I'm trying to make a good pot roast in my crockpot, but after I take it out it gets dry. It's on "low" (whatever that means) for 8 hours. I've tried searing it before and still dry. It's submerged in plain water with some herbs and spices for that time. Am I over/undercooking it? It's a cut with low fat %, is that why?
I love you. I think you learned how to make pot roast from someone on Opposite Day, or perhaps April 1st. The only thing you got right is 'low heat for 8 hours'.
Choose a fatty cut of tough meat. Look for lots of fat marbling on a Chuck roast or Shoulder roast. Tough meat has a ton of flavor, and the fat keeps the meat from drying out. The long cook time on low heat, plus acids will make 'tough' meat into a pull-apart, melt-in-your-mouth glory.
Make sure the meat is completely thawed, NOT frozen.
Plain water and nothing else except herbs/spices is.... not what I'd do. A lot of flavor can come into the broth when you add whole carrots (minus the carrot top!) and quartered onions in there. I'm a fan of adding some big chunks of pumpkin or butternut squash and chunks of turnip as well.
I think using red wine for part of the liquid base, and adding a hearty helping of worcestershire sauce will also help the flavor and making the meat 'melty.' The acid and alcohol will draw more, and different flavors from the meat and vegetables that water alone cannot do. Makes it richer.
For my very best pot roast recipe, which had my wedding guests fuckin' clamoring to get the recipe; I cheat. I'm not ashamed of that fact. For the richest, most face-punchingly meaty tasting broth, go to an asian market (or online) and find a mushroom hot pot soup base. It'll be a thick liquid inside a bag, which you then dilute with water. Use THAT as the liquid base (remember to dilute it!), and add your wine and wocestershire sauce to it, along with those herbs & spices. Your whole face will be blown off with flavor. It's the best.
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Why does my pan "seared" meat always turn out grey instead of pretty and brown :<
You're either cooking it on too low of a heat, OR you're fucking with it too much.
How to Sear Meat Good:
While you're waiting for the pan to heat AS HIGH/HOT AS IT'LL GO, salt the outside of your meat. Use BIG FLAKE SALT, or CHUNKY SEA SALT. Using fine table salt you'll end up with really overly salty food.
Get your pan RIPPING hot. Like, when you toss a drop of water on it, that fucker dances across the pan.
Add oil enough to coat the bottom fully, and wait for it to also be ripping hot.
Place your meat in the pan
DON'T FUCKING TOUCH IT!!
Seriously. don't touch it until you see the grey 'cooked meat' color creeping up the sides. Once you see about a full centimeter of cooked-color up the sides of the meat, THEN you can flip it over.
Cook on that new side until the 'edges' of the meat look completely cooked. You can then check if it's browned properly, and poke at it or cut it to see how 'done' the inside is.
At that point for a steak I'd turn the heat down or off entirely, and let the residual heat cook through the middle.
Do you have any healthy snack suggestions for someone who isn't a huge fan of nuts and dried fruit?
FIRST: A 'Snack' is just a small portion of food. It is a signifier of quantity. 'Snack' does not exclude any type or form of food - it just means a lil' bit of food.
SECOND: "Healthy" is entirely relative to every individual.
'Healthy' is just 'Supportive of a complete nutritional profile, taking into account a person's existing diet, dietary needs, and habits of energy expenditure'
For example:
A small, greasy hamburger is an EXCELLENT snack for a highschool athlete who needs to consume an large amount of calories every day to maintain their body. It has lots of fat and protein for muscle recovery and long-term energy, carbs for immediate energy, and some lettuce/tomato/onion for some extra fiber/vitamins/minerals.
On the flip side, if someone already eats a fair amount of of meat and carbs already but has a lower-energy lifestyle, a healthy snack for them might entail leafy greens, beans/legumes and vegetables, because they need more fiber and nutrients in their diet that plants have in abundance.
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If you are allergic to or hate eating something, then it's not healthy to force yourself to eat it anyway. Find a different food, or a different way to prepare it that doesn't cause physical or psychological distress!
Don't like peanuts, but peanut butter is good? Eat peanut butter instead! Hate the texture of whole tomatoes, but tomato sauce is good? Eat tomato sauce instead!
Don't be afraid to finely mince or blend your ingredients into a sauce or smoothie if you feel you need or want to eat something for the nutrients but hate chewing it.
