I'm in need of inspiration for tasty and fun food combinations to make myself eat more natural yogurts instead of the preflavoured ones (which I found out are definitely not as healthy!). What are your preferences and recommendations, oh fellow yogurt eaters? Which natural yogurt is superior for such a snack? What do you mix with it and how much? I must know!

I’m looking to explore a bit so i’d love to hear your thoughts. These are the items that make my kitchen special. I mainly cook Asian style food (Chinese, Japanese), so my ingredients trend in that direction. This is a combination of ingredients, condiments, and even snacks that bring joy to me.

If there’s a particular special brand that you think is extra special, i’d love to hear it too!

• Mirin (in Toronto there is a small store that makes homemade mirin)
• Yuzu ponzu sauce (same supplier)
• Furikake / shichimi
• Korean seasoned salt
• Perilla Oil (an amazing nuttier substitute to sesame oil) - great on subtle dishes like zaru soba
• Szechuan peppercorns - amazing to put into the mortar with other aromatics
• Chinese cured pork belly - wow how immensely flavorful - I like the five spice one. Small cubes makes fried rice sing
• Oyster sauce (two ladies LKK not panda LKK)
• Nem Chua
• Good butter (Kerrygold or St Brigid)
• Sambal Oelek
• Pandan leaves and frozen chopped lemongrass
• Maldon salt
• Frozen cheap chocolate squares (Swiss Delice)
• Lao Gan Ma black bean chili crisp
• Salted yolk potato chips, Honey Butter chips
• Korean seaweed sheets for stock along with the little anchovies
• Frozen unshelled clam meat - just throw a handful into anything like pasta or stir fries. So cheap and so good!
• Chinese cooking wine
• Perilla leaves (gganib)
• when I can find them, Alphonso, Kesar, or Colombian Sugar Mangos
• Concord or Muscat grapes
• fatty Biltong (Florence meats is best)
• wavy soba (for some reason I like the mouth feel)
• frozen special handmade ramen
• Calabrian peppers
• Peperoncinos (I like the ones from Terroni)
• Peruvian sweety drop peppers
• Thai kefir leaves (frozen)
• Thai birdseye peppers
• Vietnamese veggies (rau ram) and Thai basil mmm
• fermented tofu bricks - kinda smelly but adds a slickness and sourness when stir frying Chinese veggies
• Korean coque d’asses (Japanese ones are a bit dry for me). Great frozen as well.
• mango gummy candy from cocoa land lot 100
• Chinese snow pear
• kewpie mayo (creepy baby)
• kozlik triple crunch mustard
• Vietnamese fried onions (need to figure out what brand is best)
• affordable soy sauce (made in Japan ones - yamasa or kikkoman)
• fermented black pepper (I like the Trader Joe’s ones - I put it into ramen broth)
• kecap manis (abc brand) for making Indonesian stuff
• Hungarian Hunters sausages - great snacks that last

I started eating spicy food (mainly the 2x spicy chicken flavored instant noodles) and very spicy pho ever week.

this all culminated in me having done the hot ones like 3-4 times now and it's been fun. More or less, I can take the heat and its becoming enjoyable.

The one issue that still remains though is when the spicy food hits my digestive tract. sometimes it doesn't bother me at all, but more commonly it can cause serious discomfort and pain for about half an hour before I can finally hit the bathroom. The only thing I have found that remedies it is drinking vegan milk as it passes my digestive tract.

problem is I don't know what to do about it. apparently my stomach is more sensitive then my mouth to spicy food but I don't really know how to make my stomach less sensitive. I'd have though after a year it would get used to spicy and it's doing better than at the beginning I guess but still not without occasional pains.

Have a friend who has raved about using these for cooking meet during the work day and pan searing it for a quick easy and delicious meal. Plan on doing that with steaks/chicken, but wanted to see if anyone else on Tildes owns one and has any tips or favorite use cases to share.

I am in the process of starting up my own food blog. I have no hopes or aspirations of being huge or making money, it will solely be a labor of love and an outlet for my love of food to share with the world.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a specific niche that will be targeting and was looking to crowd source opinions on what people would feel they would like in a food blog. I’m hoping to avoid suggestions like “less convoluted stories about your grandmothers tablecloth for 3 pages before the recipe” since I think we can all agree on that front.

