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Stuckey

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  1. Thank you to everyone for the helpful advice! I can't wait to smoke my first batch of bacon in my Big Green Egg this weekend!
  2. How long can a cured pork belly be left in the fridge before it is smoked to make bacon? I've got a belly curing right now, and it will probably be completely cured several days before I'm able to smoke it on Saturday. Will it be OK to leave the cured belly in the fridge for 3 or 4 days before it gets smoked? If so, should I leave it uncovered the whole time to form a pellicle, or should I just uncover it for the last 24 hours? Thanks for any help!
  3. Relax! If bacon doesn't fully cure, you've got salt pork! With salamis and dried meats for eating raw, a little paranoia is probably justified, but bacon curing is really pretty safe. The sugar in a bacon cure is just there for flavour, somewhat (ie more or less, to taste) balancing the salt. Its supposed to be a bit more critical in salami where you may have sugars specifically to feed a fermentation culture, which acidifies the sausage, one line of defence against botulism. If you give it a bit a bit of time after you wash the remains of the cure off the outside, you are giving a chance for the salt (and sugar, etc) distributions in the meat to even out. Its a mistake to think that you can get the cure to stop dead in its tracks by washing off the residue. I don't know about others but I visualise a 'concentration gradient' of the salts. The saturated excess at the surface sets a maximum, and it will taper off, the deeper you go in. During the cure, the taper gets flatter. BUT, unless you intend storage at ambient (non-refrigerated) temperature, you don't want it as salty throughout as it is during curing at the surface. So you don't finish the cure on a zero gradient. But having removed the excess, it needs a little time for the stuff thats inside to even out. This is particularly important with British bacon, which doesn't get cooked before slicing and final cooking. Even smoked British bacon is cold smoked. The bacon that we buy in shops (sliced and packeted in supermarkets) is cured, but not cooked. The North American cooking or hot smoking must itself help to even out any non-uniformity in the distribution within the meat. ← Cheers, mate. I rinsed off my pork belly last night. I'm still trying to get through all the info on bacon contained in this thread. I figured after 7 days, the belly should be cured. I'm just about to take the belly (at which stage does the belly technically become bacon?) out of the oven, after roasting at 200F. The book says it should take about 2 hours, but geez, it's taken me over three-and-a-half hours to get to an internal temperature of 150F! It's possible that the large difference is because I used a large sheetpan on the lowest rack in the oven, which might affect the air circulation. Next time, I'll try using a smaller sheetpan and use the middle rack of the oven. How long has it taken others when roasting in an oven? Is there a real benefit from roasting at 200F rather than a higher temp to reach the same internal temp? Or would too much fat render off at a higher temp, even though the belly wouldn't be in the oven for as long? Also, what should I do with the small section of ribs still attached to the belly?
  4. I'm trying to make bacon. I used dextrose instead of regular sugar because I already had dextrose on hand, and also because the authors state their preference in the book for the dry cure rub containing dextrose, because it dissolves easily and is more evenly distributed. I don't think the belly has fully cured yet (it's been 4 full days), since there's still some give in the flesh. I'm hoping it will really firm up before 7 days, or else I'll be wary that something's gone wrong. When I think the belly has fully cured, I'll slice it in half to make sure that it is. I'm trying to be very careful on my first go - I'm sure I'll get better feel for things with a bit more experience. Cheers!
  5. Forgive me if the questions I'm about to ask have already been answered in this mammoth thread, but I haven't been able to read the whole thing just yet! I did not have any luck sourcing curing salt in Australia in small amounts, so I resorted to ordering from America. The first thing I wanted to try was bacon, so last Friday, I got a small pork belly (about 1kg = bit over 2 pounds), and mixed up a small batch of the basic cure using dextrose instead of sugar. I poured a bunch of the dry cure into a Pyrex dish, coated all sides of the pork belly as evenly and thickly as possible, shook off the excess, and put it into a ziplock bag and then into the fridge. I also added two tablespoons of the dry cure into the bag for good measure. I've been turning the belly over once a day, and so far, about 1/4 cup of liquid has come out of the belly. My questions are: 1) Is there a risk of using too much cure? The recipe states using about 1/4 cup for a belly over 1.5kg. I think I might've used a bit more than that, for a belly weighing less than 1.5kg. Would this speed up the curing process, or would it cause some kind of problem? 2) The pork belly that I got still had some rib bones attached. What should I do with them? Remove them before roasting it, remove after roasting, or just leave them on? 3) Are there other tell-tale signs to gauge when the belly is fully cured besides testing for firmness? Should a fully cured belly be rigid and uniformly firm all over? I would imagine that my smaller belly will take less than 7 days to fully cure, but since this is my first attempt, I'm not quite sure how to tell if the cure is doing its work! Thanks so much for any advice! I'll be sure to report back with progress reports, and hopefully photos! Cheers!
