Tri2Cook
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Posts posted by Tri2Cook
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4 hours ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:
But I don't have a source of chives.
Don't grow your own unless you really like them or have a contained area to plant them in. The small patch in the corner of our garden at the house where I used to live turned into the air smelling like onion every time I mowed the lawn because they spread out and took over a large section of the yard within a couple years.
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It works fine. I've always thought of it more as thinning the chocolate with additional cocoa butter than coloring the cocoa butter with chocolate but it ends up in the same place whichever way you say it. You don't need to waste a lot of resource to try it. Just combine a little melted chocolate and cocoa butter until you get a consistency that will spray easily then spray a cavity or three and see if you like the result. I wish I had a specific ratio to give you, that would probably sound much more professional, but I honestly have never measured it out that precisely.
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I'm not sure what Christmas dinner is going to be in it's entirety. I knew it wasn't going to be turkey, was leaning towards ham. Until today when I found out we were getting turkeys as a gift at work. They're supposedly some fancy turkeys with all the buzzwords attached that means they're much better and more ethical than the average grocery store turkey. I don't say that to be flippant, I realize how our food is produced is important, I'm just not the world's #1 turkey fan so my excitement level isn't as high as those birds probably deserve. But be that as it may, I do appreciate the thought and it looks like I'm cooking a turkey for Christmas because I don't really have freezer space to give up for it right now.
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3 hours ago, Vojta said:
We know that chocolate contracts while its setting up, thus I can imagine it would not help.
There is that... I didn't really think that one through very well. -
Anybody remember the old fudge recipe from the Hershey's cocoa can that turned out somewhat grainy/sugary in texture? I've never made it, my stepmom used to make it when I was a kid, so I don't actually know if the texture was a characteristic of the recipe or the way she made it. Either way, I have to confess I actually kinda liked that texture and sometimes find myself mildly disappointed with creamy smooth fudge.
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9 hours ago, Vojta said:
after one week the intensity was at ~10 %. Like if I didnt know I have to search for a rainbow on my chocolate I wouldnt even notice! After that 'failure' I didnt try again and claimed its not a stable technique.
My explanation would be that chocolate changes its structure on microscale, which we do not observe, however its certainly enough to destroy the microscopic structure of moulded grating. Maybe if I had a super stable enviroment, It would've last. Who knows.
Interesting. I wonder if leaving the chocolate on the grating for a longer amount of time would help with that? Until the chocolate has had time to fully crystallize. I know that wouldn't really be practical for production purposes, I'm just curious if it would help reduce any microscopic shifting of the chocolate. -
11 hours ago, Vojta said:
After quick googling: EZ temper will reduce the process of tempering from heating -> cooling -> heating to heating -> adding seed. Which I find not that big of a difference for chocolate.
On paper, it doesn't look like a major difference. In actual practice, it's a HUGE timesaver. It's always ready to use and it's much more foolproof for the average person than tempering by heating, cooling and heating. Not that there's anything wrong with tempering that way, it's just much easier to mess up until you develop a really good touch with it. The EZtemper is remarkably forgiving. It's probably made me sloppy to the point that I would have a very difficult time working without it now because it just always works. I guess how much "it always works" is worth to you is something only you can decide.11 hours ago, Vojta said:1000 $ for a miniature oven is unreasonably lot.
That's an easy viewpoint to take when somebody else had the idea, did the legwork, got it manufactured and does the marketing and sales. It's a professional tool that can save time and help reduce waste in chocolate production. Time and waste are profit killers, the cost for a tool that helps counteract those profit killers is more than reasonable on that merit alone. But it also makes production easier which, for me, makes it more enjoyable. I'm not really the "suffer for your art" type so that's a big plus for me. Do a little digging, see how many professional chocolate production and teaching facilities have an EZtemper onboard. They don't have it just because it looks good on the bench (which it does, by the way). These are industry professionals who have seen it in action and deemed it worthy of a portion of the budget... and we all know how tightly small business budgets tend to be held.
I'm not telling you that you need an EZtemper, I'm just giving an alternative take on a couple of your assumptions regarding it's potential value to chocolate production.
