This is a recipe for something I make pretty regularly. It's called "Korean Abdul Jabbar". It is called this because I am not Korean, and probably neither is this recipe. This is just a standard soup recipe, every ingredient in here can be substituted with something else and you can throw almost anything else in there and it will be fine.

Ingredients:

• 2 carrots, peeled and chopped into whatever size and shape you like

• 1 stalk celery, chopped (optional, some people don’t like it, I don't think Korea uses it at all but what do I know)

• 1 potato, same deal

• 1 chicken breast (optional, use whatever meat you want or none it doesn’t matter)

• Half a large white onion, diced

• 3 – 10 cloves of garlic, minced

• A whole bunch of kimchi. You’re probably not using enough. Put more kimchi in there. No, more than that too.

• A really big heaping tablespoon of doenjang (salty Korean fermented soybean paste). Don’t have doenjang? Use red miso. Don’t have that? Just put a lot of soy sauce in there, it’ll taste about the same anyway.

• A tablespoon of soy sauce unless you already substituted it for the doenjang.

• Some rice vinegar (put one tablespoon at a time and wait 5 minutes then taste the soup before adding more. If you put too much it won't be that bad but it might be kind of weird, especially since the kimchi is already going to be kind of sour.

• Mirin or sugar or something, probably like half the amount of vinegar that you use or less. You need something sweet or this thing is going to be incredibly salty. Only add a little at a time, making a sweet soup is DISGUSTING and if you do that you should THROW IT IN THE GARBAGE and then you should KEEP YOURSELF SAFE.

• Sesame oil (completely optional, if you don’t have it don’t worry about it).

• A jar of beef stock your dear mother gave to you because she’s the best person in the world, or if you don’t have that, just use a box of store bought chicken stock, or water is fine too, just less body in the broth if you go that direction, maybe add more of some of the other liquid ingredients to make up for it.

• Black pepper, lots of it.

• Something spicy (optional). Gochugaru if you want to try to make this at least a little authentic, but authenticity is overrated, so if you don’t got that, just chuck a bunch of the kind of chili flakes you’d put on your pizza in there, you probably won’t notice the difference anyway. Or cayenne pepper is fine too since it’s flavor neutral anyway. Or if you don’t want this to be spicy, don’t put anything, I don’t care what you do.

Directions:

You only need one pan, a regular sized saucepan, to make this. Put it over a little bit more than medium heat and put some olive oil in there, then add the onions, carrots, celery, and garlic. If you don’t stir it very much, it’ll all start to brown a little after 5 or 10 minutes. I don’t know, I didn’t look at my fricking stopwatch while I was cooking it, ok?

Once it browns some, add the doenjang or miso, the pepper, and the chili flakes or gochugaru. If you substituted soy sauce for the doenjang, DON’T add it now, you’ll just steam everything. Let all the shit in the pan turn really brown. At the heat level your stove is at, you are not going to burn anything unless you leave it for an hour, so don’t worry about it.

Dump the stock or water in the pan and scrape all the crap off the bottom. If you didn’t brown it much, there won’t be any crap, but that’s ok, your soup will still be fine, stop stressing about everything, it’s bad for your blood pressure.

Put the whole chicken breast in the soup. Wait, are you leaving the skin on the chicken breast? That’s AWFUL and you are RUINING the soup. Tear it off with your hands and throw it in the trash, all it will do is make your soup greasy. Add the potatoes and tons of kimchi, then add the soy sauce and a little bit of vinegar and mirin (ONLY A LITTLE IF YOU FRICK THIS UP I SWEAR TO GOD…). If the chicken breast is not submerged, add water to the pot. Bring the whole shebang to a boil and then turn it down so it’s still boiling a little and put a lid on it.

After 30 minutes, fish the chicken breast out with a fork, put it in a bowl, then use two forks to shred it into little bitty pieces. Then dump the chicken back into the pot. Taste the broth and add shit if it needs it. Soy sauce if it’s not salty enough, vinegar if you can’t notice any vinegar at all (if you taste any, leave it alone) and mirin only if it seems like it’s too salty or too whatever and you’re trying to round out the flavor a little. DON’T ADD A WHOLE BUNCH OF SUGAR I WILL KILL YOU.

Cook it for another 30 minutes. When there’s like 5 minutes left, put a splash of sesame oil in there. Don’t use too much. It won’t ruin the soup if you do, but it will kind of overwhelm some of the other flavors, which would be a shame.

