Tri2Cook

Cantaloupe, cottage cheese, olive oil, salt and pepper... associations be damned, I'm enjoying it.

For the most part, not long but established successful chefs can get away with things others can't. The Soup Nazi episode from Seinfeld takes it to the extreme but the basic premise is valid... if enough people love what you do, you don't have to accommodate anything you don't want to.

And there's nothing wrong with that. For 99.763% of us who cook for a living, that is what we do. We have to. It's a tough business with lots of competition. But that other tiny percentage has reached a point where it can do what it envisions doing and do it the way it wants to do it without having to alter it and still be successful because it's worked its way to the point of being able to do that. And there's nothing wrong with that either.

One only ought to always make the recipe as given first if one intends to criticize said recipe if the results aren't satisfactory. If one doesn't intend to do that or is willing to include the fact that they made changes in their review and not conclude that the original recipe sucks based on the results with their changes... like you said, rules were made to be broken. There was a time when I was a firm believer in "do it as written first" but over the years I've shifted more towards "What's the fun in that?"

Not that I was eyeballing this recipe with any serious interest but now I'm thinking some of both would be tasty.

Now I wanna carve a hab-o-lantern...

I prefer seafood without ketchup. I don't order it during ketchup season. Y'all started it...

I'm not able to comment on or make comparisons to a real banger, doesn't fall within my range of sausage experience. Breakfast sausage, bratwurst, andouille, a few others, we could have a solid discussion... but as far as I know, I've never had a real banger.

Yeah! What she said! They are not American breakfast sausages, at least, not from within the range of my experience. They are similar in appearance but contain a whole lot of filler and omit a whole lot of flavor compared the American breakfast sausage I've had. Casings are different as well, they're almost paper-like but edible. And generally, it's not that they're actually bad, they're just boring if you're used to something more in a breakfast sausage.

I'd probably have to go off-menu for the cocktail too. Only the mezcal margarita and the cherry negroni would have any chance at all and I'd be afraid the cherry negroni would come together as cough syrup. I'd drink the margarita if they don't wipe out the lime with the pineapple and they'll leave the salt off the glass.

Canadian sausages in general are not a problem, just those breakfast links that every restaurant (that I've been to) seems to have embraced. Obviously there are a large number of people who enjoy them or they wouldn't sell. I personally, do not.

In my personal experience, that's an absence not unique to the picture. With the disclaimer that I haven't had breakfast sausage everywhere in Canada that serves it, I have yet to encounter what I consider a good breakfast sausage that I didn't make myself. Underwhelmingly bland little links of disappointment seems to be the general theme.

I like using root beer or Dr. Pepper as an ingredient in bbq sauce. I also use root beer as part of the base liquid in a slow cooker with pork or beef roast... I like that one with a healthy dose of habaneros in the mix. I've also used the Root Beer/habanero combination in a marinade for beef jerky. I've played around with colas, ginger ale and clear citrus stuff like 7-Up but didn't find they added much flavor-wise in the things I used them in. A good ginger beer with a serious ginger punch might be interesting, haven't tried it for cooking. *for the bbq sauce and jerky marinade, I'm able to get root beer and Dr. Pepper fountain syrups through work that make the job easier. No need to reduce, it's already a 5:1 water to syrup concentration. Just have to adjust for the sugar concentration which is easy enough. But I have used the out-of-the-bottle pop in both situations before, just have to do some reduction.

Me too... and I like the tiki variation of the Tom & Jerry too, the Tabonga & Jerry.

I apologize. I realize this is off-topic and I generally try to avoid doing that. But I can't just let this thread roll on like you didn't even say that. A (as in, one) $20 strawberry? Really?

I think the Paula Deen recipe includes cream cheese as well.

I hate when people say that too because that second part is what really matters in the end. Not that there's anything wrong with making glorious desserts, I enjoy doing that too, but I got over the phase where I felt I had to try to do that every time a long time ago. I usually save that for special occasions and paying customers these days. And I think we need to be clear on the definition of "glorious" as well because I've had some normal, everyday food that was miles ahead of some fancy formal food I've had in terms of enjoyment.

You don't have to do all of that evaporation if you're going to use it in a liquid application. Just use the sodium citrate solution as part of the liquid called for in the recipe.

The quick and easy answer is no, you can't. The more technical answer is yes, you can. You can't use citric acid as a direct substitute but you can make your own sodium citrate solution from citric acid, baking soda and water and use it as part of the liquid in the recipe.

A variation on Rob's peanut butter pie (I have the book but he's shared the recipe online in a few different places so I linked one). Chocolate crumb crust with a thin layer of chocolate peanut butter ganache under the peanut butter filling and chocolate whipped cream on top. He'll tell you it's the best peanut butter pie and he won't be lying, it doesn't need my additions... but this was for a friend who likes chocolate with her peanut butter.

Chefsteps bags everything and tosses it in a sous vide tank, that's the only reason for the time and temp numbers. You can do it in a saucepan on the stove or a bowl or container in the microwave in less time with less setup, doesn't really matter as long as you get it all melted together. I think the only advantage to the chefsteps method would be if you wanted to do a bunch of individual bags at once that you could chill and toss in the fridge for another time.

There's a recipe for a nacho cheese sauce on the chefsteps site that's equivalent to the mac and cheese sauce in proportions. It just adds pickled jalapenos and a little salt to the cheese/liquid/sodium citrate combo. They also add a little sodium hexametaphosphate as an additional melting salt but that's not a necessity. Edit: I'm going to give it a try soon, maybe even for this weekend's football games, but I'm going to use pickled serranos instead of jalapenos.

Dr. Pepper is generally my first choice... but between Pepsi and Coke, I prefer Pepsi for the plain stuff and Coke for the flavored. For whatever reason, the vanilla and cherry versions seem to work better with Coke. Honestly though, I don't drink as much of any of them as I used to.

Raisin's uptown cousins... in most raisin-oriented baking projects, the subtle differences tend to be lost and it's just mini raisins. If I'm going to bother with raisins, I prefer the golden raisins over regular raisins and dried currants. That little bit of tartness they tend to hold on to makes a big difference in raisin enjoyment for me. Just a little more tartness would make them even better.

I'm not gonna say raisins don't belong in butter tarts, I'm just gonna say they don't belong in my butter tarts. I'm not gonna tell anybody else what to put in their butter tarts.