Fernwood
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Posts posted by Fernwood
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Another FYI, My photo turned out rather small in the original post; I don't know if it is clear what the defect is. The membranes came off cleanly and the whites are intact but they are marked with dents and grooves. All 12 eggs looked like this, though some were more dramatic than others. Very funky but ultimately not important.
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I hope to do some more eggs this weekend (no poking!) and, assuming they turn out nicely smooth and ovoid, I'll let this go. 🥚😄
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26 minutes ago, chromedome said:
The point of putting a hole in the egg is so the air pocket inside can expand in the heat without blowing out the shell. I don't own an IP or other pressure cooker, but in all likelihood it reverses the process - because you're cooking under pressure - and forces water into the hole, where it causes those irregularities. That's just off-the-cuff theorizing (and I'm only on my first cup of tea) but it seems plausible.
FYI, My eggs were pressure-steamed above the water. I tried to imagine what was happening in there but I had to give up and make dinner.
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20 hours ago, Shelby said:
I've never poked holes. Maybe try it once with the non-poking?
7 hours ago, rotuts said:i sued to poke holes when doing them the OldFashioned Way : boiling water
in the iPot , on low pressure , I don't.
I go from refrigerator cold , pressure low - steam w tap water ( cold ) and have never had a crack.
Thanks, folks. I mis-remembered or mis-understood something along the way and, clearly, I would be better off fussing less.
I do think the 'canyonlands eggs' effect is rather interesting, but not necessarily appetizing. No more poking!
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I love my Instant Pot for bigger batches of hard boiled eggs. [I recently bought a plate that holds 24 deviled half-eggs and got great feedback on a mixed platter for a neighborhood gathering.] Like @rotuts and my mother, I pierce the large end before cooking. When my mother and I did that for eggs conventionally hard boiled in water, it allowed air to escape, minimizing cracking and improving roundedness of the large end. When I do it to my Instant Pot eggs, they turn out like this:
Most of the time it doesn't really matter, but I keep wondering, What gives? Does anyone else see this?
Should I make the hole larger, or ?
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For me it's the metaphor pill = candy that is uncomfortable. I wouldn't make or buy any candies that look like pharmaceuticals. I think many health care professionals and other people who have more than enough experience with pills in one way or another may feel similarly: I don't want to blur the line between the two categories.
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On 6/19/2018 at 9:27 AM, ChocoMom said:
The homemade cake- and I can eat a whole one shamelessly, is a Wacky cake. It needs no frosting. One of my college friends taught me how to make it, and said it was an old Quaker recipe passed down for generations in her family. There are no eggs. The dry ingredients included flour, cocoa, baking soda and sugar. Once that was mixed together, it was poured into a square pan, and you'd make three "pools" in the dry ingredients. One for oil, one for water, and one for white vinegar. You'd mix it all together with a fork, and it would bubble like crazy because of the vinegar and soda. Then into the oven. The combination created a sticky, crater-like top to the cake, and it was incredibly moist and delicious.
On 6/19/2018 at 3:33 PM, JeanneCake said:@ChocoMom! This is the Wowie cake!!! My mom didn't do the 3 pools thing, she just mixed it up and poured it in a and we cut and ate it from the pan. I use this exact recipe now for our vegan chocolate cake; and if you sub out the cocoa with an equal measure of hazelnut flour (or almond flour) you can make a non-chocolate version and it's really good! We do the almond flour and add spices (cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg) for a vegan spice cake. Yum!
On 6/19/2018 at 3:58 PM, ElsieD said:The recipe I use for Wacky cake is actually called Crazy cake and I have also seen it referred to as Lazy Daisy cake. My recipe also calls for spices - cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and ginger.
In coastal New England this was introduced to me as "Boat Cake". (Made with ingredients you could have in the storage bin on the boat.)
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On 5/26/2018 at 3:37 PM, Shelby said:
Looking for suggestions
I have this 5.56 lb Choice beef brisket point that I want to make--maybe just half of it and freeze the other half for later because it's a lot of meat.
Should I sous vide it and then smoke it? Time and temp for both? Should I smoke it first and then sous vide?
Or skip the sous vide and just smoke it?
Forgot to add...I'm going for just a lovely, tender, smoked brisket--like at a great BBQ place.
Should I rub it with just some salt and pepper and let it marinate in that while I decide what to do?
