Shalmanese

Eater reports that a federal court has struck down the California Foie Gras ban and Californians no longer have to resort to bathtub foie gras, served in smoky speakeasies, forever fearful of the temperance police busting down the doors. Foie gras is once again available on the open market and there was much rejoicing!

I let freshly rendered duck fat sit out and it separates into a liquid portion and a solid portion. I pour the liquid portion into a bottle with a pour spout and use it as a replacement for vegetable oil. I put the solid portion in a container in the fridge and use it for deep frying.

Look up reshippers. They're companies that specialize in providing a US address for shipments that get forwarded internationally.

I've never had problems washing butter. Just swish around in cold water until the water runs clear. It's about as strenuous as washing rice. I don't see how a mixer would help. The biggest part of it is draining and refilling the water which seems harder using a machine. If, as you say, you're using the butter in a matter of weeks, there shouldn't be any concerns about rancidity.

I wonder if you could use a technique similar to what Alton Brown uses for porterhouse steaks where you put a chimney of coals above the protein to mimic a salamander. Also, you should consider the technique that Modernist Cuisine uses of putting a cold liquid filled pan of fish under the broiler to cook it. The broiler crisps the top while the liquid slowly brings the fish up to an even temp. In both cases, you're trying to replace contact cooking with non-contact cooking in a way that gets you crisp skin without overcooking the fish.

I'd be far more worried about spoilage bacteria potentially getting into a crevice in the meat and causing off flavors. I don't get why you would reheat in a 300F oven. By the time the inside is warm, the outside's going to be overcooked, like if you had just done it in the oven conventionally. Why not just start the sous vide a few hours later so you can go straight from the bath to the oven?

You can easily test this by just letting a rocks drink sit for a while. Most drinks I've tried, there's maybe a slight improvement 30s to 1 minute after it's served, but it definitely starts to go downhill after 2 minutes. I can't think of many drinks I find improved at 50 - 90% dilution. Can you give an example of a cocktail you prepare at 90% dilution?

Beans are potentially unsafe cooked sous vide! Some beans contain a lectin Phytohaemagglutinin which is toxic to humans. PHA is denatured by at least half an hour at boiling but not at sub-boiling temperatures. If you're preparing beans sous vide, make sure to boil them on the stovetop for at least half an hour before cooking sous vide or in the slow cooker. (don't ask me how I know all this).

Bugs are not sitting around with tiny stop watches impatiently waiting for the magical 4 hour mark before shouting out "Yippee! Let's kill all the folk!". The 4 hour mark is the worst case guideline for if you handle food inappropriately every step along the way. Your food is absolutely fine to eat. You're taking more years off your life obsessively worrying about food safety than from dangerous food. I mentioned in another thread that you're at least an order of magnitude more likely to die from a fatal car crash on the way to buy your groceries than from botulism in your food.

Apparently, it's a Cuban dish to get around the lack of availability of meat.

What's the point of having two circulators if you're not going to use them? I had a big bag of brown onions from Costco and decided to cook sliced onions and onion juice at 85 & 96C respectively. For the sliced onions, I sliced them with a knife and vac packed them raw. Contrary to internet opinion, they don't "blow up", when done this way. there's a small amount of air space inside of the cell walls which comes out as they cook, leaving a small amount of air in the bag. It's not enough to cause them to float substantially. The advantage of packing them raw is that they're dry so you can seal them in a clamp style vacuum machine. If you have a chamber style machine, I'd microwave them until soft, then seal. The onion juice, I made by pureeing in a food processor then passing through a sieve and pouring into ziplock bags. The bags remained completely free from gas throughout the entire cook. Onion Juice at 85C for 16 hours: Onion Juice at 96C for 8+ hours: Sliced Onions at 85C for 16 hours: Sliced Onions at 96C for 8+ hours Unfortunately, the 96C cook evaporated off too much water during the overnight cook and the circulator shut itself off so I don't know how long they cooked for. It's interesting how the onion juice browns so much faster than the sliced onions and that the onion juice developed protein clumping like you would see with meat. The 96C onion juice smelled clearly overcooked and burnt, the 85C onion juice smelled wonderful. Unfortunately, when I went to taste them, they tasted one dimensionally sweet, insipid and watery. Not useful for anything. So much for that experiment. The sliced onions are continuing to cook and I'll check back with them after another 12 hours. I also tried baking soda onions and normal onions in the PC a la modernist cuisine and they were a failure. I let them cook for an hour and the baking soda onions were overcooked and burnt while the non baking soda ones were basically white. Given that I have no visibility inside of a PC as it cooks and that reports are the flavor is underdeveloped, I'm going to steer clear of PC for now.

