Tri2Cook

I'll take a few of those Cheborek with the hot pepper sauce and pickles and the beer (might actually have to look up a recipe and save it for when football season rolls back around). I'd probably dabble in the crepes and potato cakes too. My share of the liver would have went home with you.

Never seen anything labeled as "bangers" in the local store. But brats (the sausages, not badly-behaved children) are on sale so I grabbed a couple packs. They're the white, emulsified type so we'll call them German style bangers.

I took a peek at that recipe and it does sound tasty. It also sounds like a recipe for an industrial strength drain cleaner... if those things won't clear the plumbing, nothing will.

You almost got it right. Just replace that hoagie roll with a biscuit and leave the ketchup bottle in the fridge and you'll be spot on.

You can join me in the land of overkill. I'm doing a lean cut sous vide for sandwiches and a fattier cut either in the slow cooker or stove top. Both will be cooked this weekend so, while not even coming close to rotuts' corned beef insanity, there will be definite corned beef overload happening.

When Heston Blumenthal did his over-the-top version of bangers and mash for his In Search of Perfection series, he insisted that the rusk was essential to the taste and texture of what he considers the classic banger. He attempted to create versions that omitted it and said it was impossible to get that food memory association he wanted without it. In an effort to keep the rusk content to the minimum needed to get the texture he wanted while still getting that bready flavor note he was looking for, he only used a small amount of rusk but bolstered the flavor by heavily toasting some bread, soaking it in hot water, straining it and using the resulting toasted bread flavored water in the emulsification process. I'm not posting this to try to say real bangers have to contain bread, I'm far from qualified to make a statement like that. I just find the diversity of opinion as to what's authentic that exists with almost any regional/cultural dish interesting.

I gave in to my wants and have two different cuts partying in the brine bucket. The top sirloin is still going in the sous vide tank but I really wanted something I could cook more traditionally with cabbage and potatoes. Thick cut (~2") well-marbled blade steaks were on sale so I grabbed a pack with three nice ones in it and tossed them in the brine as well. I frequently use blade roast when I want to do beef in my smoker and it turns out really nice, tender and not at all dry. So I'm going to cook the blade with the vegetables to get my corned beef dinner fix and use the sirloin for sandwiches.

I would say roughly 98.647% of people that I know of call cottage pie shepherd's pie. I have a tendency to do it myself if I don't stop to think about it just because that's what I grew up with. So it's a battle I don't wage or even think about. When you wage that battle, people say "huh, interesting... so do you want some of this shepherd's pie or not?" They don't care about the food lesson. They know it as shepherd's pie, have never heard of cottage pie and will continue to call it shepherd's pie. And if you put it on your restaurant menu or special board as cottage pie, your servers will hate you because then they have to answer "What's cottage pie?" a thousand times that day. When a menu or person says shepherd's pie, I assume it will be beef unless told otherwise and eat it with just as much happiness as I would if they'd called it cottage pie.

If the beef starts pushing towards 4" or more thick, I split it into thinner planks. I'm not at all opposed to pumping, just haven't needed to so far. If I ever decide to brine something on the larger side that I don't want to cut first, I'd probably do it.

Yesterday, I did a 5% brine with water, kosher salt, brown sugar and added lots of pickling spice, some chile flakes, cloves, allspice and cinnamon stick, fresh garlic and prague #1. Gonna let it go until next Friday and then toss it in the sous vide tank.

The small number of times I've done this, I've always done 7 - 10 days depending on thickness. I try to keep things no more than 3" thick and have never had the grey center issue. I don't inject and don't poke holes. I just toss the meat and brine in a bucket, put a big Ziploc full of brine (so if it leaks, things don't get diluted) on top to keep things submerged, put a lid on it and toss it in the fridge. I don't think there are any secrets or magic tricks involved, I think it's just a matter of sufficient time for the curing salt to find it's way completely through the meat. I've been assured by people I've discussed the subject with that ten (or even more) days isn't going to hurt anything even if it was fully brined and ready to go at the five or seven day mark so I tend to go a little longer than I think I actually need to.

Really?

True... but years in the restaurant and catering business has taught me to be less embracing of that idea than I once was. Sometimes a customer reaches a level where they're just plain ol' wrong. Their money be damned. But this isn't that type of situation at all. If she's wanting the product for a specific purpose with a specific look, that's well within reason to request it. Being unable to provide it, if that turns out to be the case, is perfectly reasonable from the business end. This is just normal business negotiation stuff.

I just like the name. Another one of those indefinable mysteries, some words are just naturally awesome for some reason. Hamantaschen, Hasenpfeffer...

Yeah, like emulsified sausages, pasta (when using an extruder, obviously), any smooth purees or other items being pushed through a piping bag or squeeze bottle for use... gotta hate that stuff.

I haven't done this as much as most posting here but the times I have, it was never an issue. I don't inject the brine but I don't use pieces more than 3" thick and I leave it in the brine for a minimum of 7 days, usually 10 if it's more than 2" thick. I've always used a 10% brine but this year I'm going to give a 5% brine a shot. I'm cooking it sous vide for the first time and hoping the 5% brine will help avoid it being too salty. That shouldn't have any effect on how long it has to brine though, so I'm not altering that.

