Tri2Cook

Thanks! Yeah, that was the general consensus... total weight and 2.25 - 2.5% with a few people saying they go as low as 1.8 - 2% if bone makes up a large percentage of the weight.

Actually, I got the information I needed via the meat curing group I'm in on facebook. Apparently you go by toral weight regardless. Some people say they lower the salt percentage a bit for bone-in if there's a significant amount of bone weight.

Thought my meat curing game was pretty solid at this point but, from the department of never think you know it all... when calculating a dry equilibrium cure for bone-in cuts, do you include the bone weight and, if not, how do you calculate the boneless weight? I realize this isn't pork belly specific but this was the only post that came up searching "equilibrium cure."

I feel like a prophet. 😁 Not really but I did say a couple years ago that I was gonna avoid the colored cocoa butter effort and learning curve by just sticking to natural chocolate colors until they came back into favor. Lo and behold, what has Andrey Dubovik been pimping on his Instagram recently? Natural.colors! I'm finally running with the cool kids again!

We used to have them in the local grocery store all the time, haven't seen them or habaneros there in quite a while though. Depending what I want to use them for, https://www.meximarket.ca/ sells whole canned poblanos. If you have a friend in the restaurant industry at a business that deals with sysco, they usually have them (or did anyway, haven't checked recently) but it's a pretty large amount. I'm thinking it was either 5 or 10 pounds. I get my habaneros through them now. They come in 1 lb. and 5 lb. packaging.

Apologies, haven't been here recently. I'm ashamed to admit, I never revisted it. I feel certain it will work, just gotta get the ratios right. Popcorn sounds interesting, I'd be interested in how that does... may have to give it a try.

Anybody have a method or idea for stabilizing cream cheese to be more melt resistant? I'm fine with using "modernist" ingredients and have a fairly extensive collection of them. The goal would be to stabilize it somehow then dice and freeze it to mix into a sausage base. I've tried just freezing straight cream cheese and it doesn't even make it through the mixing process before it starts breaking down and becomes pretty much liquid at eating temps. Ideally, it would hold up to milder temps but be soft (not liquid) when hot.

It'll be just me and the younger daughter this year. I asked her what she wants for Christmas dinner (thinking main protein) and her reply was "yorkshires and gravy" (yorkies were always a bit of an Achilles heel for me until Kerry Beal shared her recipe and then I was suddenly the daughter's yorkie hero). So I decided if I have to do that, there's gonna be beef. Got my order in with the guy at the meat counter for a hefty center cut striploin roast. Sides beyond the young'un's request are still undecided.

Big hunks of beef, smaller chunks of beef, ground beef, beans, no beans, tomato, no tomato, a zillion variations on seasoning, I've even done a green chile version using ground pork and and black beans (made it up as I went, I was happy with it). I haven't met many bowls of chili I didn't like or at least, couldn't eat. And yes (avert your eyes, purists), I do indeed like Cincinnati chili too.

That's exactly what it was like!

If I ever get around to revisiting it, I'm going to reduce the amount of butter powder and up the cocoa butter a bit and see if that gets me a better end result. The flavor was good, it just wouldn't firm up enough for bars or shelling, even with tempering.

Sounds good! I played around with corn as a flavor a while back but never really pursued it beyond seeing if it would work. I like the direction you went with the flavor. I did it in the style of the fruit couvertures with freeze dried corn, cocoa butter, sugar, butter powder and salt. It was tasty but softer than the fruit couvertures when set. I may revisit it with some tweaks one of these days now that you have it on my mind again. I think it would have worked in a ganache setting, I was shooting for a molded bar.

From what I've found, the gravity feed charcoal smoker/grill will hold low and slow temps as well as pellet burners but will also reach 700 F or higher for grilling. They take a very short amount of time to go from 200 F to 700 F as well. They produce more smoke than most pellet grills and you can mix chunks of smoker wood in with the charcoal in the hopper to create even more smoke of choice. The main downsides I've read about are cook time on a single load in the hopper, which is about half that of most pellet burners in low and slow mode and having to manually start the coals instead of just pushing a button. The cook time isn't entirely trivial for me, I generally do pork butts overnight so getting up during the night to check the hopper could be a deal breaker on those.

I won't buy a gas Weber, no danger there. If I go that route, it'll be charcoal. I also won't be buying a Yoder, those don't fit the budget. It'll either be another Bradley and a charcoal Weber or a more budget-friendly pellet burner (Traeger, etc.). I've also been doing a little research into the gravity feed charcoal smokers as well. They seem to solve the most common complaints about pellet grills but introduce other issues of their own.

Nice! Not gonna lie, those eyes are really nice and I know they were a lot of work... but I really like those ghosts.