Shalmanese

I had a similar thought on reading the OP, except I'd use a fully-saturated saline solution. Cheaper and less volatile. Use the dry ice to chill. (One could use regular ice, of course, as with an ice cream freezer, but dry ice would be more cool, so to speak, and would avoid any issue of dillution.) Vacuum pack the meat, then freeze in the bath. This will be faster than freezing conventionally, or even in a box with dry ice, as water is much more conductive than air. Whether any of that will make a significant difference in the final product is more than I know, as I've not tried it. But, if I did, this is how I'd go about it. A fully saturated salt solution freezes at -21C. Dry ice sublimates at -78C and ethanol freezes at -114C. You can get denatured alcohol fairly cheaply at a hardware store, it's going to work better than saline.

I have a question to add to the ideal roast chicken survey which is what color the skin should be at the end of roasting? A lot of the chicken photos posted in this thread as "ideal" roast chickens have a skin a lot more blonde than what I typically roast to.

If I'm using the fat for savory purposes, this is what I'll do: Get a big pot of water boiling (this water is later used to make duck stock) blanch the deboned trimmings in the water for 1 - 2 minutes until all the pink is gone and the fat feels firm to the touch remove with a spider, let drain briefly, then put in a food processor pulse quickly 5 or 6 times until fat is broken up into small chunks put into a non-stick saucepan over high heat, stirring frequently until you start hearing the sounds of frying adjust heat so fat stays at between 250F and 300F until bubbling stops completely drain fat through a sieve into a measuring cup & let cool to room temperature The fat will form two distinct layers, a solid and liquid layer (possibly with some brown sludge at the bottom) Carefully decant the liquid layer into a bottle with a pour spout and use for general cooking, pour out the solid layer into a mason jar or other container and use for deep frying I basically use duck fat in place of vegetable oil when I'm cooking and, when I run out, I buy two more whole ducks to process. SV is great if you want to get a cleaner, unheated fat for baking but, IMHO, adding in the slightly roasty flavors from browning works better for savory applications. Go much above 300 and you start breaking down the fat too much and it doesn't respond as well to high heat cooking.

You can read the actual claims of the lawsuit here. Ironically, the Sansaire came out of Nathan Myhrvold's lab and Mhyvold is widely known within tech circles as being one of the biggest patent trolls of all time.

Wolfram Alpha has a handy dandy nutrition calculator that can help figure this out. For example, using a pretty basic vanilla ice cream recipe, I get 158 grams of fat per 1007 gram portion or 15.7% fat content. If you care about fat for textural reasons, then don't include the ingredients from any mixins in the calculation.

Also, because time to temp for sous vide scales to the square of the minimum thickness, in general you want to portion then cook instead of the cook then portion of conventional methods.

a) What you're seeing on the kickstarter is a prototype, not the final mass produced tool b) working at that level of heat limits the amount of styling you can do to the product since plastics and most paints would not be able to survive c) I actually like the industrial look it has and I think it a design that tried to make it too cutesy would lose the impression of power I get from the device.

Dedicated deep fryers are always going to be affected by the limitation that you can, at most, draw 1800W out of a wall socket. The main reason they're so small is because the heating elements are so wimpy that recovery becomes difficult if you put in too much food.

I'm pretty sure dried coconut is what's leftover from after making coconut milk. It's not likely to work very well, I've tried in the past.

Interesting, I overlaid the two graphs on top of each other: The heating curve for the frozen sample is faster initially as predicted but then slows down around the 40C mark. This doesn't seem explainable by the sample being frozen since every part is well above freezing at this point. I wonder if the frozen sample was slightly thicker than the non-frozen sample, leading to naturally longer cooking time that overwhelmed the effect of freezing.

There are 3 separate procedures that need to be distinguished: thaw from frozen, reheat from frozen and cook from frozen. If your goal is to thaw from frozen for later cooking with another method, then you should ideally thaw in a circulating 4C water bath until defrosted. However, if you intend to thaw and then immediately cook or reheat SV, then it is better to combine the thaw and cook into a single step and thaw directly in the bath.