The local store brought in corned beef this year, saw it this morning while getting the shopping done. They only brought in points and I think they may have already been pretty well picked through because the few that were there were mostly hunks of fat with a little meat holding it together. I know the point isn't lean by any means but these were a bit over the top and pricey too. So I'll stick with the plan to make my own. The top sirloin roast I bought, once untied, gave me a lean hunk with a little marbling that's somewhat similar in appearance to rotuts post-trimming flat he posted above and a thinner portion with the fat cap, which I didn't remove. Not sure if I will before brining or not. Right now they're both sealed and in the freezer until next weekend and I'm considering going back for another. I don't do it often, might as well do a bunch while I'm at it and have plenty for sandwiches.

Yes, you can buy deli meats sliced to order. No, they will not build you a sandwich. But it doesn't really matter. I wasn't complaining about Subway. I rarely eat there, but I wasn't complaining. Our local Subway must be a shining example among Subways in general based on what people here are saying about their experiences. The sandwiches are what they are, not great, not horrible, but it's not dirty or staffed with ill-mannered health code violators.

Then what's the issue? With better options available, why does Subway need to be better? Just don't go to Subway. I live in a very small, fairly remote town in far northern Ontario, Canada. The options are extremely limited. Subway isn't great and never will be but it's here. The local store is always clean, the staff is friendly and attentive and the veggies are fresh. I know the manager personally and when I walk to work before 6 am every morning, she's already there baking the bread and cutting veggies. The lettuce, tomatoes, onions, things of that nature that require prep aren't coming in bags pre-cut and loaded with preservative, they're cut on site. I'm not trying to advocate for Subway or claim they're more than they are, I just don't understand the unhappiness over their not being better if there are better options readily available.

Never heard of Wawa or Sheetz but if they sell 12" sandwiches with meat, cheese and as many veggies as you want to stuff in there with better quality than Subway and they aren't just as popular, they need to have a talk with their marketing department.

Subway's not great. I don't think anybody realistically expects it to be great. But if you stick with the simple stuff, the basic cold cut type sandwiches, it's not horrible either. I think a large part of the popularity is, you can get a 12" sandwich with meat and cheese and stuff it full of as many veggies as you want for under $7 (a little more than that here in Canada). You can easily beat the quality but you can't beat the sandwich volume to cost ratio at too many other places, if any. For a lot of people, that matters. I tend to avoid it for the most part, even though I could hit the local Subway with a half decent golf shot from my house, but I'd be lying if I said I never go. Then again, the restaurant choices where I live are very limited.

This is all great information. I plan to start putting together a list of the points being made here to store in my "chocolate" folder on my laptop. There are a lot of things to take into consideration that I hadn't thought of. I'm not at the point where most of it is an issue right now but I hope to get there eventually. The chocolates I mentioned that I've sold were all plain shells or, at most, maybe a little splatter or swipe of a contrasting color (still just chocolate, not colored cocoa butter) so no decoration time or special materials were involved. The packaging I'm using now isn't particularly cheap at the quantity I purchased but I could cut the per package price almost in half by buying in bigger quantities. I just didn't want to commit to too much until I see how this goes and I'm not particularly in love with it. But it's good enough for where I'm at right now. One advantage I have where I live is I have zero competition at this time for handmade chocolates (though it comes with the disadvantage that it's a fairly remote area with a small population). I'm starting to get my flavors out there and I'm working on getting to a point where I'm happy with my results with decorating techniques so hopefully this information will come in handy at some point.

I always do my beans that way. A pan of beans below the meat. I frequently toss a pan of mac and cheese on the shelf above the meat as well. But when the meat has been in the smoke for what I consider enough time, I always move everything to the oven to finish. I just find it easier and more efficient than keeping my electric smoker to temp for that much time. But I agree completely that doing what they original poster was asking about full term in the smoker is definitely doable.

No reason it shouldn't work. But unless you just want to do it in the smoker, seems like it'd be much easier to just toss the uncovered pan in the smoker for a couple hours to get the smoke you want and then cover it and transfer it to your oven to finish. Once the item being cooked is covered, the smoker is just acting as an oven that will be less efficient than the one in your kitchen. I don't know what type of smoker you're using but mine is electric and would be hard pressed to maintain those temps. A wood, charcoal or propane smoker would be better able to hold the temps but would probably need a reload (wood or charcoal) or a lot of propane for the timespan you're talking about. But again, no reason it shouldn't work if you want to do it all in the smoker and it should do fine even if you can't maintain the higher temps you want.

Not really. The thread is titled "Hollandaise Techniques". The first question related to using a siphon but that's just one technique that can be covered under the blanket of the thread title. Anna asked about repairing a broken Hollandaise, which brings up other techniques that can be covered under that same blanket. But I agree that the siphon is a bit overkill for home service unless you're configuring it so it will foam and hold it's shape on the plate.