I spent some time on this question when I found a better-than-usual-looking brisket a few weeks ago. (Most that I see in my supermarket are so lean that I despair of getting an appetizing result, no matter what the approach.) Leaned on the Serious Eats article, for the most part. I divided in three pieces and started with 135; after they were pasteurized I put two away. The texture of the 135 piece was too firm for my taste. I ended up cooking the others some more at 155 and I much preferred that result.
[Formatting weirdness apparently due to phone posting—no emphasis intended.]
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6 hours ago, blue_dolphin said:
I've never cooked goat but enjoyed delicious roast kid shoulder several times in Barcelona. We were told it was a traditional Catalan preparation.
As far as bones go, I recall that it came to the table complete with the humerus!
My first goat meal was roast cabrito in Barcelona in the mid 1980s. I have the idea it was at Els 4 Gats, though their menu today looks very different from what I (very vaguely) remember. It was great; why is goat such a rarity in the US? Judging by what I see in our local markets, I have to think that many people in my area never eat lamb, either.
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9 hours ago, paulraphael said:
Even the best open burner designs send much of the heat energy to the edges of the pan and way beyond. Good open burners send the fire straight up. More even heating, and more of the energy gets to the food. Look up videos for Bluestar's burners; you'll get the idea.
I'm not sure I understand this... or should the first sentence say "Even the best closed burner designs..."?
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Relatively new Anova user here... looking to improve the work flow for Easter dinner:
Can I use the circulator to hold hollandaise sauce for an hour or so? Google has provided me with various versions of the Modernist hollandaise recipe but I have a relatively traditional method that I like--I would just like to be able to hold it longer, with less anxiety. I'm thinking a mason jar in the water bath might be just the thing. Can anyone suggest a temperature? Any other advice?
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(I'm not a regular in this sub-forum. I hope someone will move this if a different topic would be more appropriate.)
"Hershey's Gold", what is it? Hershey's website uses the term "crème" as though it means something in English--maybe it does in the industry(?) but I am skeptical.
I am ambivalent about tasting this but I am curious about the concept.
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18 hours ago, Tri2Cook said:
Scaling this down to a 5 lb batch is pretty easy until I get to the cream of tartar. That's going to require weighing the 3 tsp before I can do the math but it's going to be less than a gram to go along with the 1.42 grams of tartaric acid solution (50%?). I'm starting to see why a 100 lb batch is easier.
Since it's going into a relatively large amount of water, could you measure one (or ½, or ¼) teaspoon, dissolve in some manageable volume of water and then take the appropriate fraction of that solution? Requires arithmetic, but not a high-precision scale.
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6 hours ago, IEATRIO said:
I have begun to experience a big problem on both of my SmartOvens though, in that the fancy circular power buttons no longer function reliably. They beep as if they've been activated when pressed, but most of the time the on/off switch has not actually been activated. This is an annoying problem when turning the machines on, as sometimes you think the machine is on and preheating, only to return to a cold "off" oven. Its a much worse and potentially dangerous problem though when the oven is on, and you think its been turned off, but in fact remains on. It sometimes takes 10 presses or more to work the switch.
Ours has been the same for over a year. I know it has been that long because I thought to replace it with a Cuisinart steam oven for Christmas 2016 but then BBB didn't really have a CSO to send me, in spite of accepting the order online. So we kept on using the Breville. Sometimes the problem seems a little better for a while, then a little worse. I assumed that eventually I would be forced to replace it but I fantasized that Cuisinart might bring out a larger steam oven if I stalled, so I keep on jabbing at that button.
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On 1/24/2018 at 5:39 PM, dcarch said:
Eggs and poop do not come out from the same orifice.
19 hours ago, Kerry Beal said:But eggs, urine and faeces all come out of the cloaca - to me that's kind of like coming out of the same oriface. Perhaps not at the exact same time.
Now you made me want to know some of the finer points of hen anatomy that I had previously ignored!
I can't vouch for the accuracy but this page has a nice illustration and a description that is easy to follow: http://www.afn.org/~poultry/egghen.htm (scroll down about halfway to two diagrams under the heading The Hen's Perspective on Laying Eggs). The gist of it is, the egg is pretty clean as it exits. When I had some occasional henhouse chores during childhood summers, I had the impression that there was plenty of opportunity for eggs to get soiled once they hit the straw, however.
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1 hour ago, Smokeydoke said:
Yeah, little painful mixing Chartreuse, a $57 liquor, with anything.
But we're all a little mad here, aren't we? If we mix it with another $57 liquor, it's ok, right?
