Samin Nosrat of "Salt Fat Acid Heat " fame is giving at-homecooking tips to fans.- On her new podcast "Home Cooking" with Hrishikesh Hirway, a musician and podcast producer, she addresses the concerns and obstacles facing home cooks today.
- Nosrat spoke with Insider about what she's been making for breakfast, lunch, and dinner during
quarantine . - She said her go-to dish is currently a congee (rice porridge)
recipe . - Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.
Samin Nosrat, author of The New York Times bestseller "Salt Fat Acid Heat" and host of the eponymous Netflix docuseries, told Insider that she's been leaning heavily on long-lasting batch recipes while in quarantine.
When it comes to her day in meals, she laughed and said: "Sometimes it's all three the same."
Nosrat said her go-to dish is currently a congee (rice porridge) recipe. She said she's been able to dress it up with a variety of toppings to make it feel different for every meal.
Nosrat posted a photo of the dish to her Instagram and wrote: "Rice porridge with chile crisp, peanuts, and cilantro is all I wanna eat right now. I'll post the recipe in my stories so you can make your own."
She gave Insider the recipe as well:
I used raw rice, but you can actually make it with leftover cooked rice too. But I did one cup of rice — and I used a sushi type rice or a short-grain type rice, you could also use jasmine rice — and eight cups of liquid. I used stock because I had it but you could also use water or a combination of water and stock. And I added a splash of fish sauce, maybe about two inches of peeled sliced ginger, and four garlic cloves that were peeled. And some salt. I simmered that for about three hours stirring it occasionally until it was like this incredibly velvety texture and the rice had totally fallen apart. And then I ate that with a variety of toppings over the next course of meals.
"It's so comforting and filling and delicious," she said.
One of her favorite toppings for the congee is a condiment called chile crisp made with garlic, onions, chiles, and oil. Nosrat said she uses that as a topping almost every time she eats the porridge.
For a savory lunch or dinner, you can follow her lead and add toasted peanuts for a yummy crunch along with some chopped cilantro. For breakfast, she topped her bowl with a poached egg.
"I didn't have chicken, but if I had a little piece of chicken or a little piece of tofu I might put that on top," she added. Nosrat said that a great side dish option is a pile of boiled vegetables, like broccoli or asparagus. "But if I didn't have that I would ... even just reheat some frozen vegetables and put them on top," she laughed.
Nosrat told Insider that she has been driven to cook, but she hasn't really had much of an appetite while in quarantine.
"I haven't found myself to be very hungry to be totally honest, which is ... a departure from my normal self," she said. "So usually I'll just eat like two bowls of congee in a day and call it a day — and an apple or cucumber or something."
Nosrat is now the host of a podcast called "Home Cooking" with her friend Hrishikesh Hirway. The podcast mainly focuses on answering listeners' questions and providing ideas and fixes for those of us cooking at home while self-quarantining.
Episode No. 1 of "Home Cooking" talked a lot about beans and the many ways they can be stretched over several meals and dishes as well.
While she's been spending lots of time in the kitchen cooking up things that some people might, at first glance, consider to be outside the realm of possibility for their own skills, she also revealed she's just like everyone else.
"I did eat a box of Annie's mac and cheese last week with frozen peas and chile crisp," she said while laughing hard. "That was really good."
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- I made Michelin-starred chef Massimo Bottura's 5-ingredient grilled cheese and it was the best quarantine snack I've had
- I made Alton Brown's beer bread after seeing it all over social media and found it surprisingly easy to do at home
- A 'Chopped' judge taught me how to make bread rolls for free online, but it was harder than I thought