81

Anybody have any food dehydrator recommendations? I am doing some backpacking and I would like to attempt to dehydrate pre-cooked meals.

82

I challenge you iron chef green - the heat is on!

83

Is there some reason why you can’t freeze?

lol?

84

Frozen food would thaw out on the trail when backpacking. Carrying ice to keep food frozen is too heavy.

85

Chinese Food

How do you cook up traditional Chinese dishes?

How about for the basic gravy base in which vegetables and meats are prepared?

Would like to know, since I get sick off Chinese food (sanitary issues) a lot, but love the flavors and aromas.

86

I did it. I made some batter(1 egg, 1 cup of ice cold water, 1.25-1.5 cups flour) and dipped the sushi in it then fried them. Shit was delicious.

87

My only idea of traditional is what I see in restaurants. I was born here, (un)fortunately. Most of what they serve in restaurants is cooked very quickly over very hot woks, which leads to that “flavor”.

88

SRK Iron Chef battles…

who’s down?

89

Anybody watch “Sam the Cooking Guy”?

http://www.thecookingguy.com

On his website, in the “stuff you gotta have” section under recipes, he suggests cooking with vermouth. I tried some vermouth in sauces and it does bring a fair amount of flavor. I’m going to start experimenting with it.

90

Nice thread keep it going!

91

my bumps

92

I’d contribute if my recipes weren’t failing lately.

93

Oh, my, I can’t believe I overlooked this (did I?) Stir fry is NOT a wet cooking method!

94

watched this Japanese cooking show on how Chinese chefs got fried rice to taste so good – turns out there are 3 key points (which I will highlight in bold):

(1) prepare your ingredients (beat your eggs, thinly slice up your chinese sausage, fishcake, scallions, etc) and your rice so that they’re ready to go into the wok at a moment’s notice.

(2) Heat the wok over a large flame, make sure it’s really hot

(3) put some oil in the wok, and let it heat up

(3) pour in your beaten eggs

(4) pour the rice in about 7-8 SECONDS after you’ve poured the egg in

(5) toss rice and egg mixture throughly for like 45 sec - 1 minute, evenly coating the grains of rice

(6) add in your other ingredients & seasoning (a bit of soy sauce) and keep tossing. the fried rice should be done in about 2 more minutes.

You’ve got to keep the rice moving. If you can handle tossing the rice up into the air without making a total mess of the stove, go for it. Otherwise stick to using a wooden spoon. Serve hot.

95

omg thanks rook I may never go out for fried rice again :tup:

96

~!~!~!~!~!~!

interesting

I’ve been told the main 3 things that seperate restaurant style godly chinese fried rice from mediocre at-home fried rice are the oils, the cooking it (with the high heat and such) and the msg. Did it give any specifics as to what oil to be using?

Good thread!

Clockw***0***rk

97

Get those vids out faster. :smiley:

98

Chinese restaurants have burners that get much hotter than most home cooktops. Trying to replicate such dishes on a home cooktop might be a little difficult. One suggestion from “Good Eats” is to use the outdoor propane burner from a turkey fryer setup.

99

So, you’ve roasted a hunk of meat like rib roast, or a whole chicken, or whatever. It was on a rack, and there’s all these drippings in the pan. You could toss it, or you could make a jus!

You method for making a jus I’m describing here is basically a reduction sauce. Reduction sauces take advantage of the stuff stuck to the bottom of a pan when cooking. For such things to work, do not use a non-stick pan. The basic steps are:

  1. Remove excess fat from the pan.

  2. Deglaze pan with tasty liquid.

  3. Reduce.

  4. Thicken.

  5. Defat
    So, take the chicken/beef/whatever you roasted off the rack in the roasting pan and let it rest. Remove the rack, then take the roasting pan and all the tasty meat drippings to a cooktop. There’s probably a pool of fat in the pan, so tilt the pan so that it all gathers in a corner and spoon as much as fat as you can off. Remove the fat only, as the other stuff will add flavor.

