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
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 😅
I didn’t learn to measure anything until I was 30. I just cooked by vibes. My girlfriend started getting really irritated that I would make something and she would never have it again. Something like it? Sure. But it? No. So I started actually learning how to cook and know how much was going in .
That’s the way I cook, just have made enough mistakes and so many different dishes I can put things together and make magic. On baking, my family doesn’t like fancy cakes, more like snacking cakes, those are pretty forgiving. I don’t measure rice & water, just know how it should look, and yes my husband sometimes gets annoyed that it’s not more standardized but I’m not a commercial chef I am a cook.
The exceptions - My sourdough bread, and the sourdough chocolate chip cookies - carefully measured by weight and if I am winging the bread (never the cookies) I try to still write down the measurements in case it’s the best bread I have ever made. The bread I could almost certainly make it without measuring at this point, I can tell by how it feels, what it will do, but have the scale and use it.
My mom cooked from recipes. Only from recipes . She asked her mom once how to make good biscuits, and her mom said “the water has to be very cold”. Which, honestly, would have helped me a lot. But my mom wanted a recipe!
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.
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).
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.
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.
The problem with that is that the size of the pot changes the volume of water with a linear finger measure.
Like for extremes if you had a test tube shaped pot with a foot of rice deep and only a finger depth of water is way different than a giant wide pot where grains area single layer and then a finger depth over top.
That’s why you use a rice cooker.
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.
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.
Yeah but it kinda messes up fried rice
You don’t use that part for the fried rice. You just eat it.
The heating time time on some frozen chicken strips was for “a cup”. Of long frozen pieces of chicken.
My favourite is “one cup of spinach”.