Game Developers Refuge

Sirocco wrote: ↑Wed Nov 10, 2021 10:59 pm "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.

Air friers are AMAZING at reheating previously fried/deep fried foods. My favorite is chicken (wings, nuggets, fried chicken), some of them are fried once before freezing. You need to be careful to check the packaging though. IMO it's not worth grabbing anything labelled "uncooked" (it works, but it's so much better with residual oil).

One of the 7-11's in my city does fried chicken, and they refrigerate + discount it if nobody buys it. I've on many occasions picked that up, and rejuvenated it in my air frier.

There's a brand of Onion Rings that refry decently. Nothing beats fresh, but in a pinch these do the trick.

PoV wrote: ↑Fri Nov 12, 2021 5:33 pm Air friers are AMAZING at reheating previously fried/deep fried foods.

I've noticed this. I'm looking forward to seeing what else it excels at.

Also, seasoned bread crumbs and/or croutons are the shit. They go surprisingly well with a lot of random dishes, when you need texture and a bit of seasoning.

Yeah I like to put a bit in my meatballs, even though that's typically what distinguishes a traditional meatball from meatloaf.

Speaking of: meatballs and meatloaf. My late polish grandmother used to make meatloaf, and I have fond memories enjoying it with polish dumplings (giant gnocchi). I know meatloaf used to get a bad rap as some sort of "sub part" lunch, but I don't care, I love a good meatloaf. Served with HP sauce, yum (similar to A1 steak sauce and Tonkatsu sauce, but British). Grandma always loved ketchup though.

Anyway, I also love to make-up a big batch of meatballs in the oven and freeze them. My partner is a vegetarian, so I try to cook meatless meals I can just add meat to. When I'm making spaghetti, I'll make up a quick from-scratch tomato sauce, take a handful of meatballs, nuke them for 2 minutes to defrost, then fry them in a small pot before adding a bit of the sauce to finish. Turns into a bit of a meat-sauce topper for my servings.

My most recent batch of meatballs was arguably one of best batches I've ever made. Meat was a 2:1 combination of Beef and Pork, 80:20 meat to fat ratio (AKA medium in Canada, lean in the USA). Finely diced onion and jalapeños, generous amount of pepper and other herbs, egg, and as mentioned some Italian seasoned breadcrumb to offset some of the moisture. Meat was well mixed, bordering on Kofta texture (a middle eastern spiced meatball often made into a kebab). Made balls roughly the size of a ping-pong ball, spaced out and baked on a cookie sheet. Got 2 cookie sheets full. Incredibly good!

My partner didn't appreciate when I referred to them as meat cookies.

Been doing some other meal prep recently. I made some shredded chicken last night, but holy heck, I made an incredible batch of pulled pork just the other day. In both cases, cooked in the Instant Pot (pressure cooker). In case I haven't already raved about it, I have an amazing Chinese grocery store near me. They butcher fresh meat daily, and the prices are extremely reasonable. <3

If I had a secret it'd be that. The fresher the meat, the better it is. The butchers there are constantly working, selling out of a lot of things daily, so I can almost guarantee I'm getting a fresher product than the local "normal" grocery store.


Seriously, I accidentally stumbled into one of the best parts of my city for ingredients. I'm a 10-15 minute walk from numerous amazing stores. Chinese grocery store (Food Island) I've already mentioned: best place to get beef, pork, and produce in the city. They also have a decent selection of Mexican dried chilis, not to mention the fanciest of ramens. Across the street is one of the bigger chain grocery stores, BUT it's one of their bragging stores, with an unrivaled cheese selection, and in-store dry aged steaks. Across the side street from that is a Costco, need I say more? Across yet another side street is a huge Italian/European market. I mainly go here for the fresh bread and deli meats, but I find many niche items here like freshly imported Hungarian Paprika.

I mean it'd be a waste to live here and NOT cook.

Totally agreed on the whole 'fresh meat' thing. It's convenient to pick stuff up and toss it in the freezer, but it never tastes quite as good as it does fresh. We have a few butchers here, but they're on the other side of town and seldom justify a trip -- unless I'm coming from that direction.

I'm back on my diet, so I'm cooking all my meals once more :]

I'm back on my diet, so I'm cooking all my meals once more :]

Lol, I've been bad, indulging in take-out and sugary beverages (OJ, Milk). Now that I'm doing meal prep again it should help, but I need to cut back on the sugars and carbs.

One of Jenna's favourite dishes is this Indian curry "Dal Tadka" we get from a local restaurant. "Dal" literally meaning lentils and "Tadka" describes a method of tempering or blooming spices in oil.

I stumbled across this article today.

https://www.seriouseats.com/what-is-tad ... nk-baghaar

It's a technical look at Tadka.

Indian cooking isn't the only cuisine where "tempering" or "blooming" is a thing, but what's unique is you prepare the spices separately from the dish, and add the "Tadka", which sort of infuses the dish with another layer of flavour. Yum!

I was planning on making my usual Lentil Coconut Curry this evening, but I got inspired, an decided to go with a Dal Tadka.


