/ck/ - Food & Cooking

Hand Breaded Chicken Tenders, homemade mashed potatoes, and cauliflower.

>>10987

mmm sounds yummy. Thank you for the suggestion.

Meatloaf.

So many plebs disregard it because they're retards who only associate it with the cafeteria at whatever shitty high school that they went to; it was probably made as poorly as possible while remaining edible enough in order to stretch out their budget. Meatloaf is the shit though.

Start with Ruhlman's 20.

Go on with Joy of Cooking.

… and learn to tell the difference between good food and that overseasoned women's magazine crap.

And for the love of all that is good and wholesome:

LEARN TO DRESS A SALAD PROPERLY.

You do NOT just throw stuff in a bowl and dump a bucket of ranch dressing on top and pretend that is a salad. The dressing is to augment the greens. If you don't have a sense of proportion and ratio (yet), take about a cup of greens (lettuce, spinach, etc), and one serving size of dressing (1-2 tablespoons). Combine in a bowl, toss to coat the greens mostly evenly. (You can either use salad spoons, reaching to the bottom and lifting the greens through the dressing, or if presentation is less important, take a plate, set it on top of the bowl like a lid, and shake the bowl-plate-salad to mix it up.)

Once the greens are dressed, THEN you add the fancies on top - sliced cucumber, tomato, onion, crouton, carrot, etc.

I do agree on the meatloaf… if it's good.

>learn to tell the difference between good food and that overseasoned women's magazine crap.

Sorry for replying to my own post.

Anyway; ONCE you have gone through these cooking fundamentals (Ruhlman, Rombauer), you should be getting to the point where you intuitively recognize things in recipes and can spot when something is grossly out of place.

Once you can do that, then pop culture recipes - like you find in those magazines at the grocery checkout or on Pinterest - begin to have merit.

Basically, until you recognize what is wrong with Wanda's Macaroni Salad, stick to Rombauer.

Being as I have a wife I don't need to wish for one but her cooking is quite plain and she agrees I'm much more accomplished than her in the kitchen. She's great at baking though.

You requested meals…

A meal is at least 3 parts. Otherwise it's just a dish.

Salad, meat, veggies is a good basic formula.

Soup, sandwich, fruit is another one (better suited to lunches).

Vegetables - to be vegetables, think green leafy things. Cabbage, broccoli, chard are examples. Cooked, but not overcooked. Seasoned (light salt, maybe pepper), but not doused in so much seasoning that you can't taste the vegetable.

Add a root vegetable (potato, carrot, parsnip, rutabaga…) to the plate.

Meat… red meat is fantastic, but not every day. Roast a chicken. (Lemon or orange cut and placed inside? Rosemary?) Fish is good, if you don't overcook it. (Learn to cook en papillote, if you have to.)

Learn a bit about other styles of cooking. White rice is a staple food in most of the world. It's good stuff - if cooked right. Should be a little sticky. Ignore the Murrican ideal of fluffy separate kernels. (White rice would replace the root vegetable on the plate. You don't serve rice and potatoes together.)

So…

Salad. Iceberg and romaine, dressed properly, on a salad plate. Add tomato wedges, cucumber slices, a few strips of bell pepper, and a heaping tablespoon of cottage cheese.

That roast chicken from above (lemon and rosemary) with swiss chard and carrots.

A baked pear for dessert.

None of my wives thus far have figured out how to do this.

Get yourself a crock pot (or similar) slow cooker. Plastic lid vs glass lid is a bit of a religious debate, but it should have a cooking crock that can be removed from the appliance. Size 4 quarts or larger.

Learn to soup, pot roast, stew, etc.

Most slow cooker food means you cut up the food, measure it, dump it in, and wait for 3 to 7 hours while it does its thing. Maybe you stir it once during that time. This is ridiculously convenient; instead of spending all afternoon making dinner, you spend 26 minutes in the morning doing some prep and then go do anything else (like laundry or shopping or work).

