traffic.
Smash Journeyman
- Joined
- Sep 1, 2012
- Messages
- 427
Combo Kitchen, what's that?!
We all like get together for smashfests, I mean, what could be better than playing a round of Project:M with a couple of pals, some cool sodas, and- Oh No! Somebody forgot to bring the snacks and Mom's going to be gone all afternoon at the hair salon! Gee whillickers boys, I'll bet one of you wishes he had a girlfriend right about now to go woman up some cookies.
Sounds like a situation we've all been in. 9 out of 10 Kevins agree that Smashfests with snacks are better than Smashfests without snacks. So worry not, Nerds! In the Combo Kitchen, I'll show you how, with just a few basic items and the right attitude, even the most cooking impaired noobin cook up a sick combo to four-stock that hunger!
"But Traffic! I'm already a pro, pillsbury dough tubes are too easy. Skip the beginner stuff, where are the advanced techniques?"
Great question, Billy! In each lesson I'll show you how to take these combos to the next level with some tasty flair. Once you get the hang of it you'll be coming up with your own combos in no time. Many people are surprised at how quickly they can learn to cook, and don't forget boys, ladies think it's real special when you stay in for a fancy dinner!
1. The Basics
If you live on your own, and are a young male, it's likely that you don't have a very well stocked kitchen, living off of papa john's and del taco. Go to any dollar store or walmart, and you can find kitchen supplies for 1-3 dollars a piece. For anyone who still lives at home, or has access to kitchen supplies, you can disregard this supply section. For a very reasonable price range (under 100$) you can stock a kitchen with everything you need to make just about anything.
Bakeware:
At walmart, or most supermarkets, you can find 12 piece bakeware sets for around 20 dollars. This includes muffin trays, baking trays, and brownie trays in varying sizes and shapes. These are outstanding since you can use them for cooking just about anything in the oven. For the frugal student, you can pick up these trays individually at many stores and thrifty locations for approx 1-3 dollars a piece. Pans and dishes made out of Pyrex glass, are for things like caseroles and lasagnas. It's worth picking one or two Pyrex dishes, if you know you will be cooking quite a bit.
Mixing Bowls:
It's always important to have a few mixing bowls of varying sizes. You can find cheap plastic bowls at any dollar store. Makes baking 50% easier since you wont be spending so much time cleaning up the mess you made last night stirring brownie and cookie mix in a tiny stove pot because you forgot to pick some up when you went to the store the other day.
Pots and pans:
You really only need one good sized frying pan and a few pots to open your world up to culinary adventure. Instead of microwaving those cup noodles, add in a few vegetables, make a basic sauce, and you've got a stir fry your friends will go mad rage jelly over.
Utensils:
Cookware aisles have walls of this stuff. Peelers, flippers, scoopers, grabbers, wooden spoons, spatulas, tongs. Every tool has a job, but some tools just do more than others. The more you start to explore cooking, you'll find yourself in a situation where you just really need a certain something to get the job done. Most kitchen tools are super cheap and the cookware section of your market will seem like a candy store when you see just how many different toys you can buy for your kitchen.
Cutting Boards & Knives:
For a beginner chef, you should be wary of anyone trying to sell you expensive knives. Until you are experienced enough to really know the different applications of the many styles of knives, you won't need them for most of the cooking a young chap does on his own. A chef's knife is good for 90% of the cutting you'll be doing. A paring knife will be good for everything that requires a little more "finesse." You can find cutting boards in a variety of price ranges, but its best practice that if you are going cheap, getting a few is the wise choice. Chicken, beef, and veggies should be done on separate boards to help prevent cross contamination.
Rookie Cookie's Checklist:
1 Muffin Tray
1 Baking Tray
1 9x9 Brownie Tray
1 Pyrex Caserole Dish (pretty optional)
~ $10
Measuring Cups - Dry - For scoopin flour
Measuring Cups - Liquid - For measuring milk
Measuring Spoons - For little amounts of spices.
~$5-10
3 Mixing Bowls
1 Frying Pan
2 Stovetop Pots (one big and one small)
~$15-20
1 set of Tongs
2 Wooden Spoons
1 Rubber Spatula
1 Whisk
1 Flipper
~$10
1-2 Cutting Boards
1 Big Knife
1 Small Knife.
~$10-30
2. Getting Started With Something Easy
Since this will be an ongoing thing, I will try to keep this first post free from bloat and get straight to some munchies! Here's what you can expect from the Combo Kitchen:
1. A beginner level recipe for something you won't believe is that easy.
2. Some intermediate level suggestions for how to go deep on these recipes.
3. A next level idea for those cool mother****ers that already know the food-meta-game.
3. That sticky icky ooey gooey brownies WITH COOKIE CHUNKS IN THAT ****
Okay guys, I know what you're thinking. "Those look pretty delicious, but I don't know the first thing about oven science!"
So let's take a look at this 1-2 combo, in the first installment of Traffic's COMBO KITCHEN!
YO REAL TALK - How cheap and easy these snacks can be.
You can get pre-mixed dry cookie/brownie ingredients at the stores for like 2-3 bucks for a pound of this stuff. To give you an idea of this insane value, one 3 dollar bag of cookie mix is enough for 3 batches of these monsters. That's a lot of power per punch! Once you start to buy ingredients that can be used in everything, you'll soon find out you can make a lot more out of so much less. With a bag of cookie mix, and a bag of brownie mix, you can cheat the hard work and for under 10 dollars, get 3-4 batches (16 or so portions to a 9x9 pan)
YO I GOT THIS - what you can get away with:
Ingredients:
1 bag of dry cookie mix - OR - pre-made tubes of cookie dough. it's srsly that simple.
