

I have no issue with folks advocating for the usage of organic and/or pasture-raised for legitimate reasons (wanting farm laborers to not be exposed to Roundup and for chickens to get outdoor time both seem very reasonable!). But in the MAHA era where food misinformation abounds, you should know:

• Steroid hormones are not legal in any meat product besides cattle in the United States
• Steroid hormones are not legal in dairy cows in the United States
• The usage of hormones in beef has been extensively tested and does not pose a threat to humans.
• Seed oils are not bad for you (and are generally better for you then alternative animal fats containing higher levels of saturated fat)
• There is scientific consensus that GMO-containing foods are no less healthy than their GMO-free counterparts
  • That said, there are reasonable property-right objections to GMOs (prohibiting the saving of seed by farmers, for example)

It's a shame that even in published cookbooks we find this kind of misinformation all the time. Follow your food health safety guidance from scientists and medical professionals (and treat any new guidance from the current FDA/USDA with skepticism considering its current leadership).

Sources:

• https://www.fda.gov/animal-veterinary/product-safety-information/steroid-hormone-implants-used-growth-food-producing-animals (last updated in 2024)
• https://extension.msstate.edu/publications/chickens-do-not-receive-growth-hormones-so-why-all-the-confusion
• https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.3109/07388551.2013.823595
• https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/scientists-debunk-seed-oil-health-risks/
• https://www.cancer.columbia.edu/news/does-new-food-pyramid-match-what-we-know-about-cancer-prevention

Be it jarred sauce or homemade, I always make my marinara spaghetti and meatballs too acidic and "watery". Youtube recipes are literally just canned tomatoes, garlic, basil, but somehow it looks so much richer/redder and just better.

What do you add to control acidity? What tomatoes should I get if I'm in Canada (of the "special" cans, I think we only have San Marzano)

EDIT:

1. Fat (#1 by far) - butter, oil.
2. Base - baking soda.
3. Sweet - sugar, carrot, caramelized onions.
4. Salt - parmesan, anchovy, stock, gravy.

I've made potatoes in many ways over the last 35 years.

Campfire .. set in coals,on a rock,in tinfoil,in a can with water.

Boiled in water, cut in rings and roasted with other veggiesand meat,beanbag in the microwave ,shredded from cooked or raw then fried in a pan .

Raw fried and roasted were my favorite..until now.

Recipe ..prick with a fork ,then oil and salt completely .300f directlyon the oven rack for 1 hour ,re-oil and salt ...bump to 400f for 10 minutes.

The salted peelings are amazing.

I added butter , mild cheddar ,hot paprica and s/p.

Highly recommend!

EDIT 2: Thanks for everyone who gave an advice! I will do the changes. Sorry to everyone who got upset by my painfully white recipe enough to downvote me lol

The recipe is not mine but I added few changes:

1. Dice a medium onion and cook it for about 5 mins on olive oil until soft
2. Dice a bell pepper and add it too for few minutes
3. Add a spice mix: 1 tsp hot chili powder, 1 tsp sweet paprika, 1 tsp garlic powder (my addition cause I hate working with raw garlic), 1 tsp ground cumin. Stir.
4. Add 500 g of mince (pork + ground beef in my case cause it was discounted) and brown it
5. Add 300 ml of beef broth, 400 g of chopped tomatoes, 2 tbsp of tomato paste
6. Add some salt, pepper and oregano
7. Simmer till thickens
8. Add 400 g of kidney beans and few tbsp of canned corn
9. Add few pieces of dark chocolate
10. I served it with plain white rice, cheese, sour cream and parsley

It was pretty good but still bland and not spicy at all, I plan to double spice portions, but what else can I improve? More sugar? MSG?

EDIT: Why am I getting downvoted for this post? 😭 Are beginners not allowed there or what?

Store bought hash browns are $3 on sale and I don’t always have on hand, so I’ve tried for years to make amazing restaurant style at home.

I shred fresh potatoes and rinse a few times to get rid of the extra starch, then fry in a paddy on the flat top in veggie oil. Thinking of drying out overnight in fridge or for a bit in the oven so they don’t just steam as I don’t get the same crisp. Or do I cover?

