[H]

Just a place to collect any recipes or techniques for cooking you have or like.  Feel free to post about anything related to cooking though, or food, really.  Pretty much anything goes, as long as it is tangentially related.

I guess I'll start with a little "trick."  Anytime a recipe calls for simmering rice on a stove-top, like for jambalaya, for example, I actually just put the whole dutch oven in the actual oven.  Generally at about 375.  Now, that does mean you can't stir it, but you really won't have to, since it heats so evenly.  Pretty much guarantees you won't burn the rice to the bottom of the pot.  It does take a little longer, but it is worth it to me.

[Wilshire]

Store bought tomatoes off-season generally suck. If you can find them, Kumato is a great brand year round as they tend to have decent flavour in the off season. They usual come in a plastic covered container that has maybe 5 or 8 in a single sleeve.

But for all the times you want tomatoes and only crappy ones are available, or maybe a bunch are on sale and you want to save some money and need a way to make them last longer, making Conserva out of them is amazing. Basically you simmer them for an hour. Food alchemy happens, and you've magiced gross tomatoes into amazing tomatoes!

The recipe I use is from a cook book by Milk Street (pretty good cook book, though most recipes tend to be a bit elaborate), but it seems that the site is behind a paywal. I did find this site (or at least this recipe) copied in full the one I use, so its accessible for free: https://www.rachaelrayshow.com/recipes/tomato-conserva-christopher-kimball

Yes, it takes an hour to cook and a fair bit of chopping, but most of that time is just having it sit and simmer in pot. Easy to do while you are making another meal, then you can just put it in a container and have it ready for tomorrow.

[mostly.harmless]

Not really a trick, but ive been making more use of my instant pot. When you have ingredients left and look for recipes with them there's almost always a stew or soup that you can make. Plus, in general it's easy to use: once all the ingredients are chopped it's a matter of putting them in the pot in the right order and pressing go

And I've grown fond of using lettuce as a taco shell for rice or couscous dishes. Scoop rice or couscous into the leaf and add sauce and meat and toppings and you have a (sort of) taco.

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