  6. I made the Classic Banana Bundt Cake today. It turned out very well! I don't enjoy creaming butter and sugar, but in this case, it's definitely worth it. The cake is very moist, and very tender. The flavour is great - very banana-ey. I used sour cream instead of yoghurt, and used 1 3/4 cups of mashed darkly-speckled bananas. Dorie says that this cake is better the day after, and if the taste now isn't as good as it gets, I can't wait to try it tomorrow! My go-to baked banana goodie used to be Cook's Illustrated's Banana Bread, but Dorie's Banana Bundt Cake has just taken the lead!
  7. So I made the Super Lemon ice cream this weekend. I was initially a bit wary with the combination of lemon juice and dairy, since most lemon-flavoured iced desserts available in Australia are either sorbets or ices, and I'd never actually had a citrus-flavoured ice cream before. Admittedly, the mixture looked a bit curdled and smelled a bit funny once blended and pre-churned. However, once churned and popped in the freezer for a few hours, I can say that IT WORKS! The lemon flavour is great and sufficiently lemony-tart, and the texture of the ice cream is also really nice and soft. It's very refreshing, and quite addictive. I'd definitely make it again, and the fact that it was really quick and easy (no cooking!) to put together means that I can make it at short notice. Awesome!
  8. Thanks, Kerry and Randi! I'll go with the extra light cream with 12% fat. I'm gonna use it to make the Super Lemon ice cream this weekend. Cheers!
  9. A question on storage-life..... If the milk that I use to make a cooked custard for ice cream is several days away from its use-by date, will it affect the storage-life of the ice cream i.e. make it shorter? In other words, instead of cracking open a new carton of milk everytime I want to make ice cream, can I still make effective use of 4-day-old milk by making ice cream with it, or will it lessen the life of the ice cream compared to if I'd used fresher milk to make it? Am I making sense?!
  10. We don't have "half-and-half" here in Australia. We do have "extra light thickened cream", which contains 12% fat, and "light thickened cream", which contains 18% fat. Would either of these make a suitable substitute for half-and-half? Or if it's just half milk, half cream, and I have both those items handy, can I simply make up the specified quantity of half-and-half with equal amounts of whole (full cream) milk and heavy cream (35% fat)?
  11. In my experience, icey ice cream is a result of overchurning. I discovered this when I made my first ever batch of ice cream years ago (using a Krups machine that used a canister that had to be frozen in advance), when I was churning and churning and waiting for the ice cream to reach the consistency of soft serve ice cream. It never did, and I stopped the machine after one hour! The resultant ice cream was very icey! These days, I'm using an ice cream maker with a built-in compressor freezer. I only need to churn the custard for 10-15 minutes, and only until the custard increases in volume and has a slight grainy appearance. I also sometimes check the temperature by sticking a Thermapen probe through the machine's opening. If it's around 27F (no cooler than 25F), it's done. The ice cream still needs to go into the freezer overnight before it's ready to serve. The coffee ice cream (what's left of it) that was churned on Saturday night is STILL scoopable straight out of the fridge. I prefer my ice cream to be dense, not airy, and the texture of the coffee ice cream is exactly what I was after! Edit - upon re-reading this thread, I can see that Kerry's photo of her ice cream being churned sure looks like soft serve-consistency. My ice cream doesn't come out looking like that. I wonder why ice cream machines made by different companies, despite having built-in compressors, deliver different results. Would this be what distinguishes a high-end machine from a lower-end one?
  12. I made the coffee ice cream this weekend. Made the custard base on Friday, churned it on Saturday, and just had my first three scoops. It is beautiful! The coffee taste is full-bodied (I've not tried any other coffee ice cream recipe before, so can't compare to any recipes which call for instant espresso/coffee powder, as some do), and the texture is very smooth. It's instantly scoopable right out of the freezer. I didn't bother to add any ground coffee at the end - I didn't think it needed it. I would definitely make this again, but I would use cheaper coffee beans next time! I used Mexican Oaxaca coffee beans, which cost around US$7 for the amount used in the recipe. I'll still use decent beans next time, just not fancy boutique single-origin beans!
  13. I just got my hands on the book, and can't wait to get stuck into it! The first things I want to do are bacon and pancetta. Now....does anyone know where I can get pink salt/curing salt/sodium nitrite etc. in Australia?! Mail-order is fine (within Australia). Google searches aren't turning up much relevant information Thanks for any help!
