commodorified | Blowing off the dust

Honestly, I kind of wish Twitter would just cock up its toes already. It’s a horrible habit and yet there are just enough things I only get info on there that I have utterly failed to quit.

Oh well, anyone want to talk about cooking?

Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about the idea of meal prep, because I’m working part time and running a small non-profit and trying to have some sort of life. Except none of us are all that reliable about wanting to eat what we’ve prepped instead of some other thing, so I’ve been doing a lot of ingredient prepping instead.

I’m a big fan of being able to throw meals together very quickly while also knowing exactly what I’m making and having the ingredients prepped the way I want them, so this is really working for me.

Currently in the freezer: a big bag of mirepoix (diced onion, celery and carrot), ten pounds’ worth of caramelized onions in 1/2 C bags, a bunch of sliced and washed leeks, several bags of assorted herbs ready to have a chunk sliced off of them (fresh herbs are great if you go through them, but we don’t, and let me tell you what, frozen beat the pants off of dried). Shortly to be in the freezer: five pounds of roasted garlic, in 1/4 C bags. Also multiple single-serving bags of rice, because we make extra and freeze it.

Bonus: we tend to pick up grocery store rotisserie chickens for quick suppers once or twice a month. I freeze the carcasses and when I’m doing veggie prep the trimmings plus the bones make really good dense stock.

I need to get a club pack of chicken thighs and slice them for freezing. Pre-chopped they work for stir-fry or soup or I can bread them.

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From:

amazon_syren

YAY! You're back!

Ingredients-prepping is a really great thing!

For me, that's mostly frozen veggies - greens, bell peppers, sometimes diced carrots or tomatoes, broccoli, cauliflower) in muffin-cup sized pucks, plus having tinned chick peas and romano beans and, more recently (I gave myself a pressure canner two birthdays ago), diced stewing meat and soup stock (I, too, freeze the carcasses and make stock from pre-cooked chickens).

But it's also just: Make a 2-3lb roast, or get a pre-cooked chicken, and use the leftovers in two or three fast meals (usually short pasta with cream sauce, but sometimes stir fry or "curry" or soup) over the rest of the week.

I find I have to take inventory every few months (like: more frequently than I actually do) in order to keep stuff from "getting lost" in my narrrow, deep pantry or under bags of bones in my deep freeze.

I also find that if I make extra - 3x the amount of rice I'm going to need for a single meal-for-two, or make a big batch of very garlicky hummus - I don't always remember to eat it all. Which is possibly related.

Today is slow-cooker dinner. Beef + romano beans + red lentils + a big tin of crushed tomatoes + a few inches of diced leek + 5 big cremini mushrooms + a few blocks of (rather old) freezer greens + cooking wine, duck fat, chili-garlic paste, cloves, cocoa, and basil. There's leftover rice in the fridge, so we'll probably have it with that (rather than me throwing barley into the stew mix in the first place).

We got a costco membership late in 2022 and, in another couple of weeks, we'll do another costco run and pick up coffee (2kg bags of fancy bridgehead coffee for about $10/kg - which is great!) and fish and other meat and, hopefully, some big bags of frozen spinach and broccoli or something.

Pre-prepped meat that will thaw quickly is a good idea. (I forget that it takes 48+ hours for a couple of non-diced pounds of frozen meat to thaw completely in the fridge, so I often end up having to change dinner plans pretty last-minute because the roast is still an ice cube and now I have to make pasta with tinned tuna and just hope I've got some tinned artichokes or something hanging out in the cupboard too).

I tried roasting two turkeys at one, a couple of thanks givings in a row, and then stripping them for parts and freezing diced, pre-cooked turkey in little baggies. But I found the texture changed a lot? Basically they were great in soup and strew, but bad in pasta and stir-fry.

Anyway.

Cooking! Yes!

From:

fairestcat

I also find that if I make extra - 3x the amount of rice I'm going to need for a single meal-for-two, or make a big batch of very garlicky hummus - I don't always remember to eat it all.

Keeping bags of frozen rice in the freezer has been an absolute game-changer for me. Extra rice in the fridge gets forgotten, but extra rice in the freezer, in bags of enough for one or two people, can last forever, although it is prone to getting buried.

It can go with reheated leftovers, or any amount of packaged or canned quick foods (I like the single-serving boil-in-bag or microwave Indian), and I can go from staring despairingly at the fridge to eating something tasty in under ten minutes.

From:

graydon

The thought of ten pounds of caramelized onion gives me mad visions of Dreadful in a gas mask and looking very Dreadful about it.

