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Post by mach12 on Nov 15, 2019 1:07:13 GMT -5
I finally got a chance to make samoor and it was really good. Next time you want to try something different, try this. I've never had anyone not like this dish. Here's the recipe:
SAMOOR
1 Cube Butter (or Margarine), Divided 1 Onion, Sliced 6 Chicken Thighs ¼ tsp. Salt 1 tsp. Nutmeg 1 Small Hot Pepper ½ tsp. Ground Black Pepper ¼ cup Catsup 1 cup Sweet Soy Sauce (the Indonesian style vs. regular soy sauce) 2 cans Green Beans, Drained, added 29 minutes before samoor is finished cooking ½ cup Water
Directions: Brown Onion in ½ cube butter. Brown Chicken in remaining ½ cube butter. Place in chicken and onion in Wok or skillet. Add remaining ingredients. Cook at 300-400F for 1 hour or until thickened. Can serve over rice or with rice on the side.
Variations: I used ½ cube butter total instead of a full cube and because of food sensitivities in the family, I used 2 stalks celery, sliced and browned in butter, and 1/8 teaspoon onion powder instead of an onion. I wanted to do this in the Thermowell, and I think that’d work but I ended up cooking it on the cooktop because I was late getting home and needed to get it done. I’d leave out the ½ cup of water, or at least reduce it to ¼ cup, if cooking it in the Thermowell with the gas turned off too.
When I went to the cupboard to get the sweet soy sauce there was none to be found so I looked at several recipes and found one that’s so good I don’t think I’ll ever buy it again! It says it yields ¼ cup and you need 1 cup for the samoor. so, I quadrupled the ingredients and ended up with about 1 ½ cups. Government math, I guess. You could put all the sauce in the samoor and toss in 2-4 more chicken thighs or. like I did, you could put it in a jar to use as dipping sauce or whatever. I’ll post the sweet soy sauce recipe here too. It’s really good.
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Post by mach12 on Nov 15, 2019 1:11:17 GMT -5
How to Make Sweet Soy Sauce Tangy, briny soy sauce makes an excellent base from which to build a sweet sauce that can be used as a savory meat marinade, a stir-fry sauce or simply as a pot sticker dipping sauce. Adapted from Serious Eats’ Sweet Soy Sauce, the brown sugar in this mix lends a robust molasses-tasting sweetness, while Chinese five-spice powder adds depths of flavor with warm cinnamon and cooling licorice notes. While sweet, salty and umami are the stars, rice wine vinegar adds sour notes and toasted sesame oil contributes bitter notes for a sweet soy sauce that delights all five primary tastes. Start to Finish: 10 minutes - Makes around 1/4 cup - Difficulty Level: Beginner Ingredients 1/4 cup soy sauce 1/4 cup brown sugar (light or dark) 2 tablespoons rice wine vinegar 1 garlic clove, minced 1/2 teaspoon toasted sesame oil 1/2 teaspoon fresh ginger, grated 1/2 teaspoon Chinese five-spice powder 1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes 1 teaspoon cornstarch 1 teaspoon water Simmer the Sauce Combine soy sauce, brown sugar, rice wine vinegar, garlic, sesame oil, ginger, Chinese five-spice powder and red pepper flakes in a small saucepan. Bring to medium heat, whisking until the brown sugar is completely dissolved. Thicken the Sauce Whisk the cornstarch and water together in a bowl, until combined. Pour the cornstarch mixture into the saucepan, whisking to combine. Bring the saucepan to a boil and cook for 2 minutes, whisking frequently, until the sauce thickens slightly. Remove the pan from heat and let cool before use. Substitutions and Variations If you can’t find fresh ginger, jarred minced ginger is an acceptable substitute. Red pepper flakes add a subtle, underlying heat, but they can be left out if the spice isn’t desirable. An additional tablespoon or 2 of brown sugar will up the sweetness level if you prefer a sweeter sauce. Opt for mirin in lieu of rice wine vinegar. oureverydaylife.com/how-to-make-sweet-soy-sauce-12139739.html
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Post by nana on Nov 15, 2019 7:39:17 GMT -5
Both of these sound really good! Is a cube of butter about two TBSP? I'm thinking of the size that would make a cube when you cut it off a stick of butter. Although I don't actually measure butter unless I'm baking, I just use what my mother would call "a goodly chunk!"