  14. I'd like to make matcha (green tea) creme brulee for some friends, but I've never had matcha before, so I don't know what it tastes like! I have no problems making a regular creme brulee - I use a recipe from Cook's Illustrated. The ingredients (halved, to make four servings) are 2 cups heavy cream, 1/3 cup sugar, half a vanilla bean, and 6 egg yolks. How might I adapt this recipe for a matcha creme brulee? Omit the vanilla bean? Maybe increase the sugar to counter the bitterness of the matcha? And how much matcha should I use? Thanks for any help!
  15. The chocolate biscotti is delicious, and as Dorie says - by their nature, they're great keepers! I've made them twice. Just be aware that the dough/batter is very sticky for when you're forming the logs on a baking sheet.
  16. Cheers, Mark, but I'm in Australia, so unfortunately I wouldn't be able to take advantage of those prices! Thanks heaps all the same though!
  17. Kerry, are powder-free nitrile gloves by default safe for food handling, even if food handling isn't declared as a suggested use? Or do I really need to look for nitrile gloves which specifically state that they're suitable for food handling? Thanks!
  18. Thanks so much to everyone for your help! BTW, it's frickin' freezing in Sydney right now!!! Tammy, I don't think that the earlier dipped truffles cracked more. A lot of them just seemed to crack regardless of which order they were dipped in. However, the milk chocolate coated truffles cracked a lot less than the dark chocolate coated. Perhaps that was because I had rolled the centres for those ones a day earlier....next time I'll have to try giving the centres at least one full day to sit out and crust up. I want to try doing molded chocolates this weekend, and the next time I do dipped chocolates, I'll try doing a ganache slab and cutting it into rectangles/squares. Kerry, I used both a spiral dipping fork, and a two-pronged dipping fork. With the two-pronged fork, I release the truffle by turning the fork over, because I find that it releases a lot easier for me than getting them to slide off the fork. Of course, maybe that's because I don't have a very good dipping technique! I definitely want to give hand-rolling a go. I have rubber latex gloves that say they're powder-free and food-safe. They smell like balloons. I'm sure they're fine for cutting chillis, making sandwiches etc., but I'm a bit wary of using these with chocolates. Do you think they would be suitable? Mark, I tried hand-rolling truffles ages ago, and thought it was too messy and too hard. Now that I've got more chocolate experience, I'll definitely give them another go! Thanks again, everyone! Cheers!
  19. I've been busy making truffles this weekend! I made raspberry dark chocolate truffles, hazelnut milk chocolate truffles, and orange dark chocolate truffles. I am much more confident with tempering chocolate now, especially with all the helpful advice from you friendly folks! I've realised that being a lot more patient with the chocolate cooling was the key to my tempering success! I've also learned that I prefer using a two-pronged dipping fork, rather than the spiral dipping fork, to dip my truffles because the truffles come away cleaner, it's easier to wipe off excess chocolate from the fork when it builds up, and the resulting truffles are smoother and more consistently attractive. However, I did have a few hiccups. Many of the truffles developed cracks after they had set. I had formed all the ganache centres on Saturday, and left them out overnight to crust up, so I don't think that the temperature of the ganache was the cause. Perhaps the fact that the weather was quite cool was the reason? For some reason, the milk chocolate truffles didn't crack as much as the dark ones. Another problem that I had was, despite leaving the dipped truffles to set for several hours after dipping, upon removing them from the baking paper-lined baking sheet, many of them also had little round "plugs" come off from the bottom. Besides being unsightly, I am concerned with how this affects their shelf life. Some of the truffles had a small amount of sticky liquid on the bottoms. Would the compromises in the shell of the truffles significantly shorten the life of the truffles? I know that water and air are enemies when it comes to keeping truffles, but would these imperfect truffles at least keep for a week at room temperature, or must I refrigerate them, or chuck them because they'll spoil very quickly? Please note that all the ganache was made with just chocolate and cream i.e. no butter or invert sugar etc. Thanks for any help or advice!
  20. I made white chocolate-coated milk chocolate truffles today, and I'm quite happy with them, especially after having a number of recent misadventures in molding chocolates! I made the ganache on Saturday, then scooped and formed them into balls yesterday, and left them out overnight to dry and crust. I tempered around 600g of Cacao Barry white chocolate using the seed method (melted the chocolate in a Pyrex bowl in the microwave, seeded with about 20% of total end weight of chocolate), and I was quite patient this time, adding the seed and giving it a good stir, then leaving the chocolate to take its time to get down to around 86F. I tested the temper by smearing a bit on some baking paper, and after checking it had firmed up several minutes later, it was dipping time! I used a spiral dipping fork, which I found to be a lot easier to use than a regular dinner fork! If I had any criticisms, it would be that the chocolate was obviously a bit too thick. You can see this simply by looking at the truffles! Could this be because the chocolate was overseeded, or because my working temperature was too low? I didn't bother to check the temp again after I started dipping, but I did chuck the bowl in the microwave for a very short burst just to get the temp up slightly. Thanks for any tips!
