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[Rose]

They use it I  small amounts in all sorts of stuff here.

Though apparently it makes a fantastic metal polish. Dip a brown copper anything I'm it, and it comes out bright shiny pink.

[MaximumZero]

I had some tamarind candy at a mexican food stall at the Wisconsin State Fair of all places. 0/10, never again, saltier than youtube comments.

[Haspen]

Pizza Toppings thread!

I wanted to start a discussion here but there are so many toppings that they deserved a separate thread instead... SO ARE WE PIZZA BUDDIES OR SHALL THERE BE SALT BETWEEN US??

[Jopax]

So, cherry tomatoes? Awesome or just awesome?

I find that I'm eating them more as snacks than in actual meals or salads. It's both tasty, refreshing and healthy to grab a couple every now and then and just chomp. Plus the feeling of one exploding into taste in your mouth is super fun

Sure they may not be as tasty or juicy as oxheart ones, but those won't be in season for a while here, so these are a pretty good subsistute until then

[Akura]

Just made half a cup of barley, cut up a leftover porkchop, added some basil and crushed red pepper for seasoning. One of the best simple meals I've had in a while. And I couldn't even finish it, I only ate half before I was full.

[scrdest]

This seems like the right thread, so I figure that it's best I ask here. You see, I've been living in a crummy dorm room for 2 years, but no more; I have an apartment all to myself. Naturally, this also means that I need to cook for myself.

Now, it isn't that I don't know how to cook (I know a little bit), but don't know what to cook. So what's some inexpensive things that I could cook for myself? While I am unfortunately lacking a slow cooker, I have pretty much everything else- pots, pans, oven, blender, toaster oven, microwave, etc.

Fried rice is a good option. Frozen vegetables, rice, eggs, oil, soy sauce + anything you want on top of that. Simple, tasty, cheap.

[penguinofhonor]

Potatoes are cheap, filling, and you can do tons of stuff with them.

[scrdest]

Potatoes are cheap, filling, and you can do tons of stuff with them.

Boil 'em, mash 'em, stick 'em in a stew...

[Sappho]

Pasta is always a good cheap option, and it's dead easy to make a homemade sauce which is healthy and cheap. Can of tomatoes, some chopped basil, a couple cloves of garlic and a few spring onions are amazing, and you can add plenty of other things to it to make it more interesting. Or you can just sautee garlic in olive oil and use that as a light sauce that only takes 5 minutes to make. Crack an egg into it at the last second and mix it around with the pasta to get a creamy sauce.

I've also got a favorite cheap/easy recipe for rice and beans. Make the rice of your choice, or pasta works as well. Sautee onion and garlic, add sliced mushrooms and some dried basil, dump in a can of red kidney beans with some water (and flour or potato/corn starch to thicken it up) and simmer until it's got a good consistency (doesn't take long, just don't put too much water in). Don't add any salt: at the very end, add some soy sauce to taste. Amazing every time. It's what I cook for a visitor when I want to impress them. Also works great as a spicy dish, just toss in some fresh or dried chili pepper when you add the garlic.

Finally, noodles are always good. Not sure what's available where you live, but it's easy to buy packages with 5-8 bricks of instant Asian noodles here (not the crappy kind with the flavor packets in them). Wheat noodles have the best flavor. Briefly sautee some onion or spring onion, garlic, chili pepper, carrot, fresh ginger, mushroom, and Chinese cabbage in a pot, then fill it up with water and boil it for half an hour or so. Then toss in the noddles, give them 5 minutes to get soft, and eat. This works best if you have sesame seed oil for flavor, otherwise you'll want to add something else like soy sauce, chili sauce, or salt. Eat with chopsticks and drink the liquid out of the bowl at the end. Can also crack an egg into it at the end to make it more filling.

[Rose]

My to-go recipie for pasta sauce is diced capsicum, fried a bit, with some asofeteda and chilli flakes, then about 5-6 diced tomatoes dumped in, add salt, put on a lid, and leave it on low flame for the same amount of time the noodles take to cook.

Then you strain the noodles, and mix the two together.

[scrdest]

Speaking of tomato pasta sauces: pro tip, if it's too tart, add a bit of sugar. You don't want to make a tomato syrup, but something in the ballpark of a flat tablespoon per serving, maybe less, will make it milder.

Might be a good idea to add it late, because sugar likes to burn, but I never checked if it actually does in the sauce.

[penguinofhonor]

Shredded carrots are also a good way to mellow out a tomato sauce a bit. They're less useful for correcting the flavor since they need to cook for a while, but I usually add a handful to my spaghetti sauce so I don't have to worry about it being acidic later.

[Rose]

Sugar burns at a higher temperature than water boils, so it'll be fine.

[Osmosis Jones]

On the topic of eggs, learn to make poached eggs! Really easy, and great for impressing that significant other.

1) Preheat pot of water to boiling; once boiling, turn heat down to barest simmer.
2) Put a sieve over a bowl, crack egg into sieve.
3) Let egg drain for 30s. Meanwhile, stir water in pot so that a vortex forms.
4) Lower egg gently from sieve into swirling water.
5) Without hitting the egg, gently keep the water stirring for about 1.5-2 min, until the white is set.
6) Serve on toasted crusty bread with smashed avocado plus salt and pepper.

Once you get the pattern down, you can make multiple eggs in no time at all. Best of all, serving temp is ~40 C, which coincidentally is about the temp of water from the hot tap; thus a large bowl filled with hot water will keep em at perfect temp until you're ready to plate!

[Flying Dice]

Had my perfect meal again. It's at this little family-run hole-in-the-wall Vietnamese place I've been going to for something like fifteen years now, and it's still the only thing I order. A big bowl full of flat rice noodles, bean sprouts, and thin-sliced beef in a complex, murderously spicy broth that's a mosaic of oranges and reds broken only by the bubbles of pepper oils. It's the sort of dish where, by the time you're starting to drain the broth, you don't even feel the heat any more because your face has gone numb. <3

I love 'em. It's one of the two restaurants I've found where the chef isn't so scared of losing idiot customers (or the owner isn't such a cheapass) that they only use those crappy dried pepper flakes, adding an extra shake if the customer says "no, really, as spicy as you can make it". The other place was a North Indian restaurant that didn't see a problem with substituting fresh jalapenos for fresh banana peppers in their stuffed pepper appetizer. :V