Today I made Mac n cheese using sodium citrate. 4 cheese blend of Gouda, Muenster, Swiss, and....cream cheese. Even topped it with breadcrumbs that included parmesan. I subbed in cream cheese as the recipe called for Velveeta which I didn't have. Took foreeeeevvvveeerrrr to incorporate the cream cheese. Now I know why this stuff comes in a box lol. It was quite a treat, but I won't attempt it any time soon, we ate half the pan and I'm a bit embarrassed to say how long it took. Making cheese sauce with sodium citrate was an interesting learning experience though!
What non-soapy thing did ya do with soap stuff?
- Thread starter Johnez
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ResolvableOwl
Notorious Lyear
Strict dual-use household here, so I really don't have many things that are exclusive to soapmaking (citric acid as soapy chelator but also to descale the tea kettle, stick blender for soap batter but also for hummus and pumpkin soup, etc. Good for the clean-up discipline!).
The worst non-soapy abuse that I can remember atm is that I put some unrefined babaçu oil (cosmetic-grade, explicitly not food-safe) into biscuit dough. Duuude, they came out super crunchy, and smelled/tasted heavenly (for those who love the smell of babaçu, and I do!).
The worst non-soapy abuse that I can remember atm is that I put some unrefined babaçu oil (cosmetic-grade, explicitly not food-safe) into biscuit dough. Duuude, they came out super crunchy, and smelled/tasted heavenly (for those who love the smell of babaçu, and I do!).
Peachy Clean Soap
Well-Known Member
I'm gonna use lard in my pie crust for pumpkins pies' along w/ butter, everything is better w/ butter. 
update: Pies are done
that sounds like heaven' love mac & cheese.
update: Pies are done
that sounds like heaven' love mac & cheese.
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user 49910
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HA! I smoked two boneless pork shoulders, total weight pre-cook @ 15.94 LBS. (That's 7.23 KG for the @ResolvableOwl & metric centric members.)
12 hours on a Pit Boss Pellet smoker with Hickory pellets and spritzing the meat every hour with a 50/50 mixture of Rice vinegar and Apple Cider. Smoke @ 200° F until internal temp is 175° F, then into a foil roasting pan, covered, and in the oven at 205° for three hours. Then a resting period of 3 hours @ 170° F so juices will remain intact in the meat.
These two morsels of barbeque heaven are BUTTER KNIFE TENDER! Whoop!
Gently pulled apart and excess fatty parts tossed. Melt in your mouth tender... P-I-G HOG!
It all fit into a 6 quart slow cooker for re-heating tomorrow for Thanksgiving, and YES, I drizzled the pan juices over the top of the pulled pork to keep it moist, tasty and utterly delectable.
In addition, a 19.5lb turkey in "SPATCHCOCK" mode for smoking on the Pit Boss with a combo of Oak, Apple and Cherry pellets.
For those who don't know what a Spatchcock turkey is... remove the backbone entirely by having the butcher cut it out. Then take a KENWORTH W900 Tractor and drive over it to flatten it out.
Seriously though.... LOL! Place the bird breast side up and flatten it out using both hands. Lay it out on the smoker racks as follows:
Smoke at 225° F for 13-14 minutes per pound until breast meat temp is 165°-168° F. Option is for the first hour to smoke at 200° F where the pellet smoker puts out more smoke, the kick it up to 225°F.
The "soapy thing I did" was to clean up the aluminum pan, my hands, the counter, the meat temp probe, etc.
12 hours on a Pit Boss Pellet smoker with Hickory pellets and spritzing the meat every hour with a 50/50 mixture of Rice vinegar and Apple Cider. Smoke @ 200° F until internal temp is 175° F, then into a foil roasting pan, covered, and in the oven at 205° for three hours. Then a resting period of 3 hours @ 170° F so juices will remain intact in the meat.
These two morsels of barbeque heaven are BUTTER KNIFE TENDER! Whoop!
