Chris Hennes

But now I will be torn!! Bacon Egg and Cheese or Chicken!?! Also, while I agree that the Al Fresco sausages are good, and are definitely better for you than the BEC, it can be hard to resist on a busy morning... McD's is convenience food. If it tastes good too, then we win! I can't recall offhand, but do the McDonalds' in Hawaii have Spam on anything? I figured the pineapple might be for tourists (doesn't diminish it goodness, as far as I am concerned!), but I remember seeing Spam everyplace else. I would totally eat a red bean paste pie - I love that stuff, and the apple pies are too sweet for me. I haven't seen the Angus Burger in any market I've been to yet, but I don't eat non-breakfast very often at McDs so I'm not sure it will affect me anyway.

Why do you boil it first? Just to kill it (maybe I'm just violent, but I generally go with the knife-to-skull approach )?

It is definitely an interesting addition to my collection of cooking references. While it is less comprehensive than something like "A Food Lover's Companion," it has some tiny but important details that it is nice to know. In addition, I like Ruhlman's writing style: he injects some clear opinion into some of the definitions (veal stock springs to mind...), and not in a bad way. It is really quite amazing in its similarity to Strunk & White. It remains to be seen if it will prove as valuable...

did he just say Ball Parks and Microwave.... ← Yeah, kind makes ya sick to think about it... but if it is obeying the law... besides, at $100/each I doubt many people would take him up on it...

We've discussed this over in the Sous Vide thread and the consensus seems to be that the purpose of the fat is to prevent air from entering the duck and causing it to spoil: since the plastic vacuum bag serves the same purpose, just freezing the entire bag should be fine. The confit will not "mature" the same way a traditional one does, but otherwise you will be fine.

Are you actually interested in serving food, or are you only doing it because the law requires it? I mean, if your customers don't really want food, can you just post a small sign that says "hot dogs $100" and keep a package of Ball Parks in the back next to the microwave? On the other hand, if your customers do want food, maybe you need to do some more thinking about what kind of place you are opening up.

Well, to answer my own question, "yes, I can take my wife to Morimoto." We went Saturday evening, sat at the sushi bar (we reserved through OpenTable and asked to be seated there), I ordered the Omakase (upper level) and she off the menu, and it was fantastic. The desserts were lackluster, but I was very happy with everything else. A few questions for those who have been there more than I have. 1) When we arrived and were seating, after a few minutes an Amuse was brought out: a wonderful coconut soup with a ceviche of some kind in it. When we got home we realized that we had not seen anyone else at the sushi bar (or anywhere else, for that matter) get served this amuse - what gives? 2) Do any of you have a "menu" from your first Omakase? I am trying to recall all of the things we were served, but I couldn't always understand the sushi chef when he told me what kind of fish everything was. In particular, there was a firm white fish in the sashimi course that was delicious, but I have no idea what it was! 3) Obviously I should have asked this before going, but any dessert recommendations? The Omakase came with something that tasted very much like pumpkin pie, and my wife ordered a chocolate cake with some kind of green tea gelato. Neither were particularily good, at least in comparison to the rest of the food there.

I was at a McDonalds in Phoenix a few weeks ago and I noticed that they have a different kind of fried chicken than we have up here - it's much more vinegary. And, they have it on one of those breakfast biscuit sandwiches. Up to this point I was a firm believer in the Bacon Egg and Cheese biscuit, but my faith has been shaken by the awesomeness of that chicken thing. As a northerner, chicken for breakfast was quite the novelty... I've also noticed bratwurst on the menus in the midwest (though not for breakfast!), and pineapple came with everything in Waikiki. What other fast food regional specialties am I missing here in Central PA?

And a piece of steel the same size will show considerable variation in temperature... the difference between a liquid and a solid. Naturally, a piece of beef has some liquid, but its movement is significantly impeded by the solid portion, preventing the heat from evenly diffusing. The heat must convect in from the outside, with none of the mixing action that is occurring in that pot of water. This is why you let it rest - the outer layers cool a bit and the inner layers warm up, as the heat slowly redistributes throughout the meat. The idea with sous vide is that the redistribution is not necessary: once the core reaches the temperature of the water, the heat is evenly distributed and the meat is "done". With a traditional cooking method, where the temperature of the cooking surface (air, steel, cast iron, etc.) is significantly higher than the desired final temperature of the product, there is no real way to achieve the same results as with sous vide -- there is simply too much temperature variation across the product. If perfect uniformity is the goal, sous vide is the solution. Which is not to say that perfect uniformity should be the goal... but if that is the standard we are setting, then sous vide is going to win that battle every time, by definition.

Maybe this is what people are thinking when they imply that sous vide takes the "soul" out of cooking. When cooking a piece of meat sous vide one can get perfect results every time with almost complete reproducibility, and with a minimal amount of skill -- just follow the recipe and set the temperature correct. Achieving even qualitatively similar results using "traditional" methods, on the other hand, requires a great deal of skill, even if it can be done.

