Grocery: Green Onions, Stew Meat: Fill & Download for Free

Chili (green or red) is a great cast iron dish. Here is my recipe:ingredients:3 red bell peppersa red onioncarrot10 garlic clovesone of every type of red chili pepper they have fresh at the grocery storea couple types of whole dried chilieshandful of crumpled corn chipschili powdercuminsaltpepper2 cans of PBR or similarly light beer (or maybe a pumpkin beer if you are feeling interesting)water to coverlarge beef bonesa can of tomato pureestew meat coated in salt, pepper, cloves and cinnamonrough chop all fresh veggies and garlic and sweat in large pot with dry chilies crumpled chips half the chili powder and cumin you intend to use and some salt and pepper... when everything is soft add the beer, the beef bones, and water to cover. bring to a boil... taste... salt to taste...reduce to simmer and cook for an hour and half. remove beef bones and puree the mixture. add the tomato puree. In a separate skillet sear the seasoned stew meat. add stew meat and cook till tender. Add the remainder of chili powder and cumin, stir to combine and serve.

I lived there five years, but I’m pretty much self-taught and have gotten pretty damn good at cooking basic Chinese meals. My credentials are in the pictures, taken from the ten dishes I cooked in February for Chinese New Year, entirely by myself, in rural Kentucky. I got a lot of ingredients from a Chinese grocery in Lexington, but you’d be surprised how much you can pick up in Wal-Mart if you shop carefully.There’s also not really a single “Chinese” way to cook anything, any more than there’s a properly “Italian” way to cook pizza (although don’t tell the Neapolitans that) or a single “Belgian” style of beer. It’s more like a philosophy and a couple of core common elements across a wide range of styles. My host father made a mapo tofu dish that tasted exactly like spaghetti bolognese, I think because he cooked it with oregano and basil. That doesn’t make it, or him, less Chinese.First, as other answers mention, you’re usually either dicing things into small morsels for stir-frying/quick deep-frying, or you’re letting things marinate/stew/steam for a while. There’s emphasis on preparation; actual frying times are usually pretty short. As an example, you might spend hours rolling dumpling wrappers, mincing and mixing filling, then stuffing and folding dumplings. If you’ve ever spent Chinese New Years’ with a traditional family, you’ve probably been drafted into a dumpling chain gang, and been judged on the shape of your dumplings (mine are almost always terrible).But once they’re prepped, they only need to be boiled for about three minutes. When they float, they’re ready.Chinese cooking is full of little bits of wisdom and tradition like that—a similar one regards the use of aromatics, traditionally a mix of diced/sliced garlic, ginger, and the white parts of a scallion/green onion/leek, with the green parts reserved as a garnish, added a few seconds before the dish is ready to be plated, or after it’s been plated, depending.When stir-frying, the general rule is you first heat up your wok, then add in cold oil, let it heat up and whip it around so that the wok is fully coated. Depending on the smoke point of your oil, you want to be careful how hot you let it get. Then you add your mixture of aromatics; once you can smell them cooking, then you add your other stuff. Usually you start with a sauce base (soy sauce, vinegar, cooking wine, sugar, salt, chili oil, etc.), then you add your ingredients in the order it takes them to cook. So something like root vegetables/ meats/ seafood/ leaf vegetables and tofu /cooked noodles and other prepared foods/ delicate spices and other heat-sensitive foods, more or less. This does not apply to dishes like The Three Freshnesses or Twice-Cooked Pork; in that case, you cook the heavier ingredients in different batches first, then take them out when they’re cooked through. The aromatics get added at the beginning of the last batch, so they don’t get overcooked, and then the pre-cooked ingredients are returned to the pot and mixed with a sauce.The ingredients are mostly pretty easy to find, at least for the really basic dishes. A lot of recipes can be made with just oil, salt, sugar, and vinegar. Many recipes will call for corn starch or flour, either as a thickener for sauces or as breading for deep-frying. Light and dark soy sauces are useful for flavoring and color respectively, chili oil and hot peppers for spicy dishes, maybe bean sauces or fish sauces or other regional sauces for specific flavors. Some dishes, you might need cumin or Sichuan peppers or cinnamon sticks or something.This stuff is in Chinese, but none of it’s that crazy. Soy sauces, vinegar, a fish sauce, some different spicy bean sauces and premade barbecue-type sauces, usually purchased based on the chef’s regional cuisine preferences, family background, and personal tastes. The second can from the left on the top shelf is just peanut butter.Some things you can replace or substitute with homemade alternatives (some sauces), other things are more difficult or impossible to replace (Sichuan numbing peppers).Here are some basic recipes you should be able to make pretty much anywhere in the world:Scrambled Eggs with TomatoesSautéed Potato, Green Pepper and EggplantSpicy and Sour Shredded PotatoStir-fried Spinach with Minced GarlicSichuan Dry-fried Green BeansKung Pao ChickenFried Pork Fillet with Sweet and Sour Sauce RecipeSweet and Sour Spare RibsChinese Coca-cola Chicken Wings RecipeBut even stuff like Peking Duck is not crazy hard if you’re patient and have an oven that’s large enough. It requires some prep time, but it’s still not overly complicated. Get a duck, clean it, let it dry out overnight on a wine bottle (I think I used an oversized bottle of soy sauce, because we’re not big wine drinkers). Brush it in a marinade a few times. I think the marinade was salt, honey thinned with water, cooking wine, some white pepper, five-spice powder, some soy sauce, and brown sugar (so the skin browns nicely). Nothing a decent supermarket won’t carry, and nothing that can’t be substituted.Paired with a store-bought sweet bean sauce and some chopped green onions and Mission flour tortillas, because 差不fucking多.It took me about three or four years of semi-regular cooking to get to that level, but this was with essentially zero training and very little effort, just following recipes until I started to see and internalize patterns.That’s the Dao. 087 Butcher an Ox

For me the easiest way was to start a garden. By doing this the only food item I have to spend money on is meat. For savings on meat I look for sale ads, coupons, and make good use of my freezer. Also, make large pot items like stews, chili, and spaghetti. If you don’t have a yard for a garden you can still grow some fruits and vegetables indoors. One of the easiest to grow indoors are green onions