Fat Guy

There's a big difference between grinding aged beef (good) and aging ground beef (bad).

Dinosaur Bar B Que, John Stage's famed Syracuse barbecue roadhouse, opened its New York City location in 2004 in Harlem right across the street from Fairway. There was a lot of excitement when it opened, and also we had reports of the normal share of opening fits and starts, but there hasn't been much eG Forums discussion of Dinosaur the past few years. That's often the case with big openings: they happen, people flock to them, and then things settle into a groove and the attention gets directed elsewhere. There have been quite a few big, interesting barbecue openings in New York in the past four years -- Hill Country, RUB, et al. -- but the Dinosaur has not been dormant. Earlier this year, I hadn't been to Dinosaur in a couple of years. I had, however, been running into John Stage and his crew regularly at the Big Apple Barbecue Block Party, and I've commented a couple of times on those topics that Dinosaur is remarkably competitive with the world-class barbecue coming to that event from barbecue country. But there was a psychological barrier to going to Dinosaur: my perception that it's hard to get to. I have a car but, I figured, parking is hardly a sure thing up there, and if you try to park in the Fairway lot they yell at you. Taxis are hard to get, I thought, and the address is 131st Street and 12th Avenue so surely that's a bit of a hike from the 1 train at 125th and Broadway or from any of the bus routes. Well, it turns out all those things are wrong. At most times, there's a lot of parking in the area. You need to learn the ebb and flow but it's possible to find street parking. Taxis turn out to be plentiful if you just walk down to the Cotton Club, where empty taxis coming off the West Side Highway cruise by in clusters, many of them headed for the gas stations near that exit. And because of the unusual curvature of 125th Street, 131st Street is actually only a block north -- and Broadway is very far west. So it's really only about a three-block walk from the corner of 125th and Broadway to the corner of 131st and 12th. I went back in September because I was doing a barbecue roundup for Crain's and wanted to include some neighborhood outliers. I didn't anticipate that Dinosaur would be the most enjoyable barbecue experience I'd had in a long time, but it turned out to be. Dinosaur has come a long way since opening. It now has strength across its range of offerings and, though it's an extremely busy restaurant at times, it now knows how to handle the crowds. I've made two more visits to Dinosaur since then: once for my mother's friend's 70th birthday and once for Ellen's birthday. (Dinosaur is in the small subset of kid-friendly restaurants that make no culinary compromises.) I definitely recommend starting any meal at Dinosaur with a "Swag sampler plate." This include the four best appetizers and comes in two sizes, either for two ($9.95) or four ($19.50) people (though those are just rough guidelines). The platter includes spicy boiled shrimp, smoked-and-grilled chicken wings, fried green tomatoes and spiced deviled eggs, plus various dipping sauces where appropriate. At this point in Dinosaur's history, over the course of three visits on which we had the sampler each time, each of the appetizers was terrific. (On at least two of the visits either John Stage or his partner Abigail Doyle knew we were there but my take on Dinosaur is that it's not the kind of place where the kitchen is going to make better deviled eggs for one table.) All this would be pretty worthless without excellent barbecue to follow, of course. Dinosaur offers a lot of options in this department, so I've always had the various three-item sampler plates. Even so, I don't think I've made it through everything. What I've had I've loved, though. The pork ribs are just at the point of tenderness where they still maintain some structure but are "like buttah." They have a simple, tasty spice rub and a very little bit of sauce brushed on at the end. If you like you can supplement with the various on-table sauces (I prefer them straight). The brisket is as good as any I've had in town, again very tender but without being mush. Both the ribs and brisket have a good amount of smoke flavor without being overwhelming. In other words they are expertly smoked, and consistently so during my visits. I'd say that these two items, along with the terrific pulled pork (which is what Dinosaur serves at the Big Apple Barbecue), are the highest priority items. If you have someone in your group who insists on chicken, the apple-brined barbecued chicken is moist and quite good. They also offer Elgin hot sausage links (actually from Elgin), pork brisket, and several non-barbecued kitchen items such as Korean-style grilled beef ribs (aka kalbi), catfish, burgers, chicken-breast sandwiches, even a smoked portobello sandwich. I haven't had any of that stuff on my recent visits. Of the sides, my favorites have been the "Syracuse-style salt potatoes," which are boiled mini-potatoes presumably boiled in very salty water, the macaroni and cheese, coleslaw and very good fresh-cut fries. Everybody I've been ther with has loved the beans, but I think they're too heavily broken down -- more like refried beans in texture than I'd prefer. There are also a few sides (apple sauce, rice) that I haven't tried. There are a couple of dozen beers available as well as Boylan's soda and good sweet tea. Desserts are homey and tasty, if not fabulous. The place is a huge roadhouse, it's festive and can get loud. The servers tend towards sassy and efficient, which is appropriate for the venue. Despite the name, there isn't really a dinosaur theme (nor is barbecued dinosaur served), though there's some merchandise available with a dinosaur logo on it. The restaurant gets very busy, especially on weekends. My suggestion, given that it requires some transportation planning, is to make a reservation, which you can do on OpenTable.com. Dinosaur Bar B Que NYC 646 W 131st St. New York, NY 10027 212-694-1777 http://www.dinosaurbarbque.com/nycIndex.php

