Shalmanese

Bacteria stops reproducing at around 120, starts dying at around 125 and dies pretty much instantly at 140. Between 125 and 140, you had to hold food at that temp for a minimum amount of time to get enough die off. Before SV, it wasn't practical to do this so the FDA didn't really talk about it.

If you're going to be there March 9th - 18th, SXSW is on and the entire town is going to be a zoo. All the good restaurants and food trucks will have either been previously booked out or at least an hour wait the entire day but there's a ton of free food everywhere from various corporate sponsors.

In theory, at least, the closer the food is produced to where it is sold, the less fuel is needed (and by extension the less pollution is produced) to transport it; at a cumulative level, this can make a difference. Also, you might argue that supporting local (or as local as possible) sustainable agriculture is simply good for the community. Clearly, if you want lemons and live in in Denmark, you're going to be importing. But importing them from Italy has advantages over importing them from China (also in terms of being better able to monitor the labour and hygiene standards in place at the point of origin). This is largely fallacious.

Tried to come up with a simpler way of cooking hash this morning, wanting to see if I could do it in 1 pan on the stovetop. Procedure: Dice some potatoes and add them in a single layer to an non-stick pan. Add 4 tbsp of water, 2 tbsp of fat (I used duck fat) & a large pinch of salt. Cover, turn heat to medium and let cook, shaking and stirring once every minute or so. Total time is about 20 minutes from raw potato to hash: The water will first steam the potatoes and then, after the water evaporates, the fat fries and crisps the outside. What you get is ultra creamy and tender centers and a pretty decent, crackly crunchy crust. I used russet potatoes this time but I feel it might actually work better with reds. I might also switch to giving them 10 minutes in the oven at the end to give it a dryer center and a slightly stronger crust but overall, it's a great way way to get hash on the table with a minimum of fuss.

They're excellent with other whole spices in a rice pilaf.

Grab a mission super burrito as big as your head in the Mission for $8. Mission Chinese in the Mission is a bit pricier (~$15) but everyone raves about it for good reason. Expect an hour wait, even on weekdays. There's excellent Vietmanese and Indian food in the Tenderloin, near the civic center. Burmese food is a SF specialty and there's a ton of places dotted around Richmond, SOMA & The Mission There's decent dim sum in Chinatown and truly excellent dim sum that's more out of the way in either Richmond of Sunset.

Or, you could grind the dried chiles into a powder using a spice grinder and then rehydrate. Much easier than trying to do the opposite.

Spices in bottles cost 10 - 20x more than bulk spices in the same store. If you have a whole foods nearby, their bulk spices are actually one of their most economical sections. You can get a few months worth of spice for 20 - 30 cents.

You can just seal liquids in ziplocks. Unless you need a vacuum for some reason, there's no difference between ziplocks and vacuums when you're SVing.

I imagine Thai Birdseye chilis would be the closest alternative and I've definitely seen those around Seattle. They also freeze well so you can take one straight from the freezer and mince.

Umm... you shouldn't be making lemon sorbet from a recipe in the first place. Lemons vary in acidity which means you should be constantly tasting and balancing along the way.

Ever since I've switched to buying peeled garlic, this hasn't been a problem. When you can see all the cloves, it's much harder to hide rot and mold.

Can you take a photo of it?

Straight out of the bag they go into the breading, left out at room temp I bread again 15 min later before the fry. Breading sticks perfectly and evenly. No egg/milk wash? Also, I wonder how they would turn out if you SV them in buttermilk next time?

I don't think you're meant to cook them to 340, You're meant to cook them at 340 until it reaches light caramel which is closer to 320. I imagine that even holding it at 320 is going to make it increasingly bitter over time as the solids start burning which is why you need to reach it relatively quickly and cool it down which is why you can't set the burner at 320. This is just my interpretation.

Food doesn't move so I've always found if you bring a tripod, you can let it take as long an exposure as it needs to get the image. Some especially dark restaurants, it takes 5 seconds to take a shot but the picture comes out great. Another tip is that at restaurants, I always set it to a 1 second delay. That way, you can remove your finger and the camera will be rock steady the entire time.

If it's whole foods, go complain to the managers.

Coconuts are concave so flat graters don't work.

Actually, Jerk Chicken is a very good idea. Nobody else has made it, and mixing together eleventy-six ingredients is worth it if I'm making vast amounts. I'm cooking a week from today, and I'm thinking of making some sort of cheese sauce for pasta. Trader Joe's has some excellent cheese in the $5/lb range, and I figure four pounds of parmesan and asiago should make for a pleasantly strong sauce. (Also, someone asked me if I would.) Beyond making a bechamel with a little garlic and slowly dissolving the cheese, does anyone have any comments? You probably have old beans and there's not much you can do about that unfortunately. As for the cheese sauce, you should be aware that older cheeses will clump and separate rather than melt.

They tested and recommended the Sous Vide Supreme in November, 2010 and, if you read between the lines, it's clear they have staff familiar with modernist cooking techniques but they need to present recipes accessible to a home audience. A standard LC dutch oven holds 7 quarts which is more than enough for a gallon of oil. The reason why home deep fryers don't go above 395F is because they're designed for dilettantes who occasionally want to bust it out, there's no real demand to engineer something capable of going higher than 395F. Move into the professional realm and you get deep fryers designed for actual deep frying work and they're a completely different class of machine.

Cooks Illustrated uses 1/2 tsp of baking soda for 10 cups of water. In their science section, they say:

Well, you and Thomas Keller. edit: and Danny Meyer.

Taste the fat, if your smoke was clean, then you've basically made liquid smoke, except with fat instead of water. I couldn't see using all of it but it might be nice to have some around for limited applications. For example, if you're making fried rice, you could throw a tablespoon of the fat in there to give it a charred, smokey flavor.

At the beginning, it's random bits of insoluble protein, like the grey stuff that leaks out of an overcooked steak. At the end, it's gelatin. I think religious skimming is a ridiculous French affectation. I just stir it back in and I've never found it affected taste. It does affect clarity somewhat but I never saw the point of crystal clear stock anyway.

High ph dissolves pectins. Cooks Illustrated has started doing alkaline cooking of potatoes for home fries/roasted potatoes. Another variable worth looking at is the fry fat. Beef tallow is what McDonalds used to use with great success, bacon fat and duck fat are also great alternatives. Also, go with the le creuset, deep friers simply don't have the oomph to successfully fry anything worthwhile.