I made a pot roast in my instant pot but it was too big to put vegetables in with it while it cooked but it did create a lot of juices. I was thinking of taking out the meat when it is done and putting potatoes, carrots, and cabbage in the juices to cook after.

Is that a good idea? If it is, do you have any advice on the best way to do it, like timings, settings, or seasonings?

Made cast iron seared t-bone steaks for my husband and I. I thought l would be able to eat all of mine since I share with the kiddo but no. I have about 8 oz of medium rare steak. I will be making a solo dinner tomorrow night so I need ideas to use it up. Throw your best recipes/ideas to inspire me. TIA

Hi! While I was grabbing chicken to put in my instant pot, I used a fork because I didn't want to grab it with my hands. I accidentally punctured the meat pad underneath the chicken while grabbing it. Is it still safe to eat? The chicken was raw. The meat pad was in the package, I did NOT cook it with the chicken (I could only find answers for cooking the pad with the chicken online). The chicken is being pressure cooked in the instant pot. Thank you for the help!

It seems like spaghetti and meatballs is a staple at Italian restaurants, or at least it's certainly a stereotypical Italian dish in the minds of many. However, it seems odd that it always uses a marinara sauce. I've read that spaghetti/linguini is more suited to sauces like alfredo that will adhere some to the noodles, while penne makes more sense with marinara sauce because the ridges can capture the sauce. Can someone explain to me why it's usually spaghetti served with the meatballs instead of penne or another type of pasta, or why - if it has to be spaghetti with the meatballs - the dish uses marinara sauce instead of another sauce like alfredo?

I made beef mince and beans for a burrito mix about five days ago, it sat in the fridge for about 2-3 days then I moved it to the freezer for two days. I’ve taken it out and have microwaved the entire batch, is it safe to keep in the fridge and microwave in the next few days?

Hi all. I’ve come across a lot of American BBQ cooking videos on Instagram reels lately, and have always wondered why a fuck tonne of seasoning is almost mandatory? Im no chef by any means but surely that much seasoning is a little overkill. Cheers.

i made hamburgers with ground beef. I bought the ground beef tuesday and cooked it today, the best buy date in the ground beef it said best used or freeze by february 3rd. I cook all burgers to 160-165F.

I am worried bc i thought maybe the burgers had the smallest sour smell to them.. my husband disagrees and thought they smelled fine but i have never had beef in the fridge that long and i’m having the worst anxiety that I gave us all food poisoning. I don’t even struggle with anxiety so no idea why this is stuck in my brain.

Please help.. would it have been obvious with the taste and smell if my beef was bad? Can I trust the best buy date on the package?

Thoughts on Thrive market and is it worth it?

My daughter is Dairy, egg and Tree nut free due to Allergies but also experiences severe eczema I’m looking to do away with the inflammatory oils, super processed foods etc and I hate using instacart because a lot of the items I find don’t list processed in a facility with so and so and I receive the items only to return them… I’m trying to find a way of making my life a bit easier when it comes to meal time for my 1.5 year old who also happens to be the pickiest eater alive

I was making fried chicken and only needed pickle juice for my recipe. Now I have these pickles that are left unused. The question is how we can recycle and reuse these pickles. Yes, I could give them to people, but my friends and family are not huge pickle lovers. Additionally, I do not have a compost bin. Any ideas?

I usually use it to enhance Matzoh balls and to fry up Hainanese chicken rice, but I'm not planning on doing any of those any time soon. What else should I use it for?

So I bought some raw chicken wings from the store a few weeks ago. I immediately put them in the freezer. Later that night (like maybe 4-5 hours) my power went out. I didn't open the freezer but the power was out for a little over 24 hours. When the power came back I was stupid and forgot to check on the chicken and it ended up freezing again. A week goes by and I thaw it out in fridge over a couple days. It doesn't smell bad and the color doesn't seem off. Should I throw it out anyway? My worry is that when the power went out it might have gotten spoiled somehow.

