blue_dolphin

It is no longer recommended to boil the single-use metal lids, assuming they have been purchased since 1969 when Ball switched from latex, which required softening to create a good seal, to plastisol, which does not need that step. In the questions on this page, Ball says they have never recommended boiling (212°F) lids, only simmering (180°F)

Thanks to @patris & @Kerry Beal for sharing with us. Looks like so much fun! I came ever so close to buying Rice Krispies today so I could make the caramelized variety....for which I have no use whatsoever 🙃. Do put me on the reservation list for the trees though. I don't know that I could invest in an entire forest but a small grove would be lovely!

A bit of a mash up where I used the toppings from this Broccolini and Charred Lemon Flatbread on the Al Taglio Dough (50% bread flour + 50% stone ground, whole grain Glenn wheat flour) from Mastering Pizza. I had a lot less goat cheese than the recipe called for so I added some mozzarella midway when I turned the pan. I also blanched the lemon slices because of a previous and very bitter experience with lemon slices on a flat bread. Excellent flavor combo with roasted garlic purée, broccolini, sliced shallot and lemon, goat cheese and a bit of Parmesan.

At one point in my work life, each of our laboratory group meetings had 3 people assigned - one person was assigned "Research," and presented their own research project, a second person was assigned "Journal" and presented a recent relevant scientific publication and a third person was assigned "Trophic Factors" aka snacks. I think those titles make clear what drew us to those meetings 🙃.

Looks like a Danish Kringle but I can't tell which flavor.

Thanks for asking. I'm curious, too. Wondering if it might be this?

Oooh! One of my favorite holiday events is about to happen! I am in love with these - your beautiful work?

If I'm cooking a liquid directly in the pot, I consider 2 cups the minimum volume. For smaller volumes, I do pot-in-pot cooking, with1 cup of water in the bottom. Ditto that 1 cup when I'm using the steamer basket.

You can find various spreadsheets with suggested Instant Pot cooking times for Rancho Gordo beans, soaked or unsoaked. Here is one:Rancho Gordo Bean Cooking Times.pdf I am not a huge fan of using the IP for RG beans but it can be a timesaver. I'd recommend going with a shorter time than indicated, then after the pressure is released, put them on sauté to simmer until they have finished cooking to your liking. I routinely cook most RG beans without soaking but the bigger beans do benefit from a soak for more even cooking. I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "And what to cook them with?" but unless a recipe specifies otherwise, I add a couple of cloves of garlic, smashed, 1 bay leaf and 3 de arbol chiles to a pound of beans.

I might use mine more for thawing than for cooking. The other day, I put a bag of frozen chicken thighs that I'd bought at the farmers market in to defrost, then cooked them in the CSO. The best of both worlds!

Thanks for sharing that! The spiced sugar mixture sounds kinda like toast dope, some form of which I usually have on hand so this would be easy to try even with just a few leftover sheets.

@rotuts and other TJ's winos, you many want to look for this Trader Joe's Diamond Cabernet from the Napa Valley. It's $20/bottle. At my store, they were limiting it to 1 bottle per person and said they didn't have much. My wine guy raved about it and said it was a $100 bottle of wine. Maybe call and see if your store has it. Edited to add that this is the first "Diamond Reserve" and also the most expensive TJ's label wine they have offered. Their Platinum Reserve wines are priced at ~ $15. I generally try them, even if it's not a wine that I normally gravitate to and they are usually very good. With the other TJ Reserve wines, I stick with my preferences, taking advice from the staff to pick others. Edited again to add that my TJ's wine guy recommended letting it breathe for at least half an hour.

A thin coating (and once you're up over 250, the coating will be pretty thin) shouldn't really cause that much trouble as it dissolves back into the hot sugar pretty quickly once you put it back in the pan. It will slow down your response a tiny bit but it shouldn't be a huge issue. I usually do as @JoNorvelleWalker suggests and use a probe that can clip on to the side of the pan. I used to use an old school candy thermometer, which was not accurate but I knew that it read ~ 15 degrees low so it was OK. Now, I use a probe that plugs into my ThermoWorks Dot.

I'm resisting looking this up and will wait for your version before I go down the rabbit hole!

My friend's mom drinks gin & tonics. Her little daughter calls the gin, "Granny's wine" 🙃 I just checked and the 5 L box is $11.99 at Total Wine. When I come to visit, I'll just fill up the the trunk 🤣

I did it again This time I stuck closer to the recipe and smashed the sweet potatoes as the recipe directs. Though mine look more smashed than the ones in the recipe photo. Speaking of stuck, I also avoided carbonizing the maple syrup but I did make it into sort of a sticky caramel. I only used a little of it and luckily, I had a big mug of black coffee handy to dissolve it off my teeth.

