....about cooking

[Aruiko]

Yes. I noticed there was a thread about cooking, but it wsa really old.
So I would like to ask you about resepies for low budget. Please share any recepies and cooking tips

My problem is that food is always tasteless It really tastes like nothing. Any tips?

[mitsuki lover]

Do you put much spice into your recipes when you cook?Maybe you need to look for recipes that include plenty of spice so it won't be so tasteless.

[Mr. SmartyPants]

Well what exactly is it that you are cooking?

[Puritan]

For taste, mitsuki lover is right, spices are an excellent way to improve food taste. You'll have to experiment to find out what spices you like with what foods, but I, personally, enjoy that type of thing.

As for low budget cooking, I will give you the basic recipe for an authentic American Midwestern hotdish (a staple of church potlucks, especially for Lutherans), and would be happy to provide more recipes if you have specific preferences. Through most of college I lived off of one-dish meals, and hotdishes are a standard variety.

Midwestern Hotdish

1 cup (~ 240 ml) noodles, uncooked
1 can (about 11 oz or 325 ml) cream of mushroom soup (or another condensed cream-based soup)
1 can (about 15 oz or 440 ml) vegetables, drained (generally peas, corn, carrots, or the like)
1 can (4 ounces or about 120 ml) mushrooms
1 12 oz or ~1/3 kg of meat (generally tuna, turkey, or chicken. This can also be canned meat of the appropriate weight)
3/4 cup (~180 ml) milk
1 cup (~ 240 ml) bread crumbs (either store-bought or made by toasting bread and crumbling it up)
2 tbsp. (~30 ml) butter

Preheat oven to 375F (~190C). Cook the noodles as per package directions. Cook the meat until fully cooked. Mix together noodles, vegetables, soup, mushrooms, and milk, and put into a 1.5 quart (~1.5 Liter) casserole dish (or other oven-safe dish). Melt the butter and mix with the bread crumbs. Top the casserole with the bread crumbs, cook the casserole for 20-25 minutes.

[USSRGirl]

Um... here's a few cheap, easy "recipes" for people who don't like to cook. I generally just push the button the microwave, but hey...

1.) Taco rice! Get a packet of taco seasoning and some white rice (use brown rice if you want to healthy, but it won't taste as good and takes longer to boil). Add some peppers and corn and chicken, then boil 'em together and ya got taco rice. Top with sour cream.

2.) For low budget recipes throw just about any kind of meat into Pasta Roni or Rice-a-roni and your done.

3.) Sphagetti + ricotta cheese + ground beef/turkey/chicken/lamb/buffalo

4.) Hack up some potatoes and carrots, throw 'em in a pan with steak. I think they're called "cottage fries".

5.) Randomly throw sour cream and/or radishes on anything and call it a recipe. Always tastes good. XD

6.) Buy cheap frozen stuff and zap it (Temulin's personal preference)

[Technomancer]

Several recipes:


Green Curry
1. Boil noodles

2. mix green curry paste, cardomon seeds and cumin with a small amount of water. If you can find it, almond milk adds an excellent flavour.

3. Stir fry the noodles in the sauce along with tofu or some seafood mix.

peanut butter

1. More noodles.

2. stir fry the noodles along with crunchy peanut butter (buy one of the organic brands,not Kraft, etc), mango/lime curry sauce and tofu.

Some stuff with dates in it

1. Boil rice, dice up some butter nut squash.

2. Stir fry the rice along with the diced squash and some chopped dates. Add some sugar along with either cinammon or allspice.

Chicken livers

You fry these however you like (and they're good!). I've found that a small amount of lemon juice + caraway seeds make for a great flavour.

Fennel

There are lots of ways to use fennel. Fry it with anise seeds, or use it in a salad.

Some kind of curry

Use more boiled rice, and frozen vegetables. Stir fry the mix with diced tofu and walnuts. Season it with cumin, ajwain seeds and madras curry paste.

meat balls

Use the ground meet of your choice. Mix in small chunks of bread (preferably something with flavour, like rye), spices (pepper, fennel,cumin, whatever). Ground walnuts or pistachios go well in this too.

Almond chicken

Buy chicken legs and slivered almonds. Pour small amounts of almond extract on the chicken meat, and bake.

Orange Fish

Fry your fish in orange juice. Add muchrooms to help sop up some of the flavour.

[Ingemar]

Noodles:

1 package, long noodles.


1. Boil a lot of water
2. Put in noodles, keep there until they are soft (stick to a wall)
3. Eat.

[Sammy Boy]

Here is a recipe I asked my mum for the other night, don't have a name for it though.

