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What are your cooking experiments that haven't turned out well?
When I first joined Tildes I posted about weird food combos, with mine being a cheese and tuna omelette (try it! It's protein rich and it works!). Lately I've really been getting into tinned salmon so I thought I'd throw some of that into an omelette along with some chives, wilted spinach and a bit of soft cheese. I figured it'd have an eggs royale vibe to it.
It was... fine? I guess? Not inedible, but not great. Normally I love the soft, chalky bones in tinned salmon because I'm a horrid little goblin but here they were just an unpleasant distraction. 4/10, won't try again. Whether it's something pretty tame and low stakes like mine or a total, unsalvageable disaster, I'd love to hear what didn't work out for you!
When I lived alone, I liked to play a solo version of Chopped, the show where contestants are given a set of normally unrelated ingredients and have to make a meal including all of them.
Usually my pantry was fairly standard and familiar, so I’d get perfectly fine results - not great, but not unpleasant.
“Roasted squid stuffed with beet rice” may be the only dish I’ve ever thrown out immediately after tasting. It was like earthy low tide in the mouth, somehow the two amplifying each other.
Honestly, most of the stuff I make turns out edible at least...
But I rarely cook with alcohol and have it turn out good. Penne vodka chicken? Inedible. Bourbon chicken? Bland, didn't get any of the flavors expected. Even most cooking wines, I can't get anything that tastes like "ah, yes, I added something to that sauce."
Vodka-based sauces are using alcohol as an emulsifying agent so that you can increase the fat in the recipe without breaking the sauce. The alcohol doesn't add much flavor by itself. Haven't tried bourbon-based entreés, but the flavor compounds in bourbon are fairly volatile, so I wouldn't expect much flavor left after cooking chicken to safe temperatures.
The best alcohol-based entreé recipes rely on the small amount of tartaric and citric acids in wine. That mellow acidity helps break down tough fibers in meats and vegetables during long cooking. Most of the aromatics, especially in liquors, evaporate during cooking.
[Why not use vinegar instead of wine, you might ask? Acetic acid has harsher effects on textures during long cooking - think of the vaguely slimy consistency of sauerbraten, which usually uses very tough meat cuts.]
Good dishes to try:
Mussels and white wine (the wine and butter make up the sauce - delicious with crusty bread)
Garlic-braised Short Ribs with Red Wine
Vegan Red Wine-Braised Cabbage
There are beer braises as well, but it's best to use recipes that call for a specific type of beer. For example, there are stout braises similar to the red wine recipes above, but they usually call for an additional source of acid to break down tough fibers and balance stout beer's malty sweetness.
Liquor flavors do tend to persist in baked goods, quick sauces, and icings.
This classic rum Bundt cake is a typically boozy example, where the flavor of the rum shines through.
This Kahlua date nut bread safeguards the coffee liqueur flavor in soaked date pieces, to keep it from evaporating away during baking.
So there are many ways to use alcohol in cooking, but you do have to choose the right forms, and recipes that use the properties of the drink properly.
Just in case you haven't heard this before, always use alcohol you would actually drink. Stuff sold as Cooking Wine in anglophone countries tends to taste terrible.
Also consider just not adding any. I don't find the extra flavors that they add to be particularly desirable with the exception of coq au vin – but that's rather difficult to get "right" in the best of times.
My problem is, I'll drink anything! Kidding but, yeah, I've given up on that mostly. Too many cooking styles and recipes to get hung up on that one.
Funnily enough, white wine was apparently the missing ingredient in my Bolognese. Historically I've never cooked with alcohol as I no longer drink it, but the gf keeps a bottle around for Risotto and the odd evening drink and I boiled off about 150ml with the mince one day and that was that.
Instant flavours straight after first cook, which is surprising as it usually takes an overnight in the fridge and reheat for the flavours to really come out.
As for recent kitchen experiments, I decided to make Shokupan (Japanese Milk Bread) a couple of days ago. It came out as a good bread considering I generally don't bake at all and I used a handheld electric mixer without dough hooks and an opened packet of yeast, but it definitely was not Shokupan. So going to be taking another stab at it soon with some lessons learned :)
Yeah, that's where alcohol shines. It enables the release of certain flavor compounds into the air - basically, it makes stuff easier to taste and taste more complex.
I like to experiment with desserts, so that's where a lot of my flops come from.
