paulraphael

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.

Katie, I have no doubt that Twinings probably isn't as great as I remember, but I'd be surprised if my impressions have changed this radically. I'm not talking about anything subtle ... this is about the tea I remember as a mighty and almost overwhelming experience now seeming lifeless and bland. Like the old stuff watered down until you can just taste a hint of it. I've cooked with this tea a bit. mostly for desserts. creme anglaise infused with lapsang souchong (or earl grey) is nice with pears. A chef I know uses lapsang souchong for marinades to impart smokiness. he moistens leaves and covers meat with them, before and sometimes during cooking. I've been meaning to try it.

Same cut? and can you tell us what cut? And can you describe what you mean by "tasted better?"

I don't doubt that someone out there is selling some nicely blended, high end preground meat. But all else being equal, it won't be as fresh as what you grind yourself. And ground meat loses freshness very quickly (lots of fatty surface exposed to lots of air). And considering that almost all of the ground beef I see is low quality to begin with, I see no reason to do anything but grind my own. I never tire of of the looks on my friends' faces when they take their first bite of a fresh ground burger.

You're right, it doesn't make sense. In a perfect world you'd have a huge pot of water and a lot of BTUs, so the water would come back to a boil almost instantly. More often it takes a while ... but the food is still cooking at the reduced temperature, just not as quickly, and in most cases not as well. I start timing the minute the food goes in, and no matter what, use time as the roughest of guidelines. Cooking actual time has to be based on taste and texture. Salt will have no meaninful effect on temperature (water at the salinity of sea water will boil at 1 degree F hotter than unsalted water; this represents a 0.15% increase in thermal energy). Most vegetables will cook faster in salt water, at least on the surface, but this is because salt softens the cell walls ... not because of temperature. If you do an experiment at home, you'll find that the difference in boiling time between salted and unsalted water is probably too small to measure.

I'll try the LS from Ren Ten ... they have a shop in NYC and I like being able to pick it up locally. I'd love to find a good version that comes in bags, too. Often I'm lazy and like to throw a tea bag into a cup.

Lapsang souchong was always my favorite tea. i drank it growing up and for years afterwards. Usually the Twinings in the purple box. It was always a mighty tea. It reminded me of an island scotch, the way it was so robust, and the way that people who didn't share my tastes would smell it from across the room, and then leave the room. But over the last few years, the lapsang i've had, especially the twinings (but to a lesser degree Taylors) has started tasting insipid. Like a watered down shadow of its old self. I've had a couple of cups of loose leaf lapsang that tasted better, but nothing as good as what I remember. Have I just developed some kind of tolerance, or has anyone else noticed this?

Well, it's for Christmas. Giving a Dexter Russel is kind of like giving someone a bic razor. Useful, but ... Forschners are serviceable knives, but the chef knives aren't especially good values, especially compared with many of their others. In a case like this it really comes down to how willing this guy is to take care of the knives and to learn how to sharpen them. After a couple of months of use without any sharpening, no knife is nice. After a couple of months of flat out abuse, many great knives will be worse than many mediocre ones. I don't have experience with the Togiharu knives, but from what I've heard they may be perfect. Same with Tojiro. If the person is likely to bang the knives around (and lets face it, most people are) a bomb-proof German knife like Messermeister might be a more practical choice. But only if you can find a really good deal ... prices on these have been going up.

Bringing this thread back from the dead. I've been living with a barely functional toaster (free!) and my broiler since this topic first came up. Now I'm thinking about negotiating with Santa for the real deal. My first questions are about the Cuisinart Brick Oven. How do you lovers of this machine like the toast? I don't expect toast to be perfect ... in fact I've never had perfect toast. But if I can consistently get toast that's browned everywhere and blackened nowhere, I'll probably be happy. Especially if it doesn't take much too long. Also, how useful do you find the convection feature? I see now that they have three models: plain, convection, and convection plus rotisserie. I have no need for the rotisserie. But if the convection feature works well, I might use it for cakes. My last question is about that cool Kaloric toaster oven. I like the description of it but can't find any reviews anywhere. Has anyone used it??