Crab soup

post tits

rather than specific meals, learn how to cook things. learn to make staples like bread, and the perfect pot of rice. learn how to not only cook from fresh ingredients, but to make the best out of frozen stuff and leftovers to save money. practice your baking and try to keep homemade treats around instead of spending money on factory cookies.

Check out Gordon Ramsay's channel on YouTube. He is a world class chef with decades of cooking experience, but his videos detail simple recipes like the PERFECT way to prepare scrambled eggs.

I don't want to marry a woman that can't cook:

>thanksgiving turkey

>mashed potatoes

>butter + green beans + onions

>steak but cut up into really thin pieces and there's definitely some fancy name for this that I forgot

>asparagus and broccoli

>oven baked chicken legs

>chipotle chicken

and most importantly

>crockpot shredded pork

I can't cook any of these things decently, I grew up with a parent who went to culinary school.

>>11091

>steak but cut up into really thin pieces and there's definitely some fancy name for this that I forgot

Bistec de bola? Sukiyaki beef?

>he can't cook

>not even mashed potatoes

You're disgusting.

>>11091

Son, you need to get yourself a copy of Joy of Cooking.

And then pretty much any recipe for sirloin tritip… a "family" steak that gets served by cutting the big chunk of cooked meat into thin slices.

Broccoli is trivial:

Buy fresh broccoli

Cut into broccoli shaped pieces

Boil lightly salted water in pot

Put broccoli pieces in boiling water

watch closely for color change (probably less than 2-3 minutes)

test for tenderness by pressing tip of knife into stem

pull out IMMEDIATELY when it is tender enough, quick rinse under cool water in collander - not enough to get it cold, just enough to stop it from getting mushy

If I had a wife I wouldn't deserve her and she would leave. All I could eat out of that would be sadness for lunch dinner and breakfast.

Meat pie (family's recipe), pelmeni, varenyky, manti, chebureki, blini, pirozhki, kompot, braised beef, fish (salmon, tilapia, golden pompano, and eel in particular), rice pilaf, stir fry, salad, slow cooked roasts, steamed vegetables, and homemade cakes and pastries for tea.

>>11612

>varenyky

Мій негр.

>>10986

I wouldn't want my wife to cook. I only know one woman who cooks better than me, and she's married to my best friend. They both worked for the best part of their life at a 3 Michelin* restaurant.

To answer your question:

-I wouldn't want my wife to be in the kitchen all the time, cooking and doing dishes.

-I wouldn't want the budget to go to food. I'd love to go travel together with the kids, visit Italy, France and the zoo on saturdays. Maybe get a holiday house somewhere near a lake.

-I'd like simple, healthy, nutritious food to get through the day.

-I'd like my mom's food. That's the food that gave me wonderful, happy memories. I'd love it if my wife gave those feelings and memories to our children as well.

Mashed potatoes, meatloaf, meat pie, soup are all great suggestions. There's tons more: Wiener Schnitzel, cordon bleu, frittata, hutsepot, gulash, whatever (depends on where you live and what ingredients you can get, really).

>>10986

How to cook well:

-Measure everything. Get a timer and a scale. Weigh and time everything.

-Try to make sure that, when you chop something, it's chopped in equal pieces. Bigger pieces take longer than smaller ones.

-Vinaigrettes are very easy to make: use 3 tbsp of vegetable/olive oil with 1 tbsp of vinegar of your choice, salt and pepper. You can add a teaspoon of mustard, chili pepper, honey, garlic, lime zest, grated ginger whatever. But start with that and adjust. (I like half a tbsp vinegar more). Mix with your hands in a bowl, right before you serve (not before, vinegar makes things "boil" without heat, which is why it's great for marinades, but not for fresh produce). Use whatever's leftover again, tonight or tomorrow.

