Cooking Rut

Ozzie_Isaac

I'm in a bit of a cooking rut.  What do you folks cook when you feel bored with same old stuff?

johnmitchell

Sometimes I just boil a pot of water!!!!

DoubleEgger

johnmitchell said:

Sometimes I just boil a pot of water!!!!

Bravo sir Bravo

fishlessman

google images helps alot, did that a few weeks ago with stuffed pork loin and found one with olives and sundried tomatoes, a take ive never seen before, there was also one there with crab, gruyere cheese and capers ive been thinking about. pictures pull you into new cooks better than seeing a recipe

DoubleEgger

Seriously, I'm in the same boat. The wife is trying to eat healthy so that rut is getting deeper. I bought a taco book and a tortilla press the other day to get out of the rut. 

YEMTrey

I try to cook something completely new to me when this happens.  The more involved the better.

RRP

Way back when both my wife and I were working stiffs we got in the habit of planning our menus for the following 7 days every Sunday. That meant for variety, what to buy or thaw and who was cooking. Now 12 years after retirement we still adhere to this practice and love it! 

johnmitchell

DoubleEgger said:

Seriously, I'm in the same boat. The wife is trying to eat healthy so that rut is getting deeper. I bought a taco book and a tortilla press the other day to get out of the rut. 

Same here.. I just realized I have ribs out for the weekend.. 

SmokeyPitt

I am in a rut as well...honestly I have just not been cooking much at all lately. My wife is doing weight watchers, which pretty much makes me "doing weight watchers" too.  I realize there are many healthy things I could cook on the egg. However, it sort of takes all the fun out of it when you have to add up all the "points" for things like oil, butter, bacon, etc. Most nights we just eat some deli turkey and shove carrots and broccoli in our face holes until the hunger pains stop.  Also I am starving myself so I have points left for a cocktail at night. 

Next week my grill is to make different kinds of fish and grilled veggies on the egg at least a few nights.  

maso

johnmitchell said:

Sometimes I just boil a pot of water!!!!

What's your preferred wood to use? It's very important to get the smoke on the water!

fishlessman

theres always the book store, last time there i bought a thai cooking book and one for simple french bistro. the thai book was an eye opener

theyolksonyou

maso said:

johnmitchell said:

Sometimes I just boil a pot of water!!!!

What's your preferred wood to use? It's very important to get the smoke on the water!

Not sure the species, but it's a deep purple color. 

johnmitchell

maso said:

johnmitchell said:

Sometimes I just boil a pot of water!!!!

What's your preferred wood to use? It's very important to get the smoke on the water!

I have found this to have the best flavor profile..

THEBuckeye

I think we all go there from time to time. 

The weather getting cooler (finally) here in ATL tomorrow inspired a dutch oven pot roast cook for tomorrow but have no clue what to cook tonight.

I do have a couple of leftover burgers from last night I could nuke, I guess, speaking of ruts. 

gdenby

Make really boring stuff. Open cans of Chef Boy-ar-dee. Pasta-roni w. tuna. etc. After which, everything else seems so very tasty.

Alternatively, go ethnic. Tried (and failed miserably) to make some Oaxacan black mole to go w. pork. Came across a really good borscht recipe that used spare rib meat and a splash of vinegar. Used white beets. Was able to make a decent pair of stuffed cornish hens from a recipe from the Pok Pok Thai restaurant.

keepervodeflame

I was in pretty much the same condition, probably a couple of years ago.  In desperation I turned to a Greek cook book from a restaurant called Kokkari and started going though it, adapting the recipes as I came to them, to kamado style cooking. From the Greek  recipes  I moved into  the Med and started going through Ottolenghi's cook books, and then on to Mario Batali's stuff. Lots of fun trying to cook traditional kitchen recipes on the Egg. Give it a shot, I still cook the BBQ classics now and then but this experience has really given variety to what I cook on the Egg. 

DoubleEgger

johnmitchell said:

DoubleEgger said:

Seriously, I'm in the same boat. The wife is trying to eat healthy so that rut is getting deeper. I bought a taco book and a tortilla press the other day to get out of the rut. 

Same here.. I just realized I have ribs out for the weekend.. 

I've got some that I'm throwing on after lunch and I'm just meh about it. Rib meat tacos sounds interesting though. Hmmmm. 

Focker

The change in seasons, helps me out, you need to move back to IL. 

New toys help too.  Scored a deep dish baker and cloche for 12 bucks.  Looking forward to trying that in my oven, and egg this winter.

Doing venison lasagna for Thanksgiving in my dad's oven.  

There's an Indian cookbook on my radar that cali referenced some time back.

Carolina Q

Try foodgawker. They have a search function than lets you search by ingredient, or multiple ingredients. Shows a pic of the finished dish which is a link to the recipe.

Eggcelsior

Focker said:

The change in seasons helps me out, you need to move back to IL. 

