(Part 2) Best products from r/FoodPorn

Thank you! Yes it's a plate. I love shooting on dark tables, plates, and backgrounds. It can add really nice contrast to an image.

The most important thing for food photography is the styling so being a chef should give you a huge advantage. Grab the book Light Science and Magic to get an understanding of lighting and you will be producing masterpieces in no time!

I hear ya. I didn't get into the habit of making food to look as amazing as it tasted till after I worked in a few restaurants, I still get lazy most of the time and don't dress stuff up. Particularly when its just me eating it.

Taking you at your word of knowing nothing about cooking, despite some evidence to the contrary in an image above, I typed out my standard advice to someone looking to know more about cooking:

• If you want to learn more about cooking, Alton Brown's books/shows are a fantastic resource because they also tell you the how and the why that is missing from many contemporary cooking shows.
  
  
• A good resource for recipes is a copy of the Three Rivers Cookbook.
  
  
• About the only things I learned working as a line cook at a few places were: some pretty sweet knife skills, how to tell the done-ness of meat by touch, and that I NEVER want to work in another kitchen for the rest of my life. But I still like cooking for myself / my friends.

Recipe:

Note: I typically season everything by taste, so I can't really give you an exact measurement of each thing - sorry! :(

Buns:(2x)

-Bring water to a boil

-Throw in 1 brick of instant ramen noodles for 3 minutes. (I tried this with fresh straight ramen noodles which didn't turn out too great - needs to be curly)

-Strain and place in a mixing bowl.

-In a separate bowl, whisk 1 egg and then mix it with the noodles.

-Season with salt, pepper, sesame oil, tiny bit of sugar, chicken seasoning powder.

-On a clean plate, place cling wrap on the plate and then circular mold - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0061UKLKC/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

-Fill the mold with the noodles and use the cling wrap to flatten the top.

-Freeze for 15-30 minutes (Until you are able to remove the noodles without it falling apart).

-Fry both sides on medium/high heat with a neutral oil.


Burger:

-Ground beef, bread crumbs (To counter the moisture), Finely diced shallots, minced garlic, minced ginger, salt, pepper, soy sauce, sesame oil, chicken seasoning powder, and some mushroom seasoning (MSG substitute - https://www.amazon.com/All-Natural-Mushroom-Seasoning-17-11oz/dp/B004LAXGGU/ref=sr_1_4_s_it?s=grocery&ie=UTF8&qid=1522852266&sr=1-4&keywords=mushroom%2Bseasoning&th=1) for umami flavor. (FYI don't buy from amazon, they're super cheap in an asian market)

-Optionally, you can thinly slice and mix in the soft green part of a scallion. Save the lighter crunchier part for later to slice and sprinkle on your burger.

-Shape and fry on a pan


Garlic Miso Aioli:

-Mayonnaise, garlic, equal parts red and white miso paste

Bacon:

-Use thick cut bacon (didn't have any on hand)

-Make a mixture of brown sugar and equal parts of soy sauce & mirin (sweet japanese cooking sake) - Make sure the mixture is just a paste so slowly add in your wet components.

-Apply paste to both sides of the bacon and bake at 400 degrees.

-Alternately, if you want the bacon crispier, bake the bacon first - half way through. (Applying to early may cause the sugar to burn)


Toppings:

-Thinly sliced cucumber

-Pickled carrots and daikon, recipe can be found here: http://whiteonricecouple.com/recipes/vietnamese-pickled-carrots-daikon/

-Sunny side up egg

-Thinly sliced scallion (crunchy side, closer to the root).

The frosting is the Italian meringue buttercream frosting from CakeLove (a local bakery here in Maryland) run by Warren Brown. He has a really great cookbook with recipes about baking cakes from scratch that has this really delicious frosting. I used the base frosting lightly flavored with vanilla and then added ancho chile powder, cayenne powder, Dave's 2011 Private Reserve hot sauce (ghost pepper sauce) and some Hangar One chipotle infused vodka. It was mostly sweet, slightly savory and wonderfully spicy. Used a regular plastic frosting bag to pipe the frosting on top. A little bit of ancho chili powder was sprinkled on top for looks. Frosted it immediately after making it so it was the perfect texture and consistency, and I just HAD to snap some photos.

Thanks, been dialing in this recipe for like a month now!

Oh and also, as much as I am a fan of /u/J_Kenji_Lopez-Alt , I have to say, just using the bacon press combined with a piece of parchment is the way to go - it comes right off and leaves your burger on the cooking surface. I use the bacon press below because the bottom is smooth:

https://www.amazon.com/Bacon-Press-Shaped-Mountain-Diameter/dp/B001AT22ZG/


Additionaly, I would recommend the construction layers (lettuce on bottom, etc) used by Babish. Also, I'm sure his spread is good, but I just use Wishbone Thousand Island Dressing to save time and it's like 90% of the way to In-N-Out spread. You could, if you want, put a little tiny splash of vinegar in the thousand island to get the slight tang of the In-N-Out spread, but to me that's complicating things too much - Thousand Island is just fine.

Thank you. :)

I learned how to use mine from a book. This book! (tried to url it but Reddit wasn’t letting me). Good for basic guidelines. 😃 This Old Gal has great recipes too.

