HowardLi

I can probably borrow a slow cooker, and my sous vide system can heat a vessel of any size - would be a very good warmer, I think, as long as the food could handle either a) being tightly sealed, or b) high humidity. I will not have access to the grill, but even if I did, I wouldn't really want to use it. I live up north.

How do you run your one-man/woman show? There are only so many things you can use SV for, and my oven is going to be completely tied up with a roast. I'm hoping that the microwave oven will come through for a few dishes - reheating, that is.

So, the question is, does a 1 qt pot of boiling water have the same thermal mass as a 4 qt pot of boiling water? Yes, the heat transfer into the "cold" pasta will be fixed based on the mass of the pasta, but the amount of total heat energy inside the pot will vary based on the volume or mass of the water. The temperature drop is smaller with a larger pot of water, so while it may take the same amount of time to bring back to a boil, the pasta will experience less time in colder water. Does it matter? I have no idea.

Get a grip, Scoop! He's looking for a carving knife. Not dicing 20 cases of onions for thousands of wackos shoving food into their mouths in between playing the games in your Las Vegas casino. And my recommendation stands. If possible, get to a store that has some knives and see which one feels most comfortable. I spend many hours a week carving meat for wackos. Here's a link for my carving knife. It's as close as one can get to carving meat with a lightsaber. And my recommendation stands -- learn to sharpen, learn about edge geometry, then go knife shopping. If Obi-Wan is any indication, I don't want any lightsabers coming near my meat.

What's your budget? This one for cheap: http://www.amazon.com/Victorinox-12-Inch-Granton-Slicing-Fibrox/dp/B0000CFDB9/ref=sr_1_1?s=kitchen&ie=UTF8&qid=1317014025&sr=1-1 This one for pricey: http://www.japanesechefsknife.com/HattoriForumHighEndChefsKnives.html (FH-14)

That must be tender - the meat is separating itself.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chalaza IIRC, doing so helps to keep the yolk centered by loading both ends of the chalaza the same way.

In a normal oven with a water bath, though, there is significant humidity; I always get greeted with a huge blast of water vapor when I open the door to check on my cheesecake. If the humidity is at 100% (as I suspect it normally is), it would be no different than leaving the pot lid on. And the cheesecake does normally turn out very well - it's just easier to "bake" in a pot than an oven.

I think I'm going to try one this weekend. Should I cover the pan with plastic wrap? Loosely cover it with foil to keep lid condensation at bay? Leave it fully open? Unless someone says otherwise, I will try 78 C water.

Has anybody tried to do this? I assume that the cheesecake should set after refrigeration if all of the egg proteins have coagulated, which according to this site, can happen slowly at 78 C for a custard... so if I put my pan into a big pot with 78 C (or 80 or 82) water such that the level is just under the rim of the pan, in about 3 hours (randomly selected time) I should have a thoroughly-done cake. Ideas? EDIT: Crust can be blind-baked, of course.

Absolutely. http://www.amazon.com/RSVP-rotary-VEGETABLE-applesauce-ricer/dp/B000F7JXM4/ref=sr_1_6?s=home-garden&ie=UTF8&qid=1316402796&sr=1-6

Any tips or tricks for someone trying the torch-sear method for the first time?

And again in other topics. I used to make a bunch of these "pudding loaves" when I was still volunteering at fund raisers. Some of the local organizations have "pancake breakfasts" and at one event they wanted something a bit more upscale because some celebrities were going to attend. Regular French toast is much too messy to prepare for loads of people standing in line to be served so I suggested we add this to the menu, which I originally developed when I was catering, back in the late '80s, so I had plenty of experience in cooking it for crowds. I baked 20 pudding loaves in the extra-long disposable loaf pans (made it easier to slice as I could slice right through the pan sides (used an electric knife) and the resulting "French toast" was a big hit. We sold out and made a lot of money for charity. It's been so long since I first developed this that I am not sure what exactly prompted me but I think I got the idea when I was preparing grits for a similar process. Those loaf pans were aluminum? Did you have any problem with the filings?