New toys help too.  Scored a deep dish baker and cloche for 12 bucks.  Looking forward to trying that in my oven, and egg this winter.

There's an Indian cookbook on my radar that cali referenced some time back.

This. Stew, soup, and roast time FTW

Focker

Eggcelsior said:

Focker said:

The change in seasons helps me out, you need to move back to IL. 

New toys help too.  Scored a deep dish baker and cloche for 12 bucks.  Looking forward to trying that in my oven, and egg this winter.

There's an Indian cookbook on my radar that cali referenced some time back.

This. Stew, soup, and roast time FTW

Hail yeah!

HeavyG

fishlessman said:

theres always the book store, last time there i bought a thai cooking book and one for simple french bistro. the thai book was an eye opener

Exactly what I was going to suggest.

Alternatively, one could cruise YouTube for cooking videos.

I'm a big fan of this Argentinian fellow - Locos X el Asado. Discovered their videos about a year and a half ago. - https://www.youtube.com/user/locosxelasado/videos

Being Argentine their videos focus mostly on meat. My Spanish sucks but I can follow along fairly well.

I made some of these a couple weeks ago - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vF3Y_c0k7Eo


For something different, I really enjoy Vietnamese food and this Australian series - Luke Nguyen's Vietnam - was on cable last year but it seems many of the episodes are available on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vF3Y_c0k7Eo

In that video be sure to check out the size of the lump the street vendor sells at the 8:00 minute mark.

Another option is to just eat at Taco Bell for an entire week and that should snap one out of their cooking rut funk.

Ladeback69

I am in a food cooking rut right now.  Kind of tired of BBQ after spending time out at the American Royal helping my BIL compete.  Trying to figure out something to cook this weekend.  May cure a pork lone roast to be ham and do a trial for Thanksgiving.

HeavyG

Whooops...just noticed I pasted the wrong link from my clipboard.

Here's the link to the Locos X el Asado stuff I made a couple weeks ago - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZH3UuowNdY

caliking

I'm usually able to find some inspiration on the Saveur website. Fine Cooking has a good website as well. Both are free.

www.saveur.com
www.finecooking.com

lousubcap

@Ladeback69 -  care to share any insider tips from the event?  Realize the menu was a standard Q fare but the approaches had to spread across the board.  

Ladeback69

lousubcap said:

@Ladeback69 -  care to share any insider tips from the event?  Realize the menu was a standard Q fare but the approaches had to spread across the board.  

This year it was at the Kansas Speedway and for the teams it was awesome for getting into the infield and my BIL's location was less then 2 minutes from the turn in location.  This year Smithfield was a major sponsor and SRF was as well.  They had representatives from both to help hand out awards.  I was there for the party's on Friday night and on Sunday for the open competition.  Friday night was a lot of fun and the weather was fantastic, mid 70's with a nice breeze.  It was a little cooler for the open comp, it didn't really get to 60, but wasn't as bad as last year.  There were 557 competitors, my BIL finished 332.  He wasn't to happy.  He did better last year, but there is some really tough competition.  The team that took it all was Iowa's Smokin D's.  They killed it and it was easy to figure out they were the winner.  They had teams from over 50 states and 11 different country's.  A team from Ireland was sitting behind us at the awards ceremony.  They were a hoot to listen to.  I asked them if they prefer Jameson or Dewar's whiskey and they all said Jameson very fast.  One said he only uses Dewar's to polish his boots.  We believed it was a hit a the race track.  Apparently the AR is moving to Kansas on a permanent biases soon.  They are going to build a new 160 million dollar facility to do it all.  People aren't happy about it, but the Mayor of KCMO doesn't seem to care.  That part isn't great, but they need a new place.

Is there anything in particular you want to know about? 

northGAcock

Stewed Tomato and Okra sandwiches on white bread. Bring you right out of that rut.

gmac

I'm there with you. Egg hasn't been lit for close to a month since my big Mac n cheese cook Plus I am literally starving myself trying to drop a few. Like eating disorder level starving but that is the only thing that seems to work. 
But the wife is away tomorrow night visiting friends so the boys and I will be doing pizzas on the BGE and movie night. That should help. 

I find that the weather is a problem too. Cool and wet and I haven't resigned to winter coming yet. I suspect I need to make sausage or do a brisket or something big. But maybe a few apps would be good too. I actually come here for inspiration most of the time. 

ryantt

Honestly when I get sick of the same old stuff, try to  tweak my skills.   Last year I started making my own sausage, variety of different ways to flavor it. a lot of fun to to work on your seasoning game. This year I'm starting to get bored again but it's deer season so that will take my mind off things   

BilZol

So far I've been able to keep a good variety from people's cooks I see here. Finishing up a week here at Disney and have tons of ideas from here as well. There is duck in my future for sure.