Shalmanese

Should be fine. Two issues to watch out for: If the box is too big, the vac star might have struggles getting to temp and if the items are placed poorly, circulation might be an issue. Both are trivially solvable. Once the bath gets up to temp, drop the steaks in, and after 10 minutes, if it's not back up to 54.4F, pour in some boiling water to help it get back up to temp. Check again after another 10 minutes to confirm that it can hold the temp. Once the steaks reach an internal temperature of 54.4, the heater should have no problems holding. For the second, just give the bath a manual stir once every 10 minutes or so during the first hour of cooking. This will eliminate any hotspots etc. Again, once the food gets up to temp, you're essentially just holding so you don't need to mind it anymore.

I've taken to putting an upside down colander over the pot instead of a lid. I've found that letting the steam escape leads to a crunchier popcorn instead of the slightly chewy popcorn I got before.

While not exclusively soul food, Mastering the Art of Southern Cooking is a very good reference work on the American South.

I've had some pretty great Wagyu and some pretty lousy Wagyu, the label doesn't mean very much. The best Wagyu is not only well marbled, but has a rich, beefy flavor that coats your entire mouth with juicy beef fat. The lousy Wagyu has the same degree of marbling but when you chew it, the meat tastes dry and the fat tastes greasy instead of rich. I've never found that much rhyme or reason to it but it's obvious when you taste good Wagyu why it's prized.

Oh, also, squash grated on a microplane and then mixed into meatballs give them an ethereally light texture. They're my go-to "mystery" ingredient when I make meatballs.

Summer squash makes an amazing soup. The key is to first salt aggressively to draw out all the water and then saute until very well browned, preferably in plenty of butter or olive oil. Add in onions, garlic, aromatics etc. and then add water or stock to cover and simmer for 20m. Puree and pass through a sieve and you achieve a wonderfully creamy soup without the use of cream. Adjust the seasoning after you puree as the squash has a lot of salt. I love pairing it with raw or barely cooked shellfish; mussels, oysters, etc. The briny shellfish go wonderfully with the rich & smooth soup.

I've had many long debates about this with people but I've yet to be convinced that Red Bean Paste has ever improved any Chinese dessert.

All of the flavoring additives are extracted from oranges which is why there's no requirement for them to be labelled. It's hard to imagine how they could be substantially more harmful than the oranges they were extracted from.

You can also make a quick fried rice. Cut off the fatty bits of the meat and cook some until rendered, add in rice and fry with whatever stuff you have in the fridge. Then add the meat at the very end to just warm through.

I always used to make my pasta dough way too wet. The dough should be pretty stiff and barely stick together when you first knead it. Let it rest for 20 minutes for the moisture to absorb and you have a great pasta dough. Boil it in plenty of water so you dilute the outside starch and then move it to the sauce ASAP so it doesn't have time to stick together.

Different ways of chopping and cooking result in different flavors. It depends where on the mellow/sharp and fresh/browned scale you want to be.

Store bought wonton wrappers taste completely different from home made. The store bought ones are slippery and smooth whereas the home made ones are rough textured and have more chew. Given how much work wontons are anyway, the extra work from making the skins is not that huge.

I've found grapes to be one of the more sturdy fruits and can easily last 2 weeks. Also, you can freeze them whole for a great frozen snack or turn them into sorbet for a great dessert.

Why don't you just ask me and I can tell you how fast I'd like the food to come out!

It may be long but most of the stuff in there seems to be pretty solid characteristics to be on the lookout for. Is there anything there that's really egregious?

Bars are optimized for high volume and so they need to use ice for the majority of their chilling. If you're making cocktails for home use, just store the gin in your freezer and don't worry so much about the ice.

The reason why sodium is measured is because you can get sodium from multiple sources, not just salt. MSG for example, contains about 30% the sodium content of salt.

Have you not been watching Top Chef: Masters?

Are both countries on the same voltage? If not, electrical equipment with motors might be a pain.

Slate has an article on how Beef is being fed a growth drug, Zilmax to increase the lean muscle mass at the expense of flavor and marbling. This seems like a pretty distressing trend. Does anyone have any more information about this?

I think it was filmed in the Spring as I remember Tom Douglas talking about the Spring Salmon run during the Space Needle episode. If it's a good year, we'll see huckleberries on the East side in late July. But here's a tip, wait as long as you possibly can, down to the last day of the season if you can, (usually mid-September). That's when the huckleberries are sweetest. You just have to get to them before the bears eat every last berry. It was filmed during Bite of Seattle in mid July.

Goods are much more expensive but space is relatively cheaper so what you should be doing is ship as much non-electrical stuff as you can from the US, rent/buy a kitchen big enough to hold it all and then sell everything when you leave. The earnings from selling it should easily defray the cost of shipping. For electrical goods, the voltage/plug difference means only high value goods like stand mixers or vitapreps would be really worth bringing over. But definitely consider bringing some nice Le Creuset/All Clad/Shun/Riedel etc.

When I'm conceiving of a dish, I can "arrange" certain flavor combinations in my head and see what they look like. Acidic flavors are sharp, buttery flavors are smooth, sweet flavors are round, earthy flavors are rusty/dirty etc. Once I have the flavors in my head, I can see if they're aesthetically pleasing or not and can add or subtract flavors until I get something I like. When I'm tasting a dish, I can see the "shape" that taste makes. Then, I can either pull or hammer the shape until it looks better and, using that, I know how to adjust the dish.

I'm a bit unusual in that I have Synesthesia. Numbers are colors for me and flavors are shapes. When I'm developing a recipe, I'm mentally composing a picture in my head and adding or subtracting elements until I get what looks like a "harmonious" whole. This makes it really easy to improvise recipes from a disparate set of ingredients.

I've found that I've never had problems getting concentrated shrimp flavor and my main challenge has always been shrimp flavor overwhelming everything else when I use my shrimp stock. Are you using just shells or shells + heads? I find the heads give a huge amount of flavor. My general procedure is that I'll buy a pound or two of head on, shell on shrimp. Start a pretty intense court bouillon going, then poach the shrimp in the court bouillon at 60C for 15 minutes. Cool the shrimp, peel and toss the peels directly back in the stock. Then bring to a simmer, simmer for 15 minutes, then turn off the heat and let steep until cool before straining. You end up with a shrimp flavor so intense it can't be served by itself and needs to be diluted with something, just to make a sauce.