Wait, cooking isn't just with eggs???

In a shocking turn of events, this week I cooked other food items than eggs. It is a crazy concept I know, but it is what the whole six week experience is about, learning new things. And this week I learned about cooking meats and how it is important not to under cook them so I don't get salmonella, mainly for chicken, but also not to over cook them so that the meat still retains its juices, mainly for beef. Today I was planning on cooking dinner for myself and making pasta, but then my dad told me to get ready because we are going out. I could not say no to him, so I followed along. We got in the car and went to a Korean barbecue. Here the food was given to us and we cooked it ourselves. What luck! I still got to do some cooking even though I went out to dinner. I made sure to cook the meat enough so that it wasn't raw, but also not too much so that it was about medium rare.

This was the set up

That round black plate with the gold rims was where the meat was cooked. Tonight I cooked for my family Bulgogi, which is marinated sirloin, and Galbi, marinated beef short ribs. If you look in the image and see the two square containers with the dark and light sauces in them, you can see bean paste and teriyaki sauce. The bean paste was recommended to be used with the Bulgogi and the Galbi. This was a great recommendation. The teriyaki was used with the chicken. With the barbecue came side dishes, I did not make this, but they are still important to the meal. We had some kimchi, fermented cabbage, this has a bit of a kick to it, a little spicy. There were also dumplings, kimchi soup, and vegetable pancake to name a few. But more importantly were the meats that I cooked. They were the main dish. But that's not all that happened this week. I got to cook cheeseburgers for myself.

First they had to be seasoned and molded into a patty shape

Then I cooked them

Then it was grub time

These were the best burgers that I made. Also they were the only, so I guess the competition was not all that fierce. I was aiming to get a nice pink in the middle so I would say that I cooked them pretty well. When cooking burgers it is important to keep all of the juices in the meat, but also to cook them all the way through. But when you cook them all the way through, you don't want the middle to be too cooked. So it turns out that some parts of cooking can be complicated.

Another dish I made was grilled cheese, which is not that hard. I plan on making spaghetti tomorrow (Originally supposed to be made today) and if it turns out well, I can add some images to this post tomorrow.

The biggest issue I had with the grilled cheese was that it did not melt the cheese enough to get that gooey, stretchy cheese center that is desired. But I still ate it so...

Side note: This week I gained around three pounds which is good because I need to gain weight for baseball, and it shows that I am eating more foods that I cooked because the snack foods are not substantially enough for gaining three pounds. I've tried already.