I tend to eat the same thing because cooking creatively needs spoons. Rice + something, usually chopped green onions and some sort of meat (ideally, cubed up leftover roast beef), garlic powder, ginger powder, and the result getting some tomato sauce from a jar stirred in. (Helps get it down to eating temperature from the pressure cooker.)

From:

sraun

I don't know what commodorified did, but I've turned a five-pound bag of onions into a big batch of caramelized onions using a crockpot. Slice them thin (a mandoline is wonderful for that!), layer them in with a little oil, then turn it on High with the lid slightly off so that moisture can escape. Start checking after a few hours - there will come a point where you want to start stirring every 30-60 minutes. It took about 18 hours for my old crockpot - I'd turn it on just before going to bed, and then in the morning they would be about at the point where I needed to start stirring. It's a pretty forgiving procedure.

From:

curgoth

Can confirm, crockpot caramelized onions are a game changer.

From:

graydon

Never considered a crockpot.

Good to know; thank you!

From:

ysabetwordsmith

I like combining mixed vegetables with rice or other starchy base ingredients (couscous, quinoa, risotto, etc.) and then it's easy to add a flavoring (gravy, cream of something soup, curry sauce) and meat. Lots of different veggie medleys are now available in the freezer aisle. Some even come with their own sauce, saving a step.

From:

branchandroot

I'm also having good luck with those 6oz salmon fillets the grocery by me is carrying these days. If I get four of them and marinate them all before freezing, then I've got a bunch of dinners in 20 minutes. (Yay for fuzzy-logic rice cookers also.)

From:

curgoth

The sadly now gone "Depanneur" that used to be a few doors down from

welcomingsong (and was many things but not a depanneuer) used to run regular cooking events. At one point, Neeuqdrazil and I went to "meat camp" which covered prep for fish, fowl and quadruped (they used a pig). The most important thing I learned there is how to take a grocery store whole chicken (i.e., feather, head and organs removed off site) and turn it into quarters and leftover carcass parts. After a little practice I can do 3 chickens in 10 minutes. We often get a bunch of chickens, and vacuum seal the quarters, then sous vide them, then freeze them, so we have easy protein that stays nice and juicy even after being thawed and re-heated (usually in the sous vide again) before getting finished in the toaster oven for crispy skin.

Edited Date: 2023-03-06 05:02 pm (UTC)

From:

curgoth

(we also vacuum seal the leftover bits for stock making)

And cost-wise, a whole chicken usually costs about the same as a package of two chicken breasts.

From:

princessofgeeks

THis is a great idea if you have the freezer space! Also, I didn't know you could freeze leeks!!! That will be game changer for me.

From:

anais_pf

One time I ordered three leeks for a recipe, and the grocery store gave me three BUNDLES of leeks, which amounted to about a dozen leeks. That's a lot of leeks! I made the original recipe, then washed, dried, sliced and froze the rest of the leeks, and then found a couple of additional recipes calling for leeks and made them over the next few weeks. It worked beautifully!

From:

princessofgeeks

I am assuming of course that you mean uncooked leeks. Figured I better check. But I love cooking with leeks but always end up with more than I need, which is a problem! Maybe this will solve it omg.

From:

anais_pf

Yes, I froze them uncooked, since I wasn't sure what recipe(s) I was going to use them in.

From:

commodorified

Same. I actually slice and then wash them, as they’re prone to collecting soil between layers, but otherwise basically the same.

From:

jsburbidge

When life gives you leeks, make vichyssoise. It freezes beautifully and can be consumed both hot and cold. And with the advent of hand blenders, decent vichyssoise is easy to make (though you still need a mouli for really smooth soup).

From:

anais_pf

That's ONE of the recipes I made! I also made a Ukrainian leek salad with apples and carrots, a leeks and turnips dish, and we threw some leeks into various pasta sauces.

From:

curgoth

I work for a grocery chain, in the supply chain part of IT. Watermelons come in those big four foot cube crates, with 144 watermelons in each. Some store once ordered 144 of them, being confused about the item in the ordering app being for the crate. It only got caught because the order was too large to fit on a single truck.

From:

ysabetwordsmith

Leeks are like giant green onions, milder than regular onions. I love the things. Most of what you can do with onions or green onions, you can also do with leeks; but leeks also work in more delicate recipes. They make great omelettes and soups.

From:

princessofgeeks

Yes, I am very familiar with what leeks are and how to cook with them. The problem is around here it is hard to buy just a small amount of them. So learning that I can buy the bundle of leeks that is usually on offer and then freeze some of them was a great thing for me.

