Ask Lemmy

Merangue is the perfect food to make when you're angry as hell.

The trick to fried juicy chicken is tapioca flour. Chicken itself doesn't need much time to be cooked through, but a regular batter of flour coating takes forever to get nice and crunchy. By the time you get it right, the meat is overcooked.

Tapioca (or cornstarch, if you must) gets a really nice color and crunch in no time, so you can just eyeball it and it's gonna be good.

Cooking lemons

I feel you, but the truth is that they're easy to cook. It's just that they're also easy to cook badly.

Get pan heating. Medium high. If there's a number scale from 1 to 10, go about 5 or 6.

Plenty of lubricant (oil, butter, whatever), ready to go. One pat of butter to the side

Crack eggs in a bowl.

Add pepper to taste.

Scramble eggs in bowl with fork.

When pan is hot, which is when you can hold your hand about six inches over the pan and feel it, add lubricant of choice. Just enough to cover the bottom of the pan.

Give eggs one last stir with fork, then pour in.

Count to six slowly. Then gently move the eggs around with. A spatula, spoon, or whatever is handy and won't burn.

Once you've got chunks of eggs, stop. Count to six them move them around again.

Add in extra pat of butter. Let it start to melt, then gently move the chunks around until most of the liquid is now a jiggly mass with a tiny amount of liquid making the surface shiny.

Cut off the heat. Sprinkle with a pinch of salt or two. Put it all on a plate if it's just for one person, in a bowl or individual plates for a bigger table.

That's it. Bare minimum scramble. You can get fancier, but that's a choice.

The reason most eggs people make suck is too much heat for too long. They get rubbery. Lower heat, gentle scrambling, then let the heat that's in the eggs finish the last bit of cooking on the plate or serving bowl. You'll get fucking excellent eggs. Might take a few tries to really nail things to perfection, but the methodology will work to make yummy eggs before that.

Seriously, eggs don't need to be in the pan long. A minute or so for a big batch as long as you're moving the curds that form is plenty most of the time. When it isn't, it'll be because it's a huge batch rather than just big.

Same principle applies to over easy, over hard, and sunny side up, but flipping those is a skill that takes practice. But use lower heat and you'll fuck up less. Trust me, if you leave things less done than you think is done, there is plenty of heat there to finish the job and they'll be safe to eat even if not pasteurized. I promise. Carry over cooking is a thing.