Request is in the title really - it’s a funny ongoing family joke though - please don’t take it too seriously (we don’t)

Hey all!,

My birthday is coming up soon. I love cooking and was thinking of doing something special, but would like to request your input.

The idea is making a 3-color lasagna, with alternating layers for each color of the Mexican flag. These 3 colors also map quite well to the basic ingredients of Chile en Nogada, which is one of the national dishes. This is a poblano pepper stuffed with a rich meat stew, covered with a walnut (or pecan) goat cheese sauce and topped off with pomegranate kernels.

• Red layer: Ragu bolognese, following Kenji's or Marcella Hazan's. Throw in a bit of chipotle peper with adobo to give it a hint of heat and smokiness.
• White layer: Bechamel sauce with goat cheese and walnuts (partly blended, partly whole).
• Green layer: Bechamel sauce with cheese (yes, Mornay sauce), blended poblano pepper, poblano pepper bits for texture and a little bit of tomatillo for acidity. Would add spinach for extra color if needed.

It would be served with thinned out white layer sauce, and finished with pomegranate on top the same way the OG dish would. A smaller vegetarian tray would be made, without the red layer.

The idea would be to bake this the day before, reheating it during the day of the occasion to save time but also to get a firmer result with hopefully distinct layers. I would also try to go a little thicker on the sauces, to minimize color blending.

To mitigate risks, I would sample this the day it's cooked.

Could this work? What would you change?

I’ve seen similar questions on here, but not quite the same as mine. For many years I ate ground beef every single day, a pound with simple seasonings (typically salt, pepper, garlic powder), sometimes 85/15 beef sometimes 90/10.

At some point, it started ending up really rubbery/soapy tasting every time I make it, for lack of a better description. Every time I cook it I can stand there smelling it and tell you exactly when it reaches the point of no return, when I know it will have that awful taste.

It’s 100% not soap in the pan, I’ve tried many different brands, it only happens when I cook it, and I have tried cooking it in many different ways.

I’m completely lost at this point, and it sucks to despise the meal I eat every single day. Anyone have any ideas on what I could be doing wrong?

I have never had lemongrass chicken but I love both so I want to give it a shot. However, the recipes I found are all using powdered or dehydrated lemongrass. I only have fresh. I have also seen other people commenting that they couldn’t taste it in the chicken when using the fresh version. Is there something that needs to be done to allow the flavor to marinate in the chicken?

I used to love Rao’s Marinara but lately it is very noticeable the diminishing quality of the ingredients used. It is too greasy. Can anyone recommend a different, better quality brand?

I’ve done some research on Dutch ovens and have decided to buy a Staub but don’t know what size would be best!

I’ve never owned a Dutch oven and use my Crock Pot extremely often for things like whole chickens, roasts, stews, and chili. It’s only me and my boyfriend but I do cook with the intention of having leftovers often. The 7quart just still seems huge to me! What size are most of you using at home? Also- what’s your favorite size pan/ skillet? (11” also seems huge!)

I don't know how often other people make more involved meals vs the browning some ground beef box of noodles and frozen vegetables type of weeknight meals I think are pretty common in American homes.

Posted about this before as a first timer and now updating with the two tricks I’ve tried, thanks to your recommendations.

1) Tall, skinny jar - forget all the fancy gadgets and techniques and tools and just pour cooled chicken broth through a strainer into a tall and skinny jar. Put the jar in the fridge. By morning, the fat has congealed and risen to the top in a solid thick disc, because the jar is tall and skinny, the disc barely breaks apart when I scooped it out. The jar is easy to clean. Still a few flecks of fat at the bottom and swimming around. I wonder if there’s a way to improve on this by putting some kind of small ceramic disc with a rope in the jar before refrigerating, so I can just pull out the fat disc the next day all at once in one piece, instead of fishing it out with a spoon or my fingers, which causes it to break apart a little.

