The other day I picked up another bottle of Avocado Oil. I like to use this stuff on pretty much everything. It doesn't impart an Avocado taste to your food, rather it is beneficial for the high smoking temp. It smokes at around 500F. This makes it ideal for searing steaks, chicken or seafood like scallops. It is hard to find, but lately Costco has had it so I always pick up a few bottles when they have it. So this got me thinking.....what types of ingredients do you guys/gals use that maybe tough to find, or are uncommon or are new to the cooking world or your region? I though it would be interesting to see what people come up with. As always pictures are encouraged, especially labels!!
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Clarified butter. Yeah, I'm waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay out there.
The wife LOVES those things.
Thought maybe you had a stash of elephant snot. -
Lot's of Indian spices around, and I have some powdered soy sauce to play around with.Comment
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Supposed to be a lot of Umami flavors, rubs, burgers.Comment
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Some of the BBQ sauces called for Molasses which I had trouble finding here in Singapore, so I substituted it with Kecap Manis, which is Indonesian sweet Soy Sauce (incredibly good stuff on eggs, stir fry, meats). It worked really well. If you try, I suggest reducing the amount of sugar you use as this is a very sweet sauce.
"Kecap manis : Sweet soy sauce, which has a thick syrupy consistency and a unique, pronounced, sweet somewhat treacle-like flavor due to generous addition of palm sugar. Regular soy with brown sugar and a trace of molasses added can substitute." (wikipedia)
I like to throw it on lamb cutlets and cook 'em quick - enjoy!
Mike
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/ABC-Kecap-Mani.../dp/B000EINWCQComment
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yowza Thanks for the heads up on this stuff!! And it great to hear that you can get it in the States. I have to check it out.Comment
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LOL, I have the opposite problem. Entirely too many exotic ingredients, not nearly enough mundane ones. I have some "creative" ingredients but it is mostly trying to find a substitute for a common ingredient. The replacements are mostly inferior. Slicing up German cornichon pickles to use on hamburgers instead of Heinz ridged slices, for example. They're not wide enough so they fall off the bun, and the taste isn't super-strong so they barely stand out among the rest of the ingredients.
You can't really get creative with Chinese ingredients, they're pretty much for use in Chinese food only. For example, I could make some BBQ sauce and substitute this kind of black fishy vinegar, but I'm sure it would be horrible and I'm not going to waste ten bucks worth of lemon juice and butter and worcestershire on it. Or substitute it for balsamic in a salad dressing, but it would just make your salad taste fishy. LOL I know I sound like a whiny broken record when I moan & complain like this, but it's true. The black vinegar is for dipping dumplings in, and it's absolutely delicious that way, for what it was intended to do.Comment
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