Tri2Cook

Thanks! I think combining that recipe with the cocoa replacement suggestion might be perfect.

I'll check it out. Thanks! For this particular use, I really need some fairly small details to keep their shape. I know it's sacrilege here and I feel a little dirty even saying it but I really am willing to compromise flavor/texture for baking stability in this instance. I should also add that chocolate isn't essential, just preferred. It's more for the color than flavor so I can work around that part.

I know the topic has to exist here but I searched it every way I could think of and got zero results. Does anybody have a recipe for chocolate cutout cookies that will really solidly hold their shape? Edible is a requirement but holding shape is more important than them being a delicious cookie in this case.

I don't really know what to add here that hasn't been said. I'm really bad at knowing what to say or how to word what I want to say but I'll start by saying, I really need to get back to checking in here more often because life is short and there are people here who mean more to me than maybe someone you've never actually met should from an outside view. But I think, rather than going the sadness direction with this, I'm just gonna add one of my best memories of Anna. When my wife passed away 7 years ago, Anna and Kerry were huge help in keeping me from sinking completely into self pity. They would check on me and offer encouragement which helped more than they'll ever know. But something that stood out from Anna was, any time I started crossing that line between mourning and "poor me," she wasn't having it. She would give me a no-nonsense verbal boot in the butt without hesitation. There was nothing mean spirited or unsympathetic about it, it was something you might get from your mom or grandmother or favorite aunt or something. Just a solid "you're heading in a bad direction and I'm not gonna let you." There are a whole lot of good reasons to remember Anna but I'll always cherish those kicks in the seat that brightened some of my darkest days. Rest well Anna.

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.

My Bradley smoker reached the end of it's usable life this past summer and it's so old a model that replacement parts are no longer available for it. I also gave my propane grill to my daughter because I never really was happy with it. It was a case of I got what I paid for but she said it was fine for their purposes. So I have until spring to replace my outdoor cooking. I've been seriously considering a pellet grill to cover both missing items but the research I've done seems to show that while they do both, they don't do either as well as their dedicated individual counterparts without bolstering. So now I'm not so sure. I still have the PID controller I bought for my Bradley so another of those (although I wish the non-digital model was available in 6 rack, the 4 rack fills up pretty fast) and a new grill (probably a Weber kettle, wanting to move away from propane) would be the easy option. But I'm not ruling out the pellet grill yet so thanks for this post. I'll continue to watch your adventures while I decide.

Way behind on this conversation but just wanted to add that I've had the exact opposite experience with mine from what that person has had. I have the not upgraded mostly plastic guts older non-tilting model. I'm not particularly careful with particle size of ingredients or exacting with wheel tension and I haven't had to repair or replace anything so far. Usage tends to come in spurts, it gets used heavily to get a few batches made up and then may sit for a bit but it has a pretty large total number of working hours on it. That's not saying you won't experience what the other person did, just another angle based on my experience.

Muscadines are a thing of beauty. I wish they'd survive where I live. I would definitely find a way to get ahold of some plants or seeds or whatever works best ro grow them from.

That might be a good way to go with it. I don't live near anything that would carry any of that stuff but (almost) everything's within reach via online shopping.

Sorbet would absolutely be a better (or at least easier) way to go but my daughter had grape ice cream while she was away on a trip and liked it so she asked me if I could make some. I think I'm gonna give my first idea a try. The grape juice concentrate just eliminates me having to concentrate juice myself and avoids muddling the flavor from the extended cooking to reduce the water content.

I tried several search variations with no luck, wondering if anybody's come up with a good grape ice cream. Edit: to get the ball rolling, I considered just using Welch's frozen grape juice concentrate and adding some glucose powder to increase the solids a bit plus milk/cream to get the sugar level into the ice cream range and maybe some stabilizer. I'd prefer to keep egg out of this one.