Gently pulled apart and excess fatty parts tossed. Melt in your mouth tender... P-I-G HOG!
It all fit into a 6 quart slow cooker for re-heating tomorrow for Thanksgiving, and YES, I drizzled the pan juices over the top of the pulled pork to keep it moist, tasty and utterly delectable.
In addition, a 19.5lb turkey in "SPATCHCOCK" mode for smoking on the Pit Boss with a combo of Oak, Apple and Cherry pellets.
For those who don't know what a Spatchcock turkey is... remove the backbone entirely by having the butcher cut it out. Then take a KENWORTH W900 Tractor and drive over it to flatten it out.
Seriously though.... LOL! Place the bird breast side up and flatten it out using both hands. Lay it out on the smoker racks as follows:
Smoke at 225° F for 13-14 minutes per pound until breast meat temp is 165°-168° F. Option is for the first hour to smoke at 200° F where the pellet smoker puts out more smoke, the kick it up to 225°F.
The "soapy thing I did" was to clean up the aluminum pan, my hands, the counter, the meat temp probe, etc.
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Dang @Professor Bernardo I'll bring the beer (or mac n cheese!) to your next cook off. Yummy!
None of the recipes that I found for lobster Mac n Cheese had sodium citrate in them...I had to look up why you put it in there.
Mine was made with Guyrere, Fontina, Cheddar and Romano. I don't think I ever worked so hard to get a meal on the table. LOL I had some cream cheese in the fridge and almost put that in, but didn't. It was okay, but think I'll stick with the box and just add more or better cheeses to what's in there. I did have some of the leftovers last night and it was actually better the second time around. But maybe that was because I hadn't spent hours grating the cheeses by hand! LOL I was surprised that the lobster still tasted fresh..or at least didn't taste fishy after being reheated.
PS My stainless steel whisks are definitely dual use, along with some of the plastic containers. Lard and coconut oil, olive oil when I used to use it, and my HO safflower oils get used in both kitchen and soaping. I replaced all of my stirrers and spatulas with the kind that in all one piece after one of the spatula heads came off in the soap batter one day. And my scale which I rarely use in the kitchen, so it does dual duty too. The rest stays separate only because it is easier to put the soaping tools in one tote and bring it out when I am soaping, rather than trying to dig around in my kitchen for all the right tools at the right time. It was worth the time and effort over the cost to slowly replace them and keep it separated
ResolvableOwl
Notorious Lyear
Sodium citrate (lemon juice + baking soda) is the secret weapon to salvage stubborn cheese sauce. It's also a traditional ingredient to Kochkäse, or how I learned only today Cancoillotte that appears to be the more internationally common name for this specialty known in various regional cuisines across Europe.
Sodium citrate is definitely your friend when making cheese sauce. Otherwise, the lumps and sticky globs are infuriating.
Speaking of which, I made my famous (seriously) gluten-free carrot cake, with dairy-free cream *cheese* icing. Our Thanksgiving celebration includes two celiacs and two with dairy allergies, but they all want the carrot cake, sooo.... this requires a $5 pack of dairy-free *butter* and a $6 container of dairy-free cream *cheese.* One expensive cake, I tell you.
Unfortunately, the store didn't have the tried-and-true Myokos brand of dairy-free cream cheese, and I reluctantly tried the store brand. BLECH.
Had to pull out all the tricks in the book - more vanilla extract, more salt, more lemon juice, more sugar, and finally, a lump of butter-flavored Crisco. It's not ideal, but the chemical taste of the fake cream cheese is now mostly disguised.
Sodium citrate is used in our kitchen a lot, so we often grab some from my soaping supply in a pinch. But not too long ago I seasoned a Dutch oven using some lard from my soaping ingredients. Most stuff that we have is not mixed use (mainly because our kitchen pots are far too nice for me to risk ruining)
I use palm or coconut oil to season my cast iron pans. I also use it to swipe around the inside rim of the screw on caps for sugar syrup jars for the honeybees.
