paulraphael

It came out great. just what I was hoping for ... tender enough to be succulent, but not disintegrating. so it could be sliced. and eaten with a knife and fork. I ended up doing the first roast at 220 degrees, which took a bit over an hour/lb. Pulled out of the oven just below 148 degrees. A couple of hours later (at friends house) put in a preheated roasting pan in a 500 degree oven, and pulled out when center hit 148. Rested about 20 minutes. It would have been easier with a shorter wait between the low and high ovens. The interior temp dropped to 122, and it took a long time to warm up. The smoke detector had to be dismantled in the mean time. The surface was nicely crisped, but unfortunately the long browning time burnt the pan drippings so I couldn't use them in the sauce. But the sauce was nice with the sage and blackberries. I'm waiting for a friend to send pics.

um ... i've seen tongs in use in most of the high end restaurant kitchens i've ever visited. i rarely see them in home kitchens. which is why when asked to cook at someone else's house, i bring a pair. i don't doubt that tongs damage a lot of food. but it's not the tongs, it's the indelicate use or misuse of them. truthfully, i think much more food gets damaged by the indelicate use and misuse of knives. but i don't think knives should be abolished; i think people should learn how to use them.

This kind of thing has never been my style, so I decided to go for it! Had some fun with a boning knife disassembling the shoulder and turning it into a boneless, 2 foot long rug. I improvized the stuffing with some of the pork trimmings, a but end of Jamon Iberico that I stumbled upon, some mushrooms, shallots, bread, and a splash of white wine. Next up is some sauce. I'm planning to make a jus with some stock and roasted pork bones and mushrooms. And I have some blackberries ... maybe I can work that in somehow to brighten up the flavors. Mushrooms, sage, and blackberries? Maybe? Roast is in the oven now at 220 degrees. I'll try to get some pics and report on how it goes.

I agree. Ultimately, tongs are the wrong tool only when they harm the food. Or maybe when they create a dangerous situation (ok, I just pulled a couple of pans out of a 500 degree oven with tongs ... if there had been other people in close quarters this would have merited collichio's wrath). In any case, they can be used delicately and respectfully, or they can be used in a hamfisted manner. Like knives. Like anything. I think the embargos on tongs are just the product of pet peeves ... chefs who have seen them abused so often that they've decided to draw a big line in the sand.

Alright, I do have a blowtorch, but have never used it on meat. The thing burns REALLY hot. I tried to brown a peeled pear with it and it just charred the outer fringes while leaving everything underneath untouched. Is meat easier? And someone mentioned the propane leaving petroleum flavors behind ... is this a real issue?

while i take a break from circulating petitions against dihydrogen monoxide, can someone fill me in on ozone activated water? is this for real? i'm intrigued.

Baratza is selling refurbed Maestro Plus grinders (normally $140) for $63. click! I just pulled the trigger. Based on my 2 minutes of research it's a good machine, with typically Italian quality control quirks, even though it's not really Italian. They seem to have excellent customer support though, and for $63 I won't scream too loud if it isn't perfect.

maybe so, but i've neve roasted one before also, a lot of the trickery we're discussing is about the same simple goal ... how to keep as much of the meat rare/medium rare as possible, while still browning it well. the nicer the piece of meat, the more obsessive you might be about this.

So, call it $15/burger? Would I pay that every day, or when feeding a crowd at a picnic? No. But once, to give it a shot? Hell yes. I'm not exactly in a position to buy dry aged beef by the side, so no trimmings for me: the only way I am ever going to get a dry-aged, prime, fresh-ground burger is if I make it myself from a normal steak cut. And I think it may be worth trying. Later. When the economy is better... ← It would be great. But for the money (and maybe out of some misplaced, meat-centric sense of principle) I'd much rather just eat a steak like that as a steak. It's like with anything else. If you had perfectly ripe heirloom tomatoes that you just plucked off the vine, you COULD simmer them for hours to make pasta sauce. But they'd be just a bit better than run of the mill tomatoes in that application. On the other hand, eaten raw and unadorned, they'd give you an incomparable experience.

There's no doubt that butter poaching is an amazing method. I just think it's more practical in a setting like a restaurant where you can have a stock pot of beurre monte going all day long with batch after batch of food going through it. People who use this method tell me the beurre monte can't be reused as poaching liquid after it cools (maybe the emulsion breaks and can't be reestablished?) so they typically render it to clarified butter. Which isn't much of a solution ... what am I going to do with 8lbs of clarified butter? I used to use about a pound a year; now I don't use it at all. I'm betting that sous vide and alto shaam cooking are also technically better than trying to slow roast in an oven, but I'm not going to have access to any of the requisite trickery.

Chad's book and a gift certificate (korin? epicurean ege? some place local to him?) would be brilliant.

Thomas Keller also has a tong embargo in his kitchens. I believe tongs can be used very gently and respectfully, although they are certainly not appropriate for everything (yes, i have tried to turn fish fillets with tongs, but guys like keller don't hire guys like me, who have been known to use tongs to scratch our butts, open beers, change light bulbs, and dispose of spent mousetraps ... plus, I only ripped up a fish fillet once before learning my lesson!) It might be easier when you're running a kitchen (or in the case of Chang and Keller, several kitchens) to make simple rules rather than trying to get everyone to master more delicate skills. People working long shifts in a fast paced place can get lazy with tongs and rip up the food. The easiest solution is probably just to ban tongs and give everyone offset spatulas.