Some of you may be thinking the world needs another blog like you need another asshole, and that may be true. However, part of my impetus was that many of the recipe blogs I find online have the same generic 30-40 recipes with minimal variation. Others of higher quality are moving behind paywalls. My goal is to try to include slightly more obscure recipes from all over the world, tried/tested/optimized for simplicity in cooking and flavor, or more unique variations on more common recipes. I also aspire to do some articles a bit more experimental / scientific in nature in the vein of some of J Kenji Lopez Alts articles a la serious eats but that is a larger aspiration for down the road.

I welcome any suggestions or sharing of your current favorite food blogs. I know the current social media trend is YouTube, TikTok, and the like. However as I find myself here with you all, you may understand my preference for sticking with the written word (and occasional photos). Cheers!

Hi all. I cook as often as I can and thought it might be fun to chat about any recipes you’ve tried or would like to try! I’m vegan so anything I post in this thread will be too. Maybe even share snacks or restaurants that are you’ve tried that you’ve liked!

To start is a simple sauce/stir fry recipe I make when I’m pretty tired after a long day:

Spicy salty sweet sauce:

1-2 tbsp gochugaru
1 tbsp white or black rice vinegar
1 tbsp mirin
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp agave or maple syrup
1 tsp corn starch

I usually put all of the ingredients together except for the corn starch and then set aside as I do the rest of the prep.

The rest of the recipe is a bit more variable as I have certain ingredients but looks like this:

1 cup cooked white rice OR hand pulled noodles

Noodle recipe:
250g all purpose flour
125 ml water
1/4-1/2 tsp salt
Canola oil

I add the flour, water, and salt to a bowl, mixing with my fingers. It starts to form pretty quickly into a mass. I knead the mass of dough into a ball until uniform. With the large, smooth dough ball I cut it into 8 pieces with a knife, roll them into a sort of prolate spheroid shape, and coat with canola oil. Put the oiled dough shapes into a bowl and cover with a damp towel. Let them rest for about an hour or so.

Heat a pot of water. Flatten the dough pieces into rectangles with a rolling pin. Use the rolling pin (if it’s a thin one, otherwise I use large chopsticks), to press the dough lengthways to create a sort of seam. Hold each end of the dough and slowly pull to stretch. Slap on counter as you pull a few times. Stretch it as long or short as you’d like. On the seam you made with the rolling pin, split the noodle apart so that the noodle is now a large loop. Put into the boiling water and wait roughly a minute /or until it’s floating. Can cook a few noodles at a time, though I usually do one or two and roll/pull while they boil.

With the noodles or rice done or going and the sauce almost ready, start to chop vegetables, maybe a cup or so of 2-3 types. I like Napa cabbage, squash, green onions, bell pepper, and carrots but really get whatever you’d like or have on hand at the time. Sauté the vegetables in a tbsp or so of oil (I use canola or olive), starting with onions/garlic and then adding others as you see fit. Once the vegetables are done to your liking, add the noodles or rice, then the sauce (adding in the corn starch to the sauce at this point) and stir.

Often I’ll actually fry a half block or block of tofu I’ve cubed before adding vegetables into the oil. I usually do this as the noodles (or if I’m doing a pot of rice, as it begins to cook) are about done resting, maybe with 15-20 mins to go, since frying tofu can take awhile.

I like to serve in bowls, topping with a dash of sesame oil, black sesame seeds, and fresh green onion.

I’ll post more recipes in the thread as I make them but this is probably the most frequent thing I make in a given week. Feel free to share your own!

so this might be a weird question but -- occasionally, particularly in the evenings, I get a strong craving for parmesan cheese. I live in Germany, so I don't mean the green tube kind either. I'll just take little slices off a wedge of real-ass parmesan that we bought to shred over pasta and such.

Thing is, parmigiano reggiano is pretty expensive, and the similar replacement cheeses like pecorino aren't that much cheaper. But I don't know of any other snack that can deliver the combo of saltiness and umami like just munching on slices of italian hard cheese.

So, does anybody else on Tildes understand this? Or have any recommendations for other foods to scratch this itch? Keeping in mind I'm in Germany, so I'm limited to stuff I can buy here.