Introduction; oven-fried chicken
Feb. 13th, 2011 03:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
steorra posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
cookabilityHi, I just joined. I'm not entirely sure I belong here, but I think some of my struggles with cooking might fit with this community.
My main struggles with cooking have to do with meal planning, recipe selection, and coordinating associated shopping.
I don't think I've gotten any worse at these things over time, but I think in the last few years my circumstances have changed so that I'm in more challenging situations.
For me, a full dinner ought to include the following components:
-Vegetables (ideally of at least two colours)
-Carbohydrate (grain products, potatoes, etc.)
-Protein (milk, eggs, meat, legumes)
When I moved away from home, I developed a pattern of cooking that was not particularly interesting, but included all components. A typical dinner would involve:
-Steamed vegetables (fresh or frozen, depending what I had and how much of a hurry I was in)
-Rice or pasta
-a protein-containing 'variation' like cheese sauce or tuna or scrambled eggs or occasionally chicken or some other sort of meat.
This system made it so that the only component of the meal I really had to *plan* was the 'variation'.
I don't really like cooking meat and largely avoided it due to concerns about food poisoning from undercooking it or cross-contamination.
In the last few years, several things have changed:
1. For religious reasons, I now try to avoid meat, eggs, and dairy products at certain times. This has resulted in using more legumes (especially beans and lentils and also tofu), which I didn't often cook before. I don't have a repertoire of simple ways to include these into my basic cooking pattern, and so have ended up struggling quite a bit with how to cook during these times; I've come up with some things that work, but the options I've found for these periods tend to take considerably more time and effort than my normal pattern of cooking. I need to find/develop simpler meal plans including all relevant components (and not just recipes for one or two components) that are essentially vegan.
2. Instead of living on my own, I now live with housemates. We share cooking responsibilities, which in some ways makes things easier, since I don't have to cook every night. However, one of my housemates has trouble eating large quantities of dairy products, or egg that's not mixed with a considerable proportion of other ingredients, which means that some of my basic meal options are not good for me to cook for my housemates. It also means that I'm driven to cook more with meat, which I don't have a lot of simple options for, and get daunted by.
I find myself spending inordinate amounts of time looking at recipes and recipe books and eliminating most of the recipes I look at as unsuitable, either because they seem too complicated, or the involve ingredients and equipment I don't have and am not likely to have when cooking unless I specifically plan to make the recipe enough ahead of time to go shopping for its ingredients (and I only grocery shop about once a week, due to transportation limitations).
I found the free stonesoup e-cookbook that was linked on here a while back and have been using a few recipes from it with success, though a number of its recipes also seem to call for ingredients I'm not likely to have when I want to cook.
So there's the long version. I suppose the primary things I'm looking for are:
1. Simple practically-vegan meal plans, or if not complete meal plans, vegan protein recipes that can be combined into my typical cooking pattern.
2. Simple meat-containing recipes that I can integrate into my typical cooking pattern.
I suppose it's worth noting my own dietary restrictions:
1. No nuts or peanuts (pine nuts are okay, though)
2. No hot pepper or black pepper (not a health restriction, but I find even small quantities unpleasant).
Finally, I'll present a very simple chicken recipe that I found useful in my first years of living away from home, though I'd almost forgotten about it and haven't made it in a very long time.
Oven-fried chicken:
Ingredients:
A.
1/2 c. flour
1 t. salt
1 t. paprika (optional)
1/4 t. pepper (optional)
B.
Pieces of chicken with skin on, as many as desired.
2 t. butter or oil (or 1 t. butter 1 t. oil)
Combine A. ingredients in a plastic bag. Add a piece or two of chicken and shake until well coated. Repeat until you have coated all you want.[*]
Heat butter/oil in a baking dish in a 425°F (about 220°C) oven until melted (only a minute or two).
Place coated chicken skin sides down in pan.
Cook uncovered 30 minutes.
Turn chicken; cook uncovered about 30 minutes longer.
At its simplest, this recipe would involve only 4 ingredients: chicken, flour, salt, butter/oil.
[*] Put a tie twister on the bag once the chicken is baking, label the bag, and put it in the freezer for the next time you make oven-fried chicken. You could also double or triple the coating recipe and put it in a plastic container to save time for the future.
My main struggles with cooking have to do with meal planning, recipe selection, and coordinating associated shopping.
