What food is your enemy?

[Tab]

The thought originated in the store today, I saw some chips with "no salt", and told myself that salt isn't my enemy - sugar is.

However many people have allergies or sensitivities or restrictions.

So I extended it (and warped it) into "what food is my enemy to cook?" Much more appropriate when wandering the aisles of the grocery store.

As a rule, I think I cook most things well, and certain things quite well (like I might have cooked in a restaurant if I was still in the business). But one thing has always eluded me: The round of Roast Beef. I can never get it restaurant quality (or deli quality). Am I using the wrong cut? It's pretty much the only one I can find, short of going to a butcher. Does it need special equipment like a sous vide bath? It seems like it could be a solution, but people were making excellent roast beef before sous vide. I bake it - maybe or maybe not with convection on. Anybody got any clues?

And also, what food is YOUR enemy to cook?

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

1. Given that my wife is diabetic, sugar -- carbohydrates in general -- are the enemy

Personally, I loathe capsicum peppers. The taste, and even more, the smell, is almost nauseating.

[Tab]

2. I probably shouldn't have started off my post as I did.

Sugars are mine too (because I'm diabetic), and carbs, but it was more what is your enemy to cook - not because you don't like it (personally I hate tuna fish salad, although I'm sure I could cook it just fine if I cared) - but because you WANT to eat it but can never crack to code to get it right. So, for me, it didn't take much time - I would love to cook fresh hot juicy roast beef, but have never managed to. Steaks and other meats, no problem. I'm skittish about prime rib, though I've had much more success, but only get to try maybe once every few years at best.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

3. My roast beef was always horribly dry, until I got the Chef's Illustrated issue with how to do it.

Now if I'm in the mood, I buy eye of round, coat it liberally in salt, wrap it in plastic wrap and let it sit in there 12-18 hrs, unwrap, pat dry, oil it, then sprinkle pepper all over, sear it on all sides, oh, nevermind, here's a link to somebody else showing the process with photos I just dug up. It creates the most tender, delicious roast beef I've ever had.

http://www.afeastfortheeyes.net/2011/01/slow-roasted-beef-cooks-illustrated.html

ETA: actually, i notice they talk about the actual roasting in terms of temps of the meat. When I do it, I put it in at 225 degrees or so for maybe 3-5 hours, depending upon how done I want it.

[Tab]

4. I'll have to give it a try

I had run out of ideas on my own.

[Tab]

10. In actually reading it, they talk about two types of temp.

And it sounds like you were doing it correctly. The article really would like to run the oven close to the desired meat temp (really an early version of sous vide), but says most modern ovens won't go below 200. Mine will, although if I want convection I have a 300 minumum.

Anyway, the article writer then (properly) refers to the internal temperature of the meat. This is the most important temp, because that's the temp it'll be cooked to - one exception to follow - not the environment around it which means nothing (other than affecting the speed of the internal temp rise, and also if you want a browning/Malliard effect).

Speaking of internal temp rise, the article (aside from this weird pack-it-in-breading thing) writer expresses surprise that (s)he pulled the meat at 130 - a proper final temperature - but doesn't realize food continues to cook for the next 3 to 15 minutes, depending on how rapidly it was coming up to temp and how big it was. The usual home cook may not know that, but I'm surprised a writer of a cooking blog was unaware of it.

Maybe after the holidays (or maybe for New Year's) I'll take another shot at it, keeping your approach in mind.

Best case scenario: I get some great home roast beef I've been chasing after.
Worst case scenario: My dogs get some overcooked roast beef that they're happy to have.

[trof]

15. I think this is called 'dry brining'.

Works well for steaks, too.
Rule of thumb is 1 hour 'brining' for each 1" thickness of meat, or fraction.
1 1/4" steak = 1hr. 15'.

I would rinse the salt off before further seasoning.