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I'm a big fan of probiotic stuff in general, like fermented foods (kimchi, pickles, sauerkraut, miso, mustard and yogurts), since a strong bacterial colony in the gut has a positive impact on wellbeing for most folks. More importantly, I love the taste.
Buuuuuuuut~ some people are extra sensitive to compounds that are concentrated in fermented foods. Those people should not eat a lot of fermented foods. It's not healthy for them.
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If you're munching snacks out of boredom when you're not actually hungry, something low-fat but satisfyingly crunchy usually does the trick for me. Something I can keep devouring for the sensory delight, gives some good nutrients, and won't make me feel overly full afterward.
Carrots, bell peppers, mung bean sprouts, apples, pears, jicama, radish, pretzels, sweet onions, green papaya, broccoli, popcorn, cucumber, water chestnut, seaweed crisps, coconut chips, any of those fermented foods I mentioned... hell, coleslaw is mostly cabbage with oil and vinegar - plow through that and have a great time!
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If you want a snack because you're hungry, but you just want to tide yourself over until the next meal, eat something that is high in fat and fiber. Fat & Fiber makes you feel full.
Cheese, Yogurt, Butter. Olive oil. Guacamole. Tinned fish. Cream. Fry up an egg. Olives, Hard-boiled eggs - These are all relatively high in fat.
Beans, Legumes, Oats, Leafy Greens, and most Berries are pretty high in fiber, and can pair up with any of the fatty things.
Hell, a slice of cheese pizza is also fine! Buttered toast is fine! A small portion of roast beef from last night's dinner!
Eat a little bit, wait 20 minutes, and see if you're still hungry after that. A normal stomach takes 20-30 minutes to register feeling satiated. (Some people's stomachs don't really feel the difference of hunger vs satiation. Those people need to be more mindful of the quantities of food they eat - both eating too much, AND eating too little!)
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If you want a snack because salty snacks in particular sound fucking amazing, but other fatty and high-protein foods sound kinda gross, Try chugging a glass of water.
If water doesn't resolve the feeling after giving it a few minutes, try something with salt.
Dehydration and not having enough salt in your body both cause salt cravings. Acute thirst is often mistaken as hunger.
Honestly, you can have a handful of chips. Eating a whole family-sized bag of potato chips in one sitting is probably too much salt & fat for most people, but eating a handful here and there is fine. It's just as morally neutral as eating a carrot.
Eat some rice with soy sauce. Eat some pickled okra, or pickled onions. Eat some miso soup. Drink some soup broth. Have some salt-cured meats.
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So: A Healthy Snack!
Ask yourself: Am I hungry, bored, or thirsty?
Ask yourself: What have I been eating lately, and what has my diet lacked, or had in excess? (Fats, Protein, Carbohydrates, Vitamins/Minerals, Water, Salt)
Ask yourself: Am I trying to provide my body with a complete nutritional profile, including fats and carbs - or am I focusing on an imagined 'purity' of food and assigning moral value to eating what diet culture calls healthy so I can be 'good.' (Aka: Do you think instances of eating candy or fatty food is 'being bad'? Stop that.)
Ask yourself: Am I able to rely on my body's signals for hunger and thirst, or do I need to manually track this?
Sometimes a snack is a small portion of leftovers from yesterday.
Sometimes a snack is carefully sliced, cooked, and arranged on a cute plate.
Sometimes a snack is gnawing through half a head of cabbage doused in vinegar.
Sometimes a snack is a handful of shredded cheese eaten from your own palm so you become both the gentle horse and the stablehand feeding it, and that's all okay
Cooking question I'm too embarrassed to ask someone IRL: how easy or hard is it to accidentally poison yourself?
I know not to eat things that are too old (past the best-by date, changed color etc), I know not to eat things that were burned. I know to be careful about handling raw meat. I know how to store leftovers. I know to pay attention to instructions on the package and to check if the package is damaged etc.
But at the same time... well, a lot of cooking advice I've seen over the years includes some variation of "try things out, see what you like!" and I'd kind of like to do that. But if the results turn out inedible, I'd like them to be "inedible" as in "tastes very bad" and not "inedible" as in "going to upset your stomach" or "send you to the hospital"
If I try to cook/bake/roast/fry/whatever a food that can be eaten raw, like fruit, what are the odds that the result will be safe to eat?
What about lettuce? I'm aware it would probably taste bad, but would it be safe to try?