  6. Deglaze
    Put the roasting pan over two burners and turn them up to medium or high heat. Take a flavorful liquid or mixture of liquids. Red wine, for example. I recently tried a mixture of sweet vermouth and vinegar (2:1 to 1:1 ratio) that I thought was pretty good. Pour the liquid into the pan to cover the entire bottom of the pan. With the liquid in the pan, scrape the bottom and the sides of the pan with a spatula. The liquid will come to a boil very quickly, and the hot liquid will dissolve a lot of the stuff stuck on the pan (note that this is also a good way to clean pans with stuck on stuff. If you just want to clean the pan, deglaze with plain water). Continue scraping until there’s nothing stuck and most of it has dissolved.

  7. Reduce
    After only a couple of minutes, a lot of the liquid will have evaporated, so the amount of liquid left in the pan has reduced. When the amount of liquid left is about 1/2 the original amount (“reduced by half”), turn off the heat.

  8. Thicken
    I do this with cold butter, which is fattening. I use butter mainly because I don’t typically have stock laying around. Take a little bit of butter, something like 1/2 tablespoon or less, and put it into the roasting pan with reduced liquid. Stir. As the butter melts, it will mix with the liquid in the pan, and form a thicker sauce. If sauce is too thin (it doesn’t coat and cling to a spoon), add a little more butter. You must be careful though. If you add too much butter, the sauce can separate, with bits of fat floating in water. If this happens, stir while adding water little by little until sauce comes together.

Taste and hopefully enjoy!

Note that you can also cut the deglazing liquid with water if you find the flavors a bit strong. I cut the sweet vermouth with some water because it has a very strong flavor when reduced. You can also add other herbs and aromatics to the sauce when deglazing for added flavors.

100

A jus need not be thickened with butter. If one desires a thick jus… they have gravy.

Before I talk about that, I would like to mention that you should use chicken stock or broth (low sodium, please) in addition to red wine to deglaze, for body as opposed to brightness. It doesn’t really thicken it, but if you’ve only used red wine I can see that you might be hesitant to reduce it further (which thickens the jus) for fear of not enough jus. For one roast chicken’s worth of drippings, one cup each of red wine and low-sodium chicken broth (or preferably stock) is a good starting point. As UltraScrub advises, reduce until the amount of liquid is halved.

White* roux

Tools:

Chef’s pan/saucir
Good balloon whisk

Ingredients:

1 part fat from drippings or butter
1 part flour

Procedure:

Estimate the number of cups of liquid you need to thicken. For gravy, this would be the jus (see above) from a roast. For each cup, you need about 1 oz each of flour and fat. The fat can be butter or oil from meat drippings (why waste it?). You can use either, or mix them.
Add fat and/or butter to saucir over medium heat. Melt butter, if solid.
Add flour to pan all at once. Whisk constantly for 2-3 minutes or until consistency turns to that of cake frosting.
Lower heat to medium-low. You may whisk slower. When the flour cooks through and loses its raw smell, you’re done. About 5 minutes, maybe.

*A white roux is the basic roux, I guess. It has the most thickening power and the least flavor. The longer you cook it, the darker it gets. The darker it is, the more flavor it has, but the amount of liquid it can thicken decreases.

Now, when you mix the roux and the liquid to be thickened, they must be at opposing temperatures. e.g. one must be hot and the other at room temperature. You cannot mix a hot roux and a hot liquid, nor a room temp roux and a room temp liquid. I wouldn’t cool down either past room temperature.

Add 1/2 cup of liquid to the roux (in its pan) and whisk until well-combined
Put pan on high heat and slowly add all but 1/4-1/2 cup of the liquid. Whisk constantly
Lower the heat after the mix starts to bubble to keep it at a low simmer. Simmer for 20-30 minutes, whisking occasionally
Thin the gravy with the leftover liquid until it’s slightly thinner than your desired serving thickness. Serve