Best buy dates are meaningless hype to get you to use more.
I keep eggs for months. Average time in my fridge, 1-3 months. Eggs can always be scrambled, then frozen. Texture changes, but can be used in less sensitive dishes - I wouldn’t make a cake with them.
That said - Dutch Baby. Chef John’s version on Food Wishes works perfectly. It’s like breakfast dessert, though nutritionally much better because of the eggs.
Re: Best buy dates. For decades I’ve done “informal testing” (forgot about stuff) and have learned most things last far beyond their sell by/best buy date. (I put dates on everything I buy - restaurant inventory management lesson).
I currently have numerous intentional tests going - dozens of cans of different dates, chips, crackers, cookies, boxed meals (cake mixes, hamburger helper, pasta, Mac n cheese, etc.). Pasta lasts forever. As does pasta sauce in a jar or can.
Chips: will last upward of 2 years past sell by date. Oils go rancid eventually from oxygen exposure (I suspect a bag develops a leak).
Cookies:similar
Crackers: these seem to oxidize faster than chips (the oils go rancid, safe to eat just taste bad). I suspect it’s because crackers aren’t sealed as well as chips.
Peanut Butter: 4 years, no problem.
Canned drinks: 3 years average. Cans are very thin, develop pinhole leaks (especially acidic drinks - cola).
Bottled drinks: indefinitely. Anything in jars will generally last as long as canned goods (technically they’re canned too).
Canned goods are indefinite, except acidic things like tomatoes. Over time the acid will degrade the lining, then the can. Though I’ve gone past two years with tomatoes, and no problems yet.
Of course, all this is stored in a cool, dry, dark location (no sunlight, lights are OK, just keep them off). Anything under 75f is OK, the cooler the better.
There are canned goods over 100 years old (salvaged from shipwrecks) that get tested occasionally. Still safe to eat (even if maybe you wouldn’t want to).
You could try separating the leafy part from the stem. Cook the stem with everything else but don’t throw the leafy part in until the very end when you’ve turned off the heat. The residual heat from everything else should be enough to wilt the greens.
Stir fry is one of my big go-tos. All you need is a pan and spatula or tongs, whatever veg you have on hand, oil, salt. You can mix in seasonings but honestly if cooked well I don’t find it to be that necessary. Fried rice or rice stuff is in a similar vein. Cook whatever random stuff you have around, remove from the pan, start frying the rice, throw in an egg, add it all back into the pan briefly.
Street tacos are baller and you can put all kinds of things in them and make them work with just about any dietary restrictions. I prefer to go heavy handed with the seasoning but you can make it work with only a couple spices. Best with two pans, one to heat up the tortillas. Making pico de gallo is good knife skill practice and extra can the thrown on nachos directly or quickly turned into salsa.
All the soup and then some seriously there are so many great soup recipes and tricks. I love egg drop because it can be as simple as broth and an egg, though usually I put in some frozen veg and thicken with corn starch. If you eat meat and have these in your area, you can grab one of those hot held roast chickens for cheap. Lazily process it, throw all the bones and whatever is stuck to them into a pot and make a quick and cheap stock. Plus now there is a bunch of chicken laying around ready to be a chicken noodle or chicken tortilla soup.
If your stove has an oven: Ratatouille is surprisingly easy to make, costs basically nothing, and can be done in an oven or a slow cooker. Jalapeno poppers can also be weirdly cheap and easy to make. Really anything where a main component is a veg and you put it in the oven. Roast broccoli only needs oil and salt to come out great.
I like to make savory oatmeal and have pre-measured containers for breakfast prep. Oats, salt, pepper, brewers yeast. Just add water. I mix in cream cheese and put a fried egg on top. It’s cheap and filling and you can really push what you’re adding to them and at worse still come out with something okay enough.
I hope these are the kinds of things you’re looking for and they get some ideas going. If you have questions about anything or need inspiration let me know! I’ve been living with a chef for a lot of years and have a decent bit of knowledge I can share
The stir-fry thing sounds good. It will give me a break from rice!