I make a great French silk pie, and I thought I'd try to add some espresso and cinnamon and make a cookie crust to get a sort of tiramisu flavor. I didn't reduce the espresso enough, so I basically made a delicious chocolate soup. Or I guess you could think of it as a latte with butter and eggs served in a large edible mug.
Another time I was trying to make a cheesecake marbled with carrot cake for my mom's birthday, because those are her favorite desserts. I eventually actually got it to come out well, but the first two tries the carrots absorbed all of the moisture in the batter and the cheesecake was so dry that it crumbled right out of the pan. I ended up adding some condensed milk and that gave me the extra moisture I needed.
The very first time I attempted mashed potatoes, I was a teenager following a recipe. After boiling the potatoes, I didn't drain the water I had used to cook them. I added the milk and mashed everything into potato soup. Oops. Lol.
My father and sister did something similar to that. What they did is that they forgot to add the milk and butter to the mashed potatoes, so we had to eat that instead of actual mashed potatoes. But oh well it was a memory that lives in and an excuse to poke fun of them once in a while, with them joining in.
I'm currently relearning how to use a wok, because we've switched from a gas to an induction stove.
Hear me out - you can still get great wok hei with induction, perhaps even better than gas. But you don't get the same heat gradient up the sides of the pan. The base gets very hot indeed. You have to use a lower setting than gas wok recipes call for, and stir/toss very quickly to avoid burning the food at the bottom while leaving the upper layers uncooked.
Unfortunately, the first recipe I tried required cooking a huge heap of greens. I set the induction burner to the "medium-high" setting called for. Within moments, I was frantically flinging bits of cabbage all over the kitchen to avoid scorching. After dropping the burner setting to somewhere around "medium-low", I did manage to get everything cooked, if somewhat past the point of ideal stir-fry crispness and with a few black flecks.
Everything went much better the second time - lower heat, cooking in half-batches.
It requires a lot of stirring to move things from the edges to the bottom. It's possible to wok on induction, it's just slightly different and not as intuitive.
Mayonnaise.
Egg, salt, water, mustard at room temperature: add oil very very slowly.
Couldn't do it. First failure I took several hours to rescue the batch. It tasted great but it's not supposed to be hard, esp with an immersion blender.
I'm guessing you figured it out already, but for anyone else, I always just use Kenji's method:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TnIeYc2CWU
the tuna melt he made after that video is great
I’ve always had some difficulty getting my mayo to emulsify properly. I’ve found a milk frother wand is instant and super easy. Much easier than an immersion blender.
I think (but am not sure) that dish soap or detergent residue on the mixing bowl or whisk can interfere with the emulsion. Rinse and dry first. I also found that a proper whisk (balloon/french or sauce) is necessary. A fork or something won't do :-)
Oh very interesting....
I make sure the whisk and bowls are super clean when it comes to egg whites, but I didn't take the same precaution with mayo.
I may not try it again but this advice might be handy for other delicate chemistry cook ups. Thanks
According to my kids:
Yapple sauce, aka, mixture of yogurt and homemade apple sauce was not a favorite.
Yoatmeal, aka, yogurt mixed into steal cut oats, also not a favorite.
Apparently, my kids are not a fan of yogurt mixed into things. I'm taking notes. However, Yancakes, yogurt substituted in for a small part of the normal milk was acceptable if thoroughly incorporated into the batter. Different flavors of yogurt had different results. Their favorite is lemon Greek yogurt with diced green apples mixed in the batter.
Testing will continue.
One of my favorite chocolate cake recipes has sour cream as a significant ingredient. Buttermilk in pancakes is classic. I can imagine yogurt would also work well. Baking with sour milk products seems to be a good idea.
Husband and I frequently eat oatmeal with plain yogurt and fruit but I don't know that I would have liked that as a child.
Yep, one of my favorite chocolate bread recipes has sour cream and applesauce as the main liquid alone with some oil. Kids are funny, and both like and dislike mixing flavors. I just like making fun names for my tests to tell my kids so they can roll their eyes and tell me in not funny.
I was unable to make successful pancakes until a friend sent me his recipe that incorporated greek yogurt. Now my pancakes are the kids' favorite. :)
I have tried and failed multiple times to fry something.
First was fried porkchops. I made an amazing panko and herb crust and dredged 2" porkchops through it. Then proceeded to overheat the oil and char the heck out of them. To top it off, the outside was charcoal black but the inside was raw. We ended up having frozen pizza for dinner that night.