From:

cesy

Ooh, there's a proper name for diced onions and carrots and celery? Mirepoix, I will have to remember that.

From:

jsburbidge

In New Orleans they substitute bell peppers for the carrots and call it Trinité.

Mirepoix is the foundation of a great deal of French cooking.

From:

commodorified

I need to make some Trinité as well. Loblaws sells a frozen blend with all four, which in a pinch can substitute for either, but making my own is not terribly difficult and awfully handy.

From:

ysabetwordsmith

There are several dozen combinations of aromatics used for specific dishes or throughout a cuisine. Some have their own names, others are described by their most famous dish or associated culture. I listed a bunch of these in my high-burn soup algorithm (scroll down that page to find it).

From:

agoodwinsmith

This is one of those things I admire from afar: I see the value and have a small vicarious thrill thinking about stocked up deep freezers in general - but I currently ain't gonna do it. Standing: just say nay.

I am currently "cooking" with frozen diced veg plus rice pilaf in a nukeable pack plus a few spoons of coconut curry sauce plus sprinkles and drizzles. I have recently found pre-cooked sausage patties that can be diced and nuked with the veg. Mmmm.

However, I wish to bring to your attention pomegranate molasses. It is important to get fresh (one of my local stores stocks it, but they probably got a case during the last century, and: no.). I recently bought some from a very busy online supplier, and wow. It is amazing where a drizzle of that just make your mouth very very happy.

When you taste it directly from the bottle, it is too much, but mixed with other things? Oh boy oh boy oh boy.

From:

amazon_syren

Pomegranate molasses are great.

From:

commodorified

Oh, I use a LOT of purchased frozen veg. I have raw frozen chopped onions in the freezer as well, and I bought those.

I mostly do the prepping for things I can’t get that way, or not without paying obscene amounts of money.

From:

welcomingsong

Huh. These are some good ideas!

From:

jsburbidge

One of the effects of being on "hybrid" work, where that work is downtown, is that it significantly punctuates my food prep, because work = "within walking distance of St. Lawrence Market". This means that I can get a wider range if fresh ingredients at lunch time than I can (as easily) elsewhen in the week. (Back in the 5-days-diwntown days there was no punctuation because all the days were more it less the same.) So I end up doing prep in two or three day blocks, with fresher ingredients midweek and more pre-prepared things the rest of the week. Weekends let me get to Cumbraes.

From:

deakat

Okay, then! Time to get out some index cards and make all the notes. I have made food two days in a row, that is, assembled nachos with fresh cilantro, avocado, and tomatoes, so maybe it would be nice to have other food prepped and ready to go into a pot.

From:

dagibbs

Welcome back to Dreamwidth!

From:

kore

HI HI hi hi hi!

I need to get back into cooking, since partner just got the dire beedies diagnosis, but right now we're also both pro-covid and it's taking a while to get back. I need to do that rotisserie chicken stock idea.

From:

jsburbidge

Re frozen herbs: there's a trick where you blanch herbs and then pack them into ice cube trays for freezing for individual-use portions. I've never used it myself - I tend to try 5o get through my fresh herbs as quickly as possible - but I've seen it do e and it works well.

From:

commodorified

I keep meaning to but honestly for dill and cilantro, which I do most often, washing them, drying them carefully, freezing the whole bunch and trimming off what I need with scissors is remarkably effective.

From:

ysabetwordsmith

>> Oh well, anyone want to talk about cooking? <<

My latest recipes have included moringa omelettes and crockpot mushroom chicken. Latest cookbook read was Seven Neighborhoods in Detroit.

>>I’ve been doing a lot of ingredient prepping instead.<<

Good idea.

It also helps to have a pantry of things that are useful for mix-and-match meals. Whole grains, flours if you bake, dried fruits, other dried things like mushrooms, nuts, assorted oils and fats, canned goods like tomato paste and cream of something soup, dry pasta, dry beans, as many seasonings as you can cram in, that sort of thing.

Things I like having in the freezer: chopped bacon, chicken chunks, chicken thighs, salmon filets, shrimp, stock.

From:

amazon_syren

Ooooooooooo, mushroom chicken... <*goes to look*>

From:

ysabetwordsmith

Totally easy dump recipe, and it comes out impressively delicious for something so simple. You could eat it as a chicken soup, which is what my partner does. I usually put mine over brown rice. Last time I had a mix of wild rice and brown rice that went really well with the chicken.