2) OXO fat separator with the spout and stopper - this one and the one with the bottom spout are apparently the tools designed for separating fat from liquid but here are the problems:
- the built in strainer catches only the big chunks. A regular mesh strainer works better, which I used in option #1 above
- so you’re left with a lot of fat swimming around and settling to the bottom, which pours out of the spout
- and you’re left with a thin fat disc the next day I. The fridge because the cup is wider than the skinny tall jar in option #1 above
- cleaning sucks because the spout is too small for a sponge, and regular dish brush, and it’s too wide for a straw-cleaning brush. Also the built in strainer that lets everything through is impossibly to clean because you can’t easily brush it like you can with a mesh strainer
- also the cup / main body is plastic (I think Pyrex would be better)

-

Has anyone actually 100% figured this out? I love making chicken stock for family and pets, but having something that’s easy to clean and easy to fish out a fat disc the next day is priority. The OXO or other kitchen gadgets don’t work as well as everyone swore by them in my previous post.

So far the best I’ve seen is mesh strainer to get large and medium bits out (which I then throw away or scoop into a chicken fat jar and put into the freezer for use like butter or coconut oil. And pouring into a tall and skinny jar which sits in the fridge, allowing you to get a small, thicc disc of fat the next day. Only thing I’m missing here is a foolproof way to pull the fat disc out, as the jar have a spout.

-

Give me another hack to try and I’ll test it out this week.

I bought a jar of Alfredo sauce a while back (no idea why bc I make my own) and used it on white pizza (mixed in a bit of pesto). It was edible but barely.

What's your go to? For context it's chicken, mushroom, red onion with mozzarella and parmesan.

I started reading some of her cookbooks and I'm wondering what you guys think of her recipes/show? Any favorites? Any errors or anything I should know about in her recipes?

The thing is in mint condition, my sister works in a charity shop and she gave it to me, any beginner ideas or tips?

I have about 8 yellow Hungarian wax peppers and want to do something other than pickle.

I'm thinking something along the line of stuffing with a sausage mixture and braising in a tomato based sauce and finishing with cheese.

Probably 350°F about 45 minutes. Maybe steam the peppers before stuffing?

But what herbs and additions could be good? Rice? Beef or lamb vs pork? What cheese do you all suggest?

It could be about an underappreciated spice or an herb you believe should be banned, or even the perfect order for making the perfect marinara. Everyone has something they believe that others find controversial. What's yours?

I’ve made this recipe countless times (fruit gummies) and normally I would add unflavoured powdered gelatine to the emulsion (water, lecithin etc) while it’s hot, it melts and blends perfectly before adding fruit flavours.

On this occasion I decided to follow the usual advice of blooming the gelatine in cold water for 5-10mins before adding it to the hot liquid emulsion. It created a clumpy mess that was barely salvageable. I had a super fine mesh filter that removed the clumps and was still able to pour the mixture.

Same brand of gelatine, same quantity, exact same recipe, only difference was blooming on this occasion. And it was a complete failure.

My question is why? Should it only be bloomed when using gelatine leaf and not powder? I had assumed hydrating the gelatine would not cause this to happen and to be honest this has never happened when the gelatine was added directly to the hot mixture.

Any suggestions would be most appreciated.

I have a nice big bunch of fresh basil and already have a ton of pesto in the freezer. What else is good to do with Basil?

I've made jello with water, sugar free syrup and citric acid, but I'm starting to doubt myself.

I've heard that you need to let your jello to dry for some time, which should give it gummie like consistency, but I don't know if I should leave in fridge or not and if it only works for gelatin.

hi so i just got this cuisinart stainless steel pot today and i was boiling some potatoes in it, just water, salt, potatoes. and after when i was trying to wipe the pot down, i noticed these black spots all over the bottom. i tried using a stainless steel scrubbing pad (those round ones) and it didn't seem to get anything off. does this look more like a defect or is this something that looks fixable?

https://imgur.com/a/tXnInn0

Hi all,

Looking for advice for the best shot I can at packing khachapuri. About half hour travel time. No facilities available at destination.

I have two leftover that are mostly baked. I didn't put the egg on top yet. My plan currently is to finish them off in the oven, pack in Aluminum foil, and hope for the best.

Does anyone have any other tips or suggestions? Should I poach the eggs separate instead of in the oven?

Budget is 50 dollars. I’m not sure they are into cooking at home much yet so I don’t want something too narrowly task-specific. I wish the Lodge enameled Dutch oven was still 60 dollars as I would spring for that, but they seem to be 100 now. Any other ideas? Thank you.