And I assume I can substitute my own green beans for the canned. They're frozen. I would just throw them in after all the browning and sauteing and let the thermowell take care of the rest. Thanks for posting this! It's always nice to have a different way to make chicken!
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Post by mach12 on Nov 16, 2019 2:10:36 GMT -5
Is a cube of butter about two TBSP? I'm thinking of the size that would make a cube when you cut it off a stick of butter. Although I don't actually measure butter unless I'm baking, I just use what my mother would call "a goodly chunk!" This is a recipe my mother got from our neighbor when I was growing up. She was Dutch but grew up in what was then called Dutch Indonesia (Now just Indonesia) and had a lot of really good recipes that she gave us. She actually used ghee instead of butter when she cooked and bought it in a big tub. She'd scoop out a glob with a big mixing spoon and said it was the same as a cube (1/4 pound). I really think it's just fine with way less. My arteries agree. Using your green beans is fine. My mother did. My dad grew an amazing amount of food and there were farm stands and U-pick places everywhere when I was growing up. We always had fresh veggies, shelves in the basement full of canned food, and a full freezer so she used what she had on hand. We had the leftovers for lunch today and my wife says she thinks she likes it better with the store-bought sweet soy sauce. Where it called for red pepper flakes I used a little bitty pinch of some peppers I grew, dried, and then crushed and it was a bit spicy and I think that was her way of saying that.
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Post by nana on Nov 16, 2019 7:37:41 GMT -5
A 1/4 pound of butter is a whole stick! I love butter, but that seems excessive even to me. The chicken and onions would be deep frying in it! I'll stick with my mom's (and apparently your neighbor's) method of eyeballing the amount needed to properly brown the ingredients and that's it!
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Post by Chuckie on Nov 16, 2019 9:27:54 GMT -5
Is a cube of butter about two TBSP? I'm thinking of the size that would make a cube when you cut it off a stick of butter. Although I don't actually measure butter unless I'm baking, I just use what my mother would call "a goodly chunk!" This is a recipe my mother got from our neighbor when I was growing up. She was Dutch but grew up in what was then called Dutch Indonesia (Now just Indonesia) and had a lot of really good recipes that she gave us. She actually used ghee instead of butter when she cooked and bought it in a big tub. She'd scoop out a glob with a big mixing spoon and said it was the same as a cube (1/4 pound). I really think it's just fine with way less. My arteries agree.... IF you have an Aldi's near you, they actually CARRY ghee now!!! We bought a jar awhile back, and have YET to use any!! CHEERS! Chuckie
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Post by nana on Nov 16, 2019 17:58:56 GMT -5
Ghee is one of those things, I would like to try it but it's so trendy now that I'm not sure how to judge quality or if I'm actually getting what I think I'm getting. Even the supermarkets up by us are carrying it, but I'm afraid it might be the same story as with olive oil. Now that it's so popular there are a lot of adulterated oils being sold, both the cheapo stuff and some very expensive imported stuff. That's why I always buy California Olive Ranch oil. If there's one thing I know about the state of California, it's that they take their regulations seriously.
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Post by mach12 on Nov 16, 2019 22:13:25 GMT -5
This is a recipe my mother got from our neighbor when I was growing up. She was Dutch but grew up in what was then called Dutch Indonesia (Now just Indonesia) and had a lot of really good recipes that she gave us. She actually used ghee instead of butter when she cooked and bought it in a big tub. She'd scoop out a glob with a big mixing spoon and said it was the same as a cube (1/4 pound). I really think it's just fine with way less. My arteries agree.... IF you have an Aldi's near you, they actually CARRY ghee now!!! We bought a jar awhile back, and have YET to use any!! CHEERS! Chuckie We don't have Aldi's here but actually had one in Cairo when I worked there and I loved it. And it's where I bought Ghee. It kills me to buy it here because over there you could buy a big tin that was about a gallon for about 12 Egyptian Pounds and the exchange rate at the time was about LE4.25 to the dollars, so less than $3 for it. I'm hoping maybe the price will come down here since it's becoming so popular.
