Category Archives: Cheat Codes
Cheat Codes: Flavor Infused Water
Water is probably the best thing you can drink. But let’s be honest, it’s also probably the most boring thing you can drink. Switching to drinking water instead of sugar laden sodas or juices is one of the simplest positive diet changes you can make. Yet making the switch can be a difficult task if your taste buds are used to being hit with flavor every time you take a sip of liquid. Luckily flavor infused water is there to help ease the transition! You’ve probably seen flavored waters in stores. Or the flavor drops you can add to your water. There’s nothing really wrong with these products. But if you can make something yourself at home, why not do so?
Even dogs get excited about drinking water!
Cheat Codes: Homemade Tortilla Chips
Tortilla chips are a party snack classic. They’re strong enough to hold up dips of pretty much any kind, but mild enough in flavor to let said dip shine. And yet they also have enough of their own flavor to be yummy eaten on their own. Tortilla chips bought at the store are usually pretty good (though some are better than others. Perhaps we’ll have a snack report comparison about it one of these days), but tortilla chips at Mexican restaurants are usually even better. That’s because most places make their chips fresh from scratch. And is the case with almost all food stuffs, fresher is better.
Making tortilla chips from super scratch involves making tortillas from scratch. While probably awesome, making fresh tortillas is a bit too much work for this particular application. That’s why this is a cheat code; it’s halfway between totally from scratch and straight up store bought.
Luckily, despite soft tortillas from scratch involves multiple ingredients and special equipment, making tortilla chips only requires three ingredients and standard kitchen equipment.
Cheat Codes: How To Substitute Buttermilk Using Vinegar and Milk
Buttermilk is a weird concept. It’s milk that’s cultured with bacteria to curdle it slightly, making it kinda gross and blorpy, but actually good for you and better for certain types of cooking. It originally was made from the leftover milk when butter was churned, letting bacteria build up to acidify the milk and thus curdle it. In plainest terms, it’s really just a controlled version of spoiled milk. Obviously it’s not the same as leaving milk in the fridge for a month and having it taste like hot-ass and sponge, but both the old-fashioned butter churning way, and modern day cultured way result in milk that’s been curdle due to high amounts of bacteria in it.
Oh boy! Yum!
But actually, I should stop kidding around, buttermilk actually plays a really big role in foods like cake and waffles. It transforms pancakes from good to legendary. It’s ironically become somewhat of a luxury item today, despite the fact it’s not very dissimilar to yogurt. If you can find it at your local grocer and don’t mind shilling out the extra money for it, go for it! But if not, there’s a way to simulate it at home pretty easily.
Cheat Codes: How To Dry Your Own Herbs
Some people say variety is the spice of life. So I guess that makes spices the spice of food? However you wanna look at it, there’s no denying the important of herbs and spices in cooking. Without them, your flavor options would be pretty limited to really bland combinations of salt, cream, and plain vegetables/fruits. Virtually every recipe calls for herbs thrown in for that extra flavor mile. The only problem with these culinary truths is that buying herbs isn’t always cheap or convenient. We’ve already discussed growing your own herbs at home a long time ago on PCFG, but what if you want to hang onto those herbs all year round? Potted herbs are great, but sometimes it’s a pain to bring them inside over the Winter, and beyond that sometimes you just need to heartbreakingly say goodbye when a good herb plant simply dies in the cold. Big name spice companies dry their herbs and bottle them for sale, obviously. They probably use some sort of space-age water neutralization mega oven science shit. No one could do that at home, right? Believe it or not, actually yeah you can. And it’s pretty easy. Probably 90% of the process involves literally doing nothing, so it’s totally possible to dry herbs at home even if you’re super lazy. Read the rest of this entry
Cheat Codes: How to Make Homemade Chipotle Ranch
Chipotle ranch is a great condiment. It’s delicious as spread on sandwiches, in burritos, and even as a dipping sauce (especially for onion rings). Yet despite its rising popularity over the past few years, it can sometimes be annoyingly difficult to find chipotle ranch in stores. And then even when you find it, it can sometimes be stupidly expensive. So what are those of us on a budget supposed to do when we crave that smoky, tangy goodness? Make our own of course!
Mix these together…
…and you get magic.
The Poor Couple's Food Guide 
You must be logged in to post a comment.