I got tired of scrubbing my GreenPan ceramic non-stick pan, actually I just got fed up and looked for a decent stainless steel one. All-Clad was on sale, it came in today, and after cooking bacon in it this morning I did some filets in it tonight. They came out great and the pan cleaned up nicely with minimal effort. I'm getting to like SS even better the carbon steel!

I was going to post a pic of the perfectly cooked filet, but apparently images are not allowed.

I want to make pork and beans. I have pinto beans, how long do i soak them for? I plan on using salt pork belly for my beans

My friend told me about her experience the other week, and I thought I’d share it here—maybe it’ll inspire someone like it did me.

TL;DR: She started an in-home meal prep company late last year, and a few months later, she’s at $9k MRR with a waitlist.

She lives in a big city, went to culinary school, and was working as a nanny. Her husband was just graduating in a competitive field and working a lot, but his job was basically just covering rent. They needed something she could do to bring in more income.

Somehow they stumbled onto the idea of meal prep and started looking into it. I got connected with them last July through a mutual friend because they needed a website—that’s my trade.

We built the site and launched in early August. I remember this project because they were super cautious with spending. They didn’t want to overcommit since they weren’t sure if the business would even work.

The model was simple: • $300 per week + groceries • The chef travels to the client’s house and preps a week’s worth of meals • Each client = $1,200/month revenue • Since clients cover groceries, it’s a pure service with almost no overhead • Goal: Get to 2 clients per day

They worked with our mutual friend on SEO, and after launch, I mostly moved on with my life—checked in here and there, made some edits, nothing crazy.

Fast forward to last week—they reached out with a laundry list of questions because lo and behold… it worked.

They’ve now got 7 clients—2 on Monday, 2 on Tuesday, 2 on Wednesday, 1 on Thursday. That’s $8,400/month before upsells—so right around $9k MRR. And they have a waitlist for Mon-Wed.

Now they’re hitting real business problems—needing to filter leads, set up better customer communication, hire a VA for grocery prep, and bring on another chef. We’ve already got them a solid VA, and they’re about to hire their first junior chef. We’re talking almost daily now, working on stuff.

It’s crazy seeing the shift from “is this even going to work?” to “how do we keep up?”

From what I understand, their first client came from a random nanny connection… but things really took off around Christmas when Google started sending leads.

Most leads have come from SEO & the website—some from Reddit and social media, but mostly organic search. They’re planning to test ads after hiring their next chef.

Moral of the story: If you’ve thought about being a private chef, this might be way more doable than you think. Don’t give up after the first week—it might take a minute to find your groove, but once you do, you might be another “overnight success.”

Not sure what demand looks like in smaller cities, but there are multiple in-home meal prep chefs in their area, and everyone seems to be waitlisted. My gut says this could work almost anywhere.

Happy to answer questions when I’m on Reddit. AMA.

• The content here is all real. I ran it through ChatGPT for spelling, grammar, and general editing for readability. The content is all real though.

🍌

My boyfriend and I were going to make shepherd's pie for the first time tonight. I have major anxiety with everything lol but it's very bad around food specifically contaminated/ food that could make you sick. I have a huge fear of getting sick. So I'm normally careful with my food. Ground beef is something I'm more comfortable cooking. Anyways I asked my bf to take out the ground beef around 3pm for dinner and I ended up falling asleep until 4pm he had kept the ground beef in the packaging from the store, put it in a ziplock bag(open) and into some cold water. Anyways so after we were done mashing potatoes and doing everything else and it was time for the ground beef ( he put it in the fridge at the 1 hour of it being in the water mark) I noticed there was water in the packaging like about maybe less than one around 1/2 cup? The beef looked discolored which is normal when you rinse out the meat. But it didn't smell weird or taste weird. My anxiety has now got the best of me and I'm so paranoid that it's contaminated. Was it still fine to cook? Would we get sick? He's still eating it. Just want to add that the beef was cooking in a pan for probably over 20/25 mins and then at 400⁰f for 20 mins and on broil high for 5 mins. Is it still safe to eat or should we have just thrown it away? Sorry for the long post.

Any recommendations for this, either store bought or homemade? It doesn't need to be no salt/msg, I'm just looking for something maybe a little more reasonable.

