takadi

That is a beautiful steak Marlene. Care to share your own personal steak cooking method?

EXACTLY!!

Bacon should really be classified as a drug rather than a meat. It is interesting to note that pigs are incredibly smart though. So one would have to justify eating dogs if pigs, also kept as pets, are even more intelligent than most pets.

I agree there are some risks. That risk really comes with most foods, but I don't see any reason to outlaw it. Consumer reports such as these can warn people of potential dangers and possibly locate farms with bad sanitary practices. I think warning labels should also be required for raw milk products if there were ever a chance that it was legalized. I don't think the risks are any higher than eating raw eggs or fish, or as in recent cases, raw spinach. Heck, I've even eaten raw beef at some restaurants. I think it's a personal choice that comes with risks, but shouldn't be legislated.

I don't know about you guys, but I find that Popeye's quality has dropped in the past years. Something tastes missing. I heard they added MSG to their ingredients as well

hahaha I love that I've drinken regular milk all my life (hated it) until I put my lips around a glass of raw milk straight from the cow in France. The taste was so mind blowing and complex, I've pretty much been on a quest to find some in the US. No luck so far though, I live in a pretty suburban/urban area. I also believe in farms were more local, there would be less mistrust of farming practices because there would be a stronger personal connection with your food, as you stated. You can actually shake hands with the source!

Congressman Ron Paul (who's also running for president) introduced H. R. 4077 on November 5th to legalize transportation of unpasteurized milk. http://www.thomas.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c110:H.R.4077: Also his speech on the house floor about the bill http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul422.html I personally feel pretty strongly about the health benefits of raw milk and feel like we are somehow being robbed of nutritional benefits with pasteurized milk. Although we did need pasteurization in the past, I feel it's the 21st century and milking procedures and techniques have greatly improved. I find it odd that unpasteurized milk has to be pushed to some pseudo-black market. Congressman Ron Paul is pretty active in the small farms movement (I believe he cosponsored the "The Family Farm, Small Business and Home Tax Relief Act") so I encourage you all to look up some of his past work, it's pretty refreshing. I haven't found out whether this bill has passed yet, so I have some more research to do.

hhahaha I'm sorry I just had to laugh at the title of this thread

Have you tried medium-high heat plus butter? Several chefs recommend that method, and achieve excellent results. From an article in Nation's Restaurant News last year, by Florence Fabricant: Hmm I'll try that out. To tell you the truth, I learned the cast iron method from Alton Brown, and I tend to put alot of faith in him when he said that insanely hot cast iron was the only way to get any crust on your steak on your home stove. Certainly it'll save me alot of time from having to preheat the thing for 10 minutes.

Can't technically reminisce about "the good ol days" just yet. I'm pretty much in my experimental phase. The most successful dish I made was a mediocre bowl of homemade pho after having some pretty ravenous cravings while away at college last year. Needless to say I never knew that pho could take so long to make. As of now, my goal is to make the perfect steak and sauce.

I actually find in my personal experience that a super heated cast iron pan is the only way to really get a nice malliardized crust on the outside. Of course it's not the same as a broiler, but I find it's second best.

Hi Ce'nedra your char kway teow looks amazing. I've been trying to find the right noodles for ages but to no avail. Did you make them yourself or is there a special noodle sold in stores?

I heard that fructose has to be processed in the liver first, so not only does it make you fat, some people who drink excessive amounts of soda come out with livers worse than alcoholics

Well considering the fact that I have a pretty terrible stove, I don't think it's impossible to properly sear meat and even form a crispy crust on steak. I do it all the time with my cast iron pan. I just wish it had more responsiveness and I would be good to go

Yes I've read that already (three times in fact). I'm just stating testimony from avid cast iron users. Subjective opinions aren't measured by units and numbers

Really? Everybody I talked to about cast iron swears by it and its properties. Especially the nonstick seasoning that "beats out any teflon pan"

Well, it might have to do with my lack of skill, but I always find myself either burning the sauce or having it way too watery. I just find myself constantly having to adjust to the slow responsiveness or the residual heat, it just seems like a huge hassle to make a sauce. And off flavors do pop up sometimes if I cooked something in the pan previously that was pungent, like curry. Anyways, this issue is not as life and death as it seems. It's not that cast iron is unusable, but in any case I was merely scoping out for an ideal pan to keep for life. But if I don't have to pay as much for copper to get the same results with aluminum, that makes the pan worth much more to me.