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8 minutes ago, Kerry Beal said:
Mine is the middle one
The middle one is the one I'm looking at too. It comes in the 500/mm and 1000/mm I mentioned as well as the 13500/inch shown above. I didn't bother mentioning that one because I did the math and it works out to just slightly over 500/mm so I just assumed it was a non-metric variation on the 500. -
12 hours ago, Kerry Beal said:
I chose the slightly more complex version as I recall
The stuff I'm looking at comes in 500 and 1000 lines per mm. Pretty much the same price either way. -
17 hours ago, Louise nadine brill said:
I first saw this diffraction grating effect on Instagram ArtisAnne page
I immediately went looking for the stuff after seeing Kerry's post here and discovered it comes in a wide range of lines/mm. I had no idea whether more or less lines was better for chocolate work so I started doing way more than probably necessary reading of scientific information on diffraction grating. It appears that, in general, more lines is better up to a point. I'm assuming there would be no reason to make it beyond the point where it is no longer beneficial so more is probably better. But those scientific articles aren't dealing with chocolate so who knows if that changes things? So yes, I'm probably way overthinking this and I still haven't actually made the purchase.
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4 hours ago, MoonChild said:
I kind of get the feeling that everyone's situation solutions are different...
That's the number one thing I've learned about chocolate work. There are zero rules written in stone. Each and every thing that one person says you must do will be countered by someone who will say "yeah, not so much". The upside of that is, chocolate doesn't seem to be nearly as finicky and unforgiving as I once believed. It's really just about tweaking the basic guidelines until they work for you. One thing that makes sorting advice easier is to automatically write off any advice that begins with "you must always do it exactly like this".
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Those smaller bottles of colored cocoa butter go a lot farther than they look like they will. But if your only chocolate is dark, you're gonna want to make sure one of those bottles is white or get your hands on some white chocolate for backing if you really want bold colors to show. As far as $$$ goes, Kerry has pretty much shown you the least expensive options for getting a variety of colors. There are no options I've found that qualify as actually being cheap. I'm with pastrygirl on the contrasts using different chocolates. I have a decent variety of colored cocoa butters and a couple airbrushes... none of which see a whole lot of use. And it has the added benefit of you then have different chocolates to work with for shells and fillings as well.
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21 hours ago, liuzhou said:
but not because of the food
9 hours ago, Duvel said:Me neither ... was prepared to read something like „empty can of tuna found on premises“
That line above yours was the one that kept me from preparing for that possibility.
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I made a big, elaborate gingerbread castle one year. Worked on it in secret so the girls wouldn't know and kept it hidden until Christmas morning when I got up really early, put it on the kitchen table and added a few last minute finishing touches so it would be ready when the girls got up. Me and the Mrs. were sitting on the couch drinking coffee and waiting when we heard a very discouraging sound. I jumped up and went to the kitchen and, yep, her big male cat, aptly named Crash, was stomping through the castle like Godzilla through Tokyo. The castle itself was ok but it looked like an army had breached part of the wall and taken out a couple guard towers. It's funny now, less so at the time.
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I have zero problem with dining solo but there are also pretty much zero restaurants locally I find enticing enough to want to bother very often. So I doubt I'll have much to contribute but I'll follow along and be jealous of what others have available in their area.
One of my favorite movie scenes on the subject.-
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3 minutes ago, Kerry Beal said:
I've gone back to doing it the way I always did and still seem to have success.
I do it the way you always did and still seem to have success as well. Until I cease to have success doing it that way, I will continue to forego the extra steps and more frequent clogged airbrushes I was getting at lower temps.-
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39 minutes ago, Kerry Beal said:
Well - here it is morning and the furnace is tits up again! And buddy took the heaters when he left last night.
Been having the same fun. Water heater went to the place where water heaters are eternally blessed. Got it fixed and less than 2 weeks later the furnace decided to go on strike. Took almost 3 weeks on the waiting list of every plumber in town before one was able to get to me. Fortunately, I was able to get a furnace guy with only about a 1 week wait.-
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2 minutes ago, robirdstx said:
Curious, do you know the reason?