OK - before the summer is over I will be trying to get a smoke job done on some pork with this unit. I've happened on a kind-of-but-not-really-reasonably-priced film RTD at McMaster-Carr, PN 6568T46. 3-wire 100 ohm; most likely European standard tempco. I'll attach it to something thin and put it inside a cardboard box, with a wood chip-filled cast iron pan on the hot plate doing the heating.

That looks wonderful.

I'm not saying that 0.5 microns isn't fine enough—it's plenty. The issue that you don't get any benefit at all when you jump straight to that from a 2000 grit belt. You're getting a 2000 grit finish. And sure, this is "good enough," for most purposes, and as good as makes sense on softer knives. My whole point is that if you're dealing with higher end knives, this approach isn't going to get you near their potential. I don't think it makes sense to spend a lot of money on high end knife if you're not going to sharpen it beyond what you can do with a more pedestrian knife. Why would it matter that a soft edge has the same geometry as a hard edge? Of course one will probably need to be touched up more frequently than the other, but I'm not sure what point you are trying to make - that one should have to live with inferior performance simply because they haven't the right knife?

Meh. I'm getting edges that are good enough. If I ever wanted to step it up, I could go with micromesh belts (up to 12000) but I really don't see the need right now.

An issue with leather is that it's compressible, so it becomes challenging to produce a flat bevel without any rounding of the edge. I suspect that someone with middling sharpening skills (like me) can do about as well with leather as with a finishing stone, but that a skilled sharpener will do better on stones. The sharpest knives I've ever used were produced without any stropping, by friends who are very skilled. The bigger issue: what succession of belts do you use to lead up to the leather strop belt? Do sander belts come in fine grits (like above 4000)? A 0.5 micron abrassive is useful as a polish after an 8000 to 10000 grit stone or paper. It can't remove the deeper scratches of anything coarser. I'd ask Dave Martell at Japanese Knive Sharpening. He's got reasons for using the belt sander for softer knives and for reparis, and stones for the higher end knives. If he could get the best results on a belt sander, he'd have no reason not to. I don't think the goal is necessary a flat cutting bevel, but just the refinement of what's already there. The convex bevel obtained from a belt obviously doesn't need to get flattened out in order to become sharp. I have 100, 150, 320, 30 micron (~800), 16 micron (~1400), 6 micron (~2000), then leather. Note that waterstone grit is not the same as regular sandpaper grit. Oh, in case it wasn't clear, the leather belt goes on the sander too - it's not a bench-style belt.

I have a leather belt that I prep with 0.5 micron chromium oxide. I think that should get me to beyond the limits of most waterstones.

Time for some empirical research!

Probably figure out how much it's going to expand by, and then base the calculation on the mid-way thickness? That's how I would do it anyway, but I'm sure it isn't quite linear because of Newton's Law.

Couple of things to report: dcarch, I owe you an apology. There are indeed sanding belts which are directional. However, my Trizact sanding belts are bidirectional. C'est la vie. Second, sharpening a knife with a belt sander is extremely easy. My first knife (just did it, actually) came off the sander shaving sharp... so now I have a really nasty bald spot on my forearm. All the other tests are fine - tomatoes, hanging paper, etc. Only thing I note is that you need to be very careful near the tip with coarse grits as it can get rounded quickly.

Asian pears come out pretty good with David Chang's pickle recipe

I wonder if it was as much a function of the rebagging/recompression as the cooking. I used zip-top bags without vacuum, so I doubt that recompression was the cause. All other variables remained the same (inasmuch as I didn't touch them).

Can't remember where to put this, but I did an informal test yesterday with some salmon cooked at 50.5 C. First took the bags out at ~1 hour, drained, rebagged, and resubmerged the fillets, and took them out once more about 20-30 minutes after. Additional liquid had been squeezed out from the meat, so I guess that's conclusive enough for me to believe that time matters.