Tell us what you have cooked lately (that's interesting)

Everything else
4766

Have you tried it? I mean, honestly?

Conceptually, ketchup doesn’t actually do that much for fries. It’s basically vinegar and sugar. Salty and crunchy fries can use a little acid, but the sweetness doesn’t come tribute much.

Mayo has the same vinegar tang, but instead of a tomato-y sweetness, its other element is creaminess. Crisp, salty, and creamy.

Would you put ketchup on fried fish? No, you put malt vinegar…and tartar sauce.

Good homemade mayo is best. Garbage store bought mayo is still fine.

If it makes you feel better, call it aioli.

4767

+1 to fries with mayo. Match made in heaven. Though I don’t mind a little ketchup too, and then you can kinda mix the ketchup into a little bit of the mayo and make fry sauce, and that’s pretty great too.

4768

Yes I have tried it. An ex-girlfriend liked it. It just seemed too greasy to me. I actually prefer malt vinegar to ketchup but not many places have it as an option.

4769

Mayo is disgusting vile white crap. The thought of ruining fries with such an abomination.

Malt vinegar is cool though. I’m on that train with you @RichVR

4770

Split the difference, fry sauce, basically mayo + ketchup.

4771

I will say that personally, I find there are ketchup-fries and mayo-fries. McDonalds (and American fast food in general) - ketchup. 5 guys are mayo fries. Waffle fries and Curly fries - ketchup. Most bistro-style fries are mayo fries, befitting their French origin. Tater tots work well with mayo.

4772

Fry sauce goes with almost everything.

4773

Mayo plus sriracha is the bomb, on just about anything. Add a little lime juice if you like more tang, and to be honest, everyone should.

4774

Mayo? No thanks. Now sour cream with a good wedge, now you’re talking.

4775

This thread made me make home made fries for dinner. And I’m dipping them in mayo. And you can’t stop me. NYAH.

4776


She calls it … a “mayonegg”!

Now that I can sous vide the eggs to pasteurize them, I’m a lot more confident making homemade mayo, and I have to fight the temptation to put it on everything.

4777

That’d be useful. I used to buy pasteurized eggs at the grocery store on occasion, but haven’t seen them in years. Great for making egg nog too.

4778

I don’t really worry about it. I’ve been making my own mayo for a while. If you crack the egg on a flat surface and open it with two hands you don’t introduce bacteria to the inside. If you crack on the edge of a bowl bacteria can indeed be introduced.

4779

I was under the assumption mass market eggs in the US went through a chlorinated spray wash to disinfect/sterilize their shells. Did I transpose that from something else?

4780

https://www.extension.umn.edu/food/food-safety/preserving/eggs-dairy/handle-eggs-properly-to-prevent-salmonella/

TLDR: you can get Salmonella from an unbroken egg because it can be inside the egg.

That said your odds are fairly low overall. Unless you eat a lot of eggs I guess.

4781

Yeah.

The Centers for Disease Control estimates that 1 in every 20,000 eggs are contaminated with Salmonella.

If you get eggs from a producer that actively monitors their eggs / chickens for salmonella, you’re probably on the safer end of that estimate. How many raw / undercooked eggs will you eat in a year? Less than 200? You might get salmonella once in your lifetime. You’re probably ok. I eat raw-ish eggs maybe once a month? Mostly mayo, cookie dough, cooked over-easy, or cracked over hot rice or something like hot pot dippings. I don’t worry too much about it.

Really, the big problems with salmonella in eggs comes from food service. If you have a cafeteria that churns through a couple hundred eggs in a day, they’re probably scrambling them all in one big bucket, or if in smaller batches, probably re-using bowls that don’t get sanitized between batches. If any one of those eggs is contaminated, the entire chain is potentially contaminated, and all eggs that that come out of that kitchen that day are suspect. 1 in 20,000 becomes 1 in 100, which is bad odds.

A lot of our food safety guidelines are directed at food service rather than individual home kitchens. And then, a lot of additional education that comes from TV / cookbooks, etc, has to abide by those guidelines or be concerned with litigation (if an immune compromised person eats a raw-egg recipe from foodnetwork.com and dies, it’s probably a big problem for them).

I’ve never gotten salmonella. Apparently it is a very, very unpleasant 48 hours or so. But unless you’re a child, elderly, or pregnant, it’s just an unpleasant 48 hours. Of course, there’s no reason to take even that risk if it’s easily avoidable…but it’s also important to keep the risk in perspective. (Jeff, I assume you’d want to be cautious.)

