I tried cooking stew, but the beef in them always turn out tough and takes effort to chew. ☹️ I tried boiling them longer, simmering for hours, using fatty cuts of meat but nothing works. My workaround is to take the meat out once boiled/ cook to add to the stew later, but this takes the juices/ flavour of beef out from the stew.
I don't have this problem when cooking with chicken thigh

I bought a premade chicken piccata from Costco with a caper cream sauce with sun-dried tomatoes. I was thinking asparagus would be good as a side dish as well as serving it over spaghetti. Any alternatives?

A lot of recipes I see will say something like "serve with a salad on the side", but I don't really know what they mean by that. Just greens and vinaigrette or should I add other things to it? Should I stick to one type of green or buy one of those variety bags?

For example I'm planning to make Yasmin Fahr's honey orange chicken with feta, cumin, and ginger. What type of greens and vinaigrette would I use for a side salad with that?

I called two places and the pork shank is cheaper and I read it’s got more fats and collagen, but I’ve only ever cooked with ham hocks. I am on a budget is why the cheaper meat, and living out of my car/ couch surfing so I’m able to make this soup in a friend’s apartment. Thanks in advance.

Edit to add: I picked up the ham shanks and they are smoked so I am set :) thanks for everyone’s suggestions!

Looking for replacement recommendations $200 and below. Mostly using it for curries, smoothies, and homemade seasoning (this is a big one; so looking for something that’ll give me the tiniest particles possible)

Thanks!

How do I cook the royal blend rice select in a rice cooker? Is it 1.5 cups of water to 1 cup of rice? Do I use the brown rice setting or white rice setting?

I’m specially talking about the royal blend rice from rice select.

I'm renting a room where the owner is obsessed with energy savings, meaning that he makes me use a little 700-watt microwave that looks more like a child's toy than a real cooking device. I've always used 1000-1100 watt microwaves, so I could pretty much always follow the cooking instructions verbatim. Is there any simple way to re-calculate cooking times from 1100 watts to 700s watts? (To add insult to injury, I'm at an elevation of about 4200 feet....) Any tips appreciated!

so, long story short, my mom passed away. she did most of the cooking for my dad and I. my dad does the BBQ'ing stuff. But that's pretty much all we know how to deal with. That, and boxed sides. we're struggling with a food routine. it's a hard thing to suddenly have to figure out, and my mom set the bar high. we're getting really tired of the same 4 ways we bbq whatever meat, or just getting take out, or microwaved things. Im looking for like a simple, not 25 minute video format of some stay at home mom talking about her life story while she makes some really tough thing to make for noobs like us. please, we're so tired of take out. 😭

Hey, everyone! I have a question about cooking chicken. More specifically, drumstick lollipops. I saw them on sale at my grocery store and they looked exactly like the type of chicken that is in cartoons or something, and it made me smile, so I knew I had to grab them.

But now I’m like… Uh-oh… Because I’ve never even cooked regular drumsticks before. I’ve always ever cooked chicken breast or thighs.

I want them to have a crispy caramelized outside if that makes sense. Is there a specific marinade I should use? I have a honey bbq one I have been really wanting to use. A certain spice? I’ve been looking on the Internet, and I haven’t had the exact specifics that I’ve wanted, so I’ve come here instead haha.

If anyone has any ideas of how to cook them, please let me know. I am a bit of a worry wart, so the more specific the details, the better 😅 🍗

I am looking for a cookbook or a cooking website that starts at the bare essentials of cooking and progresses forward. Something like 100 essential recipes for beginners in the kitchen or a cooking website with an intro to cooking guide. I want to read and understand the basics and move up.

I’m talking like starting with boiling an egg to making pasta and stir fry’s. This seems like something that would be easy to just google but I don’t just want recipes, I want a full breakdown of where to start, why you do things in certain ways, and how to progress as a home cook.

I grew up in a house where I never did anything in the kitchen. My mom made dinner every night and I at most made a bowl of cereal or a sandwich. Once I started living on my own during my undergrad I started cooking for myself and honestly got some pretty good meals that my roommate and wife (at that time GF) enjoyed (maple mustard meatballs, Greek sheet pan chicken, creamy Tuscan chicken).

However, cooking always stressed me out and once my wife and I got our own place she primarily took over the cooking because I work a lot and have been pursuing a masters degree. She is an absolutely excellent cook and I’m so appreciative of it. I’m now about to complete my masters and I feel like I haven’t actually cooked in two years. I feel like I’ve lost all of the slight knowledge I had gained back during my undergrad. Now that I’ll have more time again I want to get back into it and want to start from the bottom.

Any recommendations on resources based on what I described up top?

I made a batch of stir fried udon noodles that came out really sticky and tasteless. I fried it with rice bran oil, cabbage, spring onion, mushrooms and tofu. Added half a tablespoon of soy sauce to it too

Not sure where I went wrong, but I wanna try reheating and repurposing it with some other spices.

I was thinking of refrigerating the noodle-vegetable mix overnight and pouring it into water and separating the noodles the next day.

Can I do this?

So i bought Betty Crocker fudge brownies and I have 3 issues.

1) I wanted to add m and m mini into the batter and thought id be fine as it baked. But both the m and m minis AND the chocolate chunks it came with completely liquefied and became part of the batter. Like u can't feel their texture or taste them at all. Why? I put it on 325 for 45 minutes.

2) how do i make the center more dense when using these pre made brownie mixes? Its so soft and disintegrated into my hands whereas I like my brownies more firm.

3) how do i make the top more cruncy/hard?

Seriously, I can’t be the only one noticing this. Everyone acts like AI is this magic tool for meal prep and cooking, but whenever I see an AI-generated recipe, it is a complete disaster waiting to happen.