[Warpy]

5. My grandmother's stewed chicken and noodles

She made the noodles herself, rolled out with a rolling pin and cut with a kitchen knife. They were broad, thick, and light as a feather. The chicken was ambrosial, back yard chicken put through the Koshering process to render it edible. She was a plain cook, avoiding pepper and most herbs. It was cooked in a big enamel stewpot on a 1920s "toss a match and run" gas stove. I've duplicated everything I saw in my childhood but I've never managed that chicken.

Old free range stewing hen, check. Sear and then stew for a couple of hours, check. Noodles from egg and all purpose flour, mixed, rested, rolled out and cut, check. End product: not even near the ballpark.

I have no idea what she did to chicken, onions, celery and carrot to get that flavor or what magic she worked on the noodles to keep them so light. Her alchemy died with her.

Grandma chicken: "What's to know? You buy a chicken, you put it in a pot and you cook it."

This is from someone who can eat something at a restaurant and go home and duplicate it.

[Tab]

6. That's one of the generational things

I can assume all her contemporaries knew but that doesn't help the rest of us.

[Warpy]

7. No, I've eaten a lot of Grandma Chicken over the years

and no one has come close.

[Tab]

14. So, psychology question

Do you think you didn't have a step-by-step recipe because in her eyes "everyone knew how to make it", or because she was intentionally keeping it close so the secrets to the recipe would die with her?

[Warpy]

16. Partly both

It was a mother to daughter sort of thing. Her mother taught her and died when she was a teenager. My grandmother was the eldest and was left to continue raising her siblings. She didn't marry until her mid 30s and that one was sort of arranged marriage to my late forties grandfather. There was never much love lost between them, so she concentrated on cooking, gardening, raising her own children and doting on grandchildren. I don't think it ever occurred to her that one of those grandchildren wanted to know the whole process, it was just what she did because she was an uneducated farm girl who'd been married off to a college professor.

She was born in 1881. People didn't think of step by step recipes. You looked over their shoulders.

[Tab]

17. Yeah

More than once I've read a recipe like "add some this-or-that" or "cook until it's done" without describing how, what temp in, and what temp to. It was a pass-down-the-knowledge. Your mother knew, your daughter knew - why embellish?

Midieval recipes are even worse. Ask anyone whoever tried to brew ancient beer. How many of what? What "kind" were those hops?

[dem in texas]

18. Pennsylvania Dutch Chicken Pot pie

I have a recipe that I cut from a magazine many years ago for a chicken pot pie with home made noodles. I made it many times but after the kids left home, I quit making it as it made too much for two people. My dear old husband mentioned this dish last week out of the clear blue sky, asking why I didn't make it anymore.

Got me to thinking that it was a tasty dish and I would make the pot pie once the Christmas holidays are over. The recipe called for stewing a chicken with onion and celery. When chicken was tender, remove from pot and take meat from bones, reserving the stock. Make a batch of home made noodles and spread out to dry. I always cut the noodles in about 1 1/2" squares. In a large skillet, heat the chicken stock to a low simmer. Taste and re-season the chicken stock. Put in some sliced raw potatoes and let cook until almost tender, 5 to 8 minutes or so. Add the chicken meat, then lay the noodles top and cover and let finish cooking, doesn't take long. I always cooked it in a large skillet with a lid

Sounds good doesn't it? I'd always serve some whole cranberry sauce on the side.

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

20. I haven't seen a stewing chicken in ages.

I'd love to get one.

[Warpy]

21. I had my eye on a neighbor's old hens who were beyond laying

but she was a bleeding heart who thought it was somehow kinder to let them die of old age.

Phooey.

Closest you can get is a high priced Rosie's chicken. They're fairly young, but they've spent enough of their lives scratching for grubs that you can't cut the meat with the side of a fork and they do have flavor that supermarket chicken does not.

