this post was submitted on 27 Oct 2023
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Food and Cooking
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My own tips for simple chemicals:
Add MSG. Another meaning of MSG besides Monosodium glutamate is "Makes Stuff Good", because besides normal salt and fat, it’s another great flavor enhancer for anything savory. And no, it almost certainly doesn’t give you headaches, that was racist bullshit and has long since been disproven.
Baking soda and the Maillard reaction are friends. You know how they tell you, you can’t caramelize onions in 5 minutes? With baking soda, you can. Add a knife’s tip and bam. Just be careful, it also makes them burn far more easily. This also works with meat, where the meat keeps water better and browns more beautifully. One of my favorite uses is for roasting cauliflower, which gets a deeper brown and tastes so much better in cauli mash.
Sodium Citrate for cheese sauce. You want creamy cheese sauce? Like for Nachos? Add a teaspoon of sodium citrate to your cheese when melting, and it will all combine without any of the fat separating. It’s best for dips, but it can be used for something like mac & cheese in a pinch, but you’ll get better results there if you make a proper roux.
You just blew my mind with the baking soda!
MSG is amazing, never deserved the hate it got.
I don’t have any tips that most don’t already know. I cook with simple ingredients. I save and freeze a bit of stock and cook with stock where I can. It adds a bit of depth that oil/butter doesn’t.
For my stock, I’ll save vegetable scraps and freeze it until I have enough. Then boil it down for a few hours. Vegetable is fun to play with. You can add different flavors, and different elements depending on the vegetables you use. Mushrooms will have a unique umami.
Same with seafood stock, I’ll save shrimp shells and fish heads and boil (simmer?) it down. Chicken stock I just boil the bones down after I roast a chicken. For beef, same thing, I’ll roast the bones for more flavor and boil it down. Also I’ll add carrots and celery to the boil for more flavor.
In a similar thought, I love to use coconut oil when cooking when I want a sweeter taste. And finishing a dish with some sesame oil can add a really good flavor. (Sometimes I’ll lightly toss noodles in sesame oil after they’re cooked, or do the same with roasted veggies)
For the stock, when you roast something, chicken or whatever, if you have space in the oven add another pan and roast the bones or vegetables, careful not burn them, you keep for stock before boiling them, you get deeper flavour and a nice colour.
Great ideas with stock. Alas, I don’t have enough leftovers for it as I tend to use everything (and for meat, I’m weird and don’t like bones or anything, so it’s always ground or filet. Only sometimes when beef shanks are on sale I eat leftovers and cook them for my wife, but that doesn’t leave many bones)
edits:
Toasted sesame oil. I use it on pretty much anything somewhat Asian :D
For #3 and for people that might not have sodium citrate handy, adding a slice of American cheese to cheese sauces will do the same thing as there's plenty of sodium citrate in there to go around.
Regarding MSG. I'm convinced that MSG is a complement to salt. If I had to choose between adding just salt or MSG, I'd go with salt.
I make a "savory salt" mixture that I use in place of salt everywhere except for things like pasta water.
It's 90% salt. 7.5% MSG. 2.5% I+G. All by weight.
If I didn't have I+G, if just do 10% MSG. But the I+G seems to additionally boost the MSG.
For #3, I've tried that in the past and ended up with sorta gritty and weird textured cheese. What might I be doing wrong?
That's weird, never had that issue. First thoughts: too much citrate, nothing but cheese ( so no liquid), to much heat. Any of those?
No, but there were tomatoes involved, and the cheese was shredded... 🤷
Shredded shouldn't be an issue, unless they're was weird stuff in there. But maybe high acidity was an issue.
I'll try again without the tomatoes and see how it works. Thanks!