HKDave
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Posts posted by HKDave
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The USDA temperatures for meat doneness are echoed in some local health codes, but usually treated as guidelines rather than rules, because - especially for beef - they're absurd. When it comes to enforcement, local restaurant health inspectors focus more on holding and storage time/temperatures rather than doneness temperatures.
Some (most?) US and Canadian codes require sushi be made from previously frozen fish. I've never heard of anything specific for things like carpaccio or tartare.
In rare cases, common sense prevails. Twenty years ago in Vancouver the food police cracked down on Chinese BBQ pork and roast duck - which are precooked and held at officially 'unsafe' temperatures, and would be inedible if they weren't - and it took a court case to point out that millions of people had been eating this stuff for years (more like centuries) and weren't getting sick. So in Vancouver you can legally sell and buy some of the best char siu anywhere. Thanks to BC's first Chinese lawyer, Andrew Joe, for fighting that battle.
Don't try it in Calgary, however, where just this year the food police issued a $36,000 fine to an Asian supermarket store for exactly the same issue - even though Chinese BBQ has been sold in Calgary without a problem for decades, and even though we went through all this 600 miles away in Vancouver 20 years ago. I'm so glad we have governments to protect us.
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Lobster roe is totally edible. Usual thing is to cook it (it turns red) and make lobster butter, which is good on, well, everything. Mash 1x cooked roe with about 5x butter.
I don't think it affects the flesh. The eggs are unfertilized; if they were fertilized she would have left them in the water.
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Del Monte is Japanese?
My bad. I was under the impression that Del Monte ketchup was for Japan and other markets outside of NA, but I see that that isn't true. It's been awhile since I checked out the ketchup shelf at the supermarket.
You're actually right. Del Monte ketchup - in Japan - is Japanese. The Del Monte name for Japan was bought in 1961 by a subsidiary of Kikkoman, who now also have the rights for a few other Asian countries.
Kikkoman used to manufacture Del Monte ketchup in Japan; not sure if they still do. Most of the rest of Asia is now supplied by their Thai factory.
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The 5 lb NT stuffer many of us have and love is on sale: $81 down from $90 during their 10% sale. (Same for the grinder: click.)
The same stuffer is still $70, not on sale, at Grizzly:
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A friend of mine, who has little storage space, swears by an old pillow case (well washed, ofcourse) that she places the washed greens in, takes it outside, and swings over her head in a circular motion!
I do the same, indoors, using a clean dry kitchen towel. Underhand, so I don't spray the ceiling. In the shower works well if you're worried about the spray.
Salad spinners are one of those mono-functional semi-disposable needs-washing the-world-got-along-fine-without-them-until-recently bulky kitchen things that I don't want in my life.
Unlike, say, vertical-piston sausage stuffers, which no kitchen is complete without.
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The Gisslen book and the CIA book and a third book you don't mention - Labensky's "On Baking" - are, between them, the standard textbooks for the baking programs at most North American professional culinary schools. Which one you use just depends on what school you went to. I don't think you'll go wrong with any of them.
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When I've cooked at my mothers house the only really frustrating issue were her very dull (thus dangerous) knives.
I've lost count of the number of times I've explained to people that their knives a) occasionally need to be sharpened and b) really shouldn't be thrown in a drawer.
The best knife at my parent's house is a very dull Henckels with a bent tip from where one of them used it as a pry bar. I no longer say anything.
The best knife at my brother's place is a Victorinox paring knife that I think I gave him years ago. He refuses to use it. He says it's too sharp and dangerous, and keeps it safely tucked away. So if I'm cooking there, there's always one decent knife I can use.
I feel pretentious if I take my knife kit when I'm cooking at someone's place (unless it's a paid gig where I'm supposed to look cheffy), but I like to sneak in one of those great $4 Victorinox paring knives. I've got a box of them at home. Other than one sharp knife, I don't really care; I'll cook with whatever they've got.
I'm humbled when I go into kitchens - even restaurant kitchens - in much of the world and see what they're capable of doing with one wok, one cheap knife, no fridge and a one-hole cold-water sink. It reminds me that I need skills and experience to be good at this game, not tools.
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If the bind is indeed just a gluey mixture and not an emulsion, can someone explain the science behind broken sausages? Why is a cold temperature so crucial to that glue, and why does warmth in preparation cause it to break? All the information I can find on myosin and meat chemistry in general refers to temperatures way above the crucial 30-50F range.
