PoV's Home-Made Cooking Thread (2nd Edition)

[Sirocco]

PoV had a great thread on the old board I'd like to resurrect. I consider cooking to be an essential skill, doubly so if one lives alone. Otherwise you just end up eating.... stuff. When a fresh, home cooked meal comes out just right, it's a borderline magical moment.


Anyway, I'll share a simple recipe for making fresh udon noodles. The trick is that it relies on a pasta-barfing machine. If you don't have one, you can look up the required steps for kneading your own dough. I've done it before, and... yeah, this is worth the money if you're gonna do it more than a few times a year.

A. Combine the following items in the barfer:
1. One cup of flour.
2. One teaspoon (tsp) of gluten.
3. One tablespoon (Tbsp) of potato starch (corn starch isn't the same, and the results are sub-optimal).
4. 80 ml water.

The amount of water needs to be fairly precise. Don't be too sloppy. Let the barfer extrude, cutting off the noodles at the desired length. This usually makes ~3 servings of noodles, given my usual appetite. YMMV.

B. Drop the noodles, one serving at a time, into a pot of boiling (and well-salted) water, for 2-3 minutes. Watch the clock. Overcooked noodles get soggy fast.

C. Remove from the boiling water *promptly* and place in an ice bath for a few minutes. You just want to get the noodles to stop cooking. There's no harm in leaving them in for a while.

There you go -- fresh noods. Add whatever you want to the dish, and serve.

[PoV]

Now that's my kind of thread.

I haven't had the best luck with my "pasta barfing machine". That said I've been pretty happy with my manual pasta maker. I made an incredible lasagna from scratch in the age before masks. My criticism of the manual pasta maker is that my kitchen doesn't have a great place to use it (lips on my countertops aren't deep enough to clamp on). I picked up a 3rd-party addon for my Stand Mixer recently as an alternative. I still need to make something with it though.

[Sirocco]

I haven't had the best luck with my "pasta barfing machine".

My first few batches were just the wrong consistency, and either didn't extrude cleanly, didn't retain their shape well, or stuck together after extrusion (sometimes all three!). The ingredient:water ratio seems to be critical. Last night's batch was perfect, which means I'll probably never succeed again

Also, It's impossible to find potato starch around here. I had to order some off Amazon :/

[Gered]

I enjoyed lurking through the last thread on the old site.

I'm not much of a cook, but I agree that it's really important to be able to cook something if you live alone (as I do). Eating out is expensive, and often not too healthy.

Thankfully I have "simple" tastes, so simple foods that are easy to make and easy to make lots of (so I don't have to cook again soon, haha) is fine by me. Spaghetti happens to be one of those, and coincidentally, it is one of my favourite meals.



It seems that I don't take photos my food very often (almost never). This was all I could find on my phone, heh. Next time I cook something yummy I will share.

[PoV]

If you don't already (and everyone else reading), I highly recommend making your own tomato sauce.

It's super easy, and a great entry point into fancy cooking. You could start with a can of good whole/peeled tomatoes, add salt and pepper, and in 20-30 minutes have a better product than the "sauce water" that is most canned tomato sauces. I like a thicker sauce myself and go longer (30-40'ish minutes), but the 20 minute figure is notable as water on most stoves take 10'ish minutes to reach a boil, and dry noodles take 10'ish minutes to cook. I.e. you could make better sauce in the time it takes to cook the noodles.

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In a pinch I grab Italian tomatoes. That's not to say there aren't good non-Italian brands, but your generic $0.99 cent can isn't probably very good. I stock up whenever they're on sale. San Marzano tomatoes are your premium canned tomato (a controlled product from a specific part of Italy), but they're expensive. San Marzano tomatoes are often "good enough" without any additives, but don't forget to salt them.

IMO the fun is making the sauce your own. Frying some chili flakes and garlic in oil, sweating some onions, finishing with the grandma technique (i.e. knob of butter at the end for creaminess). If you're going to add things, definitely go with something cheaper than San Marzano. The delicate flavors of the San Marzano will get muted by your oregano and butter.

Also depending on where you live, canned tomatoes may actually taste better than fresh. This has to do with tomatoes being picked before they're ripe, then shipped out, ripening on the way to the store. Where a canned tomato is picked when it's ripe, then the canning slows down the degradation (preservation). Local/Garden fresh tomatoes are often the best, but there's always room for error given soil and nutrient chemistry, etc.

There's also apparently some subtlety to canned tomatoes, whole versus diced. I believe it's that the whole tomatoes require less preserving chemistry than diced, but I haven't checked cans in a while for any addatives.

Anyways, tomatoes are awesome.

[Gered]

I will definitely give this a shot! I absolutely use a lot of tomato sauce and have just always bought the typical brand name tomato sauce stuff around here (e.g. Presidents Choice, etc). I'd never investigated what would be needed to make my own because I'd literally just never even thought about it. But if it is really that easy, then damn, why not?

[Sirocco]

If you don't already (and everyone else reading), I highly recommend making your own tomato sauce.

I haven't gone that far yet. I usually start out with a fairly thick canned sauce, and add red wine, red pepper, and some basic "Italian seasoning" and let it simmer for a while. I also cook the meat with a generous amount of red wine, and add it in as I go.

This thread is making me hungry

[PoV]

Here's a good simple recipe.



I tend to crush the tomato either in the pot/pan with my spoon, or with a potato masher.


Here's a video that dives into technique more.



I don't go as hardcore salting my water. I salt it until I can taste salt. "Salty as the sea" is IMO too salty, but if you can't taste any salt, your noodles wont absorb any.


Here's a great general video on sauces. The 2nd one is on tomato sauce.



To make a great sauce, you give it more time (see Bolognese, OMG). But even if you don't have an hour to simmer, you can make a really good sauce in a pinch.



And here are a few more good videos.







The last one brings up a really great point: You can add lots of depth to a sauce frying things first. The fond (brown bits) that build up in a pan when you brown meat can be easily removed by deglazing (adding a non-oil liquid like water, wine, or stock), and integrated into your sauce.

[Sirocco]

The last one brings up a really great point: You can add lots of depth to a sauce frying things first. The fond (brown bits) that build up in a pan when you brown meat can be easily removed by deglazing (adding a non-oil liquid like water, wine, or stock), and integrated into your sauce.

On that note, I've had good success with cooking the meat, then doing a little fat removal (but not entirely draining), and adding the sauce in to simmer. The leftover fried stuff is good texture

I tend to add a little salt to my noodle bath, but not to the point of saltiness. I've read several recipes suggesting to boil udon in heavily-salted water. I may try that over the weekend. I'm getting back into a cooking kick, so this is good :]

[Sirocco]

I've started leaning into the whole air fryer thing. I picked up one a couple of years ago, and obviously spent a few weeks eating fries every night
And after indulging in that for a while, promptly tucked it away and forgot about it, because I don't really need fries for every other meal.

But then I re-framed my thinking from "What else can I air fry?" to "What can't I air fry?" and so now I'm sticking everything I can think of in there and seeing what happens. It's like "will it blend?" but somewhat edible. So far it does a pretty solid job with anything bread-like, which is understandable. Just gotta watch your time and temp, or else you get a chunk of carbon when you're done. You can make a quick french toast slice by popping a slice in with some egg on top, noodles come out oddly crispy (dunno how to describe it, really), and bacon is a bit tricky but has a unique flavor that you don't get from traditional frying, or grilling.

Obviously I'm still searching for that "Game-Breaking Home Run" idea that forever revolutionizes a once mundane dish, but I'm not quite there yet. There's only so many meals one can air fry in one day