I've been reading interestedly as I'm getting ready to make a batch of cashew brittle and haven't done it in a while. I tend to agree that the temp is likely to be the issue as the color and appearance of the brittle is similar to what I get with a Peanut Brittle recipe from James Beard's American cookery. It is similar to your recipe from Craig's Aunt in the composition of ingredients and the fact that it uses raw nuts that get toasted in the syrup. What's different is that the Beard recipe adds the baking soda @ 315°F vs the 290 in your recipe. He also adds salt and vanilla at 315°F but I don't see that making a difference. After pouring, Beard recipe brittle-to-be gets spread out quickly, then pulled and turned (wearing greased garden gloves) so it's wafer thin between the peanuts or cashews. The result is about the color of your brittle from this year, although, of course, it's much thinner because of being stretched and pulled. It certainly foams up dramatically but after spreading and pulling, I see little tiny bubbles throughout, but it's not a foamy looking candy. I don't know either but my first guess was that at lower temps, the sugar mixture is thick enough to trap more bubbles but when heated to a higher temp, it's become thin enough that the gas escapes more easily. But, considering PV=nRT (Ideal Gas Law) you can also imagine that when the temp goes up, the volume of the trapped gas bubbles will also increase so they are likely pushing themselves right out of the candy at some point, whether it's thinner or not.

French toast here, too! I used some of the Sweet Potato Onion Bread from Deep Run Roots that I made the other day in that Food52 recipe for Crispy Salt and Pepper French Toast that we've all made before. Served with @Suvir Saran's tomato chutney

I've only purchased duck eggs once, at the local farmers market. They were reportedly from Khaki Campbell ducks. They averaged around 73 grams each. I felt rather cheated, compared with the monsters @Anna N is getting. Though, I will say that the ratio of yolk to white was much higher in the duck eggs than in the chicken eggs I buy.

Maybe the bowl-lift people are more serious cooks but us tilt-head folks are in it for the looks 😉

I love caramelized onions but they are also quite sweet so I'd say it almost reminds me of a raisin bread but with savory overtones. It doesn't scream," Sweet Potato!" but the bread is flavorful. Texture-wise, it's nicely chewy and browns up nicely when toasted. The crust could be a bit more crunchy but when toasted, it becomes quite nice. So far, I've enjoyed it toasted with butter, as a cheese toasty with grated Pecorino Romano and black pepper: and also as an open-faced chicken sandwich - lightly toasted bread, mayo and meat from a CSO-roasted chicken thigh. I've enjoyed them all so far.

A bit of a stretch for this topic, but my mixer has been working hard lately so I bought it a new ceramic bowl as a gift. I got this one from Crate & Barrel. I didn't realize that they had so many different versions. Here's a pretty blue and white watercolor one, a tropical floral, a winterberry leaf design, and more. Kind of a racket at these prices but if you keep your mixer out on the counter, it's fun to look at.

I made a half-batch of the Sweet Potato Onion Bread from Deep Run Roots. This was not without its challenges as I described over here in the Deep Run Roots thread.

I finally got around to trying the Sweet Potato Onion Bread from Deep Run Roots p 321. The wet, sticky dough was a bit of a challenge but I got an edible loaf at the end so no harm done. Vivian says to resist the urge to add more flour and just give it more mixing time. My decision to make a half recipe could have contributed to the problem. My dough finally began wrapping around the dough hook ~ 30 minutes into mixing and only after I raised the speed to 8 on the Kitchen Aid, something I've never done with the dough hook. It still looked more like a batter so I added 2 T more flour and gave it 10 additional min at that speed. As you can see, it's still pretty liquid at this point: but I figured that rather than adding more flour, I'd give it a longer first rest and a round of turns and folds to see if that helped it come together. Not so much. Here it is in an oil-sprayed bowl after an hour rest. Still pretty stir-able. I added 3 T more flour and gave it another rest and turns until it was something I could imagine incorporating the caramelized onions into without having them sink directly to the bottom. The onions are incorporated over 4 additions, folding the dough over the top and giving the dough a rest each time. That part went OK, though the dough wasn't something you could grab on to - I needed to use a silicone bowl scraper to scoop it up and over the top. And as for flipping it seam-side down - liquids don't really form seams 🙃 so that didn't exactly happen. There's a 2 hr 40 min rest after the onions are incorporated then the dough is shaped. I was was rather surprised that I was able to make it into a round and eventually make a hole in the center. Here it is ready for the oven: I dropped the oven temp from 450°F down to 425 at the half way point because the crust was already very dark. Probably should have put foil on the top. Here it is out of the oven last night: It baked up into a round about 9.5 inches in diameter and a little over 3 inches tall. And sliced this AM: Just out of stubbornness, I may give it another try with a full batch to see if that was the problem. If I make it again, I'll make rolls and/or a ciabatta shape as I don't find this shape all that handy to use.

I have a floor to ceiling louvered glass window near the stove so I opened that, then opened the slider in family room that's only a few feet away, then headed out to the garage for the ladder. By the time I picked up the ladder, the alarm shut off! My neighbors know I live alone. I'm very wary of drawing a crowd over here while I'm still padding around in my PJs 🙃