If I mix random liquid-y things from my pantry to make a sauce for whatever vegetables&meat I'm frying, what are the odds the result would be safe to eat? (Assuming all the components are edible by themself, I'm NOT talking about cleaning solutions or dish soap or whatever)
What might be some questions I don't even know I should check?
If I try to cook/bake/roast/fry/whatever a food that can be eaten raw, like fruit, what are the odds that the result will be safe to eat? If I mix random liquid-y things from my pantry to make a sauce for whatever vegetables&meat I'm frying, what are the odds the result would be safe to eat?
100% safe. There is a ZERO (0%) percent chance of accidentally creating a poison when cooking a safe-to-eat-raw food item.
You're not going to accidentally create a poison when you mix spices, sauces, or various edible ingredients together.
It's just not how chemistry works. With no exception I can think of, you can't take one safe-to-eat plant or animal and cook it or mix it with another in a way that will create a toxic substance.
Cooking lettuce to eat is safe. Cooking whole fruit is safe. Mixing a hundred sauces together is safe. Go for it.
I could take a sample of every single individually edible item in my fridge, pantry, and spice cabinet, blend it all into a big slurry, cook it & eat a portion of that concoction with confidence that I won't die from it. While it may be gross and taste bad, it won't actually harm me. It won't be a poison, no matter how many different types of food ingredients are tossed into the pot.
I cannot guarantee that you will never upset your stomach, because you could be sensitive to or allergic to an ingredient that I don't know about. It's not a poison to all humans, but it'd be uncomfortable to you. You can only learn about that through experience.
What CAN be dangerous:
Improper sterilization and improper technique can accidentally leave poison-producing bacteria or mold to breed when canning or fermenting foods.
Eating large amounts of a couple specific foods can be risky. There's not a lot of these, so here's a list of the big names to keep an eye on:
Cassia (common) cinnamon has a chemical that is toxic in larger quantities, but harmless in small quantities. If you eat 2 teaspoons a day, every day, you'll run into trouble. If you use Ceylon cinnamon instead, you can eat pretty much as much as you want.
Don't eat a whole nutmeg. It's wonderful when used sparingly, but can be poisonous in large amounts. Same rule as Cassia cinnamon: 2 teaspoons a day, every day, will get you into trouble. Eat less or less often.
Eating too much Liver (the organ) can cause copper toxicity and Vitamin A toxicity. It's great for you when added to a meal once a week, or a couple times a month, but shouldn't be eaten daily or in huge amounts.
Don't swallow cherry pits. They're generally harmless when swallowed whole, because they pass through digestion unscathed, but if they're crushed or cracked open first they release a compound that turns into cyanide when digested. Our body handles cyanide pretty well, but 4-5 cracked pits can become harmful. So: Don't chew them, and don't swallow them on purpose.
There are some foods which need special preparation to be made safe. They're safe COOKED, but not RAW.
Cooked beans & legumes are safe to eat. But if you're starting from a totally DRY bean or lentil (canned are pre-cooked) make sure to soak them in water for several hours and boil until they're FULLY COOKED before you eat. (Fully cooked is when you can crush them easily with a fork, with no gritty or hard center) Undercooked or uncooked beans & legumes can fuck up your guts real good. Very painful, horribly unpleasant, but probably won't kill you.
Cassava (the root vegetable that tapioca is made from) MUST be thoroughly cooked before eating. Raw cassava can be toxic. It's another cyanide bro.
Don't eat raw potatoes - always cook them. If your potatoes have sprouted, don't eat the sprouts & peel any green skin off. Tbh tho, an adult would need to eat at least a pound of green potatoes to get sick. Be reasonably cautious about it. Don't feed green potatoes to small children.
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Note: This advice is intended for someone who shops at a grocery for their food, not someone who is foraging for ingredients or is growing their own. There's a lot more opportunities to poison yourself when working with whole plants in the wild, and not the prepared-for-sale ones at a store.
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How the heck do you bake with cold butter? Doesn’t it just sit there and not mix with anything? I can never get it to do what I think the recipe wants it to do.
Cold butter DOESN't incorporate fully into the batter, and that's the point.
Unmelted, hard butter creates little layers and pockets throughout the dough, and those pockets of butter create steam when it melts in the oven to make fluffy moist pockets of air. It's used often in scones, flaky pie crust, biscuits, and especially croissants.
Those recipes often also recommend you put the dough into the fridge, to really cool it off and KEEP the butter cold before baking it. This firms up the dough's texture, and it's less likely to spread out as much, compared to a dough that's baked starting at room temp.
