Shortcut to Cooking Speghetti

To make your speghetti dish, you need to boil a pot of water to cook the noodle till it is al dente first.  Then you need a pan to fry the ingredients to flavour it.  By baking it, you cut down these two processes so you will have less utensils to wash too.

Here is the recipe for it from Feel Good Foodie.  I like it that Yumna shared her recipes with lots of photos.

I first discovered this recipe on "I love Recipes" Facebook page.  I like it better as there are lesser ingredients required to cook it.  Except for Oregano, they are ingredients which I often use in my kitchen. 

Braised or Pulled Pork to the Rescue

As I boil soup almost on a daily basis, now and then, there are meat on leftover soup bone that no one wants to eat.  I will use them to make a braised pork dish with the following ingredients:

I discovered that it is alright to even use the soup bone from boiling Lotus Root soup.  Do not discard the sauce from braising this dish.  You can add the soup bone from the soup that you will be boiling the following day to continue braising it.  Just add additional sauces to taste if you have to add more water to cover the meat to braise.

Here is another way I made use of the meat from the soup bone. I remove the meat from the bone and break it up with a fork.

I used that to cook my own version of pulled pork:

I can serve it by topping it over my Baby Zhong Cheng, which I buy from Lotus on a weekly basis.  I usually receive them in the condition as shown on their website.

I prepare it by cutting each bunch in half after washing them.  I then cook it in one of the following methods:

-in a pot of boiling water (my preferred choice). 

-placed on a plate with 1 to 2 tablespoons of water to microwave for 1-2 minutes.

-steam over a pot of soup I am boiling for the day.

You know they are ready when the leaves are limp and have turned dark green. Removed them from the receptable and drain as much of the water as you can before mixing them with the above Asian flavour sauce mixture.  As the vegetable is already wet from steaming or boiling, I do not have to add water or soup to the sauce: 

1/2 Tbsp Sugar

1 Tbsp Soya Sauce
1/2 Tsp Oyster Sauce

Dash of White Pepper

However, if you have been too heavy handed with the sauces, you can dilute it by adding a tablespoon of hot water/ABC soup. 

From the following article I read, I discovered other ways I can serve my pulled pork:

36 Ways With Leftover Pulled Pork

I also learn from it other ways to flavour and cook pulled pork.  These are some that I would like to try making one day:

I found this recipe for pulled pork that I can cook with a slow cooker a day ahead.  It is great for days when I have to leave the house earlier than usual.

I like eating Banh Mi so I am glad to find Lemongrass Pulled Meat recipe to go with it.

I actually have a shortcut for preparing the pork to go with it.  I will prepare and marinate the meat the way I have shared earlier for making my sweet and sour pork. Once they are pan fried, I will cut them into strips to eat with the bread.

Do you have a breadmaker?  If you look at your manual, you will discover that you can make meat floss with it.   This is the instructions for making meat floss with my breadmaker.

Meat floss being a dried product can be stored in an airtight jar. You can read how you can store and make use of it by reading Chinese Pork Floss is the Salty-Sweet Addition Your Pantry Needs shared on Foodnetwork.  But I think Beryl Shereshewsky taste test of dishes made with pork floss will help you to decide if this is something that you would like to try.

How to Cut Up a Whole Chicken to Store

How should you cut a whole chicken and store it in the fridge?  The best instruction I have seen so far is from Walk To Eat because other than photos, the blogger had also shared a video of the process.  However, before I proceed, I will do what my mother taught me to do and that is to give the whole chicken a good rub down with coarse salt first before I wash it off.  The salt can kill some bateria, so it will remove any smell there is on your chicken.

If you follow through with his instructions, this is how your chicken will be parted.  I have drawn red lines on the parts to show how I would cut them up into smaller portions for my soup or dishes.  

I will cut each drumstick and wings into three sections and the carcass into two sections.  These are parts from the chicken that I will pack together in a container for boiling soup with:

1) chicken feet
2) the bony parts of the chicken, like the stumps and wingtips

3) the joints from the drumsticks 
4) the carcass

By storing them together, it will be easier to take them out from the freezer when it is time for me to boil my soup.  You can see from his video for making Basic Chicken Soup that the blogger used a whole chicken to make it.  This was exactly how I used to boil soup which is wasteful for a small family if you do not eat the chicken meat.

You can learn how I make my ABC soup which is rather similar to what he is making, except that I prefer to use pork soup bones to flavour my soup.  

The reason why I steam the frozen pork over the soup is to:

-save time on thawing it.
-get rid of the scum.

The Chinese traditional way to get rid of the scum is to pour hot water over the soup bone.  However, I discovered that once it is boiling in the soup, more scums will appear which I will have to remove. 