Botulism can be prevented from growing if any of the following are true: Environment is aerobicpH is below 4.6Temperature is below 3C/48FWater activity is below 0.95source.

One thing I like doing if you have tiny basil, tiny sage, flat leaf parsley or cilantro leaves is to roll the pasta to it's thinnest setting in the machine, lay it flat on the table and put the herbs on top of the pasta, then fold the pasta over and roll again on the 2nd thinnest setting. You get a windowpane effect coming through the pasta. Cut into wide enough strips that you can see the herbs, this makes for a great presentation. It doesn't work with older basil/sage leaves as the middle rib is too thick and will tear the dough. If you're using parsley or cilantro, make sure to pluck only the leaf and not the stem.

Botulism is a problem for storage, not cooking. If you're eating the food immediately after cooking, there are no botulism worries. The risk of botulism has to be weighed against the significant benefits of storing under vacuum. You can always decant sous vide cooked foods into standard containers before storage but you now have problems with oxidation and contamination from spoilage and pathogenic organisms in the transfer. If you're storing sous vide foods for under a week in the fridge, there's no need to worry about botulism or any other bugs as long as your food is properly pasteurized. Even beyond that, botulism grows extremely slowly, if at all at fridge temperatures. For the most part, for the home cook, I can't see too many instances where you would need a more than a week of storage. The concerns about botulism are more for commercial food prep where shelf life is a concern.

Serious Eats has a fascinating article on how the current version of hoppin john is debased from the historical version and relatively flavorless, only existing due to tradition. The historical version he provides is apparently much better, now that traditional heirloom varieties are available once again.

Campari:Gin:Vermouth = Negroni Aperol:Gin:Vermouth = Aperol Negroni Simple.

I had the same issue with my old Anova and never got an acknowledgement from the company about it. What I did was get a set of pliers and gently bent the fan blades downwards a little bit so they wouldn't hit the skirt. Seems to work for a couple of months before I have to do it again.

After my 3rd cook, my Anova started spazzing out. I had it set to cook pork ribs at 80C for about 2 hours when the thermometer started climbing above 80C, first slowly, then increasingly quickly. Even when I turned the heater off, the temperature kept climbing which was worrying but a quick test with my thermapen confirmed the Anova thermometer was simply misbehaving. Eventually, it started registering 217C, even when the probe was at room temperature. Now, after a couple of hours, it appears to be registering correctly again. I contacted Anova support and will report back with their response. I suspect the reason might be liquid damage inside the device. I was cooking with an aluminum foil cover over a cambro and the only outlet for steam was where the Anova was. There was significant amounts of condensation on the device and I suspect some of the liquid might have found a way into a connection or something.

Any target temperature below 100C/212F, you can cook in a water bath, either in the oven or with a circulator. This will guarantee temps never rise above boiling so you can use any bag rated safe for boiling. All the foodsaver and freezer ziplocs are fine at these temps. Any target temp above 100C/212F, you need to use a venting bag or steam will cause the bag to blow out so there's no point vacuum sealing anything. Just use a covered pot or turkey bag as you have been before.

Maybe try some Knorr chicken powder or other chicken bouillon as well. That extra jolt of MSG might be what's needed to bring it over the top.

Yes, oysters open easily when done. The sign that they're done is the shell will gape open a good inch. It's very easy to take off the top shell after that. Usually takes 2 - 3 minutes. Be careful to put them on the grill stably or the oyster liquid will fall out once they're open.

Pappardelle uses the same pasta dough as every other fresh pasta, it's just cut wider. General rule of thumb is 1 egg/2 egg yolks per cup of flour. Add flour until the dough has the texture of the fleshy pad of your thumb.

Cheese sauce easily has a week or more of shelf life in the fridge. I'd just make it now, reheat it in a pot of boiling water at the kitchen, then mix and a quick broil to brown the top should suffice.

You can also use screen sharing apps like iTeleport to remotely view and control a PC from an iPad.

Look, we get that you have a personal animus with Katsuji but it's clearly one not shared by Doug. I literally don't know how it could be made more clear than "He is probably my favorite person in the house" and "Me and Katsuji will probably be friends for the rest of our lives".