I’ve been frying stuff in margarine because it’s cheaper, and the vast array of cooking oils confuse me. I read one oil is used for one particular type of frying, and another for a different type of cooking, etc. Is there a cheap cooking oil that’s OK to use for frying lots of different things?
Oh that’s one of the cheaper ones! No taste is good - I’ve eaten stuff cooked in peanut oil and it makes everything taste like hot peanut butter. Canola oil is on the shopping list! Cheers!
If anyone is interested in stir frying correctly you should read The Wok which goes over the technique and recipes. The short summary is high heat and short time and make sure everything is prepared ahead of time.
I made a quick vegetable stir dry last week with broccoli, mushrooms and beans (the only three vegetables in the fridge). The entire thing was 10 minutes on the pan from frying the mushrooms for 1 minute before adding the broccoli and beans and cooking for 30 seconds. I added salt along the way and finished with cooking wine and soy sauce for a sauce for 1 minute. Everything then sat in the wok off the heat for 5 minutes while I cleaned and plated. The vegetables were cooked but still had a snap and it was delicious. When used correctly its the perfect pan for everything
Depending on the wok construction sometimes they work really poorly with electric stoves, getting super hot right at the bottom and not so much on the sides. Generally though they are quite versatile. One of my favorite tricks is using one to fry an egg to keep the yolk centered
Don't anything nonstick. Pretty much ever. I got a nice carbon steel one for my birthday that I love. Our nonstick works okay on our electric stove but the carbon steel gives much better flavor.
Nonstick has two very specific use cases: Eggs and cheese. If you’re ever cooking either one of those, nonstick is often the best option. But for pretty much anything else, cast iron or carbon steel will be a better bet.
Charity shops here don’t accept electrical goods, because people were donating dangerous things like what my microwave was until very recently. I love stews so I’ll keep an eye out and maybe I’ll get lucky somehow. Cheers.
Have you got any local community sale type places? Things like gumtree, nextdoor, craigs list or facebook might be worth checking. I can vouch for the idea of a slow cooker. I’m pretty sure you could chuck in an old shoe, some random herbs, some root veg and a few hours later have enough tasty food to serve a small army.
I’ll pass on the old shoe idea 😂 I know what you mean. It’s hard to screw up a slow cooker stew. I don’t use any of those sites but I’ll have a little sniff around and see what I can find.
This is 100% the answer. If you’re looking for cheap and easy, a slow cooker is the way to go. Throw shit into a pot. Set it on low before you leave for work. When you get back from work, you’ll have a perfectly done meal that will likely last for the next two or three days at least.
It’s really not too bad. You just need to get all the ingredients together and follow the steps. Cucumber kimchi is my favorite and pretty easy to make.
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.
The cheapo carbon steel cleaver is my favorite knife in my set. I got a block of Victorinox knives as a gift and yeah they work fairly well (you’re right about sharpening being annoying tho), but the $13 cleaver is where it’s at. It’s sharp, it sharpens well and that style of knife is just so useful. I pull out two other knives generally these days, the serrated one for bread and a ceramic one for tomatoes. The rest? Cleaver time, baybee!
Also, mincing things with the cleaver is great. Mincing things with TWO cleavers? Now that’s joy.
The cheap, but well made carbon steel cleavers from www.wokshop.com or your local Asian market are very good. They will discolor your onions if you don’t oil them (the blades, not the onions. Are you getting enough iron?).
I feel I am getting on a tangent. Victorinox sucks and is overpriced despite what Americas Test Kitchen says, Kenji agrees with me.
Buy some cheap crap, a decent steel, have people ask ‘why isn’t there any hair on that part of your forearm? That’s a bit weird’ and seriously show some veggies what’s what.
The site you linked is where I got my cleaver and I vouch for exactly what you’ve said. Though I haven’t seen an issue with my onions. I don’t oil the blade often but I do use it to chop meat (and thus their fats) once a week.