Thoughts?
Here's my hypothesis. Meat fat isn't 100% saturated. If the temperature of the mix - specifically, the fat in the mix - is allowed to rise, liquid fat starts to appear and will lubricate the myosin proteins, preventing them from sticking to each other.
So when Bertolli says "Cold temperatures (32 to 35F) enhance protein extraction and prevent fat smear that causes fat loss later in cooking and a dry crumbly texture", I'm agreeing with the "prevent fat smear" part but I'm not so sure about the "enhance protein extraction" part. My gut feel is that you probably could get sticky proteins faster by mixing at a slightly higher temperature, but that it's more important to keep the fat cold and solid so it doesn't get in the way of the proteins doing their bonding thing.
Taking this to an extreme, imagine trying to make sausage using 100% liquid fat - oil - instead of fatback. I don't think you could get a bind at any temperature that you could possibly mix it at (anyone who wants to test this hypothesis, that's a way to do it...). At the other extreme, this is why fatback is so good in sausagemaking; it's the most saturated fat on the pig, so remains more solid at higher temperatures and is less likely to interfere with the bind.
Does this sound reasonable? I don't have the chemistry education to back this up; I barely got through high school (at the time, I completely misunderstood what the 'high' referred to) and that was a long time ago, so if there are people out there that actually know what they're talking about, please chime in...
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hzrt8w has a simple solution if you can't find the bottled stuff, but I think you'll find his mixture is not quite the same as what you have had in the restaurant. I buy Lee Kum Kee Sweet Soy Sauce. It has a viscocity similar to what I've had in restaurants and seems to "cling" to the rice rolls better than ordinary soy sauce.
If you want to make it just like the bottled stuff, just add lots and lots more sugar and some salt, food colouring and MSG to hzrt8w's recipe.
Here's what's in LKK Sweet Soy: http://us.st12.yimg.com/us.st.yimg.com/I/y...977_2011_304948
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More on this myosin question, this from Paul Bertolli in a NY Times article:Coolness is key, he says: “If meat is at 30 to 32 degrees when it’s mixed, it favors the extraction of protein,” which is needed to bind the ingredients. (For more explanation, see the chapter on sausage making in Bertolli’s book “Cooking by Hand.”) Common problems with grinding meat at home are that the blades aren’t sharp enough and the meat is too warm. “Then you get what we call a smear,” he says. “It’s greasy, crumbly, doesn’t bind.”
I'll check CbH when I get home, but if anyone can find this information in there before evening, that'd be swell.
Got a copy of Bertolli right here. From page 169:
"Mixing is also critical to achieving a good bind - the seamless joining of meat and fat due to protein extraction - that determines any sausage's final texture. Mixing works synergistically with salt and temperature to create bind. Cold temperatures (32 to 35F) enhance protein extraction and prevent fat smear that causes fat loss later in cooking and a dry crumbly texture."
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"The goal is to rub meat particles together to extract protein."
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"After 4 to 5 minutes of [spatula by hand] mixing you will notice the meat will stiffen considerably and become sticky. You will also observe that the meat leaves a whitish film where it contacts the bowl. At this point, stop mixing. Excessive mixing causes excessive protein extraction and a rubbery texture."
I have yet to mix a batch of non-emulsified sausage for as long as 4-5 minutes, and I haven't had a batch split on me yet. I'm carefully ignoring that batch I made at work once using pork buckeye instead of shoulder... that didn't bind at all, and was totally inedible. Lesson learned: the cut of meat also affects the bind.
I think that seasoning - specifically salting - the meat early also makes a difference. At work (where I have access to a big walk-in), I season the cubed meat a day, or at least several hours, ahead, and then grind the meat and seasonings together, and barely mix at all before stuffing. It works. Good bind, no splitting. I think what might be happening there is the salt+time is denaturing some of the proteins, and this compensates for the reduced mixing.
There's an element of taste and style that we should consider here. I've had fresh sausages from Italy and Argentina that were barely mixed; the texture was certainly crumbly after cooking, but this wasn't objectionable because it was very coarsely ground and this gives a totally different mouth feel than the mealy feel of a split (or perhaps more correctly, 'unbound') fine-texture sausage. I intentionally make some sausage this 'low-bind' way.