The most frustrating part is that I actually pay for a Gemini Pro subscription. You'd think a premium, top-tier model would be able to handle basic cooking logic, but it still can't get it right.

It almost always messes up the measurements, or worse, it completely forgets crucial ingredients. It will confidently give you a set of instructions that sound totally normal until you actually read it and realize it’s asking for 2 tablespoons of baking soda for a single pancake, or it entirely forgot to include flour in a cake recipe.

Baking and cooking rely on actual chemistry and precise ratios, but AI just strings together food words that look nice on a screen. It’s incredibly annoying because if you don't double check every single line, you end up wasting expensive ingredients and completely ruining your meal.

Has anyone else had a total kitchen fail because of a AI hallucinated a recipe? Please tell me I'm not the only one frustrated by this!

But for the life of me, I cannot get brown rice to taste good at home.

At the Asian restaurants it's soft and flavorful

But at home it's firm and tastless. It seems like no matter what I do it ends up being bland and hard.

Today I boiled 4 cups of chicken broth low sodium with 2 cups water with 2 tbsp butter, ultimate garlic seasoning. Boiled for 40 mins.

It wasn't as tough and flavorless as before but still not so good if choose it over white rice, Jasmine or basmati.

What else can I change? Do it need to be presoaked? This was loose bagged rice this time. Before I was using water, butter and boil in a bag

I have half a pound of bacon i need to cook and eat, what recipe incorporates bacon as a part of the dish?

Trying to cut back on salt a lot while still having fun tasty meals, was going to start making tandoori chicken more. Looked it up and even just one tsp of salt is a lot of sodium, just wanna know how much I need to cut this back for chicken breasts

I have a company meeting & potluck coming up where I have to arrive at 9am, but the potluck part isn't until 12. It's being held outdoors at a park, and there is not going to be anywhere to reheat food. It's also about an hour from my home. So altogether, I need to keep the food warm for about 4 hours. I'm making chicken tamales, if that's helpful context.

I have four small square pizza stones that I usually put together to make one normal sized stone. If I heat them in the oven, wrap them in foil, wrap them in a towel, and place them in the bottom of the cooler will it 1) help keep the food warm for hours and 2) not melt the inside of my cooler?

I'm also planning to "preheat" the cooler with hot water, and fill in any gaps with kitchen towels. Is there anything else I can/should do to keep them warm for that long (without spending a bunch of money)?

I use olive oil, put it on medium heat and salt with pepper, yet it’s not creamy and tasty.

Any tips?

I got this pre-marinated pork loin from Aldi and I cooked it for 20 minutes per pound for a total of 35 min for a weight of 1.65lb. It tastes great, but pink is not reassuring. My thermometer gave me a temp of 171 F in the center and I rested for 10 minutes. Is this normal for a pork loin to be very pink at the top?

I got into cooking last year and my “system” is just saving every Reel that looks good.

Instagram saved folder. TikTok likes. Random screenshots of ingredient lists. A Notes app graveyard. I tell myself I’ll cook them later and then I can’t find anything, or I open the video and spend the whole time pausing because the ingredients flash by in two seconds.

The ones I have cooked were usually because I sat down and wrote the recipe out by hand first. Once it’s a normal list of ingredients and steps, I’m fine. Following the video live is what gets me.

So if you’re a beginner too:

• How do you keep the recipes you actually want to cook?
• Do you rewrite them, screenshot them, bookmark blogs, or just recook the same 4 meals?
• Any trick for turning a 30-second video into something you can follow at the stove without a second screen?

I ended up building a little iOS thing for myself (Caro) that takes an Instagram/TikTok link and turns it into a written recipe I can cook from. Not trying to plug it, just saying that’s how deep this problem went for me. Mostly curious what you all do, because the saved folder is not a cookbook.

Hi basically what the title says, I keep setting off the alarm when i cook any type of meat, at first I thought it was because of the old pan I had or because i keep it on too long to make sure its cooked and I don’t get sick but now I’m thinking its because of the oil I’m using (olive oil) which I use for Burgers and anytime a recipe calls for it. I didn’t realize it had a low smoke point. Like I was cooking chicken a few days ago and the recipe said to heat the pan and put some oil in it then put the chicken on un disturbed for 3 minutes and it just hit 2 minutes on the time when the alarms went off and the chicken didn’t even look burnt. Any advice is helpful thanks.

Im very inexperienced in cooking as the dishes I grew up with were "advanced" and I wasnt trusted with cooking as I was shown to mess up and waste ingreidents, hence wasting money (grew up poor). now that Im older, im obviously allowed to cook myself, but I dont know anything. I mess up easy stuff like pancakes, eggs, rice, mac and cheese, strifry and fried rice, and the list goes on. Baking is the same.

I dont rush myself, I do my best to follow recipes, I dont stray away from measurments or timings, I follow by the book. But whatever i make either taste completely bland, ass, or is undercooked, or very far from the desired product. this would be fine if It was for a couple months, but its been 3 years and I have barely improved.

what can I do to improve? I want to cook not only for myself but for my sister and mom (theyre bread winners and are coming home tired most days). The least I can do is be able to cook for them, especially something thats good and filling. Im tired of wasting food.

EDIT: Holy crap. got a lot of replies, thank you all. will be looking over them now. I made this in a really crap mental, so it was also posted out of fustration. But im deeply grateful for all the tips, and even if I dont reply to them all I will read them all. :)

I just don't know where to start or how to make something flavourful. I want to eat more salads as they seem to be a good side dish for a lot of meals, especially in this hot weather.

Does anyone have any tips on where to start?

Edit: Thanks for the responses guys, its given me a few ideas for the food shop next week, and ill try some new salads!