I used this for reference, bumped the recipe to "9 servings" or "1.5 cups of lentils".

https://www.vegrecipesofindia.com/resta ... dal-tadka/

In the later half of the article there are instructions for making the curry in an Instant Pot instead of a traditional pressure cooker.


Lentil details and tweaks:

- I washed the lentils in the pot before cooking. Added water, swished around for a bit with my hand, drained, repeated until I was satisfied with the clarity of the water (2-3 times).
- Recipe called for 4.5 cups of water, but I opted for 4 cups since I tend to like thicker curries and sauces. The results were thicker than the Dal Tadka we get from our local restaurant.
- I didn't have any tomatoes, but I had an open can of Tomato paste. I used that, then added a bit of fresh lemon juice at the end.
- I used a couple Jalepenos instead of green chillis. Wasn't very spicy. Could have safely used more.
- I went with Hungarian Paprika instead of Kashmiri Chilli powder. I thought I had Kashmiri Chili powder, and I mistakenly thought Kashmiri was very spicy, but the article suggested otherwise. I have more spice tolerance than Jenna so I decided to play it safe with Paprika.
- The recipe forgot ginger! I keep a jar of ginger in the fridge. I added some after cooking, and it did the trick.
- I added some dry Fenugreek leaves after cooking. I add them to everything Indian I cook.


Tadka details and tweaks:

- I used Ghee as my oil (clarified butter). It added a lovely buttery taste to the finished dish.
- I was sure to keep the temperature at medium to be sure the spices didn't burn.
- I didn't have dark mustard seeds, but I had lighter (milder) mustard seeds. Used about double the amount of seeds.
- I roughly crushed some of the cumin and mustard seeds in my mortar, to have a mix of whole and crushed.
- Fried the garlic for a few minutes.
- I didn't have the red chillis they asked for, but I had dry Mexican Arbol chillis and dry curry leaves. I used those. I used ~20 curry leaves and roughly 3 seeded Arbol. I didn't notice much spice, so I could have used more Arbol.
- Per other advice I read, I added the chillis and curry leaves then immediately took them off the heat, letting the residual heat finish them. No complaints.


Mixed the Tadka into the lentils, stirred in some Cilantro to finish. Yum.


Served with Basmati rice.


We usually enjoy Nan bread with our curries from the local restaurant, but the other purpose of this meal was to make some lunches Jenna can take to work. I've been struggling to find a straightforward way to prepare Basmati rice, and I sort of face-palmed after googling this.

https://www.teaforturmeric.com/perfect- ... ce-cooker/

i.e. Use a rice cooker as if it was white rice.

Okay so I didn't exactly do that, but I did the following:

- Added 2 cups of basmati rice to the rice cooker. Added water, washed the rice like I washed the lentils (stir with hand, drain murky water, repeat until water reasonably clear).
- Once washed and drained, added 4 cups of water, and salt. Stirred and tasted water (salt confirmed).
- Cooked on the "White Rice" setting.
- After about 35-40 minutes I opened and checked the rice. It was done, so I shut it off. I think my rice cooker goes for 45-50 minutes on the white rice setting.

I've been turning out consistently awesome noodles from my pasta-barfer. I'm tempted to take the nozzle I've got and file off a little bit to make it more square, but honestly I've achieved the taste and consistency I expect with udon so I'm pretty okay thus far. I might order a spare nozzle (I think the one I'm using is for fettuccine). I boil the noodles for 1.5 minutes, then soak them in ice water for a few minutes.

Tonight I tried making a general Tso-style dish, with udon and grilled chicken chunks, mixed with some chicken broth and general Tso's sauce (bottled -- I'm too lazy to make my own just yet). It turned out fantastic. It wasn't anything visually worthy of snapping a picture of, but goddamn it went down smooth. Next time I want to try breading the chicken and lightly frying instead.

Food is getting hella expensive over here, so I'm stocking up on the staples, and cooking 3 small meals a day. When I go into the office we usually hit up a restaurant for lunch, so that's my occasional splurge.

Also, I've discovered that leftover (i.e. refrigerated) udon warms up very well in hot broth/sauce. I usually get ~3 good servings out of a single barf, although the machine can make a lot more in one go. Still working on my breading technique -- I'm experimenting with Tempura but results have been... uneven thus far.

Regardless, I'm gonna need a lot more flour

I took a stab at some Tempura batter, with some already cooked chicken. I ate half the bowl before I snapped a pic, heh. Things didn't turn out too well, with the batter being (probably) too thick, and since it was a base recipe there was no seasoning, which it definitely needed. But the texture was good and it soaked up the flavor, and overall the dish was still tasty as hell.

I'm convinced I should continue going down this road. I have much experience grilling and baking; frying not so much.

I tried switching from tempura to panko, doing ye olde flour and egg dredge technique. I dropped the chicken (already cooked) in the deep fryer for ~2 minutes... and... yes. Very tasty, and the breading gives the chunks more volume, presumably making the chicken go a bit further. Once again, I threw it in with udon, General Tso's, and some chicken broth. I'm trending lean on the broth. We'll have to revisit the tempura later in the month.