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Post by mach12 on Nov 16, 2019 22:15:04 GMT -5
Chuckie - try using ghee next time you scramble eggs!
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Post by pooka on Nov 17, 2019 5:12:38 GMT -5
There's a dish someone posted quite a while ago that used ghee as well as preserved lemon & a middle eastern spice mix called Ras el Hanout. The lamb or beef dish was called tangia. It's slow cooked in a pottery urn of the same name. A similar dish can be cooked in something called a tagine. It's a flat liped pottery dish with a cone shaped cover. They're both slow roasted dished of meats & vegetables, or just vegetables. There's probably a zillion different family recipes. They often call the tangia a bachelors dish. He'd assemble it at home, then on his way to work, he'd drop it off at the neighborhood bread ovens or bathhouse ovens. There they'd stick the pot in the hot ashes to slow roast all day. Then you'd pick it up on the way home as your hot dinner.
Anyway, it's a dish I'd like to try, but the key ingredients are ghee, preserved lemons & Ras el Hanout spice mix. The spice name literally mean top of the house, as it's supposed to be a mix of their best spices. If Chuckie says Aldi's carrys ghee, maybe they have it here. I'd still need the preserved lemon & Ras el Hanout spice mix. At the time it was posted, there was a kitchen store here that had the spice mix, but they went out of business. I need to check at some of the ethnic shops that have opened up here from the influx of peoples from around the globe.
From what I've read, you can make your own ghee. It's just a highly-clarified butter. It'd be a laborious process, but it can be done. I think I read how to make preserved lemons too, but it got too complicated to get what I needed for the dish, so I lost interest. If I could find somewhere that carried all this stuff, I'd still like to try it out.
There's a mosque out on the east side that has a food event of some kind every year I've read. I keep trying to keep an eye out for it, but I always miss it.
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Post by mach12 on Nov 17, 2019 11:23:31 GMT -5
Pooka, I've seen those pots and have wondered whether one of my Romertopf clay pots would work the same. I have several of them and some have glazed linings, though I generally use the plain clay ones. I love clay pot cooking and it seems to be a great fit for cooking with the gas turned off. I've only done two meals in a clay pot in the two years that we've had Pepper in the kitchen because there's just so much to try and so many different techniques out there. After reading your post I'm really intrigued. I love having some different options when we have guests and this looks like a really good one. We have a long time Moroccan community here and there's a grocery store that caters to Moroccan cooking so I'll bet they carry the specialized ingredients. We also have a Moroccan restaurant that I really like except for the beef. I don't know why but the beef is always so tough that you could hold an Olympic chewing competition with it. Chicken and lamb, no problem, but the beef is tough stuff.
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Post by pooka on Nov 17, 2019 15:48:28 GMT -5
I believe the traditional tangia & tagine are terra cotta. You season it with multiple coats of oil like seasoning cast iron. I've seen pics of some that are just glazed on the inside too. I imagine any heavy pottery or stoneware would work as long as it's oven safe. An old bean pot would work, but those aren't very large. The tangia is an urn that'd work in the oven or Thermowell if it's small enough to fit. The tagine is for the cook-top & is very specific thing. I've actually seen a couple of them at Goodwill, but wasn't tempted. I didn't think I ever get much use of it. I found an urn at the antique mall around the corner that I was going to try.
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Post by chipperhiker on Nov 18, 2019 20:39:41 GMT -5
I make my own ghee, and it's super easy, and I strongly suspect that it tastes a lot better that the version available commercially. Just put butter (I tend to do a whole pound at once) into a saucepan with medium-low heat and let it cook until all the water is evaporated. At that point it will stop sputtering/bubbling. Carefully continue over low heat until the milk solids are just slightly browned. Cool a bit for safety, and then strain out the milk solids while it is still liquid. I do this with cheesecloth.
