I’m curious why you would want to ferment both pico de gallo, which is essentially a fresh salsa, and blueberries? Were you trying to preserve them or something? Some context is missing here. Maybe someone else can be of more help. You have piqued my interest though.
Just stuff on hand for experimentation with lactose fermentation. It would have gone bad otherwise. The lid of the greenish brown jar says the start date, added a bit of honey for extra insurance (“H”). I also tasted and intuitively thought I’d try running it through a food processor, added more honey and let it go. It went through a gamut of evolving smells. It ended in a mild green salsa like flavor. It had a LOT of CO^2^ production throughout, far more than anything else I’m messing with. There is a lot more alcohol in it, but I have no idea how much is really there.
The blueberries worried me around a week ago. They tasted like olives, but now they have a more pleasant flavor, or rather, the juice does now. It is about like a more berry/savory almost beet juice like wine flavor, but more savory than a wine. It is savory like a soy or fish/Worcestershire sauce, but less concentrated than those.
These are 3% salt brine fermentations to insure the right kind of bacterial growth. Fermenting stuff and experimenting with unique flavors that this creates is how you take cooking to the highest levels, but also a serious survival skill. It only takes around 3 weeks from food scarcity to population reduction.
Thanks for the info! Experimentation in the kitchen is fun! I haven’t attempted any fermentation yet. I usually take fresh pico de gallo that’s not so fresh and cook it down with some tomato paste, blitz it, and use it as a dip or pizza sauce. To prolong its life I freeze it in an ice cube tray which I then transfer to ziplock freezer bags.
Did you try reducing down the blueberry juice? If it’s a savory flavor like you say, I’d be interested to know what properties it might have as a sauce.
More specifically, I’m curious how it’d be in three ways: one test group cooked down on its own with no additives, a second one simply used to deglaze a fond and made into a pan sauce that way, and then a third made into the same pan sauce, but then mounted with butter.
Hah, who knows? Maybe you could make a roux and try it as a gravy. Oh, or maybe, if you season it right, you could make it into like a sweet/savory/spicy chicken wing sauce?
Chef-wise I have a couple of Madhur Jaffrey books I use for curries, and then the flavour bible for cooking stuff generally that I’m comfortable with the base recipe for.
We usually cook batches of things on the weekend and eat them for the first part of the week. Quiche is better the next day, Mattar Pander, Caribbean rice and beans, bolognese sauce. Anything with spice based flavors improves as the spices infuse into the other ingredients IMO.
That’s the egg sticking to the pan, try using more fat, that worked for me. Or maybe I just needed to break in the pan. Either case, stop using metal on non stick. Use a silicone out wooden spatula
Probably because of the steep learning curve, especially for stainless.
I’ve been using stainless for years and I have a stoneware nonstick for cooking sticky stuff like potatoes and eggs. I just don’t have the skill down for those yet.
Also cast iron being cheap is kinda laughable. It’s really expensive, even though it will last forever.
It’s not particularly expensive. Cast iron and stainless steel are both about $50 for a pan, with prices going basically as high as you want for either.
I used to think this too. It just takes a little bit of time to learn the proper technique. Managing heat and a little bit of fat will make them more or less able to be wiped out. I pretty much only use carbon steel and stainless now. I used to use cast iron but I got tired of lugging it around, so it only comes out if I need to sear a steak now.
I only ever cook eggs in my cast iron skillet. If I am patient enough to get it hot enough and cook with butter, and don’t mess around with the egg too much very little sticks and what does is a cinch to clean. The pans are heavy as hell though. I don’t lug except car camping. I haven’t tried stainless yet but it sounds like it would be worth doing.
I remember someone once saying, “hot pan, cold oil, food won’t stick”. So I heat my pan, put a little butter in it. It should sizzle and melt but not brown. If it starts browning then the pan is too hot. Swirl it around a little then add egg. Temperature control is really the biggest factor I’ve found. It’s also ok to take the pan off the burner if it’s too hot. This is especially true if making scrambled eggs.
A single steelwire sponge can clean a cast iron easy in 60 seconds for even the biggest messes.
