KennethT

Actually, my wife is a little odd (she would be the first to say it) but she doesn't like her english muffins toasted - she doesn't like the possibility of the toasted bread scratching the roof of her mouth as she tastes a lot of wine for a living and having a scratched up mouth could be either painful or cause her to not perform as well as normal.

When heating things for short periods of time (like some have suggested defrosting bread products at 300 bake steam for 3 minutes), do you count the time from the moment the oven turns on, or do you wait for it to preheat first? I tried defrosting a frozen english muffin at 300 for 3 min - I put the em in the oven then pushed start. By the time the 3 min was up, I don't even know if the oven was at full temp yet, and the em was still frozen in the center and wet from condensation on the outside. So I tried a few more (cooling the oven and keeping the door open to get rid of the steamy environment each time). I found the best results with 5 min at 275 - this gave it enough time to fully defrost, and for the surface liquid to disappear.

No, basically the bottom only. Magnetic field decreases by the square of the distance.

When reheating leftovers, how do people usually do it? Our typical routine is to put the leftovers (from dinner, say) on the original dinner plate - this gets covered with plastic wrap and put in the refrigerator. To reheat, we just put the dinner plate in the microwave. I assume one couldn't put a standard dinner plate from the refrigerator into the CSO... so would we need to put the leftovers in an oven-safe dish to reheat?

Wow. That is the fanciest Domino's - actually any fast food chain - store I've ever seen!

I reheated 3 NY style pizza slices last night (from the refrigerator) - one at a time, all done on the rack over the square pan... I first tried it at 425 steam-bake for 5 minutes. Reheating was even, but it came out very floppy - not quite damp, but certainly not like the original. #2 was started at 425 convection bake, but the edges started bubbling way before the center, so I dropped it down to 300F, which seemed to be the winner for slice #3 - 300F for about 4-5 minutes on conv bake...

what is it? how big is it?

I've always bought pre-purged crawfish from the Louisiana Crawfish Company... all they ever needed was a rinse to refresh them after their long journey. Like Shelby, I always thought they had a sweet and fresh taste as well... and while I love the tails, my favorite part is sucking the heads - especially after they've been soaking in a good boil for a while. The head fat is ridiculously sweet!

You may have been joking, but they're really called mudbugs because they live in mud - or swamps...

I guess - I've never used mine for that purpose either - but they are made of welded stainless steel so I imagine they'd be fine...

The sieve looks like a tamis....

Red Rooster is basically on the other side of the world compared to Bed-Stuy... it'd probably be faster to get to Boston (via Amtrak)... haha... Unfortunately, I can't help - I don't think I've ever been in Bed-Stuy and know little about it other than it being the focus of Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing which was about the racial problems in that area back in the '80s. As @heidih recommended, this is what Eater has about Bed-Stuy... https://ny.eater.com/neighborhood/1333/bed-stuy Note that it's not very recent - but there's not a lot of action in that neighborhood...

also, how does one keep the melting cheese from dripping onto the lower heating elements? In a standard oven, I put foil on the rack positioned below the rack I'm reheating the pizza on to catch any drips.

Thanks - it's standard "NY pizza" which means a relatively thin, slightly chewy crust - but not cracker thin. Also, what is teh toast level rack? Does that mean use the 'u' shaped rack with the 'u' upside down so the top is closest to the broiler elements?

Any recommendations for reheating a slice of pizza from the refrigerator? Usually, I'd let it come to room temp on the counter or microwave for a few seconds to take the chill off, then into a 300F oven on a rack for about 5 minutes....

What is sand ginger? How does it differ from regular ginger or it's more herbal/medicinal cousin galangal?

BTW - when I was young, my parents would routinely make roasts that were long past their birthday (not 12 years, but maybe two or three)... and we didn't have a vacuum sealer, but my father always wrapped things very well in plastic wrap and plastic bags, and they sat at the bottom of a large, non-self-defrosting chest freezer that was kept really cold - around -15F.

I've heard that 2007 was a great vintage for beef tenderloin.... hehe

I thought about taking some photos, but got busy and it slipped my mind. SV followed by deep fry is great... but before I go back to that, I'll do some more CSO experiments

OK - I'll try this next...

OK - I can finally join in on this conversation as my unit arrived today. After an initial cleaning, the first thing I tried were skin on chicken thighs... something I make all the time, but in a hybrid pan fry /oven roast. When I do it my traditional way, I fry skin side down over medium to medium-high heat for like 20 minutes to render most of the fat... the pan then goes into the oven at like 400F for 13 minutes. What comes out is perfectly cooked meat and skin that has all fat rendered, and is shatteringly (is that a word?) crisp - it's a chicken cracker. So, with those expectations, I figured I'd use the new CSO - and I thought I'd use 300 bake-steam for 60 minutes as the manual, and many here, have recommended. One thing I also did, which I do sometimes when I have time, is presalt the thighs and leave uncovered in the fridge for at least an hour to dry the skin. I saw the skin bubbling after about 40 minutes or so, and after a few minutes more, decided to drop the temp to 250 since I was still waiting for the rice cooker to finish up its job... I took the thighs out at a total of about 52 minutes and what resulted was completely overcooked meat, and the skin, while nicely rendered, was not crisp at all and was rather unpleasant. More experiments must follow... (probably not this week though)... I'd also like to hear people's thoughts as to my results. I'm thinking the next step is to try a hybrid system - maybe 300 steam bake for 20 minutes, then raise the temp to 450 until the skin looks done?

just an update... there is another branch that recently opened on St. Marks between 1st and 2nd (I think... possibly 1st and A) - it's its own storefront in this location.

We've been going to this banh mi in the East Village (St Marks between 1st and A) for years, but for some reason, I've never written about it... It's a tiny subterranean place, but they put out some really good food... probably the best banh mi that I've had in NYC... granted, the bread is not like it was in Saigon, but it's not anywhere that I've found, but they do a decent job slightly toasting it to make it a little similar... but their flavors are great... The Pilot (lemongrass chicken)

According to other posts in this (and previous) thread(s), as well as the "do I need" thread, the CSO is great for reheating leftovers, and melting butter is no problem either. I can't remember if I have ever heated milk or reheated a cup of coffee, nor eaten a "TV" meal since 1982 when it was a novelty to me... not that there's anything wrong with it, but just not something I do. As I wrote in the "do I need thread," my wife and I only use the microwave for a very select few things, some of which I've been experimenting with over the last few days - like defrosting frozen coconut milk or stock in my sous vide bath which lives on my limited real estate countertop.... which has worked great... I'm a convert for those... so now, I just need to try the other stuff - like defrosting frozen bread-type items like english muffins, which is the default breakfast for my wife.

Alright, even though we're in pre-moving mode, I just bit the bullet and got one... due to arrive on Wednesday. I got it now rather than after we've moved primarily to test out the various things that we'd typically use a microwave for - to make sure we don't need to actually get a microwave.... I'm looking forward to putting it through its paces!