Tri2Cook

Sounds good to me... I don't require a heart-shaped steak but I'd prefer it over a heart-shaped box of chocolates. Edit: sorry dcarch, as nice as that looks, I'd prefer a heart-shaped steak over heart-shaped tofu too.

Good points from you both. The texture's going to be different than brisket if I use anything other than brisket so that part I just have to accept regardless and the price part won't be relevant to me because getting the local store to special order brisket for me will cost more than anything I'd substitute with. Since I don't enjoy eating large pieces of fat no matter what meat I'm eating (I have no problem sacrificing a bit of meat to avoid a fatty area) and I'm controlling the cooking with sous vide to avoid dryness, I thought using a fairly lean cut might be nice. Anyway, there's still a lot of time until St. Patrick's Day to do a little experimenting. Thanks!

So just out of curiosity, if we're using sous vide to precisely control what happens to the meat during cooking and don't need the abundance of fat and collagen found in the more traditional cuts to avoid ending up with jerky, is there any down side to using something like a top sirloin roast for corned beef? I mean, other than price. Let's pretend that part doesn't matter just for the sake of discussion. Just to be clear, I'm not asking for brisket substitutes. I can get chuck/blade and other roasts no problem and I know what I'm asking wouldn't work too well for more traditional cooking methods. I'm just curious about using cuts from further up the chain while we're already being scientific and controlling with the cooking anyway.

Yeah, probably a bit of a niche thing. I'm thinking of cold winter evenings coming home from work to a house that smelled like something good cooking. I couldn't peek through the kitchen window to see what the family was up to because it would be steamed over but I knew they were in there and expecting me home. It's okay if I don't do that myself with the corned beef though, it wouldn't be the same anyway.

Yeah, It's that deciding part that I'm working on. I'm trying to decide in my head which result sounds better to me so thanks for the encouragement and sharing your temp preference. P.S. Just for the record, I do very much enjoy steamy winter windows and cooking smells filling the house but I'm willing to forego that in the pursuit of a better result.

Corned beef is in the plans, brisket is unlikely to happen unless I can convince the local store to special order it so I'll have to consider a different cut. I'll probably do sous vide if I can decide which direction I want to go with time and temp. ChefSteps says 60 C (140 F) for 48 hours. Anova says 57.2 C (135 F) for 48 hours. The Food Lab on Serious Eats says 82.2 C (180 F) for 10 hours wasn't as juicy as when done at lower temps but was more enjoyable to eat for their taste. They also suggested 71 C (160 F) for 36 hours as an option for a juicier but more dense and solid result. I don't do a lot of sous vide and don't cook a lot of corned beef so it's a lot to digest... Edit: also, when cooking corned beef sous vide, would it be better to go with Rhulman's 5% brine for the curing process since none of the salt is going to be leached into a cooking liquid? I know when I cook corned beef by more traditional methods, the cooking liquid gets really salty. Is the resulting corned beef really salty if cooked sous vide? As you can tell, I haven't spent a lot of time making my own corned beef. I think this will be the 3rd or 4th time I've made my own and the first time cooking it sous vide.

The Reuben is on the short list of my all-time favorite sandwiches... I like them slathered in butter and pan cooked like a grilled cheese but I doubt I'd turn my nose up at an unbuttered, baked variation. Edit: had to correct this post, just realized there's no sauerkraut... my apologies for accusing it of being a Reuben. The wedge salad had to be the creation of a restaurant prep cook... "I could spend time picking through this head of lettuce and tearing it into bite-sized pieces or I could just remove the core, cut it into a few quick wedges, convince the boss it's cool and innovative and go for a coffee break."

Open the Campbell's can, plop it into a pan, fill can with water (milk mellows it too much), add to pan, heat, add pepper to taste and a small piece of butter. While it's heating, butter bread and toss it in a pan, top with cheese and another slice of buttered bread. Brown on both sides to your liking. Soup in bowl, sandwich on plate, dunking recommended but optional. Adding the pepper and butter are the "perfecting" part.

