Cooking

[Moonface]

How does everyone else feel about cooking? Are you blessed with actually enjoying it from start to finish, hate the thought of even touching a stove, or are you like me and fall off at the midway mark?

For me, I tend to only enjoy cooking when things don't go wrong. I find that whenever anything about cooking doesn't go to plan or becomes harder than it feels it should be, I quickly lose my patience with it and stop enjoying it.

If you do like cooking, or just do it because you have to, what do you tend to cook? Do you have any dishes that you often like to make? Have you ever come up with your own recipe or put your own spin on something?

Also, don't forget that you can discuss any other food and drink things that don't relate to this thread or perhaps warrant their own thread in our Food and Drink Thread.

[Mr EliteL]

I don't do much cooking. Either put on to a baking tray and shoved into the oven, or ingredients from a packet or can in to a saucepan. Tried doing a more elaborate Macroni and Cheese as opposed to my usual cook only macaroni, remove water then put grated cheese on to melt. My attempt had the cheese sauce turn into a mush of garbage. Haven't touched my pasta cook book since, but still want to try something else....one day. I can make a decent pasta bake using a jar (or two) of sauce, pasta and grated cheese in the oven though.

Sometimes with my macaroni cheese I have tomato soup, and also added a little bit of chilli to that once or twice before too.

[Moonface]

...put on to a baking tray and shoved into the oven...

This was my ideal way of cooking until @ShiraNoMai and I started using this service called Home Chef, and now unless they send anything that just gets shoved into an oven with little prep, any other meals I could make that are just a simple oven job tend to be dull in comparison to the dishes I get through HC.

[Dragon Lord]

I'm no master chef, but I do enjoy cooking very much. I don't really make any complicated dish, but I do enjoy the simple stuff I make. I enjoy all parts of cooking start to end. Just find it to be a nice relaxing activity to do.

The type of cooking I probably enjoy doing the most is baking, although I don't bake things nearly as much as I should.

[queenzelda]

I'm actually the chef of the house & make everything that we end up eating for dinner. I also love making desert, though Jing is the one who loves to make bread. xD I made some homemade chili the other night & there was nothing left when we got done.

[ShiraNoMai]

@queenzelda Oh you guys like baking bread? I've never actually done that before, but I know it's an interesting process. What kinds of bread do you bake?

@Dragon Lord I find it kind of relaxing myself as well. I never quite understand how Moony gets into this impatient mindset the moment the smallest thing goes wrong. If something messes up, oh well, improvise and work from there. Not the end of the world. I love learning all the intricacies of cooking things, so when I mess something up, I chalk it up as a learning experience.

[queenzelda]

@queenzelda Oh you guys like baking bread? I've never actually done that before, but I know it's an interesting process. What kinds of bread do you bake?

Usually we've made different kinds of bread from white bread for making sammiches, to breakfast biscuits, garlic cheddar biscuits, a few Italian breads, & we have tried monkey bread before; which was fun. xD

[Moonface]

I never quite understand how Moony gets into this impatient mindset the moment the smallest thing goes wrong. If something messes up, oh well, improvise and work from there. Not the end of the world. I love learning all the intricacies of cooking things, so when I mess something up, I chalk it up as a learning experience.

Probably because I grew up in the mindset to not waste food (maybe because the UK doesn't seem to have a leftovers culture like America does), and my instant worry when something goes wrong is that the food is going to become inedible.

[queenzelda]

Yea, if you didn't grow up cooking a lot of things can seem intimidating. I'm always the one who will end up adding the seasonings to a dish because I can eyeball how much goes into a dish; where as Jing has to measure it out. A lot of dishes I've made I came up with myself. Like yesterday I made some teriyaki chicken; with ramen. All I did was cook some thin sliced pieces of chicken, cut them into pieces when fully cooked & then cooked the ramen with out adding the packets.. Then when the chicken was done, I added teriyaki sauce I had & when it was hot enough; for Jing's he added the sauce & chicken to the ramen. I added the ramen into the remaining sauce; making it very flavorful: there was nothing left after wards. And I did all of this on instinct.

[ShiraNoMai]

I used to be the type to measure things out perfectly like Jing, but as I'm learning with Home Chef, it's been more easy to trust my instinct on how much "2 teaspoons of olive oil" translates to "just coat the damn thing so it doesn't burn".

When I took my cooking class in 7th grade, I was all about the perfect measurements, especially after mixing up the powdered sugar for the salt. Wound up making some peanut butter cookies I could actually enjoy a little

[queenzelda]

We now make our own homemade refried beans & I'm the one who has to season the butter before adding the pinto beans. We don't use olive oil cause he doesn't like it & butter is just as good impo. Most recipes want you to add cumin but I'm sensative to it since my hands swell pretty badly. So I add my own spices: paprika, a bit of chili powder, some garlic powder, onion powder. Mix it all into the butter making it smell flavorful. He then adds the can of pinto beans, mushes them into the mix until heated & we've got refried beans.