You should check the http://theculinarytrust.com/ website. In addition, our culinary-school scholarships are usable anywhere in the world. When we announce the details of our next eG Scholarship (this should happen in early 2009) you're encouraged to apply for that!

Just as a point of physics, if I recall correctly a larger pot of water will not return to the boil any more quickly than a smaller pot. All other things being equal, while the volume of water in the large pot may cause the temperature to drop less, it should take a correspondingly longer amount of time for the water to heat back up because it takes more energy to heat a larger pot. So, a more powerful burner will help with recovery speed but not a larger pot unless there are other factors at play.

You bet. Just click the book title in my signature line.

There does seem to be a long run where Janet could do that, and it's a great solution for the length of a kitchen where ceiling-mounted racks might be problematic for one reason or another. The big advantage of ceiling-mounted racks is that you can put lids above them. They also of course hold a lot more utensils per linear foot, because they're squares not lines, but that only matters if you have an incredible number of pots.

When loading up a wire-mesh shelving unit with cookware, remember that it's easy to affix S-hooks to the sides of the shelves and hang a bunch of pots that way. Just in case you need to create more shelf space for gadgets and junk.

Dozens of cookbooks on my shelf instruct that "when the water returns to the boil" you're supposed to remove the vegetables you're blanching, or you're supposed to start timing the pasta, or you're done cooking a particular item. But does this advice really make sense? Some stoves being so much more powerful than others, and depending on the quantity of what you're cooking, won't some pots of water return to the boil in seconds while others take minutes? And won't that affect results?

A couple of years ago Sam Kinsey ("slkinsey") and I decided to experiment with different blends for making hamburgers. We bought several different cuts of meat and the butcher also gave us a bunch of beef fat for free, from the tenderloin trimmings bucket. In addition to all that, we acquired some pre-ground hamburger meat just to see how that stacked up. I don't think we conclusively determined the best blend. There were so many variables (cooking method, fineness of grind, etc.) that we'd have needed to do several more rounds of tests in order to get closer to an answer. But like many episodes in the annals of science, this one had an unpredicted side result: it revealed an incredibly vast gulf in flavor between the pre-ground beef and the stuff we ground for ourselves. All the meat came from the same store and that store grinds its own hamburger meat every day, so we're not talking about some industrial prepack ground beef like you'd get in a lesser supermarket. This was a fairly high-quality sample of pre-ground beef. And if somebody had just given me a hamburger made from the stuff I'd have been fine with it. But once our palates had been calibrated against the freshly ground beef examples, the pre-ground tasted horrible. It had noticeable metallic overtones and off flavors. Now of course this was not a large enough sample upon which to base strong scientific conclusions, but the contrast was so stark that it was the one big piece of information I took away from that adventure. Ever since then, I have been holding the strong opinion that pre-grinding is the cardinal sin of burger making, and that any restaurant or person that pre-grinds is not a serious contender. Yet in the time since that experiment I have also been living uncomfortably with the knowledge that several of my favorite restaurant burgers, and a few from home cooks I respect, are made from pre-ground beef. I've basically thrown that knowledge into the big stockpot of culinary contradictions on my mind's back burner, because I didn't know what else to do with it. Fast forward to this year. There has been much talk in New York City, especially by "Mr. Cutlets" (aka Josh Ozersky, the current CitySearch dining editor and previously the editor of the Grub Street blog; he is also the author of the book "The Hamburger: A History," from Yale University Press), about Pat La Frieda's Black Label blend of ground beef, which Mr. Cutlets has called "the Bentley of Beef." It's served at a place called City Burger. La Frieda is a venerable New York meat purveyor, part of the pantheon that includes DeBragga & Spitler and Lobel's. La Frieda also offers various other blends of hamburger meat. All of these blends are delivered pre-ground from La Frieda. I ran into Mr. Cutlets at an event the other night and asked him for his thoughts on this widespread use of pre-ground beef for hamburgers. He rattled off the names of several excellent burger restaurants and noted that they are all using La Frieda's pre-ground product. For him that was the end of the discussion. So now I'm trying to reconcile two conflicting pieces of information: my iron-clad belief that pre-ground is inferior and the knowledge that several top burger restaurants are producing first-rate burgers using pre-ground beef. Thus I bring the question to you, my dear fellow Society members, for discussion.