Finally! My copy arrived today. Ruhlman is certainly correct about one thing: in none of my other books does any author wax quite as poetical about veal stock! I wonder where I can get some veal bones to try out this miracle-worker...

Yeah, this was annoying... what kind of stupid network gives away the end to the show they are currently airing? I thought you were supposed to build suspense?

Ack, it's coming back to a "what is art" discussion! Why is it that everyone wants to be an "artist" and no one wants to be a "technician"? There is nothing wrong with being precise, and it does not exclude artistry, if that's your thing. Me, I like good food, and I like futzy cooking (the more complicated the better - it's therapeutic ). For me, sous vide provides both.

I would argue that these are very fundamentally different things. As an employer you are probably only interested in the technical "can you replicate this recipe perfectly a thousand times" aspect, whereas as a diner, if the original recipe was no good, who cares how good the guy in the kitchen is? You speak of categories of restaurants: I think that the process of defining the category also defines the "litmus test" dishes. At a red-sauce "Italian" joint, try the red sauce! I mean, you are grouping them together by their main cuisine: doesn't this usually also imply basically a few main dishes (or at least very similar variants on the theme)? A restaurant that doesn't have those dishes probably doesn't belong in that category.

I've got my subscriptions pared down to Cook's Illustrated and Fine Cooking at the moment, so we're not at the crisis level anymore... the books are another story...

I love Cook's Illustrated, but I swear, if they publish one more issue on method number 8437 of how to roast a turkey I'm going to cancel it. I may have to give Fine Cooking a try.

Has anyone tried to use a Techne C-85A or C-85D circulator for Sous Vide? I just picked one up on eBay for $5 so I figured I'd give it a shot. It only has analog temperature control, but once a temp is dialed in it holds it to within 0.05 degrees C (at 37 degrees C nominal), so stability should be good anyway. I think its flow rate might be a little high, but you can put in a bypass to slow it down. Any suggestions for optimal flow rate (maybe as a function of bath size)? At zero head it flows at 12 liters / minute.

It's times like these that I find USPS especially infuriating... "Carrier notified to pick up package" for days on end! I want my book!! I pre-ordered the thing months ago... shoulda just bought it at a local store...

I have never had a problem with any of the various "fresh roasted" services: I think it's probably really not that big a deal, what with easy one- and two-day shipping available. I have not tried this one in particular, but I don't really see a reason why it wouldn't be as good as the others. If I was you I'd give it a shot - I love coffee made with freshly-roasted beans. Be sure to report back with your impressions of the service... the only differences I have seen between them is the particular coffee they are using - you just need to find one you like.

Of course, if you don't drink coffee fast enough to go through the five lbs pretty quickly, any benefit of getting freshly-roasted beans disappears. In my experience this amounts to about a week. Of course, YMMV. Your best bet is to find someplace local and eliminate shipping (or to roast your own, I suppose... sounds entertaining ).

I've been experimenting with one of these for doing sous vide: as I report over in the sous vide thread, they are remarkably tough bags. I held one at 190 F for 10 hours with no problems. In addition, you can actually use the bags even without the Reynolds vacuum if you own a wine-saver type pump (electric or manual both work, also reported on over in the sous vide thread).

I tried this today: I filled one of the handi-vac bags with food-colored water (dark red, in honor of halloween) brought the water bath to 190 F, and added the bag, checking on it every 20 minutes. After 10 hours, the bag was still intact and showed no signs of weakening. This does not say anything about what the bag may or may not be leaching into your food, but from a structural standpoint, the Reynolds Handi-Vac bags will, I believe, work just fine for long-term sous vide cooking. I will continue using the slow-cooker liners in mine to eliminate any potential leaching, and I think they will work great as a "poor man's sous vide". Plus, they make pretty good freezer bags, too .

We've actually be discussing it over in the sous vide thread, and I'm in the middle of testing the bags' heat-resistance right now (7.5 hours at 190 F and counting...).

Sorry, I did't mean to come across as overly critical - I just hadn't heard that theory before. My understanding is that the drying process is to remove water, which most bacteria require to survive. This being unrelated to confiting, which is essentially a pasteurization process coupled with creating an anaerobic environment, which obviously prevents aerobic bacteria from growing. My understanding of how salt plays a role is woefully incomplete - I know that it draws moisture out, but I just don't know how big a role that plays. We are clearly not removing enough moisture from the meat to completely dry it out, which would be required to prevent bacterial growth in that manner (at least, this is all according to my rather poor understanding of the biological processes involved).

Yeah, definitely - I don't think we're disagreeing on this point . I like your analogy to canning: that helps to think about what you are really doing. Clearly, cooking anything at 180 F for 8 hours is enough to sterilize it to foodservice standards (if I recall correctly, pasteurization doesn't actually take anywhere near that long at that temp). So we're cooking and preserving, then sealing with fat. I would expect confit done in a vacuum pouch to last extremely long, as compared to the traditional method of storing covered in fat only. I'm not sure on the porosity of the plastic bags (it is non-zero) but I suspect that it is less porous than the fat, so should provide a better seal. This would explain the lack of aging ability, and provide support for a very long shelf-life.