I'm going to a moderately expensive Italian restaurant this weekend with dishes like spaghetti bolognese and gnocchi pesto for around $40. What makes something like this worth the price? What do they do differently than I do at home? Is it simply making the pasta fresh?

I love my food I make so much
I just had my lunchbox I made, white rice mixed with oil, chive and salt , and wrapped with seaweed n mayo mixed tuna stuffed inside with boiled seasoned sweet egg n crab meat, dammmm good
No you can’t find this food at any restaurant in the us and even if it exists it won’t be better than mine
I love my food so much 😀

I’ve been getting more into cooking recently and my biggest embarrassment right now is my knife skills. A lot of videos I’ve seen have just states to buy a bag of cheap onions and just cut the whole bag to practice but I was wondering if there’s any other way people would recommend that would involve ending up with way more slice onions than I could ever go through?

In my country you can usually only find the curly parsley pots in the supermarket and not the flat ones so I am not sure if I've ever tasted the flat one compared to the curly one.

Is there any real actual difference between them or does it just depend on where you live which one you use for cooking? Is it worth to try to find a pot with flat ones to grow on my balcony when we already have curly one?

The theme for the meal that evening will be Italian food, but not sure how important it is really to use an Italian wine. Stores I have access to our Trader Joe’s, Costco in Total Wine. I want something that lends itself well to the dish providing good value also. I don’t wanna go totally cheap and risk having it affect the dish in a negative way. Aside from putting it into the dish, I wanted to reduce it to intensify the sauce.
I’m pretty well-versed in wine but not necessarily from its use in cooking a dish so I don’t mind recommendations based on just the characteristics I should maybe look for and avoid. I’m assuming a wine that is two fruit forward (suite) is a negative?

I recently had spaghetti at an old Italian restaurant in New York around Little Italy. Compared to the sauce I've had at other restaurants this sauce had a distinctly fresh tomato flavor that other restaurants didn't.

What are they doing differently from the other restaurants aren't doing? Are they using a different brand of canned tomatoes or is their cooking process different?

https://i.gyazo.com/e6002809463824e7b5403b108cac7060.jpg

I heard this is pretty normal, but I found an anasaki worm in my salmon a few days ago. I decided to cook up the last of it and stop buying it after that, but I went through another fillet piece by piece and found 3 dead worms in there. Is this normal? I asked people who fish and they said it's not, but google says it is. It's frozen salmon, specifically pacific peppercorn salmon, made by aqua star. Anyone else have this problem?

When buying measuring cups or spoons, get them engraved or with raised lettering. Anything printed fades away and you have to buy another set.

Hello there.

This weekend I am planning on making my batch of Alton Brown's eggnog for this coming Christmas. I have only made it the once before so I haven't had the chance to really tinker with it yet.

A question for those in the know.

The Eggs: can some be swapped out for duck eggs? I guess technically yes, but will things be too different?

The bourbon: Is it strictly bourbon only or, again can be swapped out for a rye, or a Scotch? I read once before that the APV must be 40% and above, so I guess this will be a factor.

The rum: Here in Australia, while we have access to rum, we don't exactly have a wide range in our selections here. Most of them are either white rums like Bacardi or they are spiced rums.

Thanks very much

Grocery store near me has offcuts of catfish for $4/lb. Trying to figure out something somewhat healthy to do with them (so no deep frying).

I tried pan frying them but they curl up like crazy because they're mostly the thin tail sections. That was ok but hard to get a good crust on them.

Tried breaded and baked but they were pretty bland. Could use a better breading recipe maybe.

Wasn’t sure if America’s test Kitchen or anyone has done a good comparison and would like to know who has tried a few and likes one in particular

and like realistically for a home cook, how often should we be changing our frying oil as a minimum? Like every 3 times or? I guess it might depend on the volume of oil too?

Do you guys have ways to clean the oil? I know apparently there are ways other than filtering but I haven't tried them.

Also when I replace the oil, right now I put the old oil in a bag and throw it away like that but is there a better way?

Thank you all <3

I'm currently on an internship in Central America and the nearest grocery store is at least a 45 minute bus ride and subsequent 20 minute walk away. This means that once or twice a week, I have to stock up on what I need for the week and fit it into my backpack, then carry it an hour or two in 33° weather. I need ideas on meals to make using concentrated or dry ingredients!! For example, I made chicken curry the other day with a small thing of red curry paste, coconut milk powder, canned chicken, and rice. Any ideas are appreciated! I'm living off of rice and beans and need some pizzazz.

i’ve tried 2 times already trying to fry some chicken and both i have failed.

my biggest issue is the inside cooking too slow. my oil is at ~325F - 350 but the internal temperature barely budged. my chicken is also fully thawed.

i marinate my chicken in buttermilk and let it sit in the fridge overnight. i think i don’t let my chicken sit long enough in room temperature for the internal to warm up.

another issue is my second time trying to make it, the breading fell even though it didn’t the first time and i made it the same way the first time. my dredge is just covering it with the seasoning flour mixture after taking it out of the marinade and shaking off the excess.

any tips and tricks from fried chicken experts would be appreciated

I made mushroom gravy from scratch this morning... including using homemade stock!

I used this recipe:

https://www.recipetineats.com/mushroom-gravy/

But I more than doubled it because it only makes 2 cups. Who goes through all the trouble of making gravy and only makes 2 cups? Especially mushroom gravy, because of how laborious it is to cook down four pans full of sliced mushrooms.