Keeps practically forever in the fridge.
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Post by chipperhiker on Nov 18, 2019 20:40:43 GMT -5
I should add that I love ghee. It has a slightly nutty flavor from the browning process, and is wonderful with eggs.
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Post by nana on Nov 19, 2019 7:58:14 GMT -5
I think I could do that! It seems easy enough.
I might try the samoor recipe for tonight. I don't have chicken thighs, but I will substitute the pork chops I do have. Also in the interest of shortening the time I need to spend standing in the kitchen after browning the chops and onions I'm just going to dump the rest of it into a thermowell pot and be done with it, including the ingredients for the sweet soy sauce. I don't think the extra step of mixing the sauce separately will make that big of a difference. At least I hope it won't!
PS-I did make this, and it was really good! The pork chops were fine. It's such a strongly flavored sauce that any meat you put in there would be kind of infused all through by the time it's done anyway. I ended up mixing the sweet soy sauce ingredients together in a measuring cup, but I skipped the part where you heat it in a saucepan, and also the cornstarch. My green beans were frozen, so I sauteed them with the onions and chops, then added the rest of the stuff. I gave the whole shebang about 8 minutes of gas and 2 hours CWTGTO. Again, I cannot sing the thermowell's praises enough!
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Post by mach12 on Nov 20, 2019 22:20:13 GMT -5
Nana - How much butter did you end up using?
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Post by nana on Nov 21, 2019 9:41:17 GMT -5
A goodly chunk! (About 2 TBSP)
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Post by mach12 on Nov 22, 2019 3:03:39 GMT -5
I should add that I love ghee. It has a slightly nutty flavor from the browning process, and is wonderful with eggs. When I make rice the Egyptian way I take half of the rice I'm going to use, put about 2 Tablespoons of ghee in the pan, heat it until it melts, and then cook the rice until it's about the color of a brown paper bag, and then put in the other half of the rice and cook it like normal. It works fine with vegetable oil too and adds a nice flavor but the ghee gives it that nutty flavor you're talking about. Makes really good rice. People ask me all the time where I buy that kind of rice. After pulling their leg a bit I tell them how it's done and they're surprised. If you like rice give it a try.
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Post by nana on Dec 13, 2019 9:20:09 GMT -5
Ghee is one of those things, I would like to try it but it's so trendy now that I'm not sure how to judge quality or if I'm actually getting what I think I'm getting. Even the supermarkets up by us are carrying it, but I'm afraid it might be the same story as with olive oil. Now that it's so popular there are a lot of adulterated oils being sold, both the cheapo stuff and some very expensive imported stuff. That's why I always buy California Olive Ranch oil. If there's one thing I know about the state of California, it's that they take their regulations seriously. I'm quoting myself here because I just went to the store the other day and I have two questions pertaining to this post. One is about ghee--when you make it yourself does it matter if it's salted or unsalted butter? And the other is about olive oil. At the store the other day I needed to buy olive oil and the California Olive Ranch oil bottle looked a little different to me, and lo and behold, they now tout it as "Destination" oil, and in tiny print it notifies you that it contains oils sourced from around the world. I have no idea if they were bought out by a big conglomerate, or if drought or wildfires decimated the actual California olive trees and they would rather put out a blended product than no product at all, but either way the reason I liked it no longer is true. Caveat emptor--the buyer must always beware! We go through a lot of olive oil, and now I need to find a new source or brand that I can trust AND afford. There is a boutique olive oil and vinegar store in Glens Falls about 40 minutes away where for $18 I could go fill up a pint jar of delightfully delicious olive oil that comes with the provenance of which farm and what date it was picked (trustworthy but definitely not affordable, and mighty inconvenient) or I could try the olive oil at the co-op, which is less pricey, but the last time I had it I didn't like it much--I like the fruity or grassy oils, not the sharp, peppery ones. Darn it!
