What simple cooking item evades you?

Chaos_Monkey

I can't make bread, or cook frozen pizza. Bread is always some verion of 'weird' and bought pizzas I always burn. I can make a pizza using a (bought) base, and not burn that though! My burnt pizzas were legendary within our circle of friends at one point

Pretty much anything else is fine, and I rarely use recipes (or follow them closely).

bupster

Bit confused by all the rice people. Maybe I just eat it wrong, if you see what I mean! I throw it in a pan of boiling water, and after ten minutes, drain it in a fine colander. I suppose maybe it's not fluffed up properly but it tastes fine for most things I eat it with. I use basmati generally.

I should add that I am rubbish at omelettes, eat poached eggs several times a week but have never got them to look like they do in restaurants (they're generally a dripping mess on toast), and my bread, though it tastes wonderful, always feels too heavy (though I'm blaming my oven for that )

jenster

someone would have already mentioned this but i can not make pastry for love nor money
ive tried by hand , by food processor but nope
so i shop buy the ready rolled ( pls dont shout) LOL
scrambled eggs was another hit and miss until i found the microwave method now i can make them all day long LOL

Hillbilly1

Am back again, Following on fromthe fdge. I have tried to make tablet a few times and it always goes wrong!

Mazzarati2000

Those that are having issues with eggs, - did you see Heston Blumenthals programme the other day? ( Think it was on C4? ) If not, it might be worth a shot looking it up online...he swears by low & slow for runny yolks, poached or boiled & recommends a bain-marie for scrambled. Eggs are not my nemesis......but I thought I might try his methods anyway as his poached egg did look particularly neat ( although the straining method looked like waste to me, but it works apparently!) As for my nemesis, I'll get back to you on that....

Lizling

What a great thread idea, lol!

I can't deep-fry stuff to save my life. I never get the oil hot enough. It'd probably help if I got a deep fat fryer but I wouldn't use it enough to justify it.

I also can't do rice apart from in the rice cooker. That really is a useful bit of kit

Oh, and macaroni cheese always comes out tasting fine but usually a bit too runny. Never seem to get the balance between sauce and pasta quite right.

I do make really good shortcrust pastry though, if I do say so myself! I haven't got a food processor so I have to do it by hand. It always looks like it's going to be too dry to come together but somehow it does (probably the extra water from using cold wet hands to ball it up helps.)