I saw them on You Gotta Eat Here a few nights ago. Not that that means anything, just remembered it when I saw your post.

$250 million would be a pretty bright prospect for my future. They're accomplishing what I'd bet is the goal of 90% or more of all small independent inventors/manufacturers... to be bought out by a bigger company for serious money.

Football (NFL and U.S. college) is pretty much the only sport I get into enough to follow consistently. I'll watch the occasional baseball, basketball or hockey game and a couple of the higher profile golf majors if I don't have something else I'd rather be doing but I don't follow any of it in any serious manner. I always catch as much as I can of the Tour de France and the Giro d'Italia but they don't always cooperate well with my work schedule. But Saturday and Sunday during the season tend to be dedicated to football... and food to watch the games with.

I'm not particularly a fan or hater of either team, I was mainly pulling for Atlanta because I'd like to see Julio Jones get a Super Bowl to go with his college national championship (been a loyal Bama fan since I was a youngster, I enjoy college ball just as much as pro... maybe even slightly more). Gonna be eating leftover game food tonight, hopefully it will help me cope with the knowledge that it's going to be 7 months before football returns.

So much failure... Atlanta throws away a 25 point lead and I was so full from the mini corn dogs that the Jamaican beef patties never made it to the oven. Guess I know what's for dinner tomorrow.

I wish I'd thought of deviled eggs. I like them but I never think of them when planning stuff like this. The above mentioned cake pop maker isn't going to get the job of baking the mini Jamaican beef patties. They didn't shrink as much in the oven as I guessed they would. With the dough wrapper, they're too big for the gadget so the oven will have to take over. I'm still going to try the mini corn dog things in the cake pop maker but I'm not 100% sold on the idea of corn dogs being baked instead of deep fried. We'll see how it goes.

Stuffing in a waffle iron topped with leftover turkey and gravy and some cranberry sauce on the side is pretty tasty too.

So the bite-size Jamaican beef patties are a definite. I mixed a couple pounds of ground beef with some fresh bread crumbs, an egg, habaneros, garlic, green onions, fresh thyme and a spice mixture of salt, pepper, allspice, curry powder and cayenne and, because it's something I like to do with sausage and meatball mixtures, a little MSG. I was going to cook the meatballs tonight but I've decided to give it an overnight in the fridge to let everything get friendly with each other. I also mixed some minced habanero, minced garlic, thyme, salt and lime juice into some sour cream to serve as a dip for the patties. Tomorrow I'm going to cook the meatballs, cool them, wrap them in puff pastry (purchased) and they'll be ready to go for game time. The mini hot sausage corn dogs don't require much prep work, just mix the batter and I'm going to pre-brown the sausage pieces even though they're fully cooked because they taste better that way. I probably won't make anything else. I have some pickles and pickled beets in the fridge that can serve as something to break up the meat-and-bread richness and a dessert, I think that's more than sufficient for just me and the kid. She's not at all interested in the game but she'll help eat the food.

I wasn't planning on doing a dessert until I saw the beauty German Chocolate Cake RobertM posted in the "Daily Sweets" thread. After that, it had to happen. I'm not a big cake eater in general but I love the frosting used for that cake. Then it occurred to me that this was my offense so I called an audible and made a big pan of nice, fudgy brownies that I then topped with an overkill amount of the German Chocolate Cake frosting. Probably going to be richness overload... but the Super Bowl is once a year so that's okay.

Who originally said it and why it was thought they were unmelted doesn't really matter. My point was that chocolate chips are formulated to hold their shape in baked goods but they do indeed melt. And the magic in real chocolate chips isn't via special ingredients, it's via a lower cocoa butter content. Lower cocoa butter content = increased viscosity = less tendency to flow. Combine that with it being cradled by and somewhat insulated by the batter or dough or whatever and they keep their shape. As chromedome said, compound coatings (which covers your butterscotch chips and peanut butter chips) contain fats other than cocoa butter and can easily be formulated to stand up to some heat from baking without running everywhere.

