Weaver’s Kitchen

07/27/2026

Beef short ribs slow cooked with sous vide, then pan seared, and a rosemary-onion pan sauce (it’s sexy gravy) over rice.

06/28/2026

Can’t beat cast iron!

06/28/2026

Nice.

06/20/2026

https://www.facebook.com/share/1BRPYCmRqE/?mibextid=wwXIfr

Most soups are just water with things floating in it. These 7 steps turn the same ingredients into something that tastes like it took all day. 🍲

The order matters as much as the ingredients.

Browning the onion first — not just sweating — produces over 200 new flavour compounds from fructose caramelisation. It takes 45 minutes on low heat. It cannot be rushed. But it is the difference between a flat soup and a complex one.

Frying tomato paste for 2 minutes before adding any liquid concentrates the glutamate content through the Maillard reaction. One tablespoon of fried tomato paste adds more umami depth than a whole tin of tomatoes added raw.

Parmesan rind simmered in soup releases glutamate slowly over 30 to 40 minutes. The rind itself does not add any detectable cheese flavour — it adds pure savoury depth.

Acid added in the last 60 seconds brightens everything. Added too early it cooks off entirely.

Save this and start every soup by properly browning the onion.

06/15/2026

Enough steak, a simple beef stew with whole grain mustard and thyme tonight.

06/15/2026

Umami is not a flavour you taste like sweet or sour. It is a signal that amplifies every other flavour on the plate simultaneously. 🧄🎌

Umami was identified as the fifth basic taste by Japanese chemist Kikunae Ikeda in 1908 after he isolated glutamic acid from kombu seaweed and recognised it as a distinct taste category.

The receptors that detect umami are found across the entire tongue — more widely distributed than sweet or bitter receptors. When activated they do not just add a savoury note. They increase the sensitivity of surrounding taste receptors. Everything tastes more of itself.

The most powerful umami trick is combining a glutamate source with a nucleotide source. Glutamate from Parmesan combined with inosinate from anchovies does not produce twice the umami — it produces 7 to 8 times the umami through synergistic receptor activation. This is the science behind why Caesar salad with both Parmesan and anchovy tastes so much more complex than either ingredient alone.

Kombu has the highest glutamate concentration of any commonly eaten food at 3,190mg per 100g. This is why a simple dashi made from kombu and dried fish produces a broth with extraordinary depth from two ingredients.

Save this and add one umami ingredient to every dish you cook.

06/15/2026

I have eaten steak like four times this week lol

06/12/2026

One of those Walmart Wagyu ribeyes in the cast iron with garlic butter smashed potato.