Hello all! Long time lurker, first time caller.

My girlfriend found this stoneware tray/dish at our local repurpose store for $1.

I had two questions:

1. What can I use this for?
2. Does it look in okay shape/what can i do to clean it up?

I appreciate y'all!

Basically dropped my shrimps into what was piercing boiling water that I used to cook noodles. They shrank to about half their original size, but some of it felt a little too snappy or translucent. I just saw their color and checked their texture with a fork and decided it was done. Am I screwed? I used it to make spring rolls so if it's raw, how do I cook them again. They were frozen shrimps btw.

I was making dinner because I’m home alone and everything was going well until I realized I was cooking it on too high of a temp. Now there’s a ton of burnt on black stuff that I’ve soaked in soap for half an hour for it to not come off, tried deglazing with rice vinegar, I’m desperate to get this stuff off.

I am making a beef chili recipe. It calls for six dried ancho chilies to be toasted and ground in a food processor. I don’t have a food processor so I purchased pre-ground ancho chili powder. Do you have any idea what the conversion rate here would be? Even just an educated guess of how much powder to use?

Brownies!!! Butter vs Oil - Milk vs Water Looking to make a box mix of brownies. Shooting for the Ghirardelli brand. I like my brownies chewy and dense. Not necessarily "fudgy". Just dense, dry and chewy! I despise cake consistency. I like when they settle down and dense up. Especially the corner pieces!! With that being said, which ingredients should I be using/substituting? I read to use oil instead of butter? Full fit milk instead of water? Use 1 less egg even? What to do?? I need help!

I have had my Power XL Smokeless Grill for like 5-6 years (using it almost every day for the past year)…and it’s finally starting to kick the bucket. The fan continues to shut itself off in the middle of cooking, and tonight the entire unit powered itself off and then back on again.

I live in an apartment that has no outdoor grilling abilities whatsoever, so I’ve been relying on my smokeless indoor grill to get the job done. Nothing fancy: chicken breast, pork chops, the occasional hamburgers.

I’ve heard some not so great reviews about the Power XL brand as a whole, so I’m thinking it might be time to try a product with a better public standing. Budget is also an issue. What does everyone recommend as a replacement that is a good product that won’t break the bank?

This will be my first time making them and while I have one 9x13 glass pan I'm planning on making a larger batch of the cabbage rolls and my stainless steel casserole pans are much larger--and deeper. Will they affect the taste of the food being in the over for an hour or two?

For me, it was the first time I made gumbo using the recipe from the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook. I was like 15, I had loved Justin Wilson, and wanted to make gumbo. There was a series of pictures indicating each stage and color of roux to help guide you in knowing if the roux was dark enough. I also remember the Hershey cookbook and how indulgent and decadent the old fashioned chocolate cake always looked.

As I stand making a roux for a delicious pot of gumbo tonight, I started thinking how indelible that image was, along with others when I started cooking. Do any of you have photo based memories of cookbooks or dishes?

Tried looking everywhere about this but couldn’t find anything.

Wondering if using a leave-in temp probe while cooking could lead to inaccurate/false readings due to heat transfer cooking the area around the probe faster.

Does this actually happen? If it does, is there a way around it?

Ironically enough, I did add labels to the bottom when I moved them to glass jars with the expiration dates.

I am going to get new ones but wondering if I am missing any basics.

Also, is there anything I can do with all the spices that are beyond their best by date? Mind you, some say expired in 2022 :X

I have in my possession a dozen or so jalapenos. The good news is, they’re not that hate and don’t taste like jalapenos (I asked, and yes they’re jalapenos). The bad news is, I hate jalapenos, due to the taste. I like hot peppers, just not these. The only thing I hate more than jalapenos is throwing away food.

So what’s something someone could do in this situation? Got any quick/simple recipes for me?

I’m not sure if this is a dumb question (I’m a beginner), but sometimes when I read a recipe in English, it says to add 1/8 or 1/4 of a cup of an ingredient. I was wondering, how big should the cup be? I have several cups of different sizes, with varying widths and heights, and I’m not sure how they measure it.