Stress-free burgers

August 28, 2025 3:36 PM

A few months ago, my dad visited me, and I made burgers for him one night because he likes burgers and because I know I can make them well enough to his satisfaction. Even so, I've always found burgers to be so much work, so I decided to try and make things easier for myself by buying pre-made frozen patties.

That was a terrible mistake. I think using the frozen patties made it so much more stressful. And it made me realize, cooking burgers on a pan is not ideal. All the fat renders off and just sits in a puddle and then you have a splattery mess to deal with. I had to keep removing all the extra fat from the pan, which was both annoying and precarious. I ended up way overcooking the burgers and they didn't taste very good ):

But a few days ago I saw some french fries and it made me really want french fries, and I also had a burger from my favorite ice cream shop, which was delicious, and I thought, it's time for me to make some burgers and fries again.

I used this ranch burger recipe, which is one of my go-to's. Some people will tell me that I'm really making meatloaf because of the fact that there's ranch seasoning, onions, breading, and egg mixed in with the beef, but I don't care, that's what makes it taste good.

But you know what really made this a successful stovetop burger? I used 93% lean beef. Now I like my meat fatty, but I really wanted to avoid the puddle of fat in my pan, so I splurged a bit on this. (It's okay, it evens out the mayonnaise that I bought for less than $1)

And it totally worked! I cooked the patties and it was super chill! I even used my meat thermometer and I cooked the meat to a temperature of about 140°F, which was plenty cooked.

It did still take a while to prep and cook and clean it all, but the important thing was that I didn't stress out about it, and I didn't make a mess.

Imitation crab musubi

September 7, 2025 2:02 PM

On Friday, I was working at a friend's house, and by the time the workday ended I was SO HUNGRY that I impulsively bought a pack of imitation crab from Aldi. As I was grabbing it, one of the workers there said to me "Have you had these before?" I told her I have, and she said "Oh okay, just making sure, because they're kind of sweet and really artificial tasting." Well, it is imitation crab, so I kind of expect it to taste artificial. I know some people that really dislike the taste of it, but I like it! I'd rather snack on fake crab than on crackers.

Aldi used to sell smaller packages of imitation crab, but now it's like, a whole pound! So I had way more than I needed to satisfy my hunger that evening, and I wanted a way to use up the rest of it (without just...snacking on it some more). I was browsing for ideas online, and I came across some creamy imitation crab onigiri recipes. And that sounded delicious.

Problem is, I don't have an onigiri mold. But what I do have is a musubi mold! I really didn't want to buy any extra ingredients for this, so I used different recipes for inspiration and just threw something together based on what I already had:

• two nori sheets
• short grain rice
• furikake
• mayonnaise
• Shark brand sriracha
• some sad looking cilantro, so I might as well throw that into the mix too

I shredded up some pieces of imitation crab and mixed it with mayonnaise and Sriracha. I cooked a cup of the rice and once that was done, I mixed in a tablespoon or so of furikake. To assemble, I placed half a nori sheet on my cutting board with the musubi mold in the middle of it. I layered in some rice, then some crab, then some cilantro, more furikake, sesame seeds because why not, and then a layer of rice to finish it off!

And then I just pressed down, removed the mold, and wrapped it up!

It was a tasty treat! And I was so happy to use up the rest of my nori as well as the rest of a jar of mayo. I am getting through so many of my sauces and shelf stable ingredients! At this point I'm refusing to buy any long lasting ingredient that will leave me with a bunch of leftover. (Except for like, oil and salt) One day I will get through it all!

Orange chicken

September 24, 2025 5:44 PM

Back when I was in middle school, a Panda Express opened in one of the local malls. Sometimes my dad would take me and my sister to this mall, and we'd eat Panda Express every single time. We ate there so often that I recognized the man working there, and he recognized us too. Almost every time, I would order orange chicken. And the times when I didn't order orange chicken, I wished I had. I don't know why I liked it so much, but sometimes I feel nostalgic for it, and every time I see a Panda Express, I think to myself, I could go for some orange chicken.

But honestly? It doesn't really hit the same way now. Every time I've gotten Panda Express in my adult life, I've kind of regretted it afterwards. Maybe my body can't handle Chinese fast food like it used to.

But I still get these desires to have orange chicken! I've been travelling a lot lately, and when I was in the airport I could smell some Chinese food and I almost ordered some, but I settled for some Jimmy John's instead. It was alright. I still wanted Chinese, and I decided that I would just make my own orange chicken when I got home.

I had made this orange chicken from Budget Bytes before, and I remembered it being pretty good! I already had all of the sauces I needed so I only had to buy chicken, ginger, green onions, and an orange.

Now the ingredient list called for "1 large orange", and whatever size orange I bought was definitely not big enough. The more detailed instructions said to squeeze out 1/2 cup of orange juice and I think I barely had 1/4 cup! Squeezing oranges is also super messy. Maybe I'm doing it wrong, but it all completely fell apart.

Anyway, I only bought one orange, so this ended up being not-so-orange orange chicken. But it's okay! It still ended up very tasty and definitely way way healthier than anything I could get from takeout.

And just to round out the meal a little more, I also steamed some broccoli and I served it with rice. It was a very good meal.

Ricotta pancakes

December 19, 2025 12:21 AM

Hello, friends.

I know I haven't blogged much. I've been so focused on my WhatTeochewSay work because one of my big goals for the year is to finish making a particularly large feature for the site. It's not going to be done by the end of the year, but after a few really busy weeks with family, I had a bunch of free time and I just wanted to LOCK IN.

Of course another one of my big goals for the year is to clear out almost all the ingredients in my kitchen. (Yes I know I've tried to do this in the past. BUT I'M REALLY COMMITTED NOW. But also, not going to get done by the end of the year) And I could be blogging about this journey! But I'm too lazy to take any decent photos. So here I am, giving you a food blog post with some really hastily taken photos.

Earlier this week, I made some ricotta pancakes. I didn't expect much from them, but I gotta say, they were pretty freaking good.

And I say that I didn't expect much because I definitely tried to make them before and they were less than mediocre and so much work. But honestly, I probably didn't even follow the recipe correctly.

But this time? This time I was calm and collected and followed all the incredibly involved instructions. In one step, I even had to beat the egg whites until stiff peaks formed. The recipe said to use a hand mixer for this.

If you don’t have a hand mixer, use a whisk and a whole lot of elbow grease.

I do have a hand mixer, but I also had a whisk already sitting out and I was like "I don't want to wash extra dishes". So I really tried to beat those egg whites by hand, but my elbow absolutely was not greased up enough because nothing was happening to these eggs. So I took out the hand mixer and turned it on, and it still took like five or ten minutes for the eggs to actually reach the consistency that it needed! Is that normal?

Anyway, by the time I had my batter done, I still needed to actually cook the pancakes. You know how they say that the first pancake is always a dud? Well my first pancake was beautiful. But I don't have a picture of it--sorry, I was way too hungry at that point.

My last pancake? That was a dud. I also didn't take a picture of that one.

But overall, this was a success. The only thing I was missing was maple syrup. But I REFUSE to buy it because I'm still on my incredibly long quest to get rid of ALL THE THINGS and not buy more things. I ended up sprinkling cinnamon and sugar on top. (Ha! Just like the last time I made this!)