Most people that say cast iron are difficult just haven’t been properly taught how to take care of one (including myself in the past). They are a buy for life product, my wife has skillets that have been in the family for generations.
You can get similar non stick properties from learning to use cast iron or stainless steel. If you’re interested, I’d say start with cast iron, it’s cheaper and while you’re still learning how to make it non-stick super easy to clean by literally scratching it with chainmail!
Google “stainless steel water test” but basically the water starts sliding around on the pan.
For eggs it needs to be hot enough to just maintain this effect, or else they can burn and start sticking again. You can also add a bit of oil at this point but it’s not strictly necessary and can cause smoke depending on the oil used.
Unfortunately the quality of your pan also has an effect here. 3-5 layer “all clad” is best. But if you wound up with partial clad like me (the kind with a visible disk on the bottom) the section that isn’t clad will almost always get at least a bit of food stuck to it.
Learning stainless steel imo also takes more patience if you’re on electric, because you’ll need to wait longer for the temperature to settle, but not impossible. I switched to magnets! If you want to give magnets a shot, but don’t want to spend $2000+, you can get an induction hot plate online for ~$100
It’s okay, just practice getting the water to bead, that’ll help a lot, and if something gets stuck, plastic or wood scrapers and barkeeper’s friend will help.
Sometimes I’ve also boiled stuck on food, that’s helped it release too.
And worst case, you make mistakes and can learn from them, no harm no foul I’d say!
Don’t use metal utensils on non-stick pans. You run the risk of scratching it up and you don’t want to be eating either the coating or cooking directly against the (usually) aluminium of the pan itself.
It looks more like you just burned the egg. Lower the temp. Eggs cook best at a medium low heat.
You also should still be using some kind of oil or fat in a non-stick pan. This whole video looks like how my dad cooks and he just drops the eggs into the pan because “it doesn’t stick.” 😮💨 It does. Use some oil or butter.
Depending on the pan, metal utensils are OK. The manufacturer will state what’s OK to use. I’ve had a brand the specifically marketed that metal utensils are OK.
This isn’t 1980’s Teflon any more (had my share of that stuff, lol, and why I have only 2 non-stick pans now, specifically for things like eggs).
Project Farm tested several pans a few weeks back, including. Scratch hardness test. I was surprised at how well some of them performed. youtu.be/N-eBmPSqd4g?si=2aDL1Z8YxjmSu_y7
You've got some good suggestions here but also, consider ditching nonstick stuff for something safer like cast iron or stainless steel: There's all sorts of nasty shit used in the creation of nonstick surfaces and they can come off if the coating is ever damaged (which can be very easy to do).
You have the heat too high and no surface liquid to transfer heat from pan to egg (like a fat) so the part of the egg that hits the pan first is denaturing super fast into a puck while the rest of the egg cooks slower. First, ditch the non-stick or be ready to spend a LOT more, second, cook your eggs with a spot of fat.
Use low heat, add butter or bacon grease to pan and melt before cooking the eggs.
Once you get good at that, try it on a seasoned cast iron. Once you get good at that, ditch the nonstick disposable health and environmental hazard. Cast irons last lifetimes and the worst thing they put in your food is iron.
First, that pan is dry. It needs some lubricant in the form of fat. Second, you say this happens even on 1/10. Have you set the burner to 1 and made sure that it’s not cranking out 10/10 flame? Third. How long are you keeping that egg in there before flipping it?
To be fair a non-stick pan typically doesn’t need oil in order to avoid sticking except in cases for you’re using one of the worst sticking foods you can possibly cook… Eggs.
And even then a good non-stick pan won’t stick as long as you’re not burning it.
That is just the egg white. Like @Kolanaki said, change your temp and use some type of fat. If it happens on the lowest setting, you could have a burner issue. Or maybe you need to learn your new skillet. Perfectly acceptable 🙂
It’s possible that part of your issue is that you’ve used that metal spatula too much and you’ve scraped off some of the coating so the egg is binding to the pan. Enough fat would help that, but a degraded Teflon pan isn’t something you should be using.
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