I’m pretty sure I got their #3 veggie cleaver, though I’m not really sure the difference between that and their carbon steel cleavers. Works fine for meat, but I don’t chop bones with it.
Got any tips on sharpening? I feel sloppy whenever I’m doing it and it seems like you take a pride in it, so if I could pick your brain on how to sharpen my cleavers better, I’d appreciate it!
The 800 is for stuff fresh from the flea market/Daiso (their knives are awesome and cheap) the 4000 is fine (for me) for daily showing veg and meat who’s boss. For straight razors I use 10k.
Regular use of a steel (daily for me because I have issues) means I only sharpen once a month. If you don’t, or you are using different steel in your knives you may want to sharpen more or less frequently.
I’m looking to actually buy myself a chef’s knife. I really only care about having a long lasting knife, that’s not horrible. You would recommend a daiso knife? (Daiso the Japanese Asian import store, right?)
Daiso is Japan's version of a dollar store (though admittedly far, far better than American dollar stores), so I would not go there for a long-lasting knife. Dishes? Absolutely. Knife? No.
I had a $5 knife from Daiso, the balance was very nice, I really liked it. I bought it around 2008? A friend has it now, they like it. Cheap knives are rarely full tang and will rust inside the handle, I drip oil into the handle, dry them carefully, and they last for a long time.
My recommendation would be to get a cheap knife like that and a nice carbon steel cleaver like The Wok Shop, or your local Asian market sells. With those two and less than $20 outlay you can do most anything. Breaking down Winter Squash is a pain, but doable, or you can get something heavy and brutish just for that if it’s you thing.
Reduce the amount of water from 200g227g (6675%) to 180ml (60%). The dough should be less messy = faster to work with.
Working too fast on anything with gluten is counter-productive, as it starts fighting back. Instead it’s better to work small steps on each chunk of dough, like this:
form all chunks of dough into balls
turn all balls into UFOs (discs with thick cores and thinner borders), by hand
turn all UFOs into properly shaped discs, using the rolling pin
This way, as you’re working with a chunk of dough, the other chunks have some time to rest.
Table space is usually a concern when you’re making tortillas, and that makes the process slower. If possible recruit the help of someone else to fry the tortillas for you, as you’re rolling them.
Here is the after. Its very hot, I used it to top a variation on Chicken Katsu Curry today. I know that isn’t a hot dish but variety is the spice of life or some such.
This is a ‘burns the top of your mouth, and inside of your lips, but still has flavor’ hot sauce.
ETA: another photo from a few days in to the ferment.
For pasta, I just mix a bulk restaurant flour (~10% gluten) 2:1 with egg, knead until incorporated and smooth, then tightly wrap and let rest for at least twenty minutes before rolling and cutting.
I would suggest just finding a recipe that already includes those ingredients.
Adding those three induces a lot of variables. Gluten is obviously going to strengthen the dough but be mitigated to some degree by the dough conditioner, it hydrates differently too. Diastatic Malt will add sweetness as well as flavor.
Your liquid (milk) will need to be increased.
What dough conditioner are you using? There are many.
What is the end goal here?
You can certainly do this but it would be an iterative process, this time too chewy, next too dry, etc.
I’ve made a recipe that includes them but for a hoagie (or sub roll). That recipe uses 240g flour, 60g VWG, 8g dough conditioner, and 6g DMP. Doing some math and using baker percentages, it goes as follows: 25% for VWG, 3% for dough conditioner, and 2% for DMP. I probably did something wrong but I could try this formula. Of course, it there’s a better method I’ll consider it first.
If you’re happy with Bakers percentages I would go with that. You will need to increase your water as a percentage too.
You said in another comment that you wanted puffier bread, usually you want to increase hydration for that. It somewhat depends on your heat transfer though. You can use lower hydrations in a conventional oven, cooking on a steel plate on the stove or using a Tandoor works better with either higher hydration or longer ferments.
Reading your original recipe I thought you were looking at around a two hour fermentation time. Is that correct?
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