  21. Kerry, the callets are shiny and I'm pretty sure still all in temper! I keep them downstairs where it's nice and cool. I'm not gonna have time to do any chocolates this weekend, but will make some time for next weekend!
  22. Kerry, I hope these photos are what you're after! alanamoana, I'll have to look for one of those heat pads. I'm sure they'll definitely come in handy! I know I'll just have to learn to be more patient! ejw50, when I tried tempering earlier this week, the temp in my kitchen would've been around 20C (around 68F). Definitely not warm, and not cool either! Lysbeth, I will certainly bring the melting temp up to 115 for my next attempt. Thanks again for everyone's help! I'll have another go this weekend, and will utilise all the advice and suggestions offered here, and I'll report back! Cheers!
  23. Thanks so much for everyone's help!!! Kerry, obviously one of the mistakes I made was to be too impatient! What I will do from now on is use maybe 1kg of chocolate, and use the leftover chocolate to be tempered with new seed for the following time. Once I nail some tempered choc, I'll mold a large block for seeding purposes, since that sounds easier than using callets to seed. Here in Australia, we never use Fahrenheit. The only reason I use it is because I have so many American cookbooks that I'm just used to it when used in a culinary context! When it's scorching hot in Summer, the temperature might be 38C outside, but I have no idea what that is in Fahrenheit. Conversely, I don't know what 90F is in Celsius! I know that 100C is 212F though Do you know how long, say, 1kg of melted chocolate might stay at a good working temperature for, assuming ambient room temp is not too hot, not too cool? For example, if I get to a temp of 89F, and I leave it for 10 minutes, won't it cool to a less than optimal working temp by then? Or am I underestimating the thermal qualities of such a quantity of chocolate? I would be happy to take a shot of the front of the bag for you. I hope you won't mind if I do that tomorrow. My camera's batteries need charging! David, I'll be staying out of the freezer from now on! I was dipping a spoon into the choc, and then putting the spoon into the freezer to test the temper. Pretty silly now that I think about it. Of course it's gonna get hard in the freezer, whether it's tempered or not! I don't have a heat gun - I'll have to make do with a blowdryer for now! Cheers, mate! choux, I will definitely try putting the molds in the freezer. I haven't cleaned them yet, because I've been lazy, so they're still lined with now-streaky untempered chocolate! What's the minimum amount of chocolate that you normally temper at one time? tammy, thanks for asking questions that I wouldn't have thought to ask! I'm learning so much!
  24. Hi guys, I've been having a few problems with my chocolate-making endeavours lately. I've previously made dipped truffles with no problems, but now that I'm experimenting with molding, I just haven't been able to get it right! I use Callebaut chocolate, in milk and semi-sweet (54%). I've got almost 10kg left of each. Today I attempted to temper some of the semi-sweet to line my polycarbonate molds (dome cavities) using the seeding method. I brought about 600g chocolate (in a metal bowl) up to 110F in a water bath, then added 100g of callets. Doing this and constantly stirring, the chocolate came down to about 95F, but then didn't seem to go any lower. I was impatient, so I added some more callets, but by the time the chocolate was 90F, there were still some unmelted bits. I decided to bring everything back up to 110F and try again. Going by Peter Greweling's advice to bring the temp down to working temp, but not go over 90F, I began testing for temper at 89F by dipping a spoon into the choc and putting it in the freezer for a few minutes. I checked the spoon after two minutes, and there weren't any streaks, so I figured my chocolate was in temper. After I lined the molds and let it set, it was obvious that my chocolate was not in temper, because it's streaky and it doesn't look like it's contracted away from the sides of the mold. This is my third unsuccessful attempt (I tried molding with milk choc twice before), and I'm going to have to discard this latest try by soaking it in hot water to clean out the chocolate. Is it possible that my chocolate is thrown out of temper because I didn't warm up my molds first? I read in another thread that testing for temper in the fridge isn't a good indicator because the chocolate will harden whether or not it's in temper. I'll try smearing some on baking paper to see if it hardens at room temp. I'm finding that I'm becoming less excited about working with chocolate because I'm just intimidated by tempering! It's really frustrating me! I've taken some photos of the usage guidelines on the side of the Callebaut packet. Can some kind soul please explain what they mean? What does the little dotted portion of the line in the crystallization curve mean?! BTW, I use a Thermapen to test temps. Thanks for any help or advice!
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