The problem is not during the first few moments of cooking, it's if your bath is struggling to keep up for hours on end. This is really only an issue if your bath size is on the upper end of what your heating element can accommodate *and* you overfill your bath with food. Keep both the bath size and food:water ratio sane and you shouldn't have to worry. I actually do the opposite and just throw the food into the room temp bath as soon as it's turned on and let it come up to temp as it's defrosting. This is largely because I'm impatient and want the food reheated as fast as possible.

By the laws of physics, putting frozen food in a properly controlled water bath cannot be slower than any room temperature method of defrosting. Think about it, by the time the center is 4C, the outside is already 50+C and transmitting heat so the center is going to get to pasteurization temps faster. Thus, from a food safety perspective, anything that's safe for defrosted food is also safe for frozen food. The only concern is if your heating element is inadequate and you put in enough frozen food to bring the water bath temperature down to unsafe temperatures for too long but this can easily be detected and fixed.

Cook the skin with moist heat until soft (1 - 2 hours), dry carefully, then either deep fry or cook in a skillet with a weight on top and serve as a pork skin "cracker" alongside the meat. It actually works out better this way and gives you a great garnish for plating.

Sprinkle on popcorn or fold into polenta/mashed potatoes. Works really great with starchy foods. Also, great on eggs.

After Sous Vide, I always dry my wings in the fridge for at least a day, preferably up to 3.

Technically, you would be advised to be conservative and throw them out but, as long as they were pasteurized, dropping the temperature shouldn't cause any issues if you're cooking it for another 20+ hours at 60C. I'd say throw it out if you see any puffing on the bag or if there's a weird smell if you open it. Otherwise, I'd wager that you'll be fine.

Experiements with ISI canisters show that increased pressure without increasing temperature can result in faster marination/infusion times.

My store no longer sells store ground beef... This is store ground beef: http://www.komu.com/images/news/ground-beef.jpg This is not: http://www.filipino-food-lovers.com/site-images/beef_giniling/ground_beef.jpg The bottom photo is representative of what my store is now selling, but not the actual package. Its packaged at some factory elsewhere, Stamped with a expiration date and heat sealed in the plastic tub. Im just creeped out Umm... Ground Beef almost always comes the 2nd way for me when you get it at a supermarket. I've seen the first before in places but not often. The second can also be packed in stores, it requires a little bit more machinery but it's a vastly superior packaging. It's highly likely that they just upgraded their machinery and it's exactly the same ground beef as before, except now it has better keeping properties due to the modified atmosphere packing. Why not just talk to the store manager instead of speculating pointlessly on the internet?

I can't be all pink slime. Pink slime is added, at most, at 20% to ground beef. No tough fibers and gristle? Sounds like you're actually getting better beef than you're used to.

I found the biggest difference with whole animal butchery is that you're not restricted to the standard American cuts. The way meat is cut at the grocery store is optimized for ease of disassembly, not best taste. Instead, I've been drawn more towards European style seam butchery where you pull out whole muscles that cook evenly. It's resulted in some wonderful muscles that I never would have normally got to experience.

Have you calibrated your thermostat? It might be that your readings are several degrees too high and what you think is 76C is actually a lot lower. Throw an egg in at 63C for an hour and report back on what the texture is.

I'm surprised other people haven't noticed gassing. All vegetable cooked at 185 will develop some gas as the vapor pressure from the water will form steam in the bag. This is noted in Modernist Cuisine among other sources.

What shape are you looking for? This Joyce Chen spatula is the only shape I'll use. I own 3 of them and they've held up well so far.

Braise until shreddable, cool and then stuff into ravioli. I love neck/tail meat for this purpose since the extra gelatin makes them almost like Chinese soup dumplings.