I’ve started cooking some red lentils in some beef stock, adding them and some breakcrumbs to mince meat to pad the meat out a bit (and hide some extra veg in the meat). With meatballs you cant even tell the difference. What are some of your hacks/tips/tricks?
Baked loaded sweet potatoes.
Basically cook a sweet potato, then open it up and stuff it full of things you like (beans, corn, sour cream is a good one).
Oh yeah? Sounds interesting! What sort of beans?
I usually have a tin of kidney beans that go straight in, or I’d like to try roast chickpeas as well. You can stick in back in the oven if you want everything to warm up nicely together.
This is not really a hack or trick, it’s just something people skip over a lot these days:
Always reuse scraps for broth/stock/soup. Everytime you cut up your vegetables, put all the ends and unused bits in a freezer bag. They will add a lot of flavour and nutrients when slow cooked with the leftover bones (from roast or fried chicken, for example). Then just strain the liquid and use it for whatever you want.
Time/temp/liquid ratio?
if you have a slow cooker - enough water to cover, and then half more, turn on low, leave for 6 hours or until it smells good.