This is how I would like my pork soup bone to look like when it is ready to be added to the soup to continue boiling.

Marinating the soup bone with salt before boiling it in the soup makes it tasty.  So, the meat on it will more likely be eaten than discarded.  You can read about the additional ingredients I used in making this soup to change its flavour or use it as a soup stock to cook other dishes at the following link:

Do you like soup? If so, what is your favorite soup?

This is another way to cut your chicken if you want to debone it.

One Pot Rice

If I am running short on time to cook a full meal for your family, I would consider cooking a one-pot meal as it is a time saving cooking process.  It will also reduce the number of dishes I have to wash.

One of such meal you can find at hawker stalls in Asia is the claypot rice.  Let's learn from a chef who has retired, how to cook it.  

Do you like eating the crispy, slightly burnt rice that you can dig out from the bottom of a claypot?  He also shared how you can get that right by moving the sides of the pot over the fire.

You can also use a rice cooker to cook it if you do not have a claypot.  It may not be as flavourful without the scotched rice that you can only get from using claypot.

You can also cook this one pot meal with glutinous rice.  If you would rather not as you will get a nauseous feeling like you have overeaten after eating glutinous rice, here is a tip the cook shared.  Instead of using just glutinous rice, for every 1 cup of glutinous rice, add 1/2 cup of white rice.  She said that you do not even have to wash the rice cooker after you have cooked the required ingredients in it.  Just wash the rice and add it to the (stained) rice cooker with the required amount water to cook it.  Then add the cooked ingredients to mix in once the rice is ready.

Here is another method to prepare this one pot meal.  You can marinate the ingredients used and keep it aside.  The boil the rice.  Once the water is reduced and bubbles can be seen on top of the rice arranged the chicken on top the rice to continue cooking.  The heat from the rice will cook the raw ingredients properly.  

I would prefer to use boneless chicken to cook it as I do not like the idea of bitting into bones when I eat the rice.

Another way to cook this one pot meal is to steam it and serve it with rice.  

You do not have to use a steam oven.  I will steam it over the pot of soup boiling for the day (which will not be Lotus soup).

Shortcut to Cooking Nasi Biryani

Don't you agree that we, Malaysians, are very lucky? Most restaurants operated by Indian Muslims (Mamak) here serve Nasi Biryani (or Briyani). We can eat it anytime of the day because some Mamak restaurants operate 24/7. 

Other than that I can also buy meal ready to eat (MRE) Nasi Briyani. My go to brand for MREs is currently Brahim’s. That is because they used to be the appointed caterer for Malaysia Airlines.  They supply it with chicken or mutton included.

MREs are great for days when I ran out of ingredients to cook or when I have to leave the house early.  It is easy to prepare to eat because I can heat it up by steaming or boiling the package in a pot of water for 8 to 10 minutes. I usually steam it over a pot of soup I am boiling for the day. I can also pour the rice with the meat into a bowl to heat up, covered, in a microwave oven for 1 1/2 minutes.

This is how it is cooked if you prefer to make it from scratch and serve it with chicken. 

You can also cook it in a rice cooker.  But, just like when you cook chicken rice in it, you should switch the power off as soon as it is cooked to avoid browning the lower layer of the rice.  Look at the number of ingredients you need to cook the rice.  I wonder if I will consider cooking it from scratch.

 These are the ingredients and steps for cooking the chicken.

I can also buy Brahim's Nasi Briyani paste to cook it with my prefered Thai white rice.

Based on the video I watched, I wonder if I will be able to use the paste to cook the chicken instead of rice.  I can cook it just like how I use their paste to cook Ayam Percik in my airfryer as follows:

I will let you know if it works.

Leftover Rice

Recently, I came across the following article shared at Matha Stewart.

How to Store Cooked Rice Safely—and the Best Way to Reheat It, According to Experts

It is noted there that cooked rice should be discarded if it has been left at room temperature for more than two hours as eating it will pose a food safety hazard, especially for those with compromised immune systems.

I do not think that Asians who eat rice on a daily basis will do that. In fact, we boil enough rice for the day so that we can eat it for lunch and dinner.  When it is time to eat, we scoop the rice, right out of the rice cooker, to serve.  Any leftover for the day will be scooped into a container with cover and stored in the refrigerator.

The important thing to note is that you should not add more water than is required to cook your rice as it can spoil more quickly due to high moisture content. I (most Asians) have been taught to use my finger to make sure that I add the right amount of water.  To do that, I put my index finger right above the rice in the rice cooker.  The amount of water I poured in should reach the first knuckle of my finger.  You can read more about that at The Spruce Eats.  They even shared a video of the procedure.

