Chris Hennes

Have you tried airtight containers with silica packets?

So (Katie/Bob, please correct me if I'm wrong here...) cost-wise we are currently looking at: Thursday, August 9, 2012 evening: TBA Friday, August 10, 2012 morning/early afternoon: tour of Italian Market and sandwiches for lunch at Paesano's ~$10 evening: Dinner at Zahav $70 Saturday, August 11, 2012 morning/early afternoon: RTM ~$10 evening: dinner at Reading Terminal Market Rick Nichols Room $20 + food cost (estimate at $30) Sunday, August 12, 2012 morning/early afternoon: Szechuan brunch, Han Dynasty $30 Total for all meals Friday-Sunday is therefore something in the neighborhood of $170 per person plus beverages. (Also, my plus one and I will be doing tourist/family stuff on our own during downtime between meals, so no interest on other planned tourist stuff)

Historically I think our numbers have been more like 30-35 people in attendance for the Saturday Feast, though of course having the event in Philly may mean that all bets are off in that regard. We'll have to decide on a food budget once we know exactly what the space is going to cost and how many people will be attending: although it gets referred to as a potluck, it's really not one. The organizer typically collects money ahead of time and then distributes it out to the cooks for ingredient costs (this is definitely one area where EventBrite would come in handy, especially if it looks like we are going to approach the space's capacity). For those considering cooking for the event, you might consider a room at the Residence Inn: it's only about a block from RTM, and the rooms have kitchens. That would let some people get a head start so we've got some apps and whatnot ready to go as soon as we get into the space.

The Heartland Gathering is in Philly this year.

No surprise there: this is definitely NOT targeted at TB's normal demographic.

Agreed (though I'd add some sugar, too).

Tonight's entry might be more appropriately called a TBL, since the tomatoes were the star. This time everything is either homemade or homegrown except the lettuce. The tomatoes are Porter's Pride, the bread is the White Mountain Bread from Beth Hensperger's The Bread Bible, the mayo is a normal mayo recipe, lighter on the mustard this time, and the bacon is again the stuff from Modernist Cuisine.

Are burritos actually Mexican in the first place? I've always thought of them as being Tex-Mex. And I like rice in them, it's a great way to absorb the various sauces involved, IMO.

A #22? For home use? That's insane. I can think of no possible justification for that size if you are making sausage in 5-10 lb batches.

I forgot all about it: there's a cherry vinaigrette in Modernist Cuisine that they serve on a lentil salad, but is really good in its own right, so you could play around with something like that.

I had the new Steak Cantina Bowl at Taco Bell tonight: if you haven't seen the ads, this is a bowl of "chef created" burrito stuff (it is in fact also available as a burrito, but I went for the bowl option). I got the steak variant: it came with a pico de gallo, guacamole, roasted corn salsa, lettuce, black beans, rice, and some kind of green sauce. It was good. In fact, it was very good. And not just in a stranded-on-a-desert-island-with-nothing-but-a-Taco-Bell sense, or even a good-for-five-bucks sense. It was actually, genuinely, good. Previously Taco Bell has been the king of repackaging the same ingredients in 50 different ways: I don't think this bowl used any of those ingredients. Even the lettuce was a fresh, crisp, quality romaine. The portion size is quite large, and included a decent amount of both steak and guacamole, two relatively expensive ingredients, so the value was also very good, at $5. All of the ingredients were flavorful, and I thought each brought something to the bowl in terms of flavor, texture, and appearance. I made the mistake of getting the "meal" option: it included an extra side of one of the salsas and some chips, plus a drink. I should have saved the $2 and gotten a water: the salsas worked better in the bowl than on chips, and soda just didn't go. Oh well.

I just started a batch of the cocktail cherries in Katie Loeb's new book, so that's one option: not your standard brandied cherries, but still on the sweet end of things, unfortunately.

I personally have 3/16", 5/16", and 3/8" plates: I have never actually found myself needing any others. For stuff that is supposed to be larger than 3/8" I hand-chop, and I've never seen anything call for smaller than 3/16", which is my standard hamburger grind.

I've only tried two grinders personally: the KitchenAid attachment and the Northern Tool model I've got. I do find that the NT model gives substantially better definition over the KA, but I suspect that's as much a function of knife design as grinder size. I find the definition to be as good as I need for the grind batch sizes I do (5-10lbs). Yes, they are standard for a given size #. For example, mine is a #12. The plates are available at a number of online and brick-and-mortar supply stores. I would never consider stuffing directly from the grinder. You need to work the meat after grinding to establish a proper bind, and trying to send bound meat through the grinder to stuff is an exercise in frustration. Get a stuffer. I like having the reverse button for those occasions when a bit of untrimmed sinew gets caught up in the blades: it makes it easier to open and free without losing any meat. All of the sausage recipes I use specify a plate size, often per meat (e.g. fat through the 12mm holes, beef through 6mm holes, etc.). Which plate you use depends on your desired result.

Well, it's HUGE... the lbs/hr rating on that grinder is 480, compared to 176 for the one I've got. If you're running a commercial operation, time is money, and that speed difference might be well worth the cost.

Do you have a link to the one you are thinking of? The one Sam's got is substantially beefier than mine: it's got a metal housing and a heavier, thicker grinder portion. Coupled with the extra power I think that explains why it costs about 3.5x as much as mine. As he mentioned in his post, that grinder will go straight through unboned chickens, a feat I wouldn't try with mine. I have no need for additional power since all I'm grinding is partially frozen beef and pork.

Have a look at this topic: Cast Iron, seasoning and restoring—lots of info in there, most of it applicable here. ETA: This is the post I was thinking of in there.

Herve This does, but to him it's a very specific thing. I think the argument for using "Modernist" put forth in Modernist Cuisine was persuasive.

That's exactly backwards, I believe: the polymerization works best with unsaturated fats, something like grapeseed oil being the best.

I haven't seen anyone comment on that precise aspect, but you might check through our previous discussions: Pigs' Head and Pig head.

Lots of questions here: the food science stuff has been pretty well documented by Modernist Cuisine, so if you can get your hands on Volume 1 of that series it will help you understand the relationships between time and temperature with respect to killing bacteria (you are looking for information on the "thermal death curve" for those pathogens). I like white meat at 140°F and dark at 160°F, personally, but have given up completely on trying to achieve this through roasting a whole bird, so rarely cook them that way. That said, scalding the interior cavity and stuffing with already-hot stuffing does sound like a good path to safe stuffing.

I've got this model from Northern Tool: not the quite the beast that Sam has, but it does the job for what I use it for (charcuterie and burgers).

Is this the sausage you are trying to make?

Me and my plus one will be there for all events Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

I really don't think you can say that it is "primarily" a function of roast: it is a function of roast and time. For example, I have a bag of emergency backup beans in the back of my cupboard that I just checked: they were roasted to City+, and were oil-free at the time and for at least a week afterwards. Now, three months later? Coated in oil. And this is just a City+ roast! Once roasted, beans will begin to express oil: the higher the roast, the faster that happens, but time is still a factor, and I bet those Eight O'Clock beans are old. abooja, my advice to you is to sacrifice three ounces of beans to the coffee gods and incinerate the damned things. I really think you will be surprised by both how long it takes and how dark you can get them before they start to actually burn. Obviously it could still be a trick of the light, but your roast above looks quite light to me.