Cooking tips and wonderful flavour combinations

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
dude at my kid's bus stop was saying how good reese's peanut butter cups are with mayonnaise

fire.gif
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
OK, so to make a change from all this heavy politics bollocks, here's my recipe for beef'n'bacon burgers. Although I say it myself, they are the fucking BOMB.

1) Ingredients: easily scalable to any quantity, but for six roughly quarter-pounders, say 400 g of good minced beef, 200 g of smoked streaky bacon, one big onion, an egg for binding, several garlic cloves. For further flavouring, add some chopped herbs, ideally fresh but dried is fine too (basil, oregano and thyme are ideal; we had some coriander lying around so that went in, which is a bit unusual but actually worked pretty well); finely chopped chili or chili flakes; paprika; black pepper; a good dessert spoon of Marmite for bonus meatiness.

IMG_20170527_204942.jpg

Cut the bacon into roughly 1 cm pieces, chop the onion until you're bored of it or can't see any more (the finer the better, really) and crush/chop/mince the garlic. Then just sort of smoosh it all together until thoroughly mixed.

IMG_20170527_210331.jpg

Form into six or so burger and sprinkle well with flour, which helps them maintain integrity during cooking. I put a bit more flour on after taking the photo above. A dash of Worcestershire sauce is good at this point (don't drench them).

IMG_20170527_212409.jpg

Grill under a medium-high heat, turning every few minutes until they go a lovely golden brown, verging on being singed. The onion, egg and bacon mean you don't really want them rare in the middle.

IMG_20170527_212651.jpg

And here's a couple served with new spuds and slathered in Roquefort, because - by definition - you can't do excess by halves.

I slightly fucked up with the wine because the only bottle of red we had in the house (for shame!) was quite light and fruity, whereas what this really demands is a shiraz that's punchier than Muhammad Ali, especially if you're going to be barbecueing them. Lesson learned for next time!
 

luka

Well-known member
anyone here grated an onion? turkish people do love grating onions and im defineitly going to give it a try some time soon.
 

Leo

Well-known member
had my first experience with koshary (also spelled koshari and kushari), Egyptian street food with rice and lentil base, a little bit of macaroni (or other small pasta) and chick peas mixed in, topped with a bit of tomato sauce and fried onions. usually also comes with a dakka sauce on the side but the one I have was too spicy for my tastes, the spiciness of the tomato sauce was enough.

really delicious, healthy and filling, gonna try to make it at home.

https://www.themediterraneandish.com/egyptian-koshari-recipe/

http://www.mattersofthebelly.com/koshary-egypts-favourite-street-food/
 
Last edited:

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I've developed a steak rub:

Sea salt
Black pepper
Garlic granules
Smoked paprika
Dried, powdered tube material from penny buns/ceps/porcini or similar mushrooms (AFAIK I'm the only person in the world who uses this as an ingredient in its own right - you will basically have to pick them fresh and dry them at home to obtain it)

Slap it on your meat before frying. I've got a couple of chunks of sirloin cooking sous-vide right now


BELIEVE.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
before your post, i thought sous vide had something to do with pressurising equipment (as in the pressure cookers used to make decent fried chicken), because of the name. Didn't realise it was home-friendly
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
before your post, i thought sous vide had something to do with pressurising equipment (as in the pressure cookers used to make decent fried chicken), because of the name. Didn't realise it was home-friendly

Nah, it's a piece of piss. I mean you can buy fancy equipment for it but all you need is a simple bain-marie (saucepan inside a bigger saucepan), ziploc-type bags for the steaks (IKEA ones are nonpareil for this) and a thermometer. Set it up with the water just a bit warmer than the desired temperature (about 54 degC is ideal for medium-rare) because it'll obviously drop a few degrees when you put the steaks in. Then just leave it, checking the temperature every 20 minutes or so and giving it a quick blast on the hob if it's too low. An hour's cooking is fine and then you give it the standard minute-per-side treatment in a hot pan with a dash of oil.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
"all you need is a simple bain-marie"!

No, it sounds quite straightforward- may try it before meat becomes a luxury item (which it is anyways of course in real terms, but, Brexit)
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
I have a good book called Cooking for Geeks where he gives instructions for building a sous vide device at home - it's basically a slow cooker combined with a digital thermometer and some kind of electronic feedback thingamajiggy. I would probably fail miserably to get this done but Tea, you could probably make it easy enough.
 
Top