Put it in a big bowl and feel ashamed of your bigoted cultural appropriation. If you know any Korean people, send them the recipe so they can shit on you for being an ignorant round eye. The end.

when i make tacos or fajitas i like to get tortilla chips and the fake jarred queso

the best part though is when they're both almost gone you pour the broken chips at the bottom of the bag into the jar with the remaining queso and some salsa, mix it up, and eat it with a fork

it makes me feel like a piece of shit tho so i don't do it very often

Took my foid out for her b-day, had steak and lobster, she had pork ribs.

Honestly wish I picked the ribs, they are so fricking fall a part good while the lobster tastes like nothing and the steak is tough. So 7/10 flawed but not bad.

Arranging these in alphabetical order for unbiased results:

I am not going to list out weights/ratios for this because I’ve never weighed anything out beyond salt for the brine; which is a ratio anyway.

Required kitchen supplies:

Blender

Large mason jar

Bubble airlock

Metal Strainers

Metal funnels

Woozy bottles

Large pot/pressure cooker

Gloves (while working with the peppers)

Required ingredients:

Peppers, vinegar, salt, citric acid

Optional ingredients:

Xantham gum, garlic, fruit, misc. spices

First let’s start with pepper selection. Imo the best base hot sauce pepper is the chocolate habanero. It’s a very floral pepper with a strong color that holds up well to fermenting. You can go with any pepper you choose, but just keep in mind what you want the final sauce to be used for and remember that lighter peppers (such as Jay’s Peach Ghost or a lemon drop) will turn brownish/off color if you don’t augment it with additional flavors. More of that later.

Next you’ll want to choose your highlight pepper. This is one that has a super intense flavor/heat that you want to highlight, but can’t be used as the base pepper due to their heat/some other factor. Carolina Reapers, Bhut Jalokias, Jigsaws, Chocolate 7 Pots, Jays Peach Ghosts etc. all taste amazing but are way too hot to use as the base pepper. I always shoot for around a 75%: 25% ration when mixing my peppers, and sometimes I will use multiple highlighting peppers for a little more complex flavor. Depends on what the hot sauce will be used for.

One final note about the peppers, don’t be afraid to use peppers that are wildly hotter than you would typically consume. I’ve eaten a Carolina Reaper and it isn’t fun, however after fermenting for a couple months and cut with other flavors + vinegar the heat really mellows out. My last batch was a cornucopia of the craziest sounding peppers I could find at my local farmers market, mixed with chocolate habs, and my grandparents put my hot sauce on their quiche. If they can handle it you can too.

Now is the time to also decide whether or not you want to add garlic, spices and/or fruit. I’m not a huge garlic in hot sauce because I feel that it limits the uses of the final product, however I am a huge fan of adding little bit of fruit prior to, and after the fermenting process because the fruitiness goes really well with hab style peppers. I like dark cherries to go with the chocolate habs, but blueberries work really well too. Adding fruit can be a good way to correct the color as well. If you spring for a lighter color try and pair it with a darker fruit that will hold its color better throughout the fermentation process.

Start by sterilizing/cleaning as best you can. Fully sterilize a mason jar and whatever knife + cutting board you are going to use, and then whip up a batch of brine. I believe last time I used 15% salt but I just google it beforehand. It’s hard to frick this part up as long as everything is sanitized. Then, chop up your peppers lengthways and throw them into the sanitized mason jar. Use a small plastic bag full of brine water as the weight and MAKE SURE TO LEAVE ENOUGH ROOM. Do NOT fill it up to the top or you will have a mess on your hands as the fermenting liquid will push its way past the airlock and start spurting hot butt liquid all over your countertop. You can really pack the peppers in (as long as they can all be completely encased in liquid), but do not overfill the jar. Cut a hole in the top of the mason jar and install a fermenting airlock, which should be filled with cheap vodka or a bring solution so nothing grows in there during the fermentation process. It should look like this when you are done

Then, leave it on your counter for a couple months + and just let it ferment. Check on it around once a week to make sure there is still liquid in the airlock. You’ll know when it’s done fermenting because it’ll stop producing bubbles. You can tell by picking the jar up and turning it around in your hand. Bubbles will float to the surface as long as the fermentation process is still proceeding.

Once the fermenting process is done I will usually add a small handful of fruit into the finished product. This can restart the fermentation process due to the extra sugar, so at this time I also add citric acid to lower the pH and make it shelf stable. I also use a pH meter, but honestly that isn’t necessary especially if you plan on keeping the final product in the fridge where it can easily last 2 years without any noticeable degradation.

Now, sterilize your blender, funnels, woozy bottles, and strainers. Separate the peppers from the fermenting liquid and blend in the blender, then add vinegar.

