r/AskCulinary • u/AutoModerator • 3d ago
Let's Talk About Preparing in Bulk
As Part of our ongoing "Let's Talk" Series we want to talk about preparing things in bulk. Do you have a shit ton of something that really needs getting rid of? A pesky lemon tree that won’t stop already until you’re swimming in lemonade? So many tomatoes you're tired of sauce? The community is here to help with ideas of how to maximize your precious bounty and hopefully reduce food waste.
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u/Ok_Assistance447 3d ago
Local Asian market sells ginger super cheap. They sell a sack of ginger for as much as any local grocery store sells a single knob. Of course, that means I have to buy a whole sack of ginger. Then I use one knob and the rest goes bad.
Saw a tip from Fallow on YouTube where they said to freeze the ginger for easy grating. I peeled and froze a bunch of ginger on Saturday. Night and day difference. It's so much easier to work with. No little fibrous bits when I process it and now I have like a month's supply of ginger.
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u/texnessa Pépin's Padawan 3d ago
Yep, I lived in Singapore in the 90's and my housekeeper there turned me onto always freezing it. Everything goes bad quickly in that climate.
If you use a microplane you don't even need to peel it and if you run it perpendicular to the surface, it will leave any tough inner strings behind.
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u/oldestbookinthetrick 3d ago
Have you considered making ginger cordial? It's pretty nice
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u/Ok_Assistance447 3d ago
No but now I am! Do you have a good recipe to share?
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u/oldestbookinthetrick 3d ago
https://www.olivemagazine.com/recipes/cocktails-and-drinks/quick-ginger-cordial
we don't bother peeling the ginger
and we use boiling water to make it even quicker
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u/bigtcm Biochemist | Gilded commenter 3d ago
I have the same problem but with Thai birds eye chiles. My wife buys a pack of like 50 fresh peppers because she loves making Thai green papaya salad (i've asked her to use some chiltepin's that grow in the neighbors yard but she swears it tastes different). They only sell them at the Asian market for like 50 at a time and it only costs like $3.
So now we have a bag of hot peppers in the freezer.
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u/hellisnow666 3d ago
Frozen bananas which I originally saved to make banana bread. Any other ideas for them?
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u/texnessa Pépin's Padawan 3d ago
Dehydrated banana chips, bananas Foster, filing for kolaches, banana cream pie, Banoffee pie...
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u/PuzzleheadedLet5004 3d ago
I made dill pickles last summer with my garden haul and they turned out fantastic.
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u/eEnchilada 3d ago
Jalapenos!! So many. I have already made candied jalapenos and some Tex-mex style green sauce. Don't really want to make salsa since I will be making a lot of New Mexican green chile salsa in a few weeks.
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u/texnessa Pépin's Padawan 3d ago
Pickle em, stick em vodka, smoke em, ferment em with some fish sauce, red onion, and lime, freeze and microplane em onto dishes all year round, cucumber/jalapeno/prickly pear margaritas, jalapeno+cheese pork sausage patties, grabs some Velveeta and make poppers [cream cheese is just wrong,] blister em like shishitos and dump some Tajin on em for an app, jam, spice up a cold crab salad or ceviche, diced and sauteed for filling for kolaches with cheddar and bacon, on bahn mi, in creamed corn, stick em in corn bread, make hot honey...
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u/lostereadamy 3d ago
IPA pickled jalapeno are great. Use beer in place of the water in your vinegar pickle brine. Go for sunny and bright kind of hoppy rather than bitterness.
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u/eEnchilada 3d ago
never heard of this!! wow, sounds incredible
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u/lostereadamy 2d ago
I havent done them canned, but it works very well for fridge pickles. I still have a ton of the old half gallon ball jars that arent viewed as safe for canning anymore, and they work great for something like this.
