Cooking Good Food - Ramens of the day

The Italian cookbook I swear by says to make ragù bolognese with red wine and no garlic, so I gave that a shot and it turned out great without much work. Next time I might punch up the spices a bit by adding clove and maybe a bit of cinnamon.

IMG_0254

4 Likes

I think bolognese can be done a bunch of ways depending on personal preference. I’d like to try Kenji’s recipe one day but it just seems like too much work so I typically take ideas from it and alter Marcella Hazan’s recipe which is much simpler. Usually I add mushrooms and a little fish sauce for extra depth and umami. And a mix of beef/lamb/pork instead of just beef.

1 Like

Mushrooms would be great. the recipe I have calls for 1/3 beef, 1/3 pork, 1/3 veal, but I just used all beef for simplicity.

The serious eats bolognese recipe is goat imo. MIght be similar. Looks like same meats.

It freezes well, so just make a vat of it to justify the effort. You can get a whole year’s worth of ragu in a few hours of active cooking.

1 Like

I believe that’s the traditional way of doing it based on recipes I’ve seen, plus an Italian place in town that puts all three meats in their sauce. As I mentioned above some people advised putting sausage meat in their sauce in addition to beef and I think it was a good call to add some extra richness - I did like 2 parts ground beef to 1 part sausage.

1 Like

Almost always Costco, which is a substantial step up from a usual grocer, but it’s not a boutique butcher.

My grandfather raised beef cattle, so yes.

i haven’t seen the show but the meat in UK supermarket isn’t better than the stuff in the US by any means taste wise.

Health wise i don’t know.

could be, but i’ll need some more citations i guess. I’ll try to look up that show.

Bit of a non-sequitur here, but during quarantine/COVID, I’ve found some inspiration from the NYT Cooking instagram account. Many more hits than misses. The entrée recipes are fairly simple, with generally compact recipe lists and a lack of 3-hour Kenji-like preparation times. Highly recommended for when folks are wanting to try something different but not put in a ton of labor.

2 Likes

This? Strikes me as alarmist and uninformative bullshit. That’s not to say we don’t use way too many pesticides and such, and more than the UK, that it’s a problem, and that it has significant negative health and environmental effects. But none of the three chemicals she names as “known carcinogens” with that super authoritative tone are in fact known carcinogens. They are suspected carcinogens based on the effects of giving massive doses to lab rats.

Those distinctions do matter, and imo the overly alarmist way these things are often presented is disingenuous and counterproductive. They don’t accurately present relative risks in a way that’s useful to people or the institutions we rely on for safe food.

https://twitter.com/C4Dispatches/status/1315728576487084039

2 Likes

Those are examples of muddy arguments that don’t really make sense. First, you can’t prove something is non-harmful. Non-harmful to who? Under what circumstances? A jar of cashews is non-harmful to me but potentially lethal to my cousin, while whole cashew fruits are harmful to almost everybody. People can and do die from drinking too much water. I have a bottle of permethrin under my kitchen sink right now. Not only is it not harmful in any way I’m likely to use it, it most likely wouldn’t be harmful if I drank the whole bottle. But it’s a problematic chemical for other reasons that is carelessly over-used and quite honestly probably shouldn’t be available to the general public.

According to this London based organization, food poisoning stats aren’t comparable.

I’m not sure what the deal is with the kids vs adults safety standards, but I’d be willing to bet that it too is a dishonest misrepresentation. These sorts of dubious claims have always been widespread in the health, food safety, and environmental movements, and it really sucks because the BS appeals to emotion end up overshadowing and detracting from real problems.

One area you can see this is with GMO foods. There are legitimate areas for concern with them, mostly related to patents from evil rent seeking corporations, along with a few other things. But the thing everybody gets up in arms about is a bunch of frankenfoods argle bargle even though there is damn near unanimous scientific consensus that all currently available genetically engineered foods present no more risk than the ones they are replacing.

Are there problems with industrial agriculture and food chains in the US and elsewhere? Yes. Lots of them.

Are there meaningful differences in safety between US and European food? idk. If I had to guess, I’d say probably not.

Hoo boy, I have a relative who worked as a slaughterhouse inspector and food safety in the US is a disaster relative to Europe.

2 Likes

lol wut? Our food is tortured before it’s killed but between decent inspection standards and all of the drugs/bleaches in our food supply North American food safety is GOAT. All of the processed crap is garbage but meat specifically is as safe as it’s ever been… like… ever?

On a bet I’d be comfy eating almost any of the meat from a normal middle class grocery store raw. The chicken would make me vomit but I wouldn’t be concerned about the tiny chance of me getting sick.

The European take on GMOs and food additives is less precautionary principle and more weird anti-science and elitism.

I guarantee this is no longer true after four years of Trump but would be surprised if it was ever true tbh

Yup. The vast majority of meat consumed in this country is factory farmed garbage.

Ketchup was created to help stomach spoiled food.

22 posts were split to a new topic: Diversity and Inclusion at Bon Appetit

A post was merged into an existing topic: Diversity and Inclusion at Bon Appetit

Bon Appetit content given its own thread

1 Like