Earlier this year I did a taste-off at work between my fennel/chili sausage, which is coarse-grind + low-bind, and a similar product from the best Italian butcher in town. The butcher's clearly had a better bind than mine, although it still wasn't perfect. The flavours were almost identical. Some of the cooks liked the texture of his better, some liked mine better, and in the end the Exec Chef asked me to leave mine as is - he felt that the texture was more 'authentic' and less commercial.
So a low bind might actually be desirable in a coarse-texture rustic-style sausage. However, it certainly isn't going to be desirable in a medium- or fine-grind sausage, unless you're making a Brit banger style or a low-end US 'breakfast sausage'.
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My husband is disgusted with himself for liking it - he feels that as an Italian, he should really know better
Here's how to deal with ketchup guilt: call it something else.
"Tonight, our pommes frites will be served with sauce Heinz, a delicate coulis of sweet tomato concasse. Please enjoy!"
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In Texas on a recent road-trip I had some fantastic smoked beef sausages that I would like to try to replicate. More specifically, the sausages came from Kreuz Market and Smitty's Market in Lockhart, TX.
Here's what I have been able to dig up so far:
- use 15% pork for added fat content
- grind chuck for the beef
- salt / pepper / garlic
Has anyone else familiar with this style of sausage? Any suggestions?
Thanks!
No garlic, at least not in their classic sausage. Kreuz (and Smitty's, same family, same recipe) have said in interviews over the years that they use just salt, black pepper and cayenne powder, nothing else. Try 17g salt, 2.5g black pep, 0.4g cayenne per kilo of meat/fat mix.
They never mention using any curing (pink) salt, but I wouldn't be surprised if they do, and I would for smoked sausage: figure 2.6g of #1 curing salt/kg, and reduce the regular salt by a similar amount.
Kreuz and Smitty's use larger than normal hog casings and stuff 1/3lb per sausage. They're coarse grind and have a higher fat content than fancy sausage, maybe 40-50%. I bet the 15% pork is 100% fat, and that there's also some added beef fat, because chuck primal is usually less than 15% fat these days. In fact, given that Kreuz sell over 4000lbs of sausage a week, they're probably using something cheaper than chuck primal.
Much of the flavour in a bbq sausage comes from the smoke (that's oak, in Kreuz's case), so how you cook them will have more effect on the result than any of the above. Let us know how it turns out.
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Gill gives a pretty big thumbs up reveiw of the new Irish Heather.
I myself think the rooms are very nice and the food is a real step up - pretty darned tasty. And filling. That comforting pot pie is really nicely portioned.
Excellent. Congrats to Sean and Colleen and the Heather crew. I'm glad to see they're now pouring some fine local R+B product.
Link to the review here:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/sto...=alexandra+gill
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How viscous is a good fresh pork sausage emulsion, or batter as McGee calls it? Can you pour it?
Does this mean baloney's an emulsion?
The mix for an emulsified sausage usually isn't pourable and doesn't need to have much, or any, liquid added to it; it looks like a smooth paste. This is can be achieved by grinding twice (1st time coarse, 2nd time fine) and then stand mixing for several minutes, as opposed to regular sausage which is usually ground once and mixed for only 1-2 minutes.
Yes, baloney's an emulsified sausage. So are hot dogs, mortadella, liverwurst, weisswurst... any variety where the meat and fat are ground so fine that they're indistinguishable. All sausages could be described as emulsions in that you want there to be a degree of bind between the meat and fat (which is what Chris is talking about above), but the term "emulsified" is usually only applied to fine-textured sausage and pate. This kind of sausage is almost always precooked and ready-to-eat.
If you are keeping everything cold, the reason you're getting fat pooling might be from the way you are mixing. You said you mixed by hand. It's possible to get good results mixing by hand, but the freezing pain makes it challenging to mix thoroughly, and it'll take several minutes of painful work to get a good bind. And if you're not quick, your hands will raise the temperature of the mix. Consider using your stand mixer next time, just 1-2min until the mixture starts to look evenly sticky. That's your bind.
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Here's a link to PolyScience, arguably the most popular immersion circulators... you're looking at $900 - 2000 there.