1 bag of dry brownie mix
some warm (not melting) butter/icantbelieveitsnotbutter
some vegetable oil
a spoonful of water yo
maybe 2 eggs, if your brownie mix drops combos and misses knees.
Hardware:
An oven, ya dummy.
a bowl or two, for mixin
wooden spoon up in here for mixing and licking
9"x9" metal brownie pan
First things first. Get all your ingredients ready, and clean off the space you'll be cooking. And turn your oven on and ****. to 350 degrees. cause pretty much everything bakes at 350 degrees. Also use 'Bake' mode.
Take about 1/3 or 1/4 of the bag of cookie mix (it's up to you how much cookie dough you want to put in these things) and dump it into a mixing bowl. You'll see a bunch of white powder and chocolate chips. On the bag there are some instructions for how much butter to how much powder, that stuff's not really too important. If it says "use 1 cup of mix, and 1/4 cup of butter" just chill homey, just keep the ratios close and you can make any recipe any size. add a spoonful of water to the cookie mix when you add the butter, and use your wooden spoon to cream that **** together, it'll be weird and lumpy and powder will be everywhere, just keep stirring, mixing, and mashing it until you end up with a sticky ball of cookie dough. If its too true, add in a little butter, making sure to mix it in thoroughly before adding more.
It should look like this homey, maybe a little drier, maybe a little stickier. It's all good homey.
Put this ball of cookie dough aside, and grab your brownie mix. Look at the instructions, you'll probably need a little bit of oil, possibly an egg or two. Whatever man just pick up a bottle of veg oil and you'll be good for everything. when you got the dry mix in a bowl, dig out a little hole in the middle. pour the oil in slow like mix that **** up, till its sticky but still pretty runny, you want brownies to be thick and solid chunks of fudgey goodness, this aint fluffy ***** cake we're talkin' about.
Check it bro, if it looks like this, you dun good. Just mix everything till there ain't no lumps yet.
If you have a whisk, or a wooden spoon, start stirring, because just like the cookie dough, we don't unevenly distribute dry ingredients like a little silly *****. No lumps homey, nobody likes lumpy brownies. Mix it proper.
At this point, you should have a bowl with brownie mix in it, and cookie dough ready to rock. Don't eat too much of it now! Take your 9x9 brownie pan, and using a bit of paper towel, or your fingers, and a little bit of butter or margarine, and lube up every inch and corner of that pan. Just rub it around back and forth, get it in there good. You can use cooking spray too if you like spraypainting your trays with plant fat homey.
Pour in the brownie mix, using your imagination and whatever else you can find to get that dough out of the bowl and into that metal pan. It should be thick enough that you have to help it into the corners, but gooey enough that it slowwwwwwly spreads out. You want that ooey gooey brownie. Then tear off chunks of cookie dough and stuff it into the brownie mix. Once you've got everything in there, and your oven has beeped to let you know it's reached 350 degrees, toss that greasy pig in the oven and look at the brownie mix. The brownies take more time to cook, so you're gonna leave em in for about as long as it says on the brownie mix. If
Now we play the waiting game. Clean up your mess. You got chocolate brownie mix everywhere. You can make this easier on yourself by cleaning up as you go. Making sweet brownies is great and all, but leaving the kitchen a mess will undo your efforts and sully your reputation among men. Put away your **** when you're done with it, and you'll be a legend to your friends, family, or dormmates.
Chill out, it still needs another 15 minutes.
Okay, so it's around 30-35 minutes, you're getting antsy, you NEED these brownies to finish cooking, how do you know if they're done? Sure you'll eat them uncooked and slopping from the tray like the animal you are, but wait those 5 or 10 minutes and you won't be sorry. If you're just starting off and want to know what "cooked long enough" brownies look like, start checking the brownies every 5 minutes after 15-20 go by. You will see the difference as the edges cook first, and the thickest gooiest center takes the longest to finish. Take a toothpick, or a knife, and poke into the thickest middle portion. If it comes out covered in batter and dough, it's not cooked enough. When the toothpick comes out clean, you know its done. Don't stress over if its been 43 or 46 minutes, just check to see if your food is done. If it isn't, just chill, let it cook a bit longer, keep your eye on it. It's more important that you learn to read the food instead of the instruction panel on the box.
Damn son, you just made brownies with chocolate chip cookie chunks in the brownies?! I want that up in my mouth like it was a pair of ladies' underpants. With the most simple combination of "stuff that comes in a bag" and "water" you can easily make these ridiculous treats for yourselves, no matter how lazy and directionless your lazy ass is.
4. Wow, what's next?!
Some of you have read this far and thought to yourself, this is lazy and simple. I can do better. So here's how you can start taking this combo to the next level.
- If you have favourite recipes for cookies and brownies, make them from scratch and combine them just the same! You can make them any kind of brownie with any kind of cookie you want!
- Instead of a 9x9 Brownie Tray, take muffin tins, grease them, and then lay the cookie dough on the bottom, and the brownie mix on top for layered crunch and deliciousness. You can put chocolates or different treats in the middle by placing it in the muffin cups before the brownie mix gets poured on top. Oreos and Reese's Cups come to mind here.
- You can add in things that you like, but remember that you may need to use less of some other ingredients. If you add a bunch of peanut butter, you can omit about the same amount of butter. Great creative! Chocolate and Peanut Butter Brownies with Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookie Chunks sounds PRETTY DAMN GOOD TO ME WOULDN'T YOU ALL AGREE.
5. I don't understand yet.
Next week, I'll be taking a look at one of my favourite tasty fruit party beverages...
Falcon Punch