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Post by mach12 on Dec 13, 2019 12:54:59 GMT -5
We keep three types of olive oil, store brand for cooking and a higher quality for things like salad and other uses more susceptible to flavor of the oil, and garlic infused. The garlic was accidental originally because someone had set the bottle back on the shelf in the wrong location and I didn't notice it until I opened it. It turns out that my wife and daughter, who don't tolerate garlic well, aren't affected at all by the garlic in the olive oil so when I need to add garlic flavor that gives me a good option. When it comes to salads and things like that the pricier stuff is worth every penny.
On the ghee, I've seen it done both ways and don't think it matters but when we've made it we were using fresh cream to make our own butter (our family had a dairy) and then we made the ghee from that with no salt. My grandmother always called it clarified butter or cooking butter and she didn't want salt in it but I never knew why. I was pretty young and my job was to turn the handle on the churn (really cool glass drum churn that I've never seen another of) so what I know is limited to what I heard the adults talking about while I was being seen but not heard.
When we went backpacking in the Olympics we'd be in there for weeks at a time and the clarified butter didn't need refrigeration so my Dad's pack always had a tin of it. Our diet consisted of pancakes, fresh trout, rehydrated food and stuff we picked and dug up (there's a bounty of food there for the taking if you know what you're looking for) and all of it was cooked in the clarified butter. Rehydrated eggs are nothing to write home about but scramble some up using some clarified butter and people are coming back for more.
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Post by nana on Dec 14, 2019 8:16:41 GMT -5
Mmmmm--toss the rehydrated eggs and double up on the fresh trout for me please! That sounds like you guys did family vacation right!
I'm kind of wary of the olive oil aisle at the market. I used to have a few brands I liked and I kind of rotated between them depending on what was on sale. Then one time I bought a bottle of a brand I liked and it tasted so wrong. I don't know what it was, but it was NOT 100% EXTRA VIRGIN olive oil like it called itself. More like it had been down to the docks when the fleet came in if you know what I mean. Then not long after that I got another previously acceptable brand, and while it tasted kind of OK, it was thick and viscous and greasy. Totally gross. (It was Carapelli and Botticelli respectively, for those keeping score.)
Then I read how the growing popularity of olive oil and demand for it had outstripped the supply, which left the field wide open for unscrupulous people to fill the gap with whatever they could, and they mostly get away with it because people new to olive oil and trying it for health reasons don't really know how it was supposed to taste and feel. And it was a problem both with store brands and fancy imported stuff--Italy keeps its good olive oil for itself and exports the stuff they wouldn't be able to sell at home, or they buy God knows what from elsewhere and export that. It's a huge racket, and like I said the buyer must beware. Of course, there are still a few honest brands. I just don't know which ones they are!
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Post by pooka on Dec 14, 2019 12:53:18 GMT -5
I've read any number of articles about counterfeit olive oils on the market. In a piece by 60 Minutes in 2016, they estimated 75 to 80 percent of the extra virgin olive oil on the American market was not what it's labeled. As you can guess, the mob is big in this. In the 60 Minutes piece, they bought three leading brands & shipped them off to be tested. Only one was found to be extra virgin. “They described one as lampante — the lowest quality olive oil. That brand happens to be one of the best-selling in America,”
Honey is another food item that's trafficked by mislabeling it's origin & purity. A great deal of the questionable honey comes from China.
In some cases, retailers are duped into buying from questionable sources, while others just turn a blind eye to the practice for the sake of profit. If there's money to be made at it, somebody is going to counterfeit it. That's just the plain & honest truth.
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Post by mach12 on Dec 14, 2019 18:42:47 GMT -5
That counterfeiting is rampant in a lot of the places I've lived so I guess we're catching up with much of the rest of the world? When I lived in Egypt you didn't want to buy things like medications because they ran on quotas and if they didn't have enough of the medicine to put in with the filler to make pills they'd halve the medicine and just keep pumping out pills. It was hard to find inspectors and police officers who weren't on the take so the inspectors got their palms greased (they call it baksheesh over there) and people got what they got.
The olive oil over there was top notch though. There were olive trees everywhere and things made from olive wood were common and beautiful. We brought home several things made of olive wood, like a floor lamp and a couple of table lamps, that are amazing. Glad I could get my meds from the U.S. though.