You can find them anywhere between $40-$75. I got mine about 5-6 years ago, and it's running great still! I usually make Jerky once or twice a month. Great protein snack in the morning and before the Gym. The wife likes to dry herbs and veggies for home made rammen too. I can't recommend getting one enough! Great purchase!

I think this is about the same kind I have at home. https://www.amazon.com/Nesco-American-FD-61-Snackmaster-Dehydrator/dp/B000CEM3WM/ref=sr_1_12?ie=UTF8&qid=1480969396&sr=8-12&keywords=NesCo+dehydrator.

We ended up getting extra trays for it too for pertty cheap at Bed Bath & Beyond at some point too.

Oh, to expand on that, it was a Canon 5D Mark II with a 24-105 f/f L-series lens. I was shooting at around f/9, I believe, and I white balance on the camera before shooting using white balance cards. I often use a reflector as well to fill in the front, but this time I didn't.

Post processing was in Photoshop. I did just a tiny bit more white balancing using a curves layer, then I punch up the highlights and bring down the darks (a standard S-curve). I also use the shadows/highlights tool to bring up the darkest darks so they aren't just straight up black.

I then make a mask around the parts that I really want to feature (in this case the beef and the folded towel on the right), the do a minor Gaussian blur on everything else to just slightly blur it, which makes the meat and texture on the towel pop a little more. Too much and it ends up looking like an Instagram photo.

Similarly, I use that same mask to blow out the lights and darks in the un-masked sections slightly so that the beef and towel pop even more. The key is really being subtle about it though. I probably did a quick sharpen on the whole image as well.

Actually, the REAL key is good lighting. You get good lighting and you're 99% of the way towards a good photograph.

Wow. That's excellent. Good luck with your new place and smoker. If you haven't decided what to get this is what my dad has. If you shop at costco it can just about fit a full set of the babyback ribs they sell. I only specify costco because I don't know if they have a somewhat unique size/cutting method.

Really? Is that just in Israel? I grew up going to a conservative synagogue and have never heard of that. Obviously I know latkes and gilt and those hanukah staples. I grew up in LA if that makes a difference.

All these different spellings of Hanukah have reminded me that my brother has a book on amazon called The Top 10 Jewish.... It's just a bunch of top ten lists like "top 10 spellings of hanukah" and "top 10 celebrities you didn't know where jewish." It's dumb, but entertaining. Looks like it is free on kindle.

The stocks were store-bought! (Right one here, left one here - or something similar...) You can buy a pack (instead of bulk) at an Asian grocery market.

All that's left is to buy produce and meat that you wanna eat :)
We had bella mushrooms, enoki mushrooms, sweet squash, cabbage, noodles, beef, fish cakes, dumplings, red onions, green onions, bean sprouts, etc.

You'd need a hot pot pot (or just a regular pot) and a table grill (shown is an induction grill), heat the pan with the water and sauce until boiling (keep it boiling), and then put in the food you wanna eat :)

Everything should cook fairly quickly, but it does take about a minute, so be careful not to eat raw meat or anything.

You can also make a sauce to dip the food in afterward in case there isn't enough seasoning in the broth! I used a soy sauce based one, but if you look online, there should be a lot of recipes to help you, along with a variety (peanut sauce, hot sauce, etc.). Sriracha works as well, if you like it.

Yes it is. I am blessed to live in the SF bay area where there are some awesome Japanese grocery stores. Looks like you can buy it on Amazon. Kikkoman is a legit brand.

http://www.amazon.com/Unknown-Kikkoman-Katsu-Sauce/dp/B0000CNU6U/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1395983381&sr=8-2&keywords=katsu

This recipe was adapted from The Uchi Cookbook.

To make the squid, I first made a marinade (roughly inspired by kimchi). Get about 30 g each of ginger, garlic, and shallots and mince them. Mince about 60 g of green onion. In a sauce pan, saute the ingredients in 30 g of vegetable oil - adding the green onions last. Once softened and aromatic, add 30 g of sugar and 30 g of toasted sesame oil. Remove from the heat. Once cool, add 55 g of fish sauce and mix thoroughly.

I bagged a calamari steak with this marinade and let marinate overnight. Next, I cooked the calamari sous vide at 140F for 2 hours. I removed all of the marinade with a paper towel, then cooked on the stove over high heat to caramelize. Once cooled, I sliced the squid into strips.

I cut 1/2 slices of green tomato and vacuum compressed them with some homemade nam chim (fish sauce, water, sugar, garlic, ginger, shallots, and Thai pepper).

For the gastrique, I mixed a 1:1 ratio of fresh apple juice to white vinegar, then added some curry paste I had on hand with some sugar and reduced to a syrup.

To finish the salad, I tossed the calamari, compressed tomatoes, thin slices of green apple, and romaine hearts with a a bit of the nam chim from the tomatoes, then piled over some of the gastrique.

They were delicious! Thinly sliced with the help of this device, I baked them in a 450F degree oven and brushed/re-brushed with a mixture of butter, olive oil, garlic, thyme, rosemary, lemon zest, and more butter.

Next time I'll put them under a broiler at the end, because they had been in the oven over an hour, and weren't getting crispy as fast as we were getting hungry. Really great taste though!

Let me plug mini silicone tart pans to you!

https://www.amazon.com/Wilton-Tart-Pie-Molds-Silicone/dp/B01I3EQASU

I've made small panna cotta in them and they turn out lovely. Plus super easy to remove!

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B01KFL1DW2/

This is how I made it :)