Nope, not trying to sell anybody on the idea of the cake pop maker. I wouldn't buy it for myself, I bought it originally because my wife wanted one. I'm still leaning towards giving/donating it, and the assorted accessories and supplies that go with it, to somebody who will put it to good use... after the Super Bowl. Edit: Now I'm wondering if the electric fondue pot gets hot enough to deep fry the bite-sized corn dog things... I've never actually had a baked corn dog and picking the healthier option isn't really part of the equation for this menu. I'm kinda liking the idea of cooking everything in these seldom used kitchen gadgets that are taking up space in the kitchen.

If you're looking to read about or be inspired by classy or fancy or even elevated Super Bowl grub, you'll probably be happier avoiding my posts. One of my current ideas is to make the filling for Jamaican beef patties but mix all of the seasoning items into the raw meat instead of cooking it. That way I can make meatballs with it, bake them off, wrap them in dough when cool and toss them in the fridge. Then during the game I can just drop them into the cake pop maker I mentioned above and let them bake. I'm also considering a corn dog batter seasoned with onion and jalapeno that I can scoop into the cake pop maker, insert a piece of pre-browned smoked sausage and bake. I can get semi-locally made smoked sausages that are more spicy than the average "spicy" grocery store offerings that I think would work really well for this. I may add something else that doesn't involve the cake pop maker (two types of meat in bread seems more than sufficient) but it would still be something similarly simple and not requiring game-time effort. Maybe a soup in the crockpot or something along that line.

They generally tend to hold their shape when baked. If you mess with them fresh out of the oven, you'll find that they are indeed melted. But they hold their shape and when they cool it will appear as if they never melted. If you're saying they were hard and not at all melted straight out of the oven, they may be brown and chocolate flavored but they weren't chocolate.

I know I'm supposed to be an adult but I have to admit it took a bit of effort and reminding myself I'd just be making more work for the mods to convince myself to keep any sordid or seedy comments to myself. But to answer the question, I have never eaten animal genitalia and probably would not if I knew that's what I was being served. I'd like to give a good reason why not but I don't have one. Some ideas just don't appeal to me with no logical explanation available to give. I've never eaten brains. I've heard people say they're good and I'll take their word for it but... no thanks. If somebody offered me bunghole broth or Kentucky fried sphincter, I would politely decline. I have no interest in experiencing "mountain oysters" either. I'm not saying there could never be a situation where I'd be hungry enough to eat whatever was available to eat but until such time, I'll continue to pick and choose what sounds appetizing to me.

I understand what you're upset about but again, morally wrong and illegal are frequently not one and the same. To call it stealing or plagiarism would be to call it illegal, which this (as described) is not. Calling it morally wrong is a completely different argument. Maybe of equal importance to you but probably not so much to the person making the money. There are probably moral objections to be found regarding a large percentage of the completely legal ways people make money. The only real recourse for moral objections is to not support the person, company, etc. in question.

Looks pretty exciting to me. I'd be happy to have that sitting on my kitchen table right now... of course, it'd be missing a big slice. Edit: see what you've done, I've made a note to make one of these Saturday. I wasn't planning a dessert for Sunday's Super Bowl menu... but now I am.

That's just the way it goes sometimes. Being better than someone else at something doesn't guarantee you'll be more successful with it than they will. I don't really see a problem with what this other person is doing based on what you've said here but even if there is some reason for moral outrage, the moral high ground and what's legal are quite often two different things. If this other person is staying within the boundaries of what's legal to make money with the content being used and you feel it's still wrong, it's the laws governing this area that you should have issue with, not the person taking advantage of opportunity. I mean, if there was something in the law that allowed us to rob a bank under certain conditions, we'd all know it was still technically stealing to rob that bank but I bet a lot of banks would be getting robbed anyway. I can't promise I wouldn't be looking to buy a burglar's mask myself.