randomly inventing meals and testing them on your family..

wondering if anyone else tries this with their family.. as a nanny of 5.. sometimes dinner can be tough.. it nearly never goes over without anyone complaining..

tonight's random experiment..

i browned some ground turkey with salt, pepper, garlic, paprika, cumin, and some dried oregano.. i was trying to go for a taco seasoning flavour.. then i added 2 cups of multi coloured pasta.. 2 cups of water and a 14oz can of whole stewed tomatoes.. covered and simmered for 15 minutes and stirred in a cup of shredded chedder cheese..

i told the kids it was called chef boyardelicious and miraculously it was a success.. all except for the 12 year old.. turns out she's a vegan and hadn't told me yet.

i'll throw a few pounds of bacon in the cast iron in the morning and see how vegan she feels then..

anyway.. who else out there likes to invent new meals for their family? please share.

I do, but my wife usually doesn't appreciate my experiments. Or at least, not if I go all out with the spices. However, these days I have gone low carb, and as a result I now make dishes for lunch at work instead of sandwiches, and in those I can do what I want.

My lunch was half a pound of ground beef, mixed up with large amounts of cucruma, curry, mix of herbs, ground chili pepper. Baked it through and then added mushrooms. I then stewed celery, paprika and an onion in butter with a spoonful of sambal (ground chili paste) and added it to the meat. Then added a small tin of pulped tomato concentrate.

It was delicious.
I regularly vary the recipe, based on what I have in the fridge at the time. I might use chicken for meat, add completely different spices or seasoning, use different vegetables, add soy sauce, ....

This is something that noone at home would eat since my wife and daughters prefer more suble flavoring whereas I go for a taste-explosion. :) I do try things at home, but I always have to perform the balancing act of adding spices / making sure that people still eat it.

I have to admit that I don't do pastry, cakes, muffins, ...because those things require you to stick with the recipe very closely or the entire thing fails. My wife the microbiology lab supervisor otoh is a genius when it comes to baking, because she can stick to the recipe and knows exactly where she can stray to add her own touch.

Experimenting has produced some of the best meals I've ever made. It's good to know I'm not the only one.

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Originally Posted by vthomlinson

i told the kids it was called chef boyardelicious and miraculously it was a success.. all except for the 12 year old.. turns out she's a vegan and hadn't told me yet.

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Haha, ain't that just like a 12-year-old girl, though?

I do this quite often.. my daughter affectionately calls it "Slop" night.

It started one night when we had very little in the way of groceries in the house or money to buy them so I took some sausage and browned it then added some corn and Velveeta cheese this mixture was then used over potatoes.

From there is has expanded and gotten better (most of the time) especially now I am more conscience of the flavor profiles my family likes.

i've found that chopped up potatoes can be browned and make a good base for anything.. sometimes a good meat sauce over country potatoes.. or breakfast gravy. pretty much anything.

"Inventing meals" is my wife's specialty. Tho she calls it by the most colorful name of "Sh17 in a pot"... Predictably we don't have written down recipes for that sort of stuff, but it's surprisingly good eats.

I wing my cooking, but with a goal in mind, so it's not like I invent something. More like my interpretation of a dish. More often than not it turns out edible, much to the wife's relief. :)

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Originally Posted by Bruno

However, these days I have gone low carb, and as a result I now make dishes for lunch at work instead of sandwiches, and in those I can do what I want.

My lunch was half a pound of ground beef, mixed up with large amounts of cucruma, curry, mix of herbs, ground chili pepper. Baked it through and then added mushrooms. I then stewed celery, paprika and an onion in butter with a spoonful of sambal (ground chili paste) and added it to the meat. Then added a small tin of pulped tomato concentrate.

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Time will come you'll need to go low cal as well.

When you start out with a basic tomato sauce you can add anything that takes your fancy. That's what I usually do. Tomatosauce can be used with rice, potatoes etc. You can add fish or meat and any vegetable.

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Originally Posted by Kees

Time will come you'll need to go low cal as well.

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I find that as long as you don't overdo it, calories don't really matter.
And I work out at least twice per week. 3 times per week during summer and autumn. Callories are for burning, not for counting :)

Besides, in 100 year time I'll be dead. I might as well enjoy the ride while it lasts.

That's about the only way I cook (unless I'm doing frozen pizza or spaghetti-o's ~ I have a mild addiction to those danged things). I start out with a meat, and build from there. Even steak and potatoes end up getting tweaked before I am done. Marinades are a wonderful thing.
I usually have no plan in mind, just whatever seems like it would be good on a given day.

When working with ground turkey for kids, two things that really help a lot (not used together though): soy sauce and chicken broth.

I love cooking, and I love experimenting in the kitchen - but totally random creations do not surface, no matter how hard I try. I always have a goal, or a main theme, and then create from there. Like, one day it can be a thai curry with coconut milk, another it can be a louisiana gumbo (actually had that today, darn good stuff), some italian inspired pasta concoction or perhaps even some norwegian inspired fish creation. It is always based loosely on some known dish tho.

Totally random to me would mean inventing something never heard of, like perhaps a popcorn soup or a bacon icecream (hold on, that's been done already). A savoury fried fish icecream perhaps? (yikes, where did that come from? that would be a random creation for sure, but alas - thinking about it doesn't make my mouth water) :D

My kitchen creations are more often adaptations or developments of what someone already made, and I often spot "errors" when I see recipes for some dish - like, how could they propose only 2 cloves of garlic, how come they forgot to add liquid smoke, where's the bay leaf, or how are they totally ignoring umame flavors in some dish. That thing about umame is meant quite literally actually.

Anyways, I find kitchen activities to be as relaxing as honing :D

I do this often. I have to! I do the cooking in the house, to boot my wife is celiac (no wheat or wheat gluten), allergic to soy and dairy...and is vegan on top of all that. Besides the vegan bit, it's all a recent development. I have to get creative and come up with my own flavor profiles because with those limitations there are only so many bean recipes on the internet and most of them taste the same. It has actually been a really interesting challenge. I find myself researching different spices and bringing home ingredients i can't pronounce just to see what i might be able to make with them. I was comfortable in the kitchen before but this has made me a better cook.