-Get good cookbooks, avoid stupid shit. Gordon Ramsay has a lot of stupid shit out there, but his "3* Michelin" (that's the title of the book) is really good. Look for Bocuse, Michel Roux, Guérard, Keller. Avoid tv personalities and social media. That's just rubbish.

-Learn about seasonality of produce: it tastes better and costs (much) less. The same cheese made with May milk (Northern hemisphere) will taste infinitely better than the regular thing. If you can find it. Same remark applies to fish, fruit, vegetables, meat, nuts, everything really.

Good luck, Miss or Mister.

>>11658

>I wouldn't want my wife to cook. I only know one woman who cooks better than me, and she's married to my best friend.

I think if you asked around, you would find this is common. Of course I can (and do) cook better than my wife. And my ex-wife. And a stack of ex girlfriends.

I don't expect her to cook better than I do - I just want whatever she makes to be edible at my standards. We're close - but there is some more training to be done.

Fortunately, when it comes to the daughter, I can train her half decently. She is not afraid to get in and cut vegetables, or try her hand at baking or stovetop cooking. So many girls get scared if asked to do more than a frozen pizza or an instant pasta salad kit, I just want her to be basically competent enough to not starve and keep other people around her from starving without having to get delivery every night.

Still haven't convinced them that cooking something for breakfast every day is ok. They are definitely prone to cold cereal when I am travelling for work; I generally do muffins or pancakes from a mix (which they love; is not too expensive or unhealthy; is ridiculously easy) and eggs and bacon.

Anyway, TLDR: just need someone who isn't lazy in the kitchen; we can work with that to get her where she needs to be

>>11667

Honestly I used to be so wary of these but TBH they are so convenient. Like, let me grill a steak and make a salad and then just… POOF mashed potatoes. Homemade will always always always be better, but these are just such a convenient and -comfy- side dish.

I want her to be able to follow the directions on the fucking box at least. and make me some banana puddin you lazy bitch. its not that much to ask.

>>11083 has the exactly right idea. Keep things simple and utilize leftovers. You'll learn most of the stuff you need to know by experience and actually enjoying/caring about cooking. If you have kids, engage them in the cooking too.

Since no one's suggested it yet: America's Test Kitchen is a great resource on PBS or Amazon.

There's a two things in this thread I disagree with in the context of your question.

Slow cookers. They are convenient if you absolutely must use it but everything I've ever had from a slowcooker (whether cooked by myself, wife, mom, SIL, family event, etc) has been relative junk. If you overuse it you'll piss off your husband/children with your "specialty" dish. You can make a much better meal with real cooking. And after my experiences in electric study and restaurant equipment repair I'm paranoid and don't exactly trust something like that to sit on my counter unsupervised all day or night. Especially if it comes from a big box store.

Exact volume measurements. I believe cooking shouldn't be treated like an arts and crafts project. Measurements are a good starting point but don't really matter that much in the day-to-day simple ingredient cooking you're asking about unless you're on a doctor prescribed diet. You just need to eye-measure proportions appropriate to your family.

About time, your main goal is not letting stuff burn or overcook so chronometers are mostly just helpful reminders if you like doing other stuff while you cook (which you should). Cook by temperatures and textures mostly.

To constructively contribute here's example of something I make often.

Chicken & Fake Stuffing - Feeds my family of two adults and two kids for two nights

<Whole chicken carcass

<Supermarket Italian bread loaf

<2 Onions

<Same amount of celery

<3-4 Carrots

<Butter

<Salt

<Whatever spices (paprika, pepper, tumeric, whatever you want)

<Skillet/dutch oven

>Melt butter/salt/whatever together and paint over chicken.

>Saute vegetables together until onions are turning goldish and sweet.

>Throw chicken on top of vegetables breast side up.

>Tear apart bread and place it all around chicken

>place in preheated 375F oven

>When chicken is safe remove from skillet/dutch oven and tent.

>Stir bread/vegetable mixture

>Serve with salad or some green standalone vegetable like broccoli or brussels sprouts.