gfweb

I think charcoal gets hotter esp with a bellows. Colonial iron smelters went to great lengths to make charcoal

350 f Steam for 20 min or so. Probably could do half that but no risk in going over on a potato

There's books that teach principles like Beards theory and practice or Colicchios Think Like a Chef. I love both. Then the big compendiums like Joy of C or Bittman. I love neither. And the gigantic CIA text which does both pretty well. ETA...I forgot Pepin's stuff and the old NYT cookbook and both of Bourdain's cookbooks Of all of them, I think I learn the most from Think Like a Chef.

I've made charcoal on a small scale by wrapping sticks in foil and cooking them on a hot plate to generate smoke for smoking meats. Could be scaled-up, but will never be as cool as the paint can flame deal

I usually SV my CB with about a cup and a half of water in the bag. It de-salts nicely. And its available to simmer cabbage and potatoes in.

re wing size...Bell and Evans markets nice little wings

The CB labeled as no papain was SV at 143 for 48 hours. Nice and firm, but tender. Perfect.

No more room service on a cart, with china and silverware. Now its mostly in disposable to-go containers and with plastic utensils. french fries are well-steamed and salads wilted. yuck They bill it as "no touch" and cite the covid as the necessity. The trend certainly started before the pandemic in many Marriotts, probably because it saves money, but now its all over. Barf

The sauce is the juice in the bag from the store before cooking? I throw that out.

Purely guessing. 2-3 hours if that papain-CB of mine is any guide. I'd say better off to simmer it if papain-treated

I suspect that the slime is hydrolyzed protein...like gelatin...but from papain action on the meat. I'd wipe off the slime

SV time and Temp might play a role. I used 140 F which is right at the max activity of papain. If you SVd at say 165 and shorter time, you'd be having less enzyme activity so less mush. Traditional simmering at around 200 would inactivate the enzyme, so no mush at all. I found a CB labelled "no papain " by the maker. In a few days I'll try SV and see if it gets mushy too.

thoughts/ opinion to follow.... Softer than meatball seems in the meatloaf spectrum (by my personal classification). Hamburger and kafte have no panade or egg and are made softer or harder by cooking temp. To me kafte are usually overcooked and dense...need a sauce...or maybe I had bad kafte. Meatballs have less panade than meatloaf and as a result will survive being simmered etc without falling apart. Of course one could overcook a meatloaf and make it hardier ( and inedible).

@Duvel Can you compare these to regular meatballs and meatloaf? Seems like little meatloaves.

Based on my single disaster...I might cook it traditionally. @rotuts Master of CB...what do you think?

If one is against processed food, then these ersatz meats should be a no-go. How much more manipulated and processed could it be?

I just had my first CB failure. Store bought pre-cured flat CB. 140F x 2 days... which I've done many times, though almost always with CB I cured myself. This time it was pure mush. I guess there was papain involved at the packer (which I didn't see on the label). I looked up the temp optimum of papain. It is right around the SV temp. So I'm smarter, but still hungry.

No worries. They are pissed-off already.

Plenty of pasta unless they run a sale that cleans the shelves

Well that is the point. Convection doesn't involve a fan and did not (originally anyway) mean any air that is moving for any reason. I suspect oven marketers thought "convection oven" sounded sexier than a "fan oven". So how many angels fit on the head of a pin? I'd say none, but am open to discuss it. 😉

And while we are at it, convection ovens work not because of thermal convection, but because of a fan moving air around

They were tasty. A bit of a flavor bomb, though. I wouldn't pair them with something mild. The web-derived (seriouseats?) recipe was (from memory) -halve and shallow fry new potatoes till golden on the cut side -boil potatoes in a mix of 3 tbsp water, 2 tbsp soy, 1 tbsp fish sauce, 2 tbsp sugar and a garlic clove, smashed. Obviously I used a small pan where this just covered the potatoes. I don't see why water couldn't be added as needed since it gets boiled down anyway I fished out the clove toward the end -cook the potatoes until the liquid has turned syrupy and slosh around to coat. -LET THEM COOL a bit Thinking back I don't see t he need for shallow frying, cooking face down on a oiled sauté pan ought to be enough since the potato will cook fine in the boiling syrup. In fact , though browned from frying, it wasn't noticeable in the product I only made it once. I could see adding a bit of heat to the sauce

Me too. I've had one end up carrying the black through long ago, but now they are all white.

Love fried/sauted lettuce

Lol. My phone has an app that I use occasionally to hide crappy plating.