Takeout with the Tos #27 : Gluten-Free

This may be my last Takeout post of the year. I have still been cooking but a lot of the dishes have been repeats of ones I've already made. When I cooked this gluten-free dish for a friend, it inspired another dish, both which I will talk about in this post. 

One of my friends is gluten-free and I was at her house. I can't remember how it started exactly,  but our conversation went from food to fried chicken to gluten-free to gluten-free flour. I told her I could make her a gluten-free fried chicken if she had the gluten-free flour. Indeed she did! 

I took her flour home and made fried chicken with it! 

You would never believe this was gluten-free if I didn't tell you. 

My breading of preference with fried chicken is actually panko. When I use panko, the crumb is larger so it sticks better to the chicken. When I used the gluten-free flour this time to fry, a lot of the coating went into the frying oil. Not a problem at all, but it doesn't leave a clear oil when you're done frying. In the past, I've just dumped the oil and the flour in it in the trash. However, this time, there seemed to be a lot of extra flour in the oil. 

Then it hit me. I had just fried chicken and inadvertently made a roux! Roux is pronounced "roo" like kanga"roo" if you don't know. Typically, it's made by cooking flour in oil in a pan for a long time before making gumbo. People have created other shortcuts to roux by baking the flour in the oven first before cooking it in the oil to cut down on the stirring time - you must stir your roux or it will burn and burned roux is bitter.  I think I just found the greatest double-duty hack of all time: fry something with a flour batter, and then use the extra cooked flour and oil to make something that requires a roux!

I poured off the excess oil from the top and then I was left 
with this beautiful dark brown, flavorful roux.

Now you might be looking at this in the bottom of my wok and think this is way too much roux to use for any dish. That's exactly what I thought. It was a lot of roux. I pulled out my silicone ice cube molds (which I've never used for ice) and spooned a portion of the roux in. These molds went into my freezer and now I have pre-made roux cubes for next time!

I only spooned out four cubes worth. In retrospect, I probably 
could have spooned out...at least another two. Wisdom for the future.

It was unfortunate I could not share this gumbo with my friend as well as I had fried non-gluten-free food in the same oil after I fried her gluten-free chicken first. I don't know all the contamination rules with gluten and frying, but I wasn't going to risk it. 

My gumbo was not traditional as the Cajun trinity involves onion, bell pepper, and celery. I used neither bell pepper or celery in my "trinity." My gumbo started simply with onion and carrot. Then I added leftover ham, lentils, and shrimp. Not traditional at all, but absolutely delicious. I would definitely make it again and use the same ingredients or even try mixing up other ingredients. I actually enjoy okra in my gumbo but I didn't have any in my freezer so it wasn't included. If this isn't a real gumbo to you, then I guess you can call it a very rich stew. 

Yum.

I flipped the order this time, but this is my cost breakdown:

4 large servings of gumbo at $12.99 per serving: $51.96

15 gluten-free fried chicken tenderloins at $2.50 each: $$37.50

Total: $89.46

Tax: $7.38

Grand Total:  $96.84

It's been a fun year blogging and sharing about my food and stories. I hope you've enjoyed reading about what I cook, how I cook, and occasional tips and tricks with freezing and saving food. I have a couple ideas for themes next year that still revolve around food. When I finalize which one I want to do, you will be reading about it on the blog. If you cooked anything I shared or received inspiration from a recipe, I'd love to hear about it! 

Takeout with the Tos #8

I didn't cook too many things on Sunday because we did some cooking on Saturday as well. To keep consistency, those dishes will not be included in my take out total. 

Cabbage Cilantro Stir-Fry: $12.99

Tofu Noodle Stir-Fry: $20.99 

Snow Pea Leaves: $18.99

Beef and Green Bean Stir-Fry: $22.99

Take Out Total: $75.96

Tax: $6.27

Grand Total:  $82.23

 

Cabbage Cilantro Stir-Fry (top right)

I enjoyed this dish so much last week I wanted to make it again this week. I normally don't repeat identical dishes two consecutive weeks, but I really wanted to eat this dish again. I love cilantro but I realize some people don't share in this sentiment. 

Tofu Noodle Stir-Fry (bottom right)

This past week, I pulled out my scrapbook from my year living overseas. We flipped through it and I was able to share my experiences with them as well as reminiscing on them myself. In the back of the scrapbook, I did a few pages with photos of food I had cooked myself.  One included a dish made with strips of tofu. 