Side note on the vinegar, hot sauce is like 90% vinegar so don’t skimp on the quality. I almost always go champagne for smaller batches and Prosecco for larger ones. Don’t fricking use white, red, or rice, or apple cider unless you have something very specific in mind otherwise you are going to ruin your hot sauce. Remember, hot sauce is about tasting the hot peppers not the vinegar. You want a vinegar that enhances the flavor of the peppers without getting in the way. A rule of thumb that I use is if someone were to taste your hot sauce and immediately know what vinegar you used, you fricked up.

While blending the pepper mash with the vinegar this is also the time to add xantham gum, which will stop the sauce from separating while it is sitting on the shelf. You don’t need to if you are sensitive to it, but I recommend it. Blend the pepper mash and vinegar mixture until it becomes completely liquid with no chunks/seeds and then transfer to woozy bottles. I try and shoot for the consistency in the picture below, a little thicker than Tabasco but very pourable.

My friend and I just got some land and will be starting a hot sauce company this summer/fall, so if people are interested I can make a much more in-depth post once I standardize everything.

Not pictured: garlic chili oil, sriracha, truff black, and truff hot

Some people unironically think that the crust is the most important part of pizza but I know they're r-slurred. Toppings btfo out of any crust and are the most tasty and exciting part of pizza (thus the most important). Plus you can eat thin crust pizza with the toppings and its still a pizza. But you can't eat pizza without toppings because at that point you're just eating bread. And no it they both can't be equally important

Anyway vote for the best part (hint it's toppings)

I need to start using actual bread flour

Marinaded Chicken and Salad with Bush's Sweet Heat Beans

Tony Gemignani started spinning pizza dough when he was 17. Crowds at his brother's pizzeria in Castro Valley, Calif., would watch in awe as he tossed dough 15-feet in the air, before seamlessly sliding it through his legs, across his shoulders and around his back like a basketball. He never dropped it.

"I loved it, and customers loved it," said Gemignani.

More than three decades later, Gemignani, now 49, has become an acclaimed pizza acrobat, with 13 world championship titles under his belt, seven of which are for acrobatics, and six for cooking. He has won several Guinness World Records, too, including "largest pizza base spun in [two] minutes." (The pie was 33.2 inches wide.)

"Tricks that you see a Harlem Globetrotter do with a basketball, we do with a pizza," he said.

Gemignani with members of the Harlem Globetrotters in 2018. He has performed with them many times. (Courtesy of Tony Gemignani)

Pizza acrobatics, sometimes called pizza freestyle or pizza tossing, has been around since the 1980s. The sport --- it is actually considered a sport --- involves tossing mounds of stretched pizza dough in the air, and performing jaw-dropping tricks with it. The dough seemingly defies gravity, launching straight in the air in perfect circular disks. Some acrobats can keep two pizzas twirling at a time.

It may be an unusual hobby, but tossing pizza is no joke. Like other competitive sports, it requires focus, coordination, physical strength and --- perhaps most important --- practice. Lots of practice.

"It's hard. You need agility," said Gemignani, who initially practiced pizza spinning with wet beach towels that he cut and sowed together to form a 16-inch circle. "There's some stamina involved. You'd be surprised."

Plus, he added, pizza dough is highly fragile compared with typical juggling props, and its elasticity is influenced by various factors that are beyond an acrobat’s control. Warm weather, for instance, makes the dough softer — and more susceptible to midair tearing.

“It’s flexible, it can rip, it changes in shape,” Gemignani said, explaining that dough for acrobatics differs from regular pizza dough, and is made with triple the salt and special flour for durability. “It’s always a little different every time you do it. The dough is always changing.”

The challenge, though, is part of what draws Gemignani to the sport. Over the years, he has attended --- and won --- many pizza acrobatic competitions, including the annual World Pizza Games in Las Vegas (which is part of the International Pizza Expo & Conference), and the Pizza World Championships in Parma, Italy --- the largest pizza show in the world.

International pizza makers --- or "pizzaiolos" --- travel from near and far to attend the yearly events.

"Competitors from around the world all fly in and compete," said Gemignani, who was born in Fremont, Calif., and has Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Native American roots.

Athletes, as they're called at the competitions, hail from across the United States, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Morocco, Sweden, France, India, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea and of course, Italy. They spend all year preparing and practicing their acrobatic acts.

There is usually a fee of about $100 to enter in the competitions, though many contenders are sponsored by companies in the industry. Winners occasionally take home cash prizes, but in many competitions, "it's bragging rights and medals," Gemignani said.