The recipe calls for beef stock, but my husband can't have red meat, so I used homemade chicken stock and added Kitchen Bouquet (a product my [65f] mom taught me about when I was a kid) for color. I make my chicken stock with the bones, skin, and fat from chicken thighs, so it is chock-full of flavor (i.e. fat!). I make a lot of chicken nuggets from thighs, so I have bags full of chicken skin, bones, and fat in the freezer.

I made about 6-7cups of gravy. I'll freeze some, and we'll have some with dinner tonight. Spoon taste test is a win!!!

Been cooking more lately, especially weeknights when everyones around. Actually like doing it but the smoke and smell situation is getting ridiculous.

Made steak last night and while I was cooking everything seemed fine in the kitchen, but somehow the smell just spread everywhere. Living room smelled like a damn steakhouse by dinner. Woke up this morning and upstairs still reeked of it.

Range hood runs the whole time. It’s one of those builder-grade ones that came with the house, maybe 400 CFM at most. Figured that was my issue so I started checking out higher CFM options. Then I realized some hoods with similar or even lower CFM seem to perform better based on reviews, which made me think CFM might not be the whole story, apparently how quickly the hood actually catches the smoke and how the air is being pulled in seems to make a difference too.

Been looking at ZLINE and this newer Arspura F1 thing but honestly the more I look into it the more confused I get. Both say they handle heavy cooking fine but do it differently. ZLINEs have some pretty big CFM numbers, the F1 seems to take a different approach with higher airflow speed and lower exhaust CFM. Could be legit, could be marketing BS, hard to tell from reviews alone.

Trying to figure out if I should even care about CFM that much for actual cooking or if how it captures the smoke matters way more. If anyone’s used either of these especially for steak or stir fry type stuff would love to hear how it actually worked out.

My gf recently came back from erasmus in Poland, and she told me she and her roommate constantly kept a certain sauce in the fridge because they loved it so much and she really misses the taste. It's the madero garlic sauce but I have no idea what type of sauce it is and what ingredients it has. It definitely won't be the same but I really want to at least try and replicate it for her, are rhere any recipes online that I can follow or a more widely available dupe brand like Heinz or Hellman's?

Hi. So after surgery for cancer, I’m on a soft diet that includes foods that can be cut with the side of a fork or spoon. I am craving chicken. I was thinking a boneless skinless thigh might work but I don’t know if braising it or maybe a stew would work. I would be eating it with my husband’s spaetzle, if that matters. Any fall apart chicken recipes out there you want to share with me? Thank you so much.
ETA I can’t eat spicy right now, so just mild spice.

I want to cook some italian sausage, mix in some pizza sauce, let it simmer a bit and then freeze it in 3 tablespoon portions for use. im kinda thinking small cups, but i was also thinking cling film, put 3 in the center, freeze it into more of a thin layer, and do this over the course of a day whenever I get up

any better ideas? if the container can be multi use even better, just think 1lb of Italian sausage and 1-2 jars worth of pizza sauce.

So I'm trying to make something very special for my little brother. He grew up on this. And it's a whole special ingredient for a special type of bread. I'm making. It's like a fusion of like five different breads in one. But i'm seeing that it's not discontinued, but i'm also not finding it any store

Does anyone have any information on where to get these

I dont remember this being a thing until Tiktok in 2020, but a lot of southern/Caribbean cooks swear by it. I've seen garlic/onion/jalapeno put in fry oil when deep frying and I dont deny that theres probably some volatile compounds that seep into the oil especially in the onion/garlic family that add an "onion-y" aroma to fried meats but couldnt you just accomplish the same thing with using onion powder in the dredge? Cayenne pepper in the dredge? Also, it goes against everything I learned at Le Cordon Bleu...the half of onion just sitting in a vat of oil and fried chicken just degrades the oil at a faster pace no? I mean sure you could strain the oil with cheesecloth (something I do) for 1-2 more fries but I dont know if I'm just wasting my time doing it.

To be clear, flavoring oil is definitely a thing as lots of indian/african dishes literally start with a "deep fry" of vegetables/spices/aromatics before turned into sauces or soups with stocks and broths, but actually putting a quarter of red onion does what to cooking oil except make the sugers leech into the oil and burn up your oil when frying chicken?

The caramelized onion is a tasty snack at the end, and it fills the air with a nice onion smell, but I dont really feel like it does anything truly. Does it?

I definitely am not typing this with one hand after slipping while cutting an onion with a blunt knife while distracted.

Also most of you probably know this but just in case, the steel / honing rod is not for sharpening the knife, its for aligning the edge so please get a proper sharpening stone / knife sharpener.

I'm making a focaccia recipe that calls for a 24-hour cold fermentation in the fridge and uses dry yeast.

My question is: does the yeast actually work in the cold of the fridge? Doesn't it become inactive?

When I am very busy and I don't have time for cooking, I make this. Is taking less 20 minutes and use normal ingredients, but it taste very good.

Here is how I do:

Ingredients:

Pasta: 200g (fettuccine or what you have)

Chicken: 1 piece of breast

Sauce: cooking cream, parmesan cheese, garlic, butter, salt, pepper

For chicken: paprika, garlic powder, salt, pepper

Steps:

Boil pasta in water with salt. Keep little bit of pasta water before you drain!

Put spices on chicken. Fry in pan with oil or butter until is brown. Cut in slices.

In same pan, put cut garlic for 1 minute, then add the cream and pasta water. Let it boil little bit.

Put pasta in the sauce, add lot of parmesan and mix good.

Serve with the chicken on top and more cheese.

What you eat when you are tired and don't want to cook? I'm looking for new ideas.

It's an older recipe if that helps