I got hired (coerced?) into cooking for a friend's holiday party. She wanted a roast, and the best looking meat I found within her budged was a 5+ pound boston butt. I've braised a bunch of these, but never roasted. In fact I don't know if I've ever had a roasted pork shoulder. I'm guessing there's a range of possible textures you can achieve, from sliceable to fall-apart tender. I'm only familiar with the latter, from braising. Does anyone have experience with cooking = boston butt to the point where it's tender but still intact? I want to make sure all the toughness is gone, but I think we can have a nicer presentation if it can be sliced. Is this a reasonable goal for this cut? I'm planning to cook in a low oven, let it rest on the subway, and blast a nice crust on it before serving.

I've probably had the latter. Much of the ground beef at my supermarket qualifies ... Never the former. In fact I'm not tempted to grind really first rate beef into burgers. But some day I'd like to grind some good beef and see how it is. So far all I've ever ground is beef from my downscale supermarket ... varying combinations of chuck, brisket, sirloin, and flank. Even with crappy beef the results are mind blowingly good. I'd like to try the same cuts, only nicer, fresher samples from a decent butcher.

And serve to guests who are recinining in a slowly bubbling hot tub of melted butter.

Busboy, how big was the roast and what was the roasting temp?

I'm still puzzling this one out. Another basic question is how much to expect the temperature in the center to rise during rest, both after the long slow roast and short fast browning. My wild guess is to pull it out of the low oven at 118 or so, and expect it to not rise all that much. And to pull it out of the hot oven at 122 or so, and expect a bit of rise. Thoughts??

I took a quick look at the tong pile. Includes: -Amco 12" tongs, with the spring loop for a lock. These are the most nicely made, and have the easiest to use lock. Downside is that they don't open very wide when unlocked. For anything big I need to grab one of the others. -Mystery brand, 12" tongs, with the magic gravity activated lock. These open up wonderfully wide, but the locking mechanism drives me nuts. Quality is ok, but spring isn't stainless and will eventually rust away. -Mystery brand, 16" tongs, with the sliding metal loop. Open as wide as you'd ever need. Locking mechanism is annoying, but I like it a bit better than the fancy automatic one. Spring is also prone to rust. These long ones are perfect for reaching into a blazing oven, working over a grill, or over a pan that's spitting hot grease. Next up: tongs that have the pull-out tab for a locking mechanism. Anyone like these?

For home cooking, the practical question is how little water you can get away with and still get great results. Restaurant chefs will often tell you to bring gallons of salted water at a raging boil, either for blanching or for pasta making. This is practical for them, because they're cycling batch after batch of food through that water. If you're making just one batch, there's a big (and probably unnecessary) cost in energy and time to bring the giant pot of water to temperature. When I'm cooking a meal that doesn't have to be amazing, I'll typically use a 5qt pot, mostly full, water at a rolling boil, for up to a pound of vegetables or pasta. This is less then half of what's ideal, but the results are good. Asparagus will be bright green and lightly crisp; pasta will be good (saucing well and eating right away will make a bigger difference than boiling improvements at this point). If it's a special meal, I'll fill the 12qt stockpot for similar quantities. But the improvements are pretty small. Next time I blanch some veggies I'll put a probe thermometer in the water and see just how much temperature is lost when the food goes in.

Thanks so much! If I buy this thing you should get a commission.

Yup. That's why the ideal situation is a lot of water (so the temp doesn't drop much) and a lot of stove (so the temp recovers quickly). But regardless of your stove's abilities, it's generally better to have a lot of water. All that thermal mass will keep the water temperature from dropping too low. In the time it takes to cook most pasta or green vegetables, an anemic stove won't make much progress raising the temperature of even a small amount of water. So it's best to keep the water temp from dropping too much in the first place. If you've ever had pasta or green vegetables cooked in tiny amounts of water, you know how this plays out.

Are you working with such large quantities that you can't make your own? I've had good luck with bartlett pears for this kind of thing. You can roast them first or not. I finely chop them and cook them down. If they aren't ripe enough to turn to mush I add water and simmer until they soften and then reduce again. If I want a bit of roasted flavor I let it brown. The intensity isn't usually that strong, but it's a real 3 dimensional pear flavor. It's easilly expanded by a splash of poire william. This has worked well in creme anglaise, pancakes, syrups, etc..

I don't know how big your dinner plates are. My corelle plates fit with lots of room to spare, and my formal dinner china plates fit as well. I could measure those, which are bigger than the corelle if you like. ← I'd love it! My biggest plates are 11 inches.

One thing I'd love to be able to use a toaster oven for is warming plates, when the big oven is occupied. Does anyone know the interior dimensions of the Cuisinart brick oven? I can only find it in cubic feet, which doesn't tell me if my plates will fit.

Tongs, tongs, tongs, tongs, tongs. I'm lost without them. I use them to pull sheet pans out of screaming hot ovens. I use them to open beer bottles. And for everything else. They're just about the first thing that goes into my knife roll if I'm going to cook at someone else's house. Hardly anyone I know has real tongs in the kitchen. I wonder how they don't starve. The only ones I like are all stainless, with the scalloped edges. Which describes about a hundred different brands. Right now I have a few different tongs in a few different sizes, each made by someone else. Each has features I like and features I dislike. If some tongs come along that are all good and no bad, I'll buy stock in the company. And open a beer.