The end result of this reorganization is that you'll be able to get lots more stuff.

I have to say, in all my years of organizing cabinets, it has never occurred to me to do that. I may do that with my nesting bowls too. I mostly use the largest of the three, so if I just invert them . . . Dave (the Cook) mentioned the sway problem. This is definitely a problem when you hang racks from high ceilings. My mother's rack has fairly long chains and if you apply lateral pressure it will sway. When you have low ceilings, this is less of a problem, especially if you have the good fortune to have studs placed a little bit wider apart than the edges of the rack. That allows you to have the chains on a little bit of an angle, which provides for an extra increment of stability.

If you don't want to make holes in the walls or ceiling, that ends the pot-rack discussion. But if you're willing to make those holes and deal with repairing them when you move out (or just sacrificing whatever part of the security deposit they withhold for holes) then I really think you will like having a pot rack. When I installed my pot racks, I couldn't believe how much stuff they held so much more efficiently than any cabinet or shelf. You should be able to fit the entire contents of your main pots-and-pans cabinet on a medium-size pot rack (or both cabinets on a large one), with room on top for the lids and possibly some spots to hang a few key larger utensils. And then you get those cabinets back for other storage. Plus you don't have to dig around for stuff -- you don't have one pot buried under two other pots so you have to take all three pots out, unearth the one you want, put the other two back and repeat that whole process in reverse after cleanup time.

Also, I am now of the opinion that all three wheels on the machine are at the same angle. It's just that depending on how you lean the knife you're getting a range of angles from, maybe, 18 to 22 degrees. But if you hold the knife consistently through all three sets of slots you don't seem to get a double bevel. What you see above is the result of applying slight pressure to keep the knife at the smallest angle while pulling it through each slot.

No reply. I played with the sharpener a little more today. There's definitely some play in the slots, especially with a thinner knife, that allows you to get a steeper angle. I've also started getting a little better at maintaining constant speed and pressure. What I haven't gotten better at is photography. This was the best close-up shot of the edges that I could get today:

Definitely small individual dishes. Allows for more orderly serving.

The iSi whippers are a super-easy way to make flavored whipped creams as well as all manner of foams. They've become standard in restaurant kitchens, at least in Western ones. Here's what one looks like. You can also just put the ingredients in a bowl and mix with a whisk or electric mixer, but the iSi reduces the effort to just about zero and makes for nice presentation when you squirt the whipped cream over the individual portions of fruit.

I'm a big believer in fresh fruit, enhanced in various ways to turn it into more of a presentation-worthy dessert. One easy dessert that tends to get great feedback is macerated fruit with flavored whipped cream. So for example you have some great mixed berries, you mix those with a little sugar, Grand Marnier, vanilla extract and citrus zest (fresh yuzu is nice if you can get it) before dinner and set the bowl in the refrigerator. In an iSi cream whipper, combine heavy cream with a little of those same flavorings. Serve coupes of the fruit topped with the whipped cream. You can do gold leaf or whatever if you're really determined to impress.

