HowardLi

I made the confit as per the book's recipe and it did come out very salty. Maybe it's supposed to be eaten cold - it wasn't bad that way.

Its the type K/J connector. I will have looked around, but seems as I mentioned, anything that can be submersed is super $. Type K or whatever is not a connector. At least read the wikipedia article on thermocouples first.

What type of connector does it have? You can do a little research on McMaster-Carr.

My cooler. Why? It can have an immersion heater controlled by my sous vide system. While I'm keeping beef warm at 132-135 F, the plates too can be readied.

I ended up using something like 85% water for the cheese sauce for the M&C, came out pretty well.

Most likely because the emulsion will break. If there aren't any stabilizers in there, then the fat will simply separate out. It calls for lecithin.

Why is the simplified jus gras to be served immediately? Can it not be refrigerated for a day or two and then reheated for service?

Sorry Laura, it's true there's almost no evaporation, but what do you mean than the meat preserves all its juices? It does not, according both to theory and to my experience in pressure cooking. It may loose its juices at a different rate than a traditional stew, due to the different temperature/time profile, but give the meat enough time in the pressure cooker and almost all its juices will be drained.... As Lisa Shock said, the meat is not dry due to collagen converting into gelatin, as far as I know. Perhaps it is that much less liquid is used in a pressure cooker, and therefore the concentration of the gelatin is much higher than in a typical braise after the collagen hydrolyzes. So, when you eat it, you get more of the juicy mouth feel because there's more gelatin. Maybe one could save a regular braise simply by adding gelatin to the juices?

1) Commercial vacuum packing tends to be done in harder vacuum than is ordinarily achievable in a home kitchen. A FoodSaver, for example, still leaves behind quite a bit of air and therefore oxygen. 2) Who knows?

How full were the jars?

Could be that meat and vegetables behave differently in salted water. Or, vegetables absorb more salt because they are "thinner" and cook longer than meat does.

The book recommends adding coconut cream to the carrot soup. Has anybody tried adding a nice balsamic instead? Also, is there a good tutorial out there for doing nice patterns in soups?

Well, since I'm planning on shredding the turkey confit anyway, I can remove the thigh meat and leave the skin on the legs attached to the breasts so hopefully the skin doesn't pull away from the outskirts of the breasts.

Alright, so I think I've decided how I'm going to cook the turkey breast to get perfect temp as well as ultra-crisp skin. 1) Get a fresh or thawed turkey 2) Bone it out galantine-style 3) Separate the breasts (the legs get confit treatment) while keeping the skin attached 3.5) Separate the skin from the breasts at regular intervals (not fully) along the "slope" to assist the egress of rendered fat 4) Apply a solution of maltose/soy sauce/salt/baking powder to the skin of the breast 5) Salt the underside of the breast to hopefully hit a salinity of 1.5% w/w 6) Allow the turkey to sit uncovered in the fridge up to 36 hours 7) Blanch the skin repeatedly per MCaH instructions for roast chicken 8) Bake the breasts in the oven on a rack at 200 F until 140F 9) Allow to cool (i.e. wait for plating time) and blast at 550F until perfect 10) ??? 11) Profit Does anyone know if the skin will shrink to a useless size if it is blanched on a breast-only rather than a whole bird?

After the skin on the chicken is tightened and gelatinized from the blanching, can the skin undergo SV without any negative effects? Or does the skin have to remain dry, such as in a low oven? I want to get super-crispy skin on perfectly cooked breast but not quite sure how to attain. Will probably use maltose and baking soda.

For the turkey confit recipe: if the meat is to be shredded, is there any point to searing the skin? And can the confit be done with a boneless leg?

Little drumstick as in a lollipop? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAekQ5fzfGM

Peking duck, of course.

<<<The panel easily and unanimously correctly distinguished between the salted and unsalted cook-chill meats. As expected, the salted meats were firmer, and had a more cured color than the unsalted. Everyone preferred the unsalted meat. The panelists were also all able to distinguish between the salted direct-serve meat and the unsalted cook-chill. Here, the panelists also preferred the unsalted cook chill, because the direct-serve steak, although juicier than the cook-chill steak, had a stringier texture. The differences between these two steaks were not as stark as with the salted and unsalted cook-chill meats. In my opinion, the differences between these two could simply be due to inter-steak variation. More tests are in order.>>> http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:HsZ5WRDykBkJ:http://www.cookingissues.com/2011/10/12/to-salt-or-not-to-salt-%25E2%2580%2593that%25E2%2580%2599s-the-searing-question/%2Bcooking+issues+salt+before+sous+vide&oe=utf-8&channel=suggest&safe=active&hl=en&ct=clnk (website got hacked but the content is still there) MCaH says not to salt before doing sous vide for long periods of time, and Dave Arnold recommends not to salt before SV if the meat is not to be served immediately thereafter. Not exactly what I was trying to get at but MCaH does indeed make that claim as far as their short ribs go, which are cooked for 72 hours.

Salting a piece of meat that is SVed for a long time; current opinion holds that it should be done only after SV. How, then, to salt to the interior? If the meat is fresh, salt applied to the exterior can diffuse into the center. Can this diffusion still occur in cooked meat, and if so, is the speed of diffusion the same?

Many of my guests have not had an opportunity to enjoy short rib done right, and I am hoping that the mid-meal cocktail will freshen them up for another beef course.

Here's my menu for Christmas. Suggestions would be well-received. Caramelized carrot soup (ciabatta on the side) SV salmon with lemon-dill sauce and caper-olive relish, garnish of deep-fried salmon skin Pan-seared SV turkey breast and confit of turkey leg, with jus gras and green salad with romaine dressing (MCaHx4) Deep-fried SV ribeye steak with creamed spinach and deep-fried brussels sprouts Chilled vichyssoise (MCaH) Modernist white cheddar mac and cheese, garnish of crumbled bacon Punch a la Romaine in cocktail glasses Braised short ribs over pomme purée (not sure of sauce yet) Apple pie and cheesecake Still need to figure out portioning. Since this meal is going to take a while (3 hours?) I figure it should be OK to serve 20-24oz of meat altogether.

Just a guess here but Cooks Illustrated's "chicken fried steak" recipe's big "secret" was when they switched from deep frying to shallow frying, that shallow frying let more steam escape which allowed for a much crispier texture that stayed crispy far longer, even when topped with gravy. Because the greater hydrostatic pressure from the deeper oil kept more water from boiling?

Very interesting - so did you actually use the second stock "as is" or are saving it use with/in addition to water for your next batch. I also made a quadruple batch of the vegetable stock and should last me a while. But next time, I think I'll do as you did and then reserve the second stock to add as water or in addition to water next time. Todd in Chicago I haven't used it yet, actually, but I did drink a cup of it with a little salt when there was too much to fit into my storage container. It was delicious and perfectly able to stand on its own as a broth. In other news, I made a turkey version of the jus gras last night for Thanksgiving dinner. Wow. Amazing. The turkey jus was already incredible, and emulsifying in some roasted turkey fat blew the doors right off. That would be teh full-fledged multi-recipe jus gras and not just the thickened drippings, correct?

So I should be OK to refrigerate up until the fold-in-mascarpone step? Thanks