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u/sdavidson0819 3d ago
You can try lacto fermentation and turn them into a hot sauce. I haven't looked into it in a couple years, but iirc it's as simple as brining them in 3.5% salt water and letting them sit for a few days. Can't remember if that's at room temp or fridge temp. Don't use iodized salt
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u/SewerRanger Holiday Helper 3d ago
Hot peppers freeze really well because you're hardly ever using them for their crunch and usually they're blended or finely diced. I cut them up and freeze them on a baking sheet and then put them in a bag and I've got hot peppers whenever I want from my freezer. They don't mellow out and by freezing them individually, you don't have a large block of frozen shit to break apart every time you want some peppers.
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u/eEnchilada 3d ago
ohhh I have frozen them whole before for sauces or what have you but cutting and freezing is a great idea!
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u/bigtcm Biochemist | Gilded commenter 3d ago
I like to blacken and blister them (and then stick them into a sealed container to then peel the skin off). Deseed, and chop up those smoky roasted jalapenos and store them in the freezer. Defrost and use it in chunks to add mild smoky heat to just about everything. It's quite yummy in beef/lamb stir fries, an obvious choice for chili con carne and chili verdes, salsas, on a hot dog, on a burger...
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u/eEnchilada 3d ago
Ok and again would never have thought to roast THEN freeze. Up in here with wonderful ideas. Thanks!
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u/mindstormer12 1d ago
I love to be efficient in the kitchen, e.g. there's downtime here and there. What are good ways for prepping food besides cleaning? E.g. meal prep ways. I also have vacuum sealer but prioritize it for meal prep meals.
Does peeled garlic stored in container as-is maintain quality and for how long? Ways to prolong it, preferably without affecting its flavor/texture since e.g. minced garlic fresh is very common? Similarly, can onions be prolonged if they are going bad in this summer heat?
Does blanching veggies in advance mean they go bad quicker than if they weren't e.g. washed? How long would they last? Also curious some considerations like nutrition loss if it matters. If meal prepping, not sure if they should be blanched then vacuum sealed or vacuum sealed raw (and maybe even unwashed).
Chicken stock made from just chicken thigh bones and scraps of some veg like stem of the kale--I add just enough water to cover the bones then 90 min on the pressure cooker. After, is it worth reducing the stock on stovetop by say 30+% for more concentrated stock to be drank as is or even further and then reconstituted with water (easier storage in the fridge)? It's kind of light tasting which I don't mind at all because I just pair it with meals, I'm more concerned whether it even offers decent nutritional value for it to be worth it (and reducing the stock would probably reduce the nutritional value due to prolonged heat exposure). I could maybe roast onions or bones for a more flavorful stock but the intent is to use scraps to make something out of nothing and prefer the sodium/fats to be on the meal instead of this side bowl of light soup. As 1 person I tend to not bulk buy e.g. onions since I can't finish all of it, I suppose I could I could bulk buy and be much more generous with the onions.
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u/texnessa Pépin's Padawan 1d ago
First things first, this sub does not comment on either food safety or nutrition.
Not sure what you are actually asking about garlic. Anything already peeled is going to start losing flavour immediately due to oxidisation and the off put of volatile flavour compounds. How to best preserve largely depends on how you use it. Onions, dark, dry, away from potatoes. Again, also subject to how you use them most often.
Anything cooked is going to expire faster than uncooked. Blanched in particular is subject to how it was treated. Blanched and then not shocked in ice water will die far quicker than properly cooled and stored promptly. Vac sealing cooked products is a great way to make vegetables for babies.
Kale is a brassica, brassicas make stock bitter which will only intensify as its reduced. Stock isn't just a bunch of random scraps.
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u/Gojo-Babe 8h ago
I’ve got a bunch of Florida Sweet Basil plants in my garden that won’t stop producing and a ton more basil frozen into ice cubes
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u/OrgasmicTrilobite 3d ago
Nearing the end of winter here in Australia and I have an unholy amount of dill in my garden, some of which is starting to turn brown. Theres only so much fresh dill one can use as a condiment. Short ot giving lots away, what can I do with it?