With respect to the scary drawer, one thing to consider is a DIY organizer in there. That little flatware organizer in there only organizes a tiny portion of the space. Chances are there is no commercially available organizer that fits the exact dimensions of your drawer. Even the expandable ones, albeit an improvement, would only fit perfectly in one dimension -- and certainly not in the critical height dimension. Because it lacks significant height, a flatware organizer tray is just not going to contain bulky gadgets all that well. There are a lot of ways to make your own organizer. At the most basic level you can use heavy corrugated cardboard, cut several strips the length and a couple the width of the drawer, cut notches so they fit together, make a grid and not worry about the fact that it's unattractive and utilitarian -- it's in a drawer after all, not out in the open. If you're more ambitious and have skills with a saw or access to someone with those skills, you can do it with wood or masonite like this, though in a pattern that works for you.

The glaze on a tile is rock-hard. I wouldn't be as sure about the enamel paint on an appliance. Not that I'd care. I'd completely disregard the building's rules, mount stuff to the walls and ceiling wherever possible, and just fix up the holes on move-out day. But assuming Janet's desire not to violate the terms of her lease, the only available forces would seem to be gravity and magnetism.

For those of you with Sirius satellite radio, I'll be on the Frank DeCaro show today around 1:15pm New York time. It's on Sirius OutQ 109, don't you know.

Okay there seem to be several possibilities for where to place a shelving unit, if you ultimately decide on a shelving unit -- which I think could be a good middle ground between 1- adding nothing, which may not give you the storage and hanging capacity you need, and 2- converting the whole dining area into an extension of the kitchen. 1. This is what I originally thought made sense. On-the-ground measurement would be needed to determine whether the passageway is wide enough for a person to walk without rotating. 2. Possibly the most unobtrusive location is here, however the disadvantage is that there's a solid wall (plus the pantry unit, I think) meaning anything you want from the shelf you need to walk around to get. 3. Another option, again it depends on measurements. 4. A possibility for a longer shelving unit: 5. Or: 6. It's also possible to rotate, again dependent on actual measurements: 7. The last thing I though of is the possibility of using a corner shelf (Metro makes these too: like this) to follow the angle of the passageway. This wouldn't hold as much as a rectangular shelf but would still hold a lot and would still offer the pot-hanging benefits along one face.

I still don't have a great feel for all the areas near the kitchen, but I wouldn't give up on the idea of a Metro-type shelving unit. That passageway, for example, looks like it's narrowed somewhat by the small bookshelf near the bar. Moving that could compensate for some of the space lost to a tall shelving unit. Not to mention, tight passageways are something that can be accepted in exchange for good storage. For example, when we did our kitchen everybody told us there was no way we had the width to put cabinets on both sides of the kitchen. There was some magic number of inches that simply had to be the width of the floor. We ignored all that authoritative advice and now we have a very narrow kitchen but with huge amounts of storage on both sides. So, sure, when two people want to pass in the kitchen they really have to maneuver. But we're way ahead of the game because of all the storage we acquired in the tradeoff. Also there's the option of the other side of that entryway. In any event, I think some good shelves like that could be liberating for you, especially given the inability to mount anything on the walls or ceiling.

I am also wondering whether anybody manufactures a two-sided magnetic knife strip -- in other words a magnetic knife strip that holds knives with a magnet on one side and has magnets on the other side so it can be affixed to the side of the refrigerator.

Just as a general philosophical point: when there's no more room in the kitchen -- when you've crammed every cubic centimeter full of stuff -- the only thing you can do is expand outside the footprint of the kitchen. We used to have a smaller kitchen than we do now (not that we have a big one now) and we had to overflow into a baker's rack and butcher-block cart parked just outside the kitchen entryway. I don't have a good sense of the space available at the end of the counter that holds the sink. It might be possible to put a Metro-type shelving tower there, one that's a couple of feet wide and as tall as the room can handle (like this). Because these shelves are freestanding, you don't have to worry about the attachment issues. And it's possible to do a lot with those shelves: your big plates would fit, you could get hooks and hang pots off the sides, you might be able to rig up a knife rack somehow.

Looking at the machine there seems only to be a little wiggle room. But there is a little. I wonder how much I can alter the angle just by leaning one way or the other.