Last Word When I finally made my first one, my only regret was that it had taken me so long to invest in Chartreuse.
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Carnitas started in Instant Pot (30 min at high pressure, waited 1 hr in Keep Warm mode while I was elsewhere), then transferred with all the juice to the Falk copper sauté pan that @JoNorvelleWalker persuaded me to get. The liquid was rapidly boiled off and the meat browned nicely to complete a totally eG-enabled approach to the dish. Yum!
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On 12/16/2017 at 8:40 AM, gfron1 said:
"This is our 6-month baked tomato sauce."
I've tried to come up with a plausible interpretation of this but I can't. What do you think it was supposed to mean--and what do you think it really was?
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6 hours ago, weinoo said:
Not that they're installed yet, but we are putting dimmable 2700K in the overhead/ceiling cans, and dimmable 3000K in the under counter lighting.
Obviously, nothing is ever easy in NYC.
Having grown up in NYC in the 60s/70s, I remember the bright white of mercury vapor streetlights before they were switched to the sodium vapor lamps. I like incandescent/2700K inside my house but I was never a big fan of the pinky-yellow sodium vapor streetlights.
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https://www.falkusa.com/copper-cookware/
For US shoppers: 20% off on Falk for a few days. I don't know if they ever go lower(?).
I am thinking of putting a sauté pan on my Christmas list.
ETA: "Free shipping on orders over $50" Not sure what they sell that could possibly be <$50....
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When I'm washing apples, bell peppers and other produce with relatively sturdy skins I usually use some "dishwashing liquid" (not automatic dishwasher detergent) and rinse well. (I don't use detergent for delicate things like raspberries.) I guess I have no way to know if baking soda would be more effective; the dish detergent is very convenient. One might think that the wax on apple and citrus skins (even the endogenous wax) could trap some substances like pesticides and I always imagine that the mild detergent is increasing my chance of clearing that residue but, really, it's magical thinking on my part--I have no data.
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6 hours ago, Porthos said:
I regularly grate 2 lb blocks of sharp cheddar divided into 8 oz portions. They go into quart Ziplocs and get frozen. We pull them out one at a time to keep in the fridge. We've been doing this for years. There are four adults in our household at the moment but even when it was just my DW and myself we went through the cheese fast enough for mold to never be a problem. Right now we're also grating 2 lb blocks of Monterey Jack. All of this grating is done using a food processor. I do have one timing requirement for when to grate. I want an empty dishwasher so that I can immediately rinse off the parts of the food processor and get them into the machine.
@Porthos, If you're grating rather than shredding with the food processor, does that mean you are using the steel blade, rather than a disc? Does the Monterey Jack grate nicely that way? The kind I usually get is significantly softer than cheddar and I feel that it might get clumpy, but I'm just speculating.
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2 minutes ago, weinoo said:
I keep a pair of these at the ready, next to my sink, at all times. Makes it quick and painless to do a quick wash up of a big, dirty bowl, blender jar, etc.
My favorites!
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On 6/24/2016 at 1:39 PM, Katie Meadow said:
I swear by this: potato salads benefit from the following step: when the potatoes are still very warm, cut them up and sprinkle generously with salt and vinegar. Let them sit at least 10 minutes before adding the rest of your ingredients, and then don't forget you already put in some vinegar.
What she said.
Adding the vinegar at this point also firms up the cut surfaces of the potatoes. Good if you don't want your salad to resemble smashed potatoes but if you use waxy spuds and leave them with the vinegar too long before completing the dressing they can set into disconcertingly sharp-edged polyhedra.
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I think some cuts and some qualities of beef tolerate more thorough cooking better. Ribeye cap and skirt steak are two cuts that still taste good to me well-done. And the more marbled the meat, the better it will survive. Don't try this with lean sirloin, folks!
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What Are You Preserving, and How Are You Doing It? (2016–)
in Cooking
Posted
Shelby, You have much more canning experience than I do, so feel free to consider the following as relatively ignorant speculation.
I wonder if the difference between regular mouth and wide mouth jars has to do with the difference in headspace volume? Canning recipes usually specify headspace in inches, but the same depth represents a larger volume in a wide mouth jar than in a regular one. The most specific discussion I could find about that is here The Natural Canning Resource Book p.54 (via Google books) in the box headed "Determining headspace in odd-sized jars". I don't know if that provides any information that is helpful to you.
Canning looks like it is subject to rules of science but in my experience it sometimes feels like it owes more to black magic!