Whatever the reason, it blocks me as well.-
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12 minutes ago, gfweb said:
Thing is, fries are solid and have no nooks to hold oil, and they are wet, so oil is repelled. But tots are like formed, half-cooked hash browns, lots of nooks and much of the water already cooked off. How does one properly fry a tot?
I don't know of any special secret but I've yet to have my tots be grease-bombs so I just assumed someone must have fried them in some improper manner for you. Of course, it's entirely possible we just have differing ideas of what constitutes a grease-bomb... I hadn't taken that into consideration when I posted before. A little residual surface fryer oil caught in the nooks doesn't bother me, I think of grease-bomb as being when the fried item is soaked and saturated with grease due to improper frying technique or temps.
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17 hours ago, gfweb said:
Tater tots fall into two groups, the oven baked beauties and the grease-bombs that are deep fried. These look like the latter. Lazy cook.
Deep fried tots are much better than baked. They shouldn't be any more grease-bomb than fries. The lazy cook isn't the one that deep fries tots, it's the one that deep fries them improperly and turns them into grease=bombs.
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I haven't figured out a formula for getting a good balance of stress, depression and Douglas fir into a ganache yet...
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There's a market for something like that. I don't know how big it is but it's definitely out there. But I'm not sure how much of that market hangs out here. That would look interesting sitting on the counter and would probably spark conversation from those who saw it but there are other ways to do he same job that are much more practical. As you've probably worked out from the comments above, that tends to be the way the prevailing winds blow around here. Not that we don't appreciate fancy toys, most of us just don't tend to place them above function and practicality.
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27 minutes ago, weinoo said:
Do you sanitize the tray table, armrests, etc.? It has been alleged that they are some of the most germ laden areas on a plane...
I don't know about Kerry but I wipe the tray down with my bread just to make sure I get all that germy goodness.
Kidding, of course. I'm actually curious to hear what others have to say because I honestly very rarely think about things like that at all unless it's visually obvious that something has not received even the most basic level of sanitation. And even then, I may just shrug it off and be careful about keeping my food on it's plate or in it's container. Me and those free range germs have been coexisting for a pretty long time with no major conflicts. One sneaks through the defenses now and then, I fight it off, we go have a beer and it doesn't bother me again. Other than those pesky cold germs... they refuse to fully commit to joining the team and have to give it a shot once or twice every year.-
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I don't have any ideas for saving your apple butter but from the category of looking at things on the bright side, apple ketchup sounds pretty amazing to me. I'm thinking a burger with the patty made from pork instead of beef with a good cheddar and some maple bacon... dammit, I really don't need to be making apple ketchup right now.
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2019 Holiday Cooking and Baking
in Cooking
Posted
Christmas grub decided. That beautiful free-range, farm raised, etc. etc. turkey I received at work weighs just a few ounces short of 22 lbs. It's just me and the kid so I foresee a whole lot of turkey-based leftovers in my future. I'm going to spatchcock the bird today, blanch the skin with boiling water, salt it at 1% and toss it in the fridge uncovered for 24 hours or so. My number one rule of poultry... thou shalt not eat skin that is not extra crispy. It's my problem with chicken wings. I hate soggy skin but if you pull it off, you also pull off whatever seasoning or sauce was used. Anyway, to accompany said bird will be gravy (of course), stuffing that will include a healthy dose of my homemade breakfast sausage (I made a batch a little heavier than usual on the sage for this purpose), jalapeno mac & cheese (I make a big batch of the nacho cheese sauce from chefsteps, mix it with the pasta, a little butter and some additional grated cheese, top it with crushed Ritz crackers that have been fried a bit in butter, then bake), collard greens sautéed in bacon grease with onion, cranberry sauce (the jellied kind, straight out of the can) and, non-traditional with turkey but by request of the kid, Yorkshire puddings. She likes to dip them in gravy, something she's done since she was a small child. Dessert is going to be a honey vanilla cheesecake. I'm making lots of everything. I'm actually getting a few days off work and I don't intend to do a whole lot of cooking during that time after tomorrow's big meal so I scaled everything to provide adequate leftovers to allow for my planned laziness.