About 10 years later I felt I recovered from that incident, so I decided to make Fish and Chips. To start, I almost sliced a finger off with the mandolin (even with gloves and the hand attachment so I wasn't touching the potatoes), but the beer batter looked amazing. I had learned my lesson about the oil being too hot and was using a thermometer to make sure it was in the correct zone. I got through about 50 French fries before the oil degraded too much and boiled over. Of course, I have a gas stove so that could have been disastrous. The fries were great, so I cleaned up the mess and tried again. Apparently I learned nothing because the same thing happened again. So we went out for Mexican.
My husband and best friend now forbid me to attempt anything in the kitchen that needs to be fried.
I've stopped doing actual fried fries. For a start, oil is expensive nowadays, but even before that they'd turn out too greasy or took forever for 4 people. The only potato "chips" I do now are in the oven. Peel potatoes (250g per person) and cut into the fries shaped sticks with a knife, soak these in water for 15 minutes, then drain, dry with a cloth (soaking makes them crisper, or they can turn out mushy). Mix in a large bowl with a spoon of oil, salt, pepper and garlic powder (do in batches, about 1 level teaspoon salt per person, pepper and garlic to taste or optional). Oven for 20-30 minutes at 200 deg C (or until golden brown, I find I have to turn the tray in the oven since it has hotter spots, the more you do the longer it takes and you might have to move them around in the tray too). I use greaseproof paper on the tray to prevent them sticking.
A similar approach works great for potato wedges (cut medium potato into 6-8 wedges), but there I use a mix of salt, pepper, paprika, oregano, garlic and onion powder. Again, soaking the spuds is vital to get them nice and crisp in the oven. I've not made fried-fries for years since I discovered how well they turn out in the oven. We re-used the oil, but even so fried potatoes used up an insane amount.
I still love doing breadcrumb fried pork chops though. 2 minutes each side for those - I use a timer to get it scientific because otherwise they do burn or turn out undercooked. I don't use a thermometer for the oil though, just adjust the gas and keep my eye on it. My tip for knowing if the oil is hot enough initially is to have a small piece of frying fodder (e.g. a small piece of meat that broke off), throw that in the oil as you heat it, and when the small piece starts to splutter the oil is hot enough for the bigger bits. I use a pan and do 1-2 chops at once, too many and the oil goes cold. Pork chops on the grill are so disappointing, but fried they're frickin' delicious. Pair with aforementioned wedges, and a lot of sauces like BBQ, ranch, sriracha, ketchup, and it's one of my house's favorite dishes :-P
This is the point where I’m known to abuse the microwave to get it more cooked in the middle :) I did that with some expensive veal that I screwed up and felt terrible about it but it actually turned out surprisingly good (and cooked enough in the middle).
Tamago nigiri. I love the stuff, and I thought "hey, it's just egg and rice... I can make that at home for a lot cheaper and have it every day!". There is a reason it's expensive. There is a lot more in it than just egg and rice, and there is a special skill in folding a perfect omelette. I tried a few times and then decided to happily stop being cheap and appreciate the splurge when I get the chance. :)
Oh man, I used to love making Japanese omlettes.
The technique is not too hard to pull off, it's just really difficult to master. You just need the tricks and tools You really need the square pan because round ones are too wide and will give you oblong omlettes. You will also need to use a huge amount of oil and you will have to apply it after every single layer. A japanese "mop style" brush is best for this but you can get away with a paper towel in a bowl of oil and tongs. Finally a lid for your pan is going to help you form the omlette into the perfect shape.
But even after that you need to master getting the perfect temperature first, and then you need to master how to roll the layers, which involves learning the timing and how the eggs will look when it's ready. So while it's not exactly easy, it's doable. It just takes practice.
Unless you are going to a very fancy sushi place, your homemade ones can easily be better, and then you can also eat it hot!
There may come a day when I give it another shot, but for now I'm content to appreciate just how much skill goes into that little rectangle of egg.
Thanks so much for the breakdown, though. I'm saving this for the day when I try again. It's funny, because I think I got every one of your points wrong when I attempted. Round pan, plain old spatula, not enough oil, no lid, high temp, bad timing. It's really no wonder I failed so miserably. 😂
You may want to also take the time to master chopsticks. A good pair of long cooking chopsticks is good for a lot in the kitchen and they give you more control than tongs. You can make the omlette with a spatula (and in fact I think many of mine had me doing just that), but chopsticks can make it easier if you are practiced with them. They're also better for popping egg bubbles.