------------
Ingredients:
------------
- Tomatoes (x2 - depends on how many you wish to serve)
- Tomato sauce
- Pineapples (x1 canned pineapples)
- Onion (x1)
- Cornflour
- Skirt fillet beef * (can be substituted with chicken or lamb or fish fillets) (washed and cleaned)
- Soy sauce
- Oil (can be olive oil)
- Lemon grass (optional)
- Salt

------
Tools:
------
Wok
Wok spatula thing
Plate
Small bowl
Medium sized bowl

------
Steps:
------
1. Put the beef into the medium sized bowl.
2. Add cornflour to this.
3. Add soy sauce to this.
4. Mix and marinate so that the cornflour completely covers the beef.
5. Cut the oinion into thin slices.
6. Cut the tomatoes into quarters.
7. Add some oil to the wok.
8. Add the oinion slices, tomato quarters, and lemon grass (optional) into the wok and stir them around for half a minute or so.
9. Fill the small bowl with water, and pour the water into the wok.
10. Now add some tomato sauce into the wok and mix everything well.
11. Add some salt (or not).
12. Add the beef from the medium sized bowl and stir fry until they are cooked.
13. Finally, add the can of pineapples.
14. Pour everything onto a plate.

------------------------------

Also, my mum said not to cook the beef separately, just chuck it in and cook the stuff together in the wok.

[Aruiko]

Orange Fish

Fry your fish in orange juice. Add muchrooms to help sop up some of the flavour.

Wow, This one sounds good!

5.) Randomly throw sour cream and/or radishes on anything and call it a recipe. Always tastes good. XD

... somehow this is allways the case when food ends up tasteless.

Well what exactly is it that you are cooking?

I usually just look what i have and mix them all togerher. Well only if there is possibility that those ingrediens would taste somehow good together I use quite alot spices, so i dont think the problem lies there.
Though i tend to use them lot i use them carefully... like im allways scared of too putting too much chili. It might be that i put too often foodcreame to food...maybe..

Usually i use chili, pepper, oregano, salt and china mix. Any other good spices? Maybe i just use the wrong ones...

Thanks for all recepies here. Puritan and Ultra Mangus, thanks for exact recepies. I try them this week

[Mr. SmartyPants]

I dunno then.... some soy sauce? Or Sweet Rice Wine? Try using some liquids to marinate your dishes with. You could even try beer to tenderize meat.

[mitsuki lover]

Technomancer you are only the second person besides my mom who seems to like chicken livers.

[Kaligraphic]

Try putting teriyaki sauce on a meat-based Mexican dish.

Also, if your food is tasteless, yet you are using spices, perhaps you are not using enough? Sour cream tends to dilute the spices, so that might not be so useful.

Also, try a bit of hot sauce on your food. Hot sauces have different tastes, so you'd probably have to try multiple kinds to know what you like with what. Also, don't be afraid to experiment. The worst that happens is that the combination of flavors you choose summons a malevolent alien entity intent on destroying all life on Earth. More likely though, a bad combination just wouldn't taste the way you wanted it to. Not that bad of a consequence.

I suggest designating at least one day a week as an "Experimental Food Day", where you try something new and outlandish - the more dramatic, the better. Eat something weird. Put new spices on an old dish. Give Menchi indigestion with your leftovers if you have to, because after a while, you'll know better what you like.

[USSRGirl]

Burying stuff in garlic is always good, though bad for your breath. XP Oregano gives stuff a kind of pizza-ish taste. Sweet n' sour sauce is good on rice, or teriyaki sauce, though I don't know about it on a Mexican dish. Um... there's always salt and pepper! ^__^;;

[Kaligraphic]

Buy a box of taquitos, realize that the meat is bland, and drop some teriyaki sauce in there. That's how I first tried it. You only risk one taquito if you don't like it, and you can improve the whole box if you do. Alternately, try a different sauce on each taquito and write up your observations on each flavor. Taquitos are a usefull food because they come in comparatively useful numbers without being large enough to really fill you up before you can compare.

Of course, that doesn't give you info for foods with cheese or other stuff, but it's a nice quick way of trying different sauces on meat. It's just a starting place, but you've got to taste for yourself anyway.

[Mithrandir]

I've got a bunch of recipes on my website. Here's a link directly to the list...

http://flactem.com/cgi-bin/db_recipe.cgi?Command=ShowAll

[USSRGirl]

I'll be sure and try that next time I buy taquitos, Kal. >.>;; *Spooked*

[Kaligraphic]

Yes, ph34r m4h sp00ky t4qu1t0s.

[Technomancer]

Technomancer you are only the second person besides my mom who seems to like chicken livers.

Chicken livers are awesome, and they're cheap. Next you're going to tell me that it's weird to like blood pudding!

[Mr. SmartyPants]

[quote="Technomancer"]Chicken livers are awesome, and they're cheap. Next you're going to tell me that it's weird to like blood pudding! ]
Ever try Soondae?

[Technomancer]

I've never seen them in any of the Asian grocers here, although I expect the Koreans would make a decent pudding.

[Kaligraphic]

Yes, they do, but you have to be careful making pudding out of Koreans. A lot of people still have objections to cannibalism.

[mitsuki lover]

Would that be North or South Koreans?