Pie doughs particularly, may even ask for freezer-cold dough. This is essential for very fine flakes that are defined enough to HOLD UP to a filling being put on top of it.
Croissants are very well-known for their super flaky interiors.
This is achieved by rolling dough flat, making a sheet of cold butter and then folding the dough and sheet several times, rolling it out so it forms many thin layers of cold butter, between the dough. It can become a multi-day process because you have to regularly chill the dough to keep the butter from warming up too much.
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Most recipes will say you need to dice the cold butter, slice it into sheets, or warm it to just barely cooler than room temp so you can smush into a shape (like the croissant's butter-sheet), then chill again to be cold.
Hey friend I basically learned to cook from you (you took all the intimidation out of it, and gave me my first meal that other people liked) so I come back like a decade later asking if you have any advice about knives. I don't love cooking but I recognize that the right tools make any task much more satisfying and also I am just so tired of my cheap knives going dull immediately so: what exactly is a "good knife"? Any advice on how to recognize one, and take care of it once acquired? Many many thanks.
Thank you so much, that's really heartwarming to hear <3
Regarding knives: I'm going to go over some basic care & maintenance that will help knives stay sharper, longer... and then some knife recommendations.
Always cut on a cutting board. Wood or plastic. Don't cut food against stone, metal, or glass as they'll fuck up the edge.
Don't use the sharp side of the knife to scrape food off the cutting board. If you wanna use the knife as a scraper, flip it over and use the non-sharpened edge.
Once or twice a year, sit down and sharpen all your knives.
Don't use those shitty little "knife sharpeners", they don't actually give the knife a good or stable edge. Instead, take 30 minutes to learn how to use a whetstone. They're shockingly easy to learn to use, and super effective. You can make a shitty $11 walmart knife razor sharp. Here's another video about it.
Ideally, you should hand wash and towel dry your knives right after you're finished prepping food with them. Best practice is to avoid leaving it in water to soak, and to avoid putting it in the dishwasher. Cleaning it immediately keeps the edge nice, longer, and heads off any rust or corrosion that can happen from leaving acidic juice on the metal.
ALL KNIVES need to be sharpened 2-3x per year if you're a home chef who cooks almost every night. 4-6 months of excellent sharpness, then becoming kinda dull, is normal for a good knife.
Even a $700 knife will eventually get dull and need sharpening, if you're using it frequently. Because knives are tools, they get used, and in being used the metal gets a little damaged. The edge rolls, dents, or gets chipped. So, it needs to be sharpened.
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This guy gives an EXCELLENT overview of knives.
You do not need to spend a ton of money for decent knives.
Victorinox and Mercer are solid workhorse brands that make good-quality knives, which you can get for between $20-$60 per knife. Really great for any home kitchen. Wusthof and Zwilling are a little more expensive, and even nicer quality. More expensive than that, and you're looking at high-carbon steels meant to be used by pros for hours and hours, every day. A home chef doesn't need that.
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There's a lot of specialty knives out there, but I always come back to the 8" chef's knife. Two chef's knives lets me cut raw meat with one, and everything else with the other.
I also have a cleaver and a bread knife for Melons/Bones and Bread respectively, and a small set of smooth-blade steak knives.
Tbh, most people think they have a shitty knife, but really they've just been using it for 3 years straight and never once sharpened it.
Food Myth: Roast your spices before using to 'Release the Flavor'
Truth: Dry Roasting your spices will CHANGE their flavor.
A raw sesame seed tastes different than a roasted sesame seed, just like a raw onion tastes different than a roasted or caramelized one.
There's chemical reactions happening in there. Aromatics aren't just released to be used, they're also broken down into OTHER flavor compounds.
Indian cooking exemplifies this: recipes will have WHOLE RAW spices, GROUND RAW spices, and ROASTED WHOLE spices. The same seed may be used in the recipe in 3 different states, and this is important because each different state will give your mouth a different interaction.
For example: Coriander (cilantro seed)
Raw coriander is floral and lemony. The roasted version is grassy and earthy - it's a totally different flavor!
A ground-up version will infuse the whole dish with an even flavor.
Leaving the seeds whole will impart the dish with some flavor and you get little bursts of intense flavor when your teeth crush a seed. Whether that's a burst of earthy or floral/lemony depends on if you roasted it or not.
Don't roast pre-powdered spices, because they burn easily and break down too fast.
BUT! You can Roast a seed first, and THEN grind it!