I don't think I've gotten any worse at these things over time, but I think in the last few years my circumstances have changed so that I'm in more challenging situations.
For me, a full dinner ought to include the following components:
-Vegetables (ideally of at least two colours)
-Carbohydrate (grain products, potatoes, etc.)
-Protein (milk, eggs, meat, legumes)
When I moved away from home, I developed a pattern of cooking that was not particularly interesting, but included all components. A typical dinner would involve:
-Steamed vegetables (fresh or frozen, depending what I had and how much of a hurry I was in)
-Rice or pasta
-a protein-containing 'variation' like cheese sauce or tuna or scrambled eggs or occasionally chicken or some other sort of meat.
This system made it so that the only component of the meal I really had to *plan* was the 'variation'.
I don't really like cooking meat and largely avoided it due to concerns about food poisoning from undercooking it or cross-contamination.
In the last few years, several things have changed:
1. For religious reasons, I now try to avoid meat, eggs, and dairy products at certain times. This has resulted in using more legumes (especially beans and lentils and also tofu), which I didn't often cook before. I don't have a repertoire of simple ways to include these into my basic cooking pattern, and so have ended up struggling quite a bit with how to cook during these times; I've come up with some things that work, but the options I've found for these periods tend to take considerably more time and effort than my normal pattern of cooking. I need to find/develop simpler meal plans including all relevant components (and not just recipes for one or two components) that are essentially vegan.
2. Instead of living on my own, I now live with housemates. We share cooking responsibilities, which in some ways makes things easier, since I don't have to cook every night. However, one of my housemates has trouble eating large quantities of dairy products, or egg that's not mixed with a considerable proportion of other ingredients, which means that some of my basic meal options are not good for me to cook for my housemates. It also means that I'm driven to cook more with meat, which I don't have a lot of simple options for, and get daunted by.
I find myself spending inordinate amounts of time looking at recipes and recipe books and eliminating most of the recipes I look at as unsuitable, either because they seem too complicated, or the involve ingredients and equipment I don't have and am not likely to have when cooking unless I specifically plan to make the recipe enough ahead of time to go shopping for its ingredients (and I only grocery shop about once a week, due to transportation limitations).
I found the free stonesoup e-cookbook that was linked on here a while back and have been using a few recipes from it with success, though a number of its recipes also seem to call for ingredients I'm not likely to have when I want to cook.
So there's the long version. I suppose the primary things I'm looking for are:
1. Simple practically-vegan meal plans, or if not complete meal plans, vegan protein recipes that can be combined into my typical cooking pattern.
2. Simple meat-containing recipes that I can integrate into my typical cooking pattern.
I suppose it's worth noting my own dietary restrictions:
1. No nuts or peanuts (pine nuts are okay, though)
2. No hot pepper or black pepper (not a health restriction, but I find even small quantities unpleasant).
Finally, I'll present a very simple chicken recipe that I found useful in my first years of living away from home, though I'd almost forgotten about it and haven't made it in a very long time.
Oven-fried chicken:
Ingredients:
A.
1/2 c. flour
1 t. salt
1 t. paprika (optional)
1/4 t. pepper (optional)
B.
Pieces of chicken with skin on, as many as desired.
2 t. butter or oil (or 1 t. butter 1 t. oil)
Combine A. ingredients in a plastic bag. Add a piece or two of chicken and shake until well coated. Repeat until you have coated all you want.[*]
Heat butter/oil in a baking dish in a 425°F (about 220°C) oven until melted (only a minute or two).
Place coated chicken skin sides down in pan.
Cook uncovered 30 minutes.
Turn chicken; cook uncovered about 30 minutes longer.
At its simplest, this recipe would involve only 4 ingredients: chicken, flour, salt, butter/oil.
[*] Put a tie twister on the bag once the chicken is baking, label the bag, and put it in the freezer for the next time you make oven-fried chicken. You could also double or triple the coating recipe and put it in a plastic container to save time for the future.
no subject
Date: 2011-02-18 01:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-17 01:45 am (UTC)The kinds of mushooms I can recall seeing around here are:
white button mushrooms
crimini mushrooms
portobello mushrooms
(I just learnt from Wikipedia that these three are the same species in different stages of maturation)
Oyster mushrooms
There may be a few others that I'm not remembering or haven't noticed.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-17 12:12 pm (UTC)