I have added a squirt bottle of PS80 to my laundry room cabinet to treat stains & I have a mini bottle of PS80 in my travel bag (same purpose.)
Last week when my son called to say the kitchen drain was draining really slowly, I grabbed my masterbatch lye solution (the 38% concentration leftover from a batch I made while traveling) and cleared that drain right out.
In fact, I do sometimes clear drains while traveling in the same way because now and then other travelers seem to have a habit of rinsing their shaving razors in bathroom sinks & the drains run slow as a result. No need to call maintenance for a slow drain when I Have-Lye-Will-Travel.
Last week when my son called to say the kitchen drain was draining really slowly, I grabbed my masterbatch lye solution (the 38% concentration leftover from a batch I made while traveling) and cleared that drain right out.
In fact, I do sometimes clear drains while traveling in the same way because now and then other travelers seem to have a habit of rinsing their shaving razors in bathroom sinks & the drains run slow as a result. No need to call maintenance for a slow drain when I Have-Lye-Will-Travel.
Like @earlene , I use old lye MB to keep my drains clean. I recently learned that I can use soy wax to make non-soapy things that smell nice, such as wax sachets and wax melts. The wax melts are incredibly easy to make and both are a good way to use up the last bits of scents left in bottles, or to use up scents that turn out to be problematic in soap.
I found that my MB lye had a huge chunk of lye "ice" at the bottom... so yes, my drains are very clean now, and I'm off to make more MB lye solution on my back porch.
Like @earlene I do use PS80 in the laundry room for treating stains. It's fantastic for getting out all those grease spots from soaping!
Like @earlene I do use PS80 in the laundry room for treating stains. It's fantastic for getting out all those grease spots from soaping!
Ugeauxgirl
Well-Known Member
If only I had known! I make my own vegan butter and cream cheese which cost sooo much less than store bought And the taste is very good. I could squish some through the interwebs for you!Sodium citrate is definitely your friend when making cheese sauce. Otherwise, the lumps and sticky globs are infuriating.
Speaking of which, I made my famous (seriously) gluten-free carrot cake, with dairy-free cream *cheese* icing. Our Thanksgiving celebration includes two celiacs and two with dairy allergies, but they all want the carrot cake, sooo.... this requires a $5 pack of dairy-free *butter* and a $6 container of dairy-free cream *cheese.* One expensive cake, I tell you.
Unfortunately, the store didn't have the tried-and-true Myokos brand of dairy-free cream cheese, and I reluctantly tried the store brand. BLECH.
Does using coconut oil to make vegan butter count as non soapy use of soapy stuff?
If you are like me, culinary use of Coconut oil came prior to using it in soapmaking. So in my case, it is the reverse: What non-culinary thing do you do with culinary stuff? Most everything I use in soapmaking was first used for culinary purposes, except for certain specialized things like micas, clays, pumice and that sort of thing.
@Janewoc17 If you are willing to share, I'd love a tried-and-true recipe for vegan cream cheese and vegan butter. Even if I used it only a few times per year for the cream cheese frosting, it would be worth it not to buy that nasty stuff I got this last time.
Back on the topic of this thread, I actually used some bacon grease for frying our eggs this morning, rather than putting it with the rest of the cooking fats into a bag in our freezer. When that bag gets full, I render it all out and used the mixed fats to make soap for our household. But bacon grease gets a pass from going into the future-soap-freezer-bag, because it makes really terrific eggs. And quesadillas. And... well, you get the point.
Back on the topic of this thread, I actually used some bacon grease for frying our eggs this morning, rather than putting it with the rest of the cooking fats into a bag in our freezer. When that bag gets full, I render it all out and used the mixed fats to make soap for our household. But bacon grease gets a pass from going into the future-soap-freezer-bag, because it makes really terrific eggs. And quesadillas. And... well, you get the point.