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Post by pooka on Dec 15, 2019 3:25:38 GMT -5
One source I looked up said counterfeiting olive oil goes back to at least Roman time, & most likely before. I found this article from epicurious.com that give a lot of good info to tell the good from the bad. It seems to come down to being an informed shopper. Read the label, & know what to look for & what it means. The Tip #5: If you see EVOO made in Australia or Chile, buy it is a good one to look for. Who knew Australia has the most stringent standards and a highly advanced testing system. Fake Olive Oil: 7 Ways to Spot It | Epicurious I imagine people living around the Mediterranean know good olive oil, & who sells the good stuff. As you say mach12, if you're a local, you know what products are trusted, & which ones aren't.
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Post by nana on Dec 15, 2019 19:13:30 GMT -5
Thanks for that link! The tips are very helpful, and I followed a link from there to another article that was also quite informative. The California Olive Ranch still seems to be an acceptable, affordable choice even with the sourcing change, so I think I can just relax a little. If I find any Australian oil, I'll give it a try, too. I was just not looking forward to getting yet another crappy bottle of oil. Although the article was from 2017, and I last bought olive oil sometime in the summer, 2 big bottles of the California stuff because it was on sale, and they still had the old label, so they must have been pretty old already. They seemed fine to me though.
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Post by pooka on Dec 16, 2019 2:37:09 GMT -5
Good olive oil seems to be a moving target. It's tough to find brands you can trust, without some third party looking over their shoulder to make sure they don't pull a fast one. In so many countries around the world, there are stringent rules & laws on many foods pertaining to origin & how it's produced. In this country it's the wild west for many things. It's my understanding there are only vague standards for olive oil from USDA, with no enforcement. In this country, you'll have to go with the endorsement of some of the independent growers who've banded together to ensure some trust in their product. You just have to watch out for the shady sources.
Freshness seems high on the list, because it has a very limited shelf life. Be leery of bargains unless you're sure it's good quality. Here's a handy list of brands from North American Olive Oil Association.
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Post by chipperhiker on Dec 22, 2019 20:41:14 GMT -5
I just saw your question about making ghee, Nana. Sorry for the delayed response. I use salted butter, but that's just my own preference. Unsalted is fine, too. Obviously a slightly different end product...
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Post by mach12 on Apr 8, 2020 12:23:17 GMT -5
I should add that I love ghee. It has a slightly nutty flavor from the browning process, and is wonderful with eggs. When I make rice the Egyptian way I take half of the rice I'm going to use, put about 2 Tablespoons of ghee in the pan, heat it until it melts, and then cook the rice until it's about the color of a brown paper bag, and then put in the other half of the rice and cook it like normal. It works fine with vegetable oil too and adds a nice flavor but the ghee gives it that nutty flavor you're talking about. Makes really good rice. People ask me all the time where I buy that kind of rice. After pulling their leg a bit I tell them how it's done and they're surprised. If you like rice give it a try. I made rice a couple of days ago to go with some chicken I had marinated and grilled and did it using this method I learned when I was living in Egypt. We're out of ghee and since we're staying at home due to the covid-19 social distancing I used vegetable oil and it was still really good. I'm always surprised at how good the rice was. I cooked some extra rice and a couple of extra chicken breasts and my wife used the extra to make a casserole and it worked well there, too. I thought I'd bring this back to the top in case someone was sitting at home at wanted to try something different. Here's the basic recipe (works great using the idle hour method for cooking rice in the Thermowell): Egyptian Method of Cooking Rice (From Egyptian Eldoha Brand Calrose Medium Grained White Rice Package) 1 Cup Rice 2 Tablespoons Butter or Oil 1 Teaspoon Salt 2 Cups Water 1. Put oil or butter in 2 liter pan, heat until melted (or oil is well warmed) 2. Add ½ of the rice and heat until it becomes a golden color 3. Add the remaining rice and mix well 4. Add the water and salt, cover and heat over low heat 15-20 minutes until water is absorbed and rice is cooked 5. Remove from heat, leave covered for 5 minutes, then serve hot
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