I had forgotten the use of tofu strips over the years, so this week when we went grocery shopping, I put it on the list and made this dish. It's similar to the vermicelli dish I've made in the past, but I just added the tofu strips in with the noodles. My sauce was a mixture of Chinese barbeque sauce, soy sauce, and sesame oil.

Snow Pea Leaves (top left)

These were on sale at the grocery store for the cheapest I've seen them this season - $2.99/lb. As always, we love these. Simple stir-fry with garlic, salt, and sugar. 

Beef and Green Bean Stir-Fry (bottom middle and left) 

This dish ended up being two containers because I ran out of my large containers. It's a bigger portion than I normally make. I didn't intend on using this many green beans but there was the tiniest bit left in the bag that was only 1-2 servings worth and I didn't feel I could do much with it on its own. I agree there's a lot of green beans, but I think the meat to vegetable ratio is still acceptable.

I can't remember which cut of beef I bought but I'm guessing it was a top round. My preference is for flank steak but prices have almost doubled since I first started buying them 6-7 years ago so I've found other alternatives. The key is to marinate in just a bit of corn starch to tenderize the meat. I've also learned the velveting technique with baking soda but it's not my preference because you need to rinse the meat to remove the baking soda before cooking. I find corn starch works well in small amounts because then you don't get goopy meat in your pan.

Honestly, the real star of this week's cooking adventure was the pan:

Our new wok.

 

We purchased a new stainless steel wok a few months ago and finally pulled it out to use. Stainless steel has always scared me for stir-frys because of the fear of food sticking. I think it scares a lot of people for the same reason. However, as convenient as nonstick pans are, the coatings wear down and eventually they lose their nonstick quality and need to be replaced. In the past five years, I've worn down over 3 nonstick pans. I agree: the better you take care of your cookware, the longer it will last.

When we switched to an induction cooktop 3 years ago, there was a new learning curve finding the right heat settings to cook what I needed in the pans I was using. High heat kills nonstick pans. This is a universal truth and even the instructions on the packaging say to use medium/medium high heat only. The feeling of cooking on a brand new nonstick pan is incomparable. It really makes me feel like I know my way around as a chef. The difference from cooking on an old nonstick that is on its way out vs switching to a brand new one is night and day. 

But the feeling doesn't last. Eventually, the nonstick pan will start to stick and need replacing. 

I've cooked minimally on stainless steel over the years. The majority of my stainless steel is for pots - soups, stews, and braises. Sometimes there's an occasional deep fry. But I've shied away from stir-frying in nonstick. I've watched cooking shows and looked up videos on how to cook in stainless steel to make it nonstick. There are various methods out there.

After cooking all 4 of these dishes in our new wok, I've come to the following conclusions:

1. Heating up the pan properly helps to keep food from sticking to the pan. This includes heating up the pan to where water "dances" on the pan instead of evaporating into steam. 

2. Add enough oil. Stainless steel cooking is not meant for the health-conscious. No, we're not trying to drench food in oil, but you need oil for food not to stick. Dry heat = sticking.

3. Our stove is flat. We don't have gas and we most definitely don't have a wok insert for a gas stove.  The wok is rounded. Even a flat-bottomed wok like what we have is still rounded on the sides. Therefore, the heat is strongest on the bottom and will taper as the sides go up. This means we will have cooking limitations even with the most skilled of chefs. 

After cooking our four dishes in the same wok one after the other, this is what it looked like on the inside:

 

I cooked the tofu noodle stir-fry last because I knew there was going to be a starchiness in my noodles which makes sticking more likely. With a delicate balance of changing the heat as I was cooking as well as monitoring my ingredients during the cooking, I was able to prevent a lot of sticking from occurring. As you can see, there is some food stick to the bottom of the wok, but it is not much at all. I didn't scrape the bottom at all to remove the food. This is what was naturally left. There was minimal scrubbing needed to clean this pan. Some hot water and dish soap did the trick easily. 

My conclusion for now is that this stainless steel wok is our best frugal option. It does a decent job cooking food without needing to purchase a $70+ pan every 2 years or so. I'm hoping to be able to improve my cooking skills in this wok so I don't need to rely on nonstick as much. If it doesn't happen....then at least I tried. 🤷🏻‍♀️