At least if I bought the 20 ounce bag, that’s divisible by 4, and taking out 12, leaves 8… but still…

Baking shouldn’t start with a Tower of Hanoi puzzle.

For me the missing ingredient is always milk. But we have heavy cream for coffee so I can dilute that down. I’m starting to keep a pint bottle of ultra pasteurized milk in the fridge for occasions when I need milk. As long as those are sealed they keep for a very long time.

I get the shelf-stable boxes of milk from the baking aisle. They’re smaller and last longer, and so much more convenient than buying fresh if you don’t use it all the time. I’ve always got milk on hand without worrying about it going bad.

I hate beets as vegetables but shredded beets in chocolate cake will fix it just like the carrot fixes the spice cake.

I don’t measure rice & water

oh dude entire family agrees that i make the best rice in the family and i’ve tried to teach them how i make the rice but like it’s a big fucking argument how to make rice properly. at this point i think it’s just become a joke.

One scoop of rice. Rinsed a few times until the water is mostly clear. Throw it in the pot I always use for rice. Add water to the lower line that has developed over the years of making rice in the same pot. The upper line is from making mac and cheese so don’t use that one. Some salt. Maybe some oil or butter depending on the final dish. Place the lid on.

Bring to a boil, reduce to low. Wait until the lid harmonics change to tell you there isn’t any liquid water in there anymore. Use a fork to check the bottom of the pot for water. Done.

No one else here knows how to make rice. Everyone thinks a rice cooker would make my life easier. I had one. I tossed it because it kept scorching the rice.

once we got an electric pressure cooker it got a lot easier, but now i miss my rice pot that’s in a box somewhere in the garage.

During the previous round of shirkflation I warned people about knowing what year a recipe was from because “a can” means something different in 2004 than in 2010. And now it means something different again in 2025.

Now boxes are getting the shrink treatment too.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.bestiver.se/post/618032

Comments

I’d cry if I had to tower of hanoi every time I started up my stand mixer!

Recipes that don’t specify things in grams and millilitres can go screw.

“Now add a traditional american furlong of bushel sauce to the 25 ounce pot until it bubbles up by five and a smidge horse hands” … yeah, no

That’s an American thing. In most of the world butter comes in ~half pound units. So half a stick would be half a cup. Except Australia which 500 gram blocks. America has been 1/4 pound units since 1800s but didn’t move to the stick shape until the 1950s.

I have five pressure canners/coolers. None electric. I don’t trust electronic devices designed to turn electricity into heat and be sold as cheap as possible to be a buy it for life item.

Where do galette (buck wheat savory pancakes from Britanny) and puff pastry come together? Or is that just another Amerikan kitchen misnomer like “pepperoni” or “bologna”?

I can’t speak to that book specifically and am not sure what the translation of Australian moneys to Freedom Units is, but 40 bucks for THIS sounds kinda… I wouldn’t go so far as to say “scammy” but I would definitely imply it.

Yes, baking and the like is almost entirely ratios. But you still have to understand how many parts fat and liquid butter is versus shortening versus lard versus… Yes, understanding those ratios makes it much easier to be flexible and you start realizing just how similar so many recipes are (and what the actual contribution of a given developer is). But that is more in the sense that you learn how similar two bread recipes actaully are as you make both.

The best way to actually learn that is to actually just cook and read through the recipes and make tweaks as you go. The second best way is to find instructors/youtubers who understand this and convey it. Kenji is going through some stuff lately but his older videos are spectacular for “Two parts flour to one part water but also this is the texture you actually want because humidity is a thing”. But Brian Lagerstrom (and Ethan Chlebowski when he is focusing more on cooking and less on weird wellness guru’ing) have more than taken up the burden. And while it is a few tiers lower, Made With Lau is actually amazing for learning how to translate “older” recipes into actionable steps.

And if you JUST want the ratios? Just go to the library and grab a few of the foundational cookbooks for a given cuisine and look at the recipes. THOSE are the ratios and… they are generally going to be REALLY close

The buckwheat panake is specifically a Breton galette. Compare with the galette des rois which does use puff pastry. But you’re too high on your own “America bad” farts to consider that words are used in more than one way.

Then why do you call it just galette instead of galette des rois?

I have five pressure canners/coolers. None electric. I don’t trust electronic devices designed to turn electricity into heat and be sold as cheap as possible to be a buy it for life item.

I’m all for using box mixes like this to make something easier if you wanna bake shit… but this seems a bit odd…

“It’s just so upsetting,” says Judith, whose cookie recipe was passed down by her mother. These “perfect little cookies” once made the rounds at bake sales, Christmas cookie exchanges, and birthdays. She now calls them “unusable.” She could buy an additional box to make up the difference, she acknowledges, “but out of principle, I just can’t.”

It was a box mix… does that really need passing down? It looks like she sub’d oil for butter and thats it. I’m sure the box suggests a little less butter now… so like, a little less oil? I can’t imagine the box mix cookies are just plain trash now either, unless they just are.

Grandma grew up in the 80s eating microwave dinners. She never learned to cook.

It’s American by nature.

“It’s 1950 and a can is a can is a can, everyone knows how big a can is. And it will never change!”