Cookin again

[Umbran]

I recently watched a couple of videos in doing chicken soup in a pressure cooker- including one from ATK- and I’m really going to have to give it a go.

Weird. I mean, ATK also tells us that a decent chicken broth only takes two hours normally. How much can you actually save with a pressure cooker.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I don't own a pressure cooker at this point. In principle I'm willing to be convinced, but I'm neither running into the sorts of problems it solves nor sure where I'd store it. I do stew-type soups (mostly bean stews and chilis) in the oven, simply because the oven is better at maintaining a constant low temperature. Pot roasts and baked beans, too, for the same reason.

The only chicken soup I make (and it's been a while since I've made it) is one that's a riff on a beer and onion soup recipe. The major logistical hurdle for that beer is that it requires one 12-oz. bottle of beer, and my wife and I are both beer nerds and we consume beer in twos. I suppose we could double the recipe, but that'd be a lot of soup.

Pressure cookers can do certain things much more quickly than other cooking tools, sometimes shaving hours off of a recipe. That could transform a once in a while dish to a week night fave. Low & slow can become low and reasonably quick.

For similar reasons, they‘re also good for making stocks or similar dishes when you’re using bone-in meats. They’ll extract more flavor from the meat, bones and connective tissues than conventional means- again, in less time.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Weird. I mean, ATK also tells us that a decent chicken broth only takes two hours normally. How much can you actually save with a pressure cooker.

They did scratch chicken noodle soup in right around 20 minutes.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Did the cornbread sop with white beans. Good, but not good as with the red beans.

 

[Vael]

Pressure cooking is how we now make our beans. We still do an overnight soak, but after many failures slow cooking them (getting either beans that were too mushy or too hard), the pressure cooker gives us the best consistency.

So, I lost my job in the pandemic, and have been thinking about selling baked goods on the side as a way to make a little cash, and if it takes off ...

And, I'd mentionned before I wanted to take another crack at Pâte à Choux (choux pastry) ... so I made Cream Puffs and Éclairs. Obviously, I need to work on consistent sizing and clean piping if I'm to sell these, but after the spectacular failure that was my last effort, I'm pretty darned pleased with these.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Sorry to hear about the job.

Bright side: your pastry looks tasty! I’m from NOLA, but haven’t lived there for most of my life. And with Katrina forcing most of my family to relocate, I haven’t been back in years.

One of the things I miss most is the baked goods & pastry. NOLA was riddled with bakeries. One fave were the chocolate éclairs, and few places outside of Louisiana do them the way they were done there: with chocolate- not vanilla- filling.

I don’t know what it’s like where you are, but if you’re one of the few-or only- bakers doing a chocolate filled chocolate éclair, it could be something that makes your products stand out from the crowd!

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

A couple days ago, I cooked omelettes with a side of butter-sautéed zucchini & onions. The side dish was, unfortunately, under seasoned, so I had plenty of leftovers.

Today, I was looking to have a light lunch, and I remembered the zucch...and had an idea. I dished some into a bowl with a little more butter and zapped them in the microwave for 60-90sec. Then I shredded three pieces of the thinly sliced Genoa salami I had just gotten yesterday, and popped it all in the mic for another 30sec.

A little twist of freshly ground pepper and a quick stir...

All the issues with my veg being under seasoned disappeared. It was actually quite tasty. It wasn’t pretty, though. It looked exactly like what it is: something a bachelor threw together. But it was good.

I’ll probably do this combo again to work on finishing the leftovers, but I‘m not sure what to do with what I learned today. I mean, I don’t know if I could serve this as an intentional dish in the future, tasty though it was.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

That’s rotisserie chicken drizzled with mesquite smoked olive oil, served with a side of diced Yukon golds baked with butter, chives, parsley, black pepper, salt, and shredded truffle gouda.

 

[prabe]

That’s rotisserie chicken drizzled with mesquite smoked olive oil, served with a side of diced Yukon golds baked with butter, chives, parsley, black pepper, salt, and shredded truffle gouda.

Clearly you came into some truffle gouda. I can see how it would play nicely, here.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Yes, yes I did. Bought a huge freaking wedge of it and have been gluttonizing the thing all week. The potatoes forced me to share...some of it.