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[Arx]

Cool thread! I can't wait to learn some new recipes.

Spoiler: Yesterday's dinner (click to show/hide)

Stir-fried bok choy and miso yakionigiri with pickled scallion inside; custard pudding and blackberries for dessert.

Spoiler: Today's dinner (click to show/hide)

Bell pepper and zucchini frittata with leftover bok choy; half a sliced pear for dessert.

I'm trying to learn better plating skills...

Fixed those images for you.

Plating always seemed like a bit of a waste of time to me. Then again, I'm used to cooking for between five and seven people, not one.

[crazysheep]

Plating is an even bigger waste of time when I cook for one, because I'm just here for the food :3

[Corselet]

Fixed those images for you.

Oh, thanks!


Plating may not be a biological requirement, but I think it's a nice thing to do and it doesn't take that long. Helpful when you're trying to impress picky parents

[Eldin00]

It's been a while since I posted any food here, but I'm just getting over being sick and my wife is just coming down with the same thing I'm getting over, so today I turned these ingredients:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

into this soup:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Because nutrient rich hot soup with loads of garlic, ginger, and chili is a great thing to eat when you've got respiratory illness.

[Levi]

Occasionally I'm too lazy to make a proper pizza, so instead I just put a bunch of pizza toppings onto a tortilla and bake it for 10 mins.  It's surprising good for how little effort it takes.

[Flying Dice]

No pictures today, but I will next time I make it. I found a new favorite for fast and easy. Just olive oil, garlic, and onion tossed in a skillet with white kidney beans, tuna, and sage, plus a little black pepper at the end. Took me maybe fifteen minutes including prep time.

[Akura]

If only I had the resources to try this recipe.

Bah, family probably wouldn't appreciate it anyway. I'll just stick to making onigiri filled with mozzarella and pepperoni.

[Sappho]

Blarg... I've got a problem. I have an electric oven. It sits on the countertop but it's not a toaster oven. It's pretty large and it works brilliantly. It's also getting a bit old - a friend gave it to me 4 years ago and it was already old then. And dirty. I put some effort into cleaning it up but it will never look new at this point.

Recently I decided to try to at least get the trays to be cleaner. Normal soap wouldn't get all the residue from years of cooking off the trays, so I used a much stronger cleaner recommended to me by a friend. The cleaner, Savo Razant, has warning labels all over it. You have to wear gloves to use it or it burns your skin a little bit (and I did learn that the hard way). I had used it successfully to clean my shower, toilet, and sink really well, so stupidly I thought it would be a good choice for getting the caked-on gunk off my oven trays.

Turns out it may have worked a little too well. Trying to cook with the oven after I had cleaned the trays, I noticed a funny taste in some of my food. I also noticed some gunk on the tray after cooking which I assumed was grease and oil from the cooking. When I finally got around to trying to wash it, I realized it was actually really sticky, like some kind of resin. I think it's the non-stick coating on the trays. The cleaner must have interacted with it so now when it's heated, it liquifies and gets into my food.

Is there anything I can do about this? It's definitely not possible to buy new trays for this oven (it's an unusual size and very old) and buying a new oven would obviously be very expensive (and it seems a bit silly, considering this one works fine). I suppose I can put aluminum foil on the trays, but that scrapes off easily when cooking something I need to flip (like fries, etc.) and I'd hate to get little bits of aluminum in my food... I'm tempted to keep scrubbing with the harsh cleaner until all the nonstick stuff just comes all the way off, but I'm not sure if that would work... Any ideas?

[Sirus]

I would try covering the pan with parchment paper when it comes to things that need flipping. It's not nearly as sticky as aluminum foil.

The problem is that in smaller ovens, if the paper gets too close to the heating elements, the edges can start to burn up. This can probably be avoided by properly sizing the paper so that it fits the pan's dimensions as best as possible, but definitely keep an eye on it the first time you try this.

EDIT: words are hard sometimes

[Sheb]

Yeah, cover it. God knows what's in that coating, and entirely getting it off with anything else than sandpaper is probably going to be more pain that its worth. oiled alufoil or perchment paper should do the trick.

[Jopax]

Do the trays have to fit perfectly though? Maybe you can MacGyver some non fitting ones so they kinda fit?

[Sappho]

Do the trays have to fit perfectly though? Maybe you can MacGyver some non fitting ones so they kinda fit?

I really don't think so. The trays slide into a groove on the side of the oven and they're an odd size. Parchment paper sounds like it could work... I'll give it a try, thanks.

[Sheb]

Alternatively, burn the coating off, then clean. I made a bread oven out of some old steel drum once, and that's how we got the inside clean from all the coatings and residues: just build a fire inside. Of course, that's assuming you've got a place to build a big fire.

[Helgoland]

Non-stick coating usually involves PTFE, aka the stuff that literally cannot burn because it's mostly fluorine. You might get some thermal decomposition going, but a) the required temperatures probably are rather high and b) there's no way of telling what weird sort of cracking products you'll get. I'd only take that route if I could do the burning outside, far away from civilization, and gave the whole thing a very thorough scrub afterwards.

You could try various organic solvents to dissolve that gunk. Start with xylene or toluene, if those are availible in a hardware store near you.

[Sheb]

She mentioned that her cleaner attacked it though. I don't think PTFE would react that easily at room temperature. It does decompose readily at over 250°C and sublime. A good will get rid of it. But yeah, the fume aren't exactly good for your health.

Acetone might be more readily available than xylene (nail polish remover usually contain acetone), and might be worth trying if you got some laying around.