[Trailrider1951]

8. I have a love/hate relationship with biscuits

I just love biscuits the way my mother made them. They turned out light and fluffy and absolutely delicious! Mom's recipe was this: take a large bowl and add some self-rising flour. Put in a couple of dollops of saved bacon grease. Mix with your hand until mixed enough, not using all the flour. Then pour in some milk (buttermilk, if you had some) and mix with your hand until mixed enough. Form the dough into flour-coated discoids, put in a cast iron skillet coated with more bacon grease and bake until done. They were heaven in a pan!

But can I make them like that? Oh, Hell NO! First, I must say that I no longer eat pork, so the bacon grease is out. I've substituted unsalted butter, or vegetable shortening, with equally bad results. No matter what recipe I use, or how I handle the dough, my biscuits always turn out to be rancid crunchy crusty hockey pucks. It is so frustrating! For now, the best biscuits I make are the frozen ones.

[dem in texas]

19. Beatrice's Biscuits

My late mother-in-law, who lived in Western Tennessee, was famous for her biscuits. She used a technique similar to what you describe. She also used self rising flour. She'd put the flour in a large bowl and make a deep hole in the center of the flour. She'd put a big scoop of lard in the hole, then pour in milk to fill the hole. She'd take her spoon and work the lard and the milk into the flour until she had a large sticky mass. She'd put it out on a heavily floured board and flouring her hands, knead the dough for a short time, letting it take up a little more flour. Then she would pat out the dough out lightly, sprinkle a little flour on top and with her rolling pin, roll out the dough to about 1/2" thick and cut into biscuits. she'd put on ungreased pan and bake in a 450 oven. The biscuits would be crowded in the pan and would make light, tall, fluffy biscuits, crusty on top and bottom and soft in the middle.

I made them with her quite a few times until I got the technique down. The only thing that I do different is to use shortening instead of lard. I read in a cookbook on cowboy cooking that this was the way the "Cooksey" on the cattle drive would make his biscuits, except, he'd made the hole in the center of the big bag of flour he had on the chuck wagon, but he'd use the same technique of working the fat and liquid into the flour until he had a big mass of dough which he throw out on his dough board to shape the dough into biscuits.

I told my granddaughters that one day, we make biscuits and I'd show them how their great-grand Mother Beatrice made her famous biscuits.

[Phentex]

9. Pudding. I have talked about it before...

and got good tips from people here but I am already scarred.

[Tab]

11. I'm not much of a pudding eater

unless I'm in the hospital and need something to go down easily.

I'd say 99.9999999% of my puddings were from a box mix (e.g.: Jell-o pudding). Probably all of them were, but I might have tried at one point in the last few decades, though I don't remember for sure. My wife likes rice pudding, but I don't recall if it was from scratch or a box. It might be neither, since she usually only gets it from a restaurant now.

What were your pudding problems? (sounds funny to ask it that way).

And actually, this is off-topic since it's from a box mix too, but I loved it (it's actually more of a parfait)..

[Phentex]

12. I remember that stuff!

Mmm...

Mainly burning and clumping. I guess I'm not patient enough to whisk and watch the heat at the same time. I'm better with candies but then I am using a thermometer.

[Tab]

13. Damn it was good

I couldn't quickly find photos of other flavors, but I remember lime as my favorite.

[restorefreedom]

22. so simple, yet so elusive

potatoes. i love em..mashed, baked, fried...and yet i don't hsve good luck with them. i think i pick out good ones and then i get them home full of eyes, or they are green, or something.

i get my potatoes on the outside now.

[Tab]

23. Is it more that you have trouble cooking them?

Or just finding cookable ones?

[restorefreedom]

24. i think the finding is harder

once the good ones are boiling (or whatever), its pretty straightfoward.

its why i never buy bagged taters. i always grab them loose in produce so i can look at them, but i still find it hard to spot the good ones.

any tater shopping tips?

[Tab]

25. Maybe we should create a startup

"Taters of the Month"

I'll go for it if others can do it too (computer stuff is one thing, but I don't know a damned thing about sourcing taters).

[restorefreedom]

26. wouldn't that be nice!

i suppose the frozen peeled ones are available, but i am sure they are more expensive