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I'd get the Rex (the one in the photo). It's sharp, extremely light (which you'll notice if you're doing a sack of spuds) and cheap. Just remember to dry the blade after use, because it can rust.
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What about the best Po Tarts and pastry shops in general, if we had to choose one, which would it be and where is it?
There are 2 places that are equally famous for Portuguese egg tarts, Margret's Cafe e Nata and Lord Stowes; in fact Margaret Wong and Andrew "Lord" Stow used to be married. Margret's is downtown, in a lane between Leal Senado and the Lisboa, and Lord Stow's is in Coloane Village, a couple minutes by bus or taxi from Fernando's.
BTW, you also can also get Lord Stow's tarts at a shop in the lobby of the Excelsior Hotel in Causeway Bay, Hong Kong... but they won't be hot from the oven there.
For Macanese pastries and candies, there are 2 well-known chains that sell all the usual local stuff (almond cookies, peanut candy, pineapple buns etc) and have outlets all over Macau: Koi Kei and Choi Heong Yuen.
http://www.koikei.com/introduction-e.htm
http://www.choi-heong-yuen.com/current/en/main.php
The latter has a shop in Yaohan (near the ferry terminal) if you want to shop on your way back to HK.
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A friend of mine says that the S&W Restaurant in Kerrisdale (right below Golden Ocean) now serves Hunan food. Her parents (who are Cantonese) went - but were warned away from anything too spice, and so ended ordering very blandly - but they saw plates piled high with chili's served to other tables. And they knew that they had been steered wrong. Has anyone been?
Lee, is this Kerrisdale S+W related to the "S+W Pepper House" restaurants (Crystal Mall in B'by, and #3 Road in Richmond?) If so, I've also heard good things about them...
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I'm not sure about adding schmaltz to poultry sausage. Schmaltz liquefies fairly easily and could smear in mixing... also, you don't necessarily need it.
I make chicken sausage without schmaltz simply by using 100% chicken thighs with their skin. I got the idea from an Aidells recipe, and Len Poli also goes this route. This gives you an acceptable fat ratio (ok, sometimes I do throw in a little extra skin...), and I assume the same would work for turkey. I don't use drumsticks (too many tendons) or breast (don't like the texture when ground, and it dilutes the fat % too much) in chicken sausage, but others do.
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I regularly freeze chopped parsley, although I haven't tried keeping it for longer than a couple months this way. Remove stems (and freeze these, too, for future bouquet garnis etc), chiffonade the tops, spread them on sheet pans and semi-dry uncovered in the fridge for a day or two. Then transfer to snap-top storage thingies, loosely packed, and freeze.
It's not 100% as good as fresh (I wouldn't use it in a tabouleh), but it's infinitely better than dried and is fine for garnish or in anything cooked. The trick is to use it frozen; take it out of the freezer just before you want to use it and put it back in right away. It thaws very fast and if it gets thawed/refrozen a few times, it gets mushy.
Another possibility would be to make parsley oil. Start with about 4 parts parsley to 1 part oil by volume. Blanch and shock parsley, dry very well, puree, add oil, puree. Use neutral oil - grapeseed if you're fancy, canola if you're me. Fridge 12hr. Let it come back to room temp and strain through cheesecloth, or maybe a coffee filter if any particles are getting through (this will take a while...). Keeps in the fridge in a glass bottle for at least a couple of months. Don't keep at room temp.
You can also use the same technique for other herb oils (rosemary etc), most of which benefit from having 50% parsley in them for colour.
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The first one, the one about China threw me off though. My mom always told me that she was taught to finish every tiny grain of rice because your future husband would come with one pockmark per grain you left stuck messily to the bowl. What's going on? Is this uncommon thinking? I thought leaving food was just if you were a guest...
I think you're right, and the quiz was wrong on this one. Children are expected to finish their rice; every kid in China been told that "every grain of rice is a pimple on your future husband/wife" story. The "leave a little bit" thing is for guests, and applies over most of Asia. I learned this at a long business lunch in Korea decades ago where I made the mistake of taking the last piece of bulgokee thinking I was showing how much I enjoyed it, and the host immediately ordered another platter which we had no hope of finishing...
Interesting to find out that the "don't turn the fish over" thing applies in Poland, because there's the exact same custom, for the same supposed reason, in Thailand.