I wouldn't say the cheeses themselves are dangerous. That's like saying canned vichyssoise is dangerous because people died from botulism. Aside from that, I don't see how raw milk cheeses are any more dangerous than any other food if they are carefully and safely made

haha yes sorry about that, I actually just read most of the Q/A thread. I preferably would like a pan with high heat capacity, but I'm really looking for an all purpose pan. It sounds to me like the perfect lifetime all-purpose pan would be a straight-gauge very heavy, large, wide saucier type pan with SS interior (preferably exterior too but I haven't found one suitable yet). Right now, I just set my sights on making the perfect steak and sauce. I bought a cast iron pan specifically to form the crust for the steak, but later figured out that cast iron is terrible at making reduction sauces from the leftover fond. While a thick disk bottom aluminum might do a good job at forming the crust, is it suitable for sauces and reductions? I feel that copper is really the only one that can really do the job because it can form that desired crust while at the same time is responsive enough for a sauce afterwards. I'm not really afraid of shelling out cash because this will be a pan to keep for a lifetime and a pan I plan to do most jobs with, but if there's a pan out there that can do the same job, if not better, at a cheaper price, I'll set my sights on that one.

Thanks for the reply Kinsey. Do you have a range of prices for how much one of those would cost in comparison to its copper counterparts? Are there any brand names you can throw out there? And are there differences between disk bottom and straight gauges? I assume that straight gauges have a thinner bottom but have the material more dispersed throughout the pan (would that make it more expensive?).

Mauviel has copper cookware with stainless interiors, but they are copper on the outside. It isn't a sandwich, just heavy copper explosion bonded with stainless. Very expensive, very heavy, very durable and oh so beautiful (if you like to polish copper that is). I know there are other copper mfgs out there but am only familiar with Mauviel. (My DH bought me a rather large set for Christmas several years ago. ) Edit to add: there are different levels in the Mauviel line. For best performance, you want the 2.5mm line. ← Wow I am so incredibly jealous. I've never seen a Mauviel in real life, but whenever I pick up an all-clad one, I feel like I'm sinning. Just for the sake of being too lazy to polish copper, are there other ones that have SS throughout the entire exterior but don't have aluminum?

But to write off an entire food because of its risk factors? I don't think that merits the FDA to put a total ban on it. Every food has risk factors, but that's our personal responsibility to decide whether to eat it or not based on those risks. A label would be more than sufficient As for the FDA itself, don't get me started on the pharmaceutical industry and the massive subsidies loaned out to big farming corporation. But that's an entirely different topic =) Let's talk about cheese

Thanks Tim. I guess my craving for a sweet 3 qt SS clad copper saucier isn't going to subside anytime soon =(. It seems like most All-clad copper pans have a copper core sandwiched between aluminum layers. Are there brands that have all-copper cores clad with very thin stainless steel? (I want there to be as much copper as possible but with the advantage of a non-reactive surface)

I hate the FDA.... I wish food inspection would at least be extended to some privately owned agencies that don't freak out and put outrageous bans and regulations on everything. I would even think that they would do better than the FDA considering they probably have expert knowledge compared to the bureaucrats in Washington. Eh I hate getting political, but it's just that I've been doing some research, and it seems like situations like these just prove that government departments like the FDA just get in the way of our freedom to just enjoy life because of their "nanny" mentality. I actually was researching about the "Small farms" movement to allow farmers to provide localized, fresh organic produce instead of garbage they sell at supermarkets, and I ran into an amazing speech by a man named Ron Paul at Farm Food Voices (he's actually running for president I think). Farm Food Voices is a small farms lobby group. Anyways, it seems as if the ideas he expresses tends to reflect on this current, sad situation. Here's the video if anyone wants to watch

Thermal diffusivity is interesting, but wasn't addressed much in the Q/A. I can't really visualize the significance of thermal diffusivity. Since aluminum is a close second to copper, does it mean it can generate high temperatures and be able to maintain that high temperature despite adding food? Cast Iron would achieve and maintain high heat only because so little heat is lost due to its low conductivity, and copper would reach also reach similarly high heats but compensate for its heat loss through its high conductivity. So both cast iron and copper are similar in this sense, but their thermal diffusivity differ greatly. Is diffusivity more relevant in terms of how much heat per cubic unit is accumulated per unit of time rather than measuring how hot a pan can get and how hot it will stay with cooking?