General Food Talk

[Gutmutter]

Have you ever tried making them yourself? Wicked easy. I use just a little olive oil and a small grinding of sea salt at the end to cut back on both. Frozen is good, too. I like to split the batch from one large sweet potato and take the other half in my lunch the next day.

[inthegarden]

I like to peel and cut sweet potatoes in round slices and fry them in a skillet with a small amount of butter (just enough so they don't stick). After they are cooked, sprinkle with Pumpkin Pie Spice.

[Critical]

Have you ever tried making them yourself? Wicked easy. I use just a little olive oil and a small grinding of sea salt at the end to cut back on both. Frozen is good, too. I like to split the batch from one large sweet potato and take the other half in my lunch the next day.

I haven't tried making fries, but I probably should. With the holidays coming, they're probably going to be on sale a lot. I can experiment!

ITG - I sometimes have trouble with sweet potatoes because so many recipes for them are, well, sweet. I did find one - and I've gushed all over it in the Recipes thread - that I like that has maple syrup and some savory spices, as well as onions and chicken. I've done it in the oven and on the stovetop and it's great. I need the balance between savory and sweet. My cousin makes a sweet potato pie recipe at Thanksgiving that is just TOO sweet - marshmallows and maybe maple on top too. Ick.

[prhoshay]

Some people never can get things sweet enough, and they get reinforcement from people telling them how good it is. The people that come to mind are the people that love to brag on their baked beans. I don't think there is anything worse than sweet baked beans. YUCK-O! I'm guessing that a lot of people have never had the savory baked beans, though. To die for!!!

[prhoshay]

Had a Veggie Delite sandwich from Subway, and it was wonderful!!! I never thought I'd like a sandwich like that. There will, eventually, be a repeat performance on that one!!!

[PhoneGrrrl]

I don't think there is anything worse than sweet baked beans.

I totally agree--Honey Baked Ham (of all counter-intuitive places!) used to make some really savory baked beans years ago but they quit making them. They were the only ones I could tolerate until I hit a BBQ place here last Saturday. Those were some well-seasoned, smokey beans with no sweetness. They're still out there, just hard to find.

I've got a question for the bacon lovers here--has anyone baked bacon? If so, for how long? I have a recipe for making baked bacon cups & filling them with a deviled egg mixture, which sounds ideal for my office Thanksgiving party this Thursday. The recipe says to bake the bacon at 350 for 1 hour to 1.5 hours. I did a test run with one piece of bacon, baking for only one hour, and it came out a bit too "done." Bon Appetit has a similar bacon cup recipe, but they say 350 for just 20 minutes, which seems awfully short. Any baking bacon advice would sure be appreciated.

[Gutmutter]

My daughter's bacon wrapped pineapple recipe bakes at 375* for 25-30 min.

[prhoshay]

A friend, whose son used to make bacon in the oven, always told me 350 for 20 minutes, which (in my mind) seemed like a short time. That bacon's claim to fame, per my friend, was that it was just so "pretty" (mind you, I never saw it!). Run a test piece, like you did before; how badly can it go if you monitor it? I assume that they are not talking about thick-cut bacon.

[ClosetRTWatcher]

I totally agree--Honey Baked Ham (of all counter-intuitive places!) used to make some really savory baked beans years ago but they quit making them. They were the only ones I could tolerate until I hit a BBQ place here last Saturday. Those were some well-seasoned, smokey beans with no sweetness. They're still out there, just hard to find.

I've got a question for the bacon lovers here--has anyone baked bacon? If so, for how long? I have a recipe for making baked bacon cups & filling them with a deviled egg mixture, which sounds ideal for my office Thanksgiving party this Thursday. The recipe says to bake the bacon at 350 for 1 hour to 1.5 hours. I did a test run with one piece of bacon, baking for only one hour, and it came out a bit too "done." Bon Appetit has a similar bacon cup recipe, but they say 350 for just 20 minutes, which seems awfully short. Any baking bacon advice would sure be appreciated.

We usually bake it hotter than this. We lay is out on one of those pans that lets the grease drip off through the bottom and then cook it at 400 degrees. It takes about 15-20 minutes total and I check it a few times along the way to flip it over and rearrange if anything is cooking unevenly.

It works great, but the bacon definitely has a different consistency. I personally prefer chewy bacon, and I think that is better accomplished in a frying pan. I really appreciate the oven technique if I am going to crumble the bacon and cook with it or if I need to cook a large amount and don't want to babysit multiple batches in pan.

[PhoneGrrrl]

Today was the Thanksgiving office lunch so I thought I'd report back on the bacon cups. As it turned out, when I had a whole pan of 24 mini muffin cups draped in bacon, it really did take an hour at 350. I did them last night and checkd at 30 minutes then every 10 afterward. They were a huge hit and were all eaten. I suppose if the pieces were flat and not touching another one, then the lower time would have been ideal. Trial & error, that's what's fun about cooking.