Completely picking up what you’re putting down regarding the dollar value and if I’m being honest was probably going to find an alternative way to access rather than purchase. Our libraries offer pretty much every book as ebooks on loan and for informational non fiction works you can usually glean the majority of the content through a quick peruse in-store or online synopsis.

Personally I do little baking but have been the primary cook in our household for the past 8 or so years and have been noticing that my dishes have been improving a lot lately due to noticing some ratios (particularly in pasta dishes, carbonara especially) that seem to work really well with what the family likes. These are probably rather personal and the missus does also somewhat despise that I generally never make the same thing twice cause I’m always tweaking things depending on available ingredients & whatnot, basically cooking from experience and feel. So I also agree with what you’ve mentioned around learning from doing and bringing in the look, feel & smell components to aid that learning.

The smell of things has made a huge difference in my cooking as well once I started to pay attention to when I could smell that things were done (mostly bbq and baking) - nothing more disappointing then following a recipe to the letter and coming out with an over cooked lamb shoulder (just one somewhat recent experience).

Why this was interesting was because I’ve realized that having a few ratios/rule of thumbs that relate not just to ingredient ratios but also to cooking times and styles I can be way more flexible and adventurous in my cooking while maintaining mostly consistent flavours and (more importantly) a happy family.

Also realizing the importance of trusting that you know your own appliances/cooking environment best has been helpful lately. Going back to the lamb shoulder comment, the recipe asked for me to have the grill at medium heat or about 150’ Celsius for like an hour. For me to get my bbq up to 150’ took a lot (it’s a six burner, so lots of space) but I was determined to follow the recipe to the letter and instead what I did was I ruined the dish. Everything was telling me that it was too hot (dials were past mid way, fat flare ups, etc) but instead of trusting my instincts and adjusting to my conditions I just blindly followed the recipe.

So yeah, bit of a lengthy comment but love simple ratios like a 3:1 for a vinegarette and feel like I could definitely benefit from some more knowledge in that area to further bolster my cooking skills. I’ll check out a couple of the youtubers you mentioned and go from there, cheers

Sprinkle on some Glorm to taste, or for you midsouthnortherners, pour in some Old Undeserving Chattal Slave Mamy’s for a similar effect

Mfw (I am in the Middle East and my understanding of American food is exclusively “<verging-on-parody tuple name> Whopper” (this is a 30 second explainer on how to boil a potato))

Hydration level comes first. Everything is built around that

Because of this I won’t buy any box mixes anymore - they were almost always overpriced for what you got and didn’t contain anything magical… They just made things simpler. I’ll make my cakes and cookies from scratch now and save a fortune.

This is the way.

There are recipes based on package sizes which is fine for chocolate chips or nuts but becomes intensely problematic when it is leavening ingredients. Half-a box of bisquick was a valid measure when there was one size on the shelf.

Some of my family recipes go back 150-250 years so along the way some of the collection contains cards calling for a tin of x, y, or z. I still sometimes use a ham glaze that calls for a bottle of coca cola.

You have a different quantity of leavening relative to ypur fats due to the size change. The whole thing will be goopy until you sort out the baking soda/powder which can get difficult since you use so little relative to the volume of the batch.

Hadn’t heard the term before but it does look like it.

I know of a dump cake as a thing to do on a family camping trip. Canned fruit, cake mix, butter and I think some other ingredient are simply dumped into a baking dish or dutch oven, resulting in a cobbler-like substance which 10 year olds will love. Here we’re making half of one in an instant pot, because everything had to be done in an instant pot. I remember seeing a recipe for making wine in an instant pot. YOU DON’T APPLY HEAT OR PRESSURE TO GRAPE JUICE TO MAKE WINE!

It would be better if other recipes adjusted accordingly.

The Zatarans Jambalaya box still says to add a pound of smoked sausage. But those sausages went down to 14oz. Then 12oz. Now some are 10oz. The box still says to add a pound. It’s becoming a hotdog/bun situation.

This explains everything.

I made some things from hand me down recipes recently that I had memorized and they seemed a bit off. So I dug up the recipes (a can of this and a container of that) and assumed that I was going insane.

These c°ck$uck!ng m0th3rf^ck€r$… Grrr!

Okay but some of my favorite people in life have been cock suckers. Which is why I hate it as a pejorative.

The crispy rice at the bottom of your pot is tahdig in Persian, tutong in Tagalog. In some cultures and families, they fight over the crispy rice, lol.

I’m curious, do you use the first line on your middle finger to measure water?

That’s how my grandmother taught us (pot and rice cooker).

Everyone I know has an asshole, yet here we are…

i used to use my index finger, now i’m all about different ratios of water to rice depending on the grain because i’m fancy. we’ve got a 25 lb bag of jasmine we’re working through that i do 3water:2rice + 1T butter + 1/2 t salt.

Current project is good garlic rice, so i’ve been sauteing up some garlic butter (for 1 cup of rice, 10 cloves in 4T butter, then adding all the cloves and 1T of the garlic butter), but it’s not quite garlicky enough. I’m not sure whether i need more cloves or to make the butter more garlicky somehow.

Yeah but it kinda messes up fried rice

i can never get tahdig right, pressure cooker or stovetop. we used to have a kebab place around the corner that included it in their rice and i did everything i could to keep them in business. they closed march 2020 and left the country. good for them.

Oooh, that’s what Obama meant by “yes we can”

You and my dad would get along great. He uses a whole bulb; his fried rice version has this toasted garlic flavor that’s just tasty.

My SIL adds Better Than Bouillon Roasted Garlic with her garlic rice (I dont remember if it’s a teaspoon or tablespoon).

Another version we learned was adding a combo of grated garlic and baked garlic; they both have different yet distinct flavors. That’s my aunt’s version and she uses chicken broth (Alton Brown’s recipe).

Lol on the fancy… good for you. You’re right though, different kinds of rice require different amounts of water. We already got that lecture from our grandparents a looooong time ago.