All rice cookers are supplied with a measuring cup.  I find it easier to add 1 cup of water for every cup of rice I cook.  I have been buying Thai white rice and I noticed that it turns out better if I add about 3/4 cup more water to it.  If the rice is not cooked fluffy enough, I can sprinkle 1 to 2 tablespoons of boiled water over the rice and let it cook further.  The only way you can save a soggy pot of rice is to make porridge with it. Been there, done that.

When I was young, we do not have a refrigerator at home.  We kept leftovers at room temperature in a kitchen cabinet with netted doors for ventilation.  We placed a ceremic cup under each leg of the cabinet.  The cups are specially made.  It is like a cup within a cup to hold water.  The cabinet leg is inserted into the inner cup and water is place in the outer circle of the cup.  This photo of a bed bug trap or interceptor will give you an idea what I mean.  The water placed at the "outer pitfall" noted in this photo prevented ants and insects from crawling in to contaminate our food.  The ceremic cups also prevented the legs of the cabinet from getting rotten by water being splashed on the floor when we washed the area. 

I managed to find a photo of a Chinese cabinet on Pinterest that closely resembled what we had, except that the legs were longer on ours and there is an extra compartment at the bottom for storing our crockery.

When my mom started using the rice cooker, she would leave the leftover rice in it till the following day.  There was a general rule that we must all follow.  We were not allowed to fluff up the cooked rice to loosen the grains as stiring it could make it gooey and spoil it sooner.  The next day the leftover rice will be scooped into a bowl.  After the pot from the rice cooker had been washed, rice for the day will be cooked in it.  The leftover rice will be poured in to be heated up when most of the water had evaporated and bubbles had started popping above the nearly cooked rice.  

Do Asians have stronger constitution?  My grandma lived to a ripe old age of 101 years eating leftovers that were considered not properly stored.  She taught me to pluck the molds off stale bread before eating it.  I noticed that my former Western colleagues will not eat bread after a day even though the loaf had not passed its expiration date.  They used to joke that I ate ants with my bread.  I guess there must be some ants hiding inside the bread after I removed what I could see on the outside before eating it.

Nowadays, we store leftover rice in a container with cover and put it in the refrigerator.  Unless you are making porridge, I will not suggest heating leftover rice in a pot on the stove as there will be wastage as the grains will stick to the pot.  You will also have to watch over it to prevent it from burning.  These are ways I prefer to reheat my leftover rice.  By:

-boiling it up in a pot with leftover soup or water to make porridge.
-heating it in a mini rice cooker (at my bike shop) with 1 to 2 tablespoons of water or leftover soup or sauces.

-making fried rice with it.

-steaming it in a covered bowl over a pot of boiling soup (not when boiling lotus roots soup).
-microwaving it 2-3 minutes in a covered bowl with a tablespoon of water added to prevent it from drying out.  

It is true that you should reheat just the amount of cooked rice you want to eat.  Any leftover reheated rice should be kept in the fridge once it is cool but you are not to mix it with the other leftover rice already in the fridge.  Rice that has been reheated too many times can go stale easily.  If you have to reheat the same bowl of rice again, take it out of the fridge to reheat only when you are about to eat it.

Some people will consider buying mini rice cookers to cook just enough rice for the day.  The one that I have is large enough to boil 5 cups of rice.  It has been with me for more than 20 years.  Instead of boiling just enough for the day, I usually boil up to 4 cups of rice each time as I think that it is a great way for me to save time, water and energy cooking it.  That is enough plain rice cooked to feed us for 4 to 6 days.  

To make sure that it will be safe to eat after so many days, I make sure that:

-I do not add more water than is required to cook my rice.  
-the scoop I used for the rice is clean.
-the rice is not warm when I store it in the refrigerator.
-I store the rice in a container with cover.
-the leftover rice to be stored are not stained with sauces or ingredients.
-uneaten reheated rice are not be mixed with the rest of the leftover rice stored in the refrigerator.

Knead your Dough with a Ziplock Bag

If you do not have a hand or stand mixer or a breadmaker and you do not like the idea of using your hands to knead sticky dough, you can prepare it in a ziplock bag.  I agree with Left Brain Craft Brain that it is a fun way to initiate a kid to cook anything that requires dough prepared. 

Watch this video for making Fried Dough Balls" and you will get an idea. 

You can also use the same method to prepare dough for baking bread.  This baker is able to shorten the resting time of the dough by microwing a glass of water for 2 minutes.  She then put the dough in the ziplock bag to rest for 30 minutes in the microwave oven with the glass of heated water.

 

I first came across this idea on Cookrate Facebook page for making Ham and Cheese Bun.  If you are going to use a breadmaker to prepare the dough, you can add the ingredients "3" to "10" in the order I have written it in the following table.