unbibium

I just had the brilliant idea to seal-a-meal the ingredients to the stuff I like to cook, so when I feel like cooking up something fresh I can just pull it out...

I wonder whether this will be better or worse than just cooking everything twice in a row and freezing the second one.

Today was my third attempt at frying chicken.

I couldn't find my probe thermometer, and my infra-red thermometer crashed and froze right when the oil temperature reached 290, so I suspect my temperature control was way off. As evidence, every piece has blackened skin, and I may have hit the smoke point very early.

I fried not just the chicken I carved yesterday, but a package of drumsticks. The drumsticks didn't soak in the buttermilk for more than an hour or so, but at least I got to reuse those two cups of buttermilk before throwing it out.

I think next time I'll use my electric frying pan, since I'll be able to delegate most of the temperature control to its thermostat.

so I let the whole wheat dough rise overnight.

I opened the lid, and it seems to have risen to the exact right level.

So I started to move it to the fridge to store it for later cooking, and I dropped the bowl.

It didn't spill, but all the air went out of the dough.

I guess I'll try baking it anyway.

I'm working from home today, so I attempted fried chicken again for lunch, this time with boneless breast meat, even though I had no thermometer, and only my light teflon pan in which to fry it.

The result was thoroughly cooked, but very greasy, and without very much crust. Either I didn't have the temperature up high enough the whole time, or I did something wrong with the flour. Maybe I drained the buttermilk off for too long while I was prepping everything else.

Incidentally, Lodge sells two 10-inch skillets: the Logic, which is what I had originally, and the Pro-Logic, which has sloped sides and a loop handle. And they're both the same price, to my surprise. Is the Pro-Logic any better?

I just checked, and, oops, some of the linoleum tile is stuck to the bottom of my cast-iron skillet.

I was going to give this to my brother's grandchildren.

Oh well, I need a new one anyway.

So, to eat three fried drumsticks, it cost me enough money for nine drumsticks, a lot of shortening and flour, my apartment's damage deposit, and my cast-iron skillet.

Because I didn't test my thermometer before starting, I didn't get my money's worth out of my ingredients.

Because I both forgot to turn the heat off when I was done, the shortening started smoking, and the smoke detector started barking. I should have moved it to an unused burner, but because I didn't want the smoke detector to keep barking, I tried to move it outside. And because it was full of hot oil, it sloshed onto the floor and into my sock. And because I was most interested in preserving my feet, I sacrificed my pan and my apartment floor.

My last chicken was too large, at about 4.5 pounds. Tonight, all the store had were 5.5 pound monster chickens.

So I just bought a container full of drumsticks. Problem solved, and I saved a lot of time now having to carve everything. Except it's all going to be drumsticks. That's OK, though. No sense spending extra for chicken breasts when I'm not yet sure about whether it'll turn out...

At the QuikTrip, $7.01 will buy you a cooler that is too small for my second-largest pot, and a bag of indestructible ice. Since the cooler was too small, I ladled what I could into a few ziploc bags, and put the bags in with the ice. I also liberated the ice from its plastic bag, figuring it should be given the chance to melt and create some water to help convection along.

I'll check on it in an hour.

I was by no means exhaustive with my filtering, but I don't see any solids. And I also was not very exhaustive in my collection. This was just a practice, anyway.

I still don't really know what I'm going to do with it. My cooking habits have been stockless for so long.

I threw in the baby carrots about an hour ago. And now they're swimming around.

Seriously, they're bobbing to the surface and then sinking again, and there's a couple that are nipping at the surface like goldfish for a few seconds, and then start moving again. It's the craziest thing. There must be a lot of convection going on in that pot.

I also threw in an undisclosed quantity of kosher salt, because, hey, kosher salt. Was that wise?

I also still have no idea what I'm doing this afternoon.

went for a quick IKEA run with tamtrible, which turned into a lengthy Costco run in which I put back almost everything I put in the cart, which turned into a much more productive grocery shopping adventure at Sunflower.

I tried making my famous Curried Chicken with Peaches, but with pork instead. Just like that really old commercial about that restaurant where all the customers order chicken dishes with pork substituted. I substituted some ribs that were on sale. The first thing I noticed was the impact of the darker color; the meat was no longer the same color as the peaches when coated with curry. It was also tougher to chew, and probably could have benefited from smaller pieces. I also could have selected a lighter cut, but those were more expensive. tamtrible stayed to act as guinea pig.

The chicken carcass has been thawing in my fridge since I said it was, and she told me I should put it in a pot of boiling water and then set my stove on the lowest possible setting, and then cook it for like a day, and I can add the vegetables whenever, and it will eventually become a stock. Now, when I looked this up online, I remember it talked about browning the meat first and a few other things before I got bored and stopped reading, so I'm not sure what's optional and what isn't. Before I dump my precious baby carrots and leftover onions into this pot, I'd like to check with the LJ nation and ask you all: am I actually on my way to making something edible, or should I empty my stockpot into the dumpster now?

Mistakes made so far, apart from carving:

1. The chicken was too big, and therefore I can't fit all eight pieces in the pan at once. Considering it takes close to a half hour to fry the whole thing, I don't know if I should fry them afterwards -- they'll have been at room temperature for too long, and I wouldn't put them in the fridge like they are. The space problme may also have to do with the skin integrity problems I had while carving.

2. Forgot to put the seasoning on a few of the pieces before I put the flour on them. And I don't think they're the same pieces.... On Good Eats, they seasoned all the pieces before dredging, but I don't quite have that kind of room. I may have to be more creative about my layout next time.

3. Couldn't recognize the chicken pieces by shape; had to feel them for the bone structure.

4. Forgot to put the splatter guard on for the first few minutes.

I also am not sure I've got this temperature control thing down. We'll find out.

So far, it looks like this will at least be edible, and if I do this again it'll be better.