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Anyone out there doing the dry-curing thing want to take a stab at that last set of steps? I haven't done any yet (my guanciale is currently occupying my entire curing chamber) so I'd just be quoting from Ruhlman. Any tips/tricks for dry-curing that should be on the list?
I've done some, so I'll give it a shot.
Dry-curing would modify some of the previous steps. You wouldn't refrigerate your starter culture solution as implied by Mise #2 (and not overnight, per Mise #8, and not add cold per Mixing #6), because you want the starter bacteria to stay alive and happy. The starter should be mixed with distilled water at room temp and let bloom for a few minutes, then thoroughly mixed in as a final step after all the other ingedients have been mixed.
Dry Curing
1. Ferment stuffed sausages in a warm room at 80-90% humidity for 12-48 hours per starter instructions.
2. Check sausage pH; it should be under 5.0 after fermentation.
3. Weigh and label one sausage.
4. Hang sausage for aging at 7-18C/45-65F; 60-80% humidity.
5. Check regularly for bad mold growth or case hardening. Wipe sausages with brine solution and decrease humidity for the former; increase humidity for the latter.
6. After 5 days for sheep casings, 10 days for hog casings, 1 month for beef middles and 90 days for beef bungs, start checking the weight of the labeled sausage. Sausage is ready when the weight has dropped by 30-35%, or when it feels firm all the way through.
For the temp and humidity ranges, I referenced Kutas, Poli, Bertolli and Polcyn... there's quite a spread between them.
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However, this one interests me. Has anyone had any experience with such brand?
I've got a Misono paring knife - same brand, same steel. Beautifully finished and very sharp out-of-the-box. The Molybdenum series uses Misono's lower-end steel. I haven't had it long enough to comment on the durability. I've bought a few knives from japanesechefsknife.com and they've always provided good service.
As Octaveman pointed out above, I think you're confusing "hollow grind" with kullens. The former is a way of setting the edge of a knife and isn't common on kitchen knives because it's fragile. The latter refers to the reverse dimples that are supposed to keep food from sticking to the knife. They're arguably not very useful on a small knife. Further reading here: http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showto...0entry1198530
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Sher, the first question is, where in HK did you find Charolais hanger???
I agree with what Scottie said. I'd add:
- There's no need to let hanger mature in the bag; it doesn't benefit much from aging. It doesn't have much collagen other than that centre membrane, which you should butcher out as Scottie says. You should end up with two lobes that look something like motley tenderloins. One lobe is always bigger than the other.
- The classic, and easiest, method is sear or grill rare (if you take it past med-rare, it gets tough, and well-done is inedible), then rest, then serve sliced across the grain. In this case, "across the grain" isn't at right angles to the lobe. Good slicing makes a huge difference to this cut of meat. Properly sliced, hanger can be as tender as rib-eye; but improperly sliced it can be send-it-back chewy.
- Hanger is very good at soaking up marinades. Something like red wine, oil, garlic and rosemary works well, as does a Korean kalbi style marinade (especially for the bbq).
- The meat is a little grainy for tartare, but if you have a rotary slicer it makes great carpaccio.
Sausages--Cook-Off 17
in Cooking
Posted
When you say the fat wasn't rendered, is this because a) you can see lots of chunks of fat that haven't rendered or b) it's not as juicy as it should be? From your photo, and the fact that you cooked it to 165F, I'm thinking you meant that it's just not as juicy as Kreuz.
The likely reason is that your mix is too lean. Commercial trim chuck and pork shoulder are under 20% fat these days, so unless you added fatback, you had less than 1/2 as much fat as Kreuz. Next time maybe try 85% chuck and 15% fatback, and maybe grind the fatback finer than the beef for more even dispersion and faster rendering.
That'll bring you up to about 25% total fat, which is still minimal; if I was making these I'd start at 30-35% fat. Most commercial grilling sausages (like Johnsonville brats) are 50%+ fat and I suspect Kreuz and Smitty's are close to that.
Looks good enough to eat as is, though...
Your post says "They were smoked with oak for about an hour at approx. 235°C." I hope that's 235F! That's still pretty hot; you'll get more smoke flavour by going lower and slower. Maybe try smoking at 180F (at this lower temperature I'd strongly recommend using some curing salt #1 as mentioned in my earlier post), and I'd be comfortable pulling them after they'd been at 150F internal for a while.