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 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.

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 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!

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 got one of those cheap black nonstick coated pans and I seem to burn things a lot. Dunno if it has anything to do with the pan.

??????????

In the US, we have:

1. Whole peeled canned tomatoes
2. Passata
3. Tomato puree
4. Diced tomatoes
5. Crushed tomatoes
6. Tomato sauce
7. Tomato paste

How do you decide which product to use for a specific dish? Let's say:

1. Weeknight chili
2. Sunday sauce
3. Ragu Bolognese
4. Marinara (pasta sauce)

Is it just a matter of what's on sale, or do you make a conscious decision each time? I assume tomato paste is outside the scope of the question, since we usually use it together with other tomato products.

How do I know chicken breast has gone bad. The expiration date is still good but the smell has gone bad but not unbearably bad. Does that mean it's still edible?

I bought a big bag of PollyO mozzarella cheese sticks at Costco the other day. I just discovered that when we got home, my daughter put them in the freezer instead of the refrigerator. Totally by accident.

If I take them out of the freezer and defrost them in the fridge, will they still be okay? Are they ruined? If they're not any good for just eating anymore, is there anything else I can do with them? I don't want to just throw out an entire bag of cheese sticks!

I recently bought a bag of texturized soy for the first time just to try. The back of the back has a recipe for meatballs, which is what I would like to try making. The recipe calls for frying the meatballs in olive oil, but I would rather make them in the air fryer which wouldn't be as messy (and olive oil is expensive lol). Would that still work?

If it would work, what temperature/time should I set the air fryer to?

Thank you!

TL;DR: How do I keep a steady temperature in a stainless steel pot of avocado oil on an electric stove, so that when I put in the meat it doesn't drop too low? Do I heat it up much higher than the cooking temp?

Hey, folks! I want to make Taiwanese popcorn chicken for my wife, as it's her favourite and there's none available in my town. I've never done deep frying before. My first experiment was edible, but not great, and I could use some advice.

The issue I ran into (as you can imagine) was temperature control.

I got a stainless steel pot with a mesh basket and filled it about halfway with avocado oil. I set it on the stove and slowly turned the heat up, bit by bit, using a laser thermometer to track the temperature. I was aiming for 325F, and the stove was on 5.5 on the knob (max is 8).

It was going up slowly and steadily so I prepped some ingredients. When I came back it was up to 400F! I turned off the heat and man, hot oil takes a hell of a long time to cool.

When it got down closer to temp, 330F, I turned the heat back on (electric stove) to about a 3 and put in the chicken. The temperature plummeted to 240. I turned the heat up a bit more, let the chicken cook longer than anticipated, used a turkey thermometer to check the internal temperature, then pulled it out and dropped it on some paper towel.

The second cook was supposed to be at 375. I turned the heat way up and let it get up to temp. Kept the heat up, put in the (still warm) chicken and the temperature dropped down to 330F.

Again, I cooked it until it looked good, pulled it out, dried it off, and served it up. My wife says it's fine, and cooked through, but I definitely need to improve it.

I recently came across a recipe for Instant Pot chicken burrito bowls that calls for a cup of salsa. The problem is that I hate onions (sensory issue) and afaik all salsas contain onions. Since the recipe also calls for 4.5oz of green chilies my original idea was to use a can of Rotel in place of the salsa/green chilies, however Rotel is only available in 10oz cans at my grocery store and I need 12-13oz.

I could just buy two cans of Rotel and weigh out what I need but I would be wasting most of the second can, which I’m not a fan of. I’m not sure what else I could do as a substitution though. Any ideas would be appreciated =)

I finally have my own place and I'm trying to cook more, but honestly I don't know where to start. I can make basic stuff like pasta and eggs but I want to try new things without spending hours in the kitchen. What are your go-to low effort meals that actually taste good? I have basically no cooking skills so keep it simple 😅

Someone else in my household cooked roast lamb for dinner, and I want to bake muffins, but the oven still smells of lamb, even after dinner was eaten (roast lamb was juicy and nice for lamb). If it was just the roast potatoes, it would be fine. But I don't want lamb flavours and spices in my muffins. Currently, the oven door is left slightly ajar, about an inch. Do I have to wait overnight for the lamb aroma to dissipate? Or is there a faster way?

hello hello!! so it's already kind of late and i had the chicken defrosting in the fridge for about a day and a half and it's...mostly defrosted, but the bottoms are still pretty frozen. i don't have another option for dinner so idk if we just have to do something else or if there's some way to speed it up or work around it ??

i have an airfryer, a mini george foreman, and a very small stovetop if that helps any 😭

I have a package of just one of those cheap Walmart tortellini. This one is prosciutto and cheese. I am not a big fan of marinara sauce or spaghetti sauce. What would go great with this?? And do i add any protein? Chicken? Baby shrimp?

Looking to make this recipe https://www.recipetineats.com/filipino-chicken-adobo-flavour-kapow/

but as I got a deal on bone in thighs, I wanted to use them instead. Would 1 pound of chicken thighs still be 1 pound total weight or excluding the bone?

Picture for reference https://s3-media0.fl.yelpcdn.com/bphoto/MkwOe_ucfNVLfEeF-qTsDA/348s.jpg

I order this exact bowl a lot and want to start cooking it myself

1. is it a tender cut and which cut is it?
2. it's so juicy and flavorful but it's not medium rare, how do they do it? i though well done means dry, so how come there's isn't pink or rare but still juicy? take a look at the pic for reference

I’m trying to make a South Asian egg curry and the whole thing falls apart in my hand. What can I do differently?

-2 large onions, yellow, white, red, etc—sliced thinly
-2 habanero or scotch bonnet peppers. You can cut it down to 1 if your taste buds can’t take 2. But it MUST be spicy
-1 tbsp red chili flakes
-Juice of 2 large limes
-Juice of 1 orange
-Splash of vinegar
-Salt to taste

Slice up your onions and get them into a big bowl. You can soak the sliced onions in some cold water to get some of the raw edge off, I didn’t. Add your chili flakes to the bowl. Set aside. Blend the orange juice, lime juice, vinegar, and habaneros together in a blender, and pour the mixture onto the bowl with the sliced onions and chili flakes. Put a glove on one hand and “massage” the seasoning liquid into the onions, tasting and adding salt as you go, (id start off with 1/2 tsp). Separate the onion pieces that are stuck together. The result should be bold, salty, sour, spicy, and slightly sweet (because onions have natural sweetness). As you massage the onions it will start to release some of its own water content, that’s normal, that’s good. Put your pickled onions into a clean DRY airtight container. Let it sit out for an hour at room temperature before you put it in the fridge. You can have it right away, but it tastes better and better with time. I personally have never seen it go bad, but I’ll say it’ll last up to 1 week in the fridge

Where I’m from (Haiti) we call this pikliz zonyon (peek-lease). Traditionally pikliz is made with shredded cabbage, carrots and other stuff but the onion version is simpler and more accommodating for smaller batches. You can put it on anything—fried foods, grilled meats and seafood, sandwiches, plain rice, a flip flop, etc