While each competition has its own set of rules and protocols, contenders always choreograph their own three-minute routines, which are accompanied by music and performed in front of a live audience. A panel of several expert judges then critique them on various factors, including dexterity, difficulty, showmanship, synchronization and creativity. Points are deducted for dropped dough.

"You shouldn't drop it that much," said Gemignani, who has started about 40 pizzerias across the country, including the famous Tony's Pizza Napoletana, in the heart of San Francisco's Little Italy. "You've got to pull it off and be the best you can."

While pizza acrobatics is a niche sport, it's actually somewhat conventional compared with other unusual contests out there, including bee-bearding challenges, nail art competitions, extreme ironing tournaments and worm charming championships.

Even though Gemignani has performed "thousands of times" over the course of his career, "I still get nervous," he said, adding that in addition to competitions, he has traveled the world --- from London to Thailand --- tossing pizzas at cancer camps, local festivals, sporting games, talk shows, fundraising events and other gatherings, large and small. He especially loves performing for kids.

"It's so rewarding," said Gemignani, who has an 8-year-old son named Giovanni. In 2009, Gemignani published a children's book about pizza acrobatics, called "Tony and the Pizza Champions."

In addition to performing tricks with dough, Gemignani's primary passion is making pizza. When it comes to pizza style, he does not discriminate.

"I celebrate every style of pizza. I have every type of oven," he said, adding that his new fast-casual franchise concept called "Slice House" offers five different styles of pizza: Detroit, grandma, Sicilian, New York and California. There are gluten-free options as well.

"I could never get sick of pizza," said Gemignani, who also teaches cooking courses, including at the Pizza University & Culinary Arts Center in Maryland. "I could eat it every day."

In recent years, Gemignani has focused more on cooking than performing, though he is still very involved in the pizza acrobatics scene. He helps organize the annual competitions in Las Vegas, and is the keynote speaker for the upcoming World Pizza Games, which will be held from March 28 to 30 at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

He has become a friend and mentor to many up-and-coming pizza performers, including Tara Hattan, 26, an award-winning acrobat from Tulsa. She has clinched six gold medals and was the first woman to win the World Pizza Games.

"I love the excitement," said Hattan, who is the co-owner of Zasa's Pizza & Wings --- which has two locations in Tulsa. "My body takes control, and I just throw dough."

Like Gemignani, she started tossing pizza in her teens while working at a pizzeria in Owasso, Okla., to make some extra money. She learned several tricks on YouTube, and quickly got the hang of it.

Hattan enjoyed it so much, that she eventually decided to drop out of college and pursue a career in the pizza industry full-time.

“This makes me happy,” said Hattan, adding that she attributes much of her success to her pizza master predecessors — including Gemignani — who have guided her along the way.

“All of them are just so experienced and so knowledgeable,” she said. “It’s so great to have people like that.”

Although competition can be stiff, the pizza tossing community prides itself on being supportive. It may be a serious sport, but most contenders do it for fun.

At the end of the day, Gemignani said, pizza is one of the most popular foods in the world for a reason.

“Pizza always takes you back to a time when things were much simpler in life,” he said. “No stress, no politics. It’s just about eating great food and having a good time.”

ingredients:

parsley and thyme rice, pan-fried marinaded chicken, black beans, salsa, lettuce, mozzarella, and sour cream

It was really good.

I probably put too much parsley on at the end, but it was tasty af

Went to a fancy Creole place with my girl last weekend and ate one of the top 5 dishes I've ever had

If you're in SoCal I'll DM you the place

“No culture or people is better they are just different” pic.twitter.com/LZ0dBnkSo2

— SleepiestCell Hapa cringeposter (@SleepiestCell) February 22, 2023

New type of guy just dropped: guy who spends $23/week on groceries by eating fresh-baked chocolate chip muffins for 2 out of every 3 meals pic.twitter.com/Nprs5iIkBX

— Matt (@SpacedOutMatt) February 21, 2023

always use defrost when reheating food in the microwave to retain moisture

get a knife sharpener, a cheap one will do

don't be afraid of soaping cast iron. just apply another layer of oil and bake for a half hour. not really needed when fully seasoned

setting your fridge to extra cold will make your food last much longer

keeping the heat on medium prevents sticking for cast iron and stainless steel. clean up with steel wool and/or flat metal spatula. can also be used to scrape fond as you cook

nutmeg + microplane

you can make ice cubes out of lemon juice or milk

boiling water in a pan is much faster than a traditional kettle

Pretty baller ngl