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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • Cookbooks are a great option if you have a bit of time and like reading. I started out this way, simply reading books and watching YouTube for fun. I’ve found many books at my local bookstore and thrift shops for very cheap (like $1 - $10). I would keep an eye out for these specifically, especially older editions that are cheaper:

    The Professional Chef, Culinary Institute of America
    Professional Baking, Wayne Gisslen
    What’s a Chef to Do?, Anthony Bourdain
    Gear, Alton Brown
    On Food and Cooking, Harold McGee
    Basics with Babish, Andrew Rea
    The Flavor Matrix, James Briscone
    The Flavor Equation, Nik Sharma

    All of these go over essential principles and skills that every cook needs; if you read and understood even just one or two of these cover to cover, you could easily master cooking essentials in just a couple days/weeks accompanied with some practice


  • Your problem might be not pre-heating the pan long enough (this goes for cast iron, stainless, and carbon steel). For eggs made in pans with these materials, you need to let it sit on the heat for a bit; not too hot to obliterate the egg, but hot enough to evenly heat the pan. The pan should have some oil/fat in it as well.

    In layman’s terms, the science behind this is that these metals have little microscopic “pores” that open wider when heated. When the pan is cold, they are smaller and latch onto the food. Heating up the metal opens up these “pores” and allows the oil to lubricate the metal much better.

    You might want to invest in a 3-ply stainless steel pan ( which basically means aluminum encased in steel). The steel protects the aluminum, and the aluminum distributes heat evenly to the whole pan to facilitate the above process. As long as you pre-heat the pan and add enough oil or butter, not even eggs will stick. I personally use a Viking stainless steel pan, but I’ve also heard that Made-In makes some good ones too. Cuisinart also is a cheaper option





  • I personally use Lemmy for 2 things really, tech/foss/privacy news & discussion, and as a social media replacement (memes). When I used to be on the crappy socials, I would only really use them for memes, and left when I started to care more about privacy rights. The very first community I followed was 196 when they migrated away from reddit, so it was essentially what I came here for initially, and then found that the whole platform was miles better for discussion as well.