For lunch today, I grabbed left over mac and cheese and leftover rice and mixed them. Thought I might be on the cusp of a culinary discovery. Alas, there’s a reason mac and cheese rice isn’t a thing. It wasn’t bad but it wasn’t as good as the sum of its parts.
I'm a lazy chef so I don't typically experiment too much. That being said, when I switched to the whole foods plant based diet, I did a whole lot of experimentation with alternative ingredients. Most of them turned out pretty good or at least OK, but the thing I remember trying was using chickpea flour to make an okonomiyaki.
It was absolutely terrible. Chickpea flour smells terrible for reasons that elude me; it's got this really putrid smell that is almost like vomit when wet. I tried to ignore it and take a bite but the result was weirdly spongy and dry on average. On average because it burnt really quickly so I had at least slightly burnt exteriors combined with wet uncooked insides.
And now I'm really wanting an okonomiyaki again.
Not sure if it's really an experiment in the same way, but I recently came across a recipe in a comment that used metric measurements. Instead of converting them to imperial, I decided to try using a scale we already have.
The issue was that this scale isn't for food, and doesn't have enough decimal places to properly convert to grams. We were originally given this to weigh our cat. I guess I mostly just wanted to see if I could eyeball my ingredients well enough to bake one small cake.
Turns out, I cannot. Especially trying to bake in metric, when I've been baking in imperial all my life.
So my cake batter was very liquidy, took way longer to cook than the stated time, rose up like a souffle, burned on the top, and was generally an embarrassment. This wasn't entirely unexpected, but I just needed to truly rule out the possibility that I'm some sort of cake wizard.
I got into Ice Creams over lockdown and really wanted to do away with the eggs but keep the rich texture.
Going for just milk and cream was fine when it just comes out the machine but after freezing feels a little thin and watery. Tried a few substitutes in different combinations: Cornstarch, flax seed, buttermilk, cream cheese, gum stabilizers and even oil. Results were bad or inconsistent and mostly came down to texture, particularly after freezing.
Had cherry turn to grape, results that leave you nauseous and have wasted a lot of milk and cream. Also have quite a few pots with black streaks at the bottom, stains all over the stove and a few burns.
The best breakdown for me to replace the protein is:
35% Full cream milk
20% Fresh cream
20% Mascapone cheese
10% Sugar (condensed milk)
15% Evaporated Milk
Immersion blended, cooked down for an hour just under boiling point, constantly stirring so it doesn't burn and clump up at the bottom and skimming off the muck at the top.
Its creamy and the clean flavor is perfect for flavoring or toppings. But its still missing that rich texture and takes the good part of an evening.
I cook some flavors into it like chocolate, coffee, peanut butter and salted caramel.
I prefer to make fruity flavors by folding in a low water concentrate or gels after churning because cooking it in changes the flavor.
Really enjoy making it and always open to interesting flavors or methods.
I can only respect the dedication to exploring this! As is the case with almost everything, Serious Eats has a good recipe for ice cream without eggs too. Have you tried incorporating freeze dried powders for extra fruit flavour? This is something that's worked really well for me in cakes and other applications where I need to avoid the extra water content from raw fruit.
The cornstarch didn't work out in my testing but I suspect it is because I have to cook down the milk for much longer. Our milk is not nearly as fatty as I'd like so it's very icy on a short boil. Maybe I'll hold off for a bit and add it right at the end.
I love the idea of toasting the sugar. Is really interesting and I'm curious of what it does to flavor so I might incorporate it.
Not tried the fruit powders yet but enjoy the texture of the fruit bits folded in or as toppings. My go-to fruit flavors are some Fabbri syrups I was gifted.
So-called Philidelphia style (no-egg) ice cream can be quite creamy if you've got an ice cream maker that whips enough air into it. It's not quite the same, but it's really enjoyable.
I hear you can also replace eggs with other thickeners like xanthan gum, but I haven't tried it myself.
I've been exploring various permutations of bread making - leavened/unleavened/soda/sourdough, loaves/miches/flatbread/tack, and the wild and wooly universe of flours. I've made undercooked blobs, and overcooked curling stones. Inadvisable rosemary loaves that taste of medicine.
Of all the disappointments, the worst was the time I made parmesan-flavoured corn tortillas. The colour was good, the smell was heavenly... but as I went to lift it out of the pan, it looked at me and said "Mr. Stark, I don't feel so good."