4782

A weird little breakfast I made for myself (to my tastes) last weekend:

Sage sausage, fried till quite well done (I really don’t care for murkily grey sausage), plus two eggs, fried over hard with the last of the preceding week’s guacamole, some hashbrowns absolutely doused in cheese and green onions, and a from-a-can buttermilk biscuit.

Meh, I get my breakfast preferences for stuff aren’t much like y’all’s in general, but it makes me happy :)

Later, I made some panang curry with chicken, carrots, green beans, onions, and crushed peanuts, served over jasmine rice:

Nothing too fancy, but it was a good quick meal I could make for my gf and I during a very, very busy week.

Last night, I finally got the chance to dig into some real-ass cookin’, though:

Dry-brined some thinly sliced chicken breasts with salt, brown sugar, and baking powder, then dunked into very seasoned flour (tons of salt, paprika, cayenne, garlic powder, onion powder, and Italian seasoning), then into a buttermilk-bourbon-hot sauce-egg mixture (a little of which I then mixed into the flour to make it crumbly), then back into the flour. Chilled for 15m, then deep fried, along with some from-the-freezer crinkle fries and corn (doused in butter, garlic, and black pepper).

The sauce is from Bon Appetit, a mixture of homemade mayonnaise (omfg the Serious Eats/Food Wishes “immersion blender in a jar” method is so easy), garlic, chives, celery seed, lemon, and salt that’s extremely delicious, plus some butter-fried French bread, sliced iceberg, and tomatoes.

All in all, it was a pretty fuckin’ good supper.

4783

OK maneofriendeo (word I just made up) - turn your driveway and front yard into quaint, outdoor cafe so I can come over and eat! Half the restaurants in my area have less talent and creativity than in your pinky. I am going to try and do those hash browns tomorrow if I feel good enough. Green onion on them. Yum!

4784

ArmandoPenblade’s foolproof guide to hashbrowns that don’t suck and also strongly resemble a cheesy latke:

  • Large handful (I dunno, maybe 3/4 cup? 1 cup??) of frozen shredded hashbrowns (or shred a russet potato and laboriously squeeze all the water out of it quickly before it starts to brown, but ugh, that’s so obnoxious to do!)
  • 1-2 tbsp frozen diced onions (or use fresh, but ugh, then you’ve got most of an onion left to deal with)
  • 2 tbsp of unsalted butter, divided
  • Salt and Pepper
  • Small handful of shredded mozzarella
  • Small handful of shredded cheddar
  • ~1tbsp green onions, diced

Heat a small skillet over medium heat and melt half the butter in it. Dump the hash browns into the pan, sprinkle the onions over top, and then cover the whole shebang with something small. I usually use the lid to one of my larger saucepans, but anything heat-safe’ll do. The steam’ll cook 'em faster.

After 6-7 minutes as the bottom starts to brown, you can either: flip 'em in the existing pan carefully, trying to finagle the other tbsp of butter underneath 'em, OR heat a second small skillet on another burner, melt the butter in it, and just invert the first pan into the second one, dumping the un-crisped side straight down into hot butter. But AP, then you’re dirtying two pans for one dish!, you cry. Ah, but not if you just got done frying two eggs in the second pan. . .

Anyway, flip 'em however you please and sprinkle with salt and pepper. After 3-4 minutes, sprinkle on the cheeses, then the green onions. Cook another minute or two till everything is melty and serve hot.

That’s a really extraordinarily kind thing to say. Thank you :)

4785

I’ve been slacking on posting about my cooking lately, but I’ve still been doing it so here are some things that have gone on in the last month or two:
Skillet Saltimbocca Spaghetti
(from Pasta Revolution )

It calls for thin spaghetti but I ended up using angel hair since that’s what Trader Joe’s had. Fried prosciutto, fried sage leaves, chicken of course, white wine, and some lemon zest and juice all combined to very lovely effect. (I may be forgetting a few things.)

Carolina Chicken Bog
from Cook’s County Eats Local

Pretty straightforward rice dish with chicken, kielbasa and onion. The recipe calls for bone-in thighs and I have to once again assert that these seemed like a lot more work to no particular improvement in flavor and left little bits of gristle I had to pick out. If I were confident enough to adjust the recipe for boneless I’d go with that instead. As it is I may just skip making it again because there are other versions of the basic chicken/sausage/onion/rice formula that I’ve enjoyed as much or more.

Pasta with Mushrooms and Bacon, Cooked Risotto Style
from How to Cook Everything Fast

Pretty much you start up the bacon and mushrooms and then cook the pasta in with them, starting off with wine and then adding chicken broth periodically, just like you’d do with risotto. Pretty darn yummy. The baseline recipe for this uses squash and ham and I should try that at some point but squash is not a favorite historically so I am dubious.