KennethT

I do salmon usually once a week - I set the circulator to 115, and use SVDash to calculate when to remove from the bath when the core hits 100. I then let it sit out for a minute or two, then torch the top. This yields a texture that many people like - slightly more cooked on the outside, but very moist and just flaking on the inside, consistently. This is skin-off though... I haven't played with skin-on.

I know you wanted to avoid the starch route, but another option is Ultra-Tex 8. It's a cold swelling starch derived from tapioca, and a little tiny bit goes a long way, so it doesn't mask flavors. It yields a very nice creamy mouthfeel.

Yes - can you be a little more detailed about your typical diet?

I've used beef cheeks with pretty good success with this... once trimmed, it's pretty lean, but very beefy.

I never knew hosta were edible! I mean, I know the deer love them, but I didn't know people eat them too...

If you have every rack filled with a sheet pan, do you have issues with hot/cold spots, or do you just rotate pans once in a while?

A long time ago, a Jean-Georges restaurant in NYC (specifically his Thai restaurant Vong) did a rabbit curry - it was basically a yellow curry with the leg meat cooked a long time until tender, but the loin was cooked briefly, separately, so as not to get overcooked... There was also a small skewer of cubes of cooked rabbit liver, and the vegetable in the curry... carrots (to go along with the rabbit theme).

Well, even though he's not a hydroponic farmer, there is lots of information available as to water efficiency, plant growth rates, potential planting density, etc which don't require practical experience to understand. When I first heard about him, I thought his ideas were ridiculous because I thought they were impractical due to energy costs (mainly for the large amount of artificial lighting required for his theories to work). But over time, I've come to believe that what he's writing about is not necessarily something that could or should be done now, but he's presenting ideas to work towards - a goal, if you will. His ideas are already viable in areas with very cheap power - like Iceland where geothermal power is very inexpensive - but for say, New York, at $0.21 per kwh, acres of lighting, even LED lighting, is not practical for more than supplemental lighting - and only then it is only practical because of the large population of relatively wealthy consumers willing to pay $4-5/lb for tomatoes, or $4 for a 4.5oz clamshell of salad greens.

I think that really hits the nail on the head. If it's a cookbook with recipes, then the recipes should be tested, etc... but if it's just a treatise on theory, then I see no reason why you need experience in cooking or recipe writing for it - just don't call it a cookbook! Here's an example - Dickson Despommier is an ecologist and college professor - and has written a highly lauded book "The Vertical Farm", www.verticalfarm.com . He's given TED talks about it, been on national TV shows promoting the book and his theories - yet, he's not a farmer and doesn't have any practical experience with hydroponics.

That certainly looks like a healthy bunch... the Eataly bunch probably had about half the product in it. Don't get me wrong - I'm not trying to knock the greenmarket - I was just giving a comparison - even though it wasn't a fair comparison because it didn't compare quantity + intangebles.

I don't know about the size difference of bunches, but Eataly had them today for $2.50 per bunch

Funny enough, my oven is usually more free than my circulator, so it's typically used for warming the plates! If both are occupied though, I'll give the plates a quick rinse (just to get them wet) then stick them in the microwave for 30 seconds... you can stick the whole stack in and it works fine.

I think a better result might be obtained by using a standard batter for frying, then dust with the malt vinegar powder afterwards.

That's what I was referring to. It was duck they tested, and they blind, triangle-tested several variations - cooked with no fat, then with no fat added; cooked in fat; cooked with no fat, then brushed with fat; then other variations brushing with other non-duck fats. They could absolutely tell the difference between non-duck fats and brushed with duck fat, but could not tell the difference between cooked in duck fat and no-fat cook and brushed with duck fat. Because of this, when I do confit at home, I just package the duck legs naked - and you know what I find after the cooking is complete? The duck leg is surrounded by duck fat - no brushing required!

OK - I get this for a restaurant situation turning out tons of the same dish.... another analogy would be the cooking water for chicken-rice - hawker stalls will recycle this liquid forever...

That's a very expensive idea to try!!! Other than the glory shot or advertising ability, what's the advantage to circulating butter (or any other fat or liquid) versus bagging the product with butter and circulating water like normal? To the same point, Modernist Cuisine points out that cooking in fat does not help cooking or add flavor to the interior of the meat - the fat molecules are too big to penetrate muscle - so you might as well bag naked then brush with butter once fully cooked. Otherwise, some of your meat flavor is going to making flavored butter. The only purpose I can see to circulating non-water is if you are cooking something that is too big to bag - like Dave Arnold's bionic turkey that he had to keep whole due to family expectations.

As far as I was aware, in the US, crab meat in containers is already fully cooked. I don't think you can buy raw crab meat other than whole crabs - which are usually alive when you buy them.

Just an update - I picked one of my limes to make limeaide... I got literally 1/4 cup of juice from 1 lime!

In one of the earlier SV threads nickrey had posted comments on using bag juices to make a pan sauce.

Exactly... I've been growing a dwarf bearss lime tree in my small NYC apartment for years now (there are some photos in other threads). It has never been outside... and right now, I have a tree full of limes at this very minute. And like Jaymes said, anyone can do it anywhere... check out four winds growers - they are a nursery for dwarf citrus trees and have almost every variety imaginable. The trees are dwarf because they ahve been grafted to dwarf rootstock - but they bear full sized fruit. My apartment is pretty sunny, but nowadays, it's pretty inexpensive to get a 100W LED grow light to give it supplemental lighting. Get a 200W light and you could grow it inside a closet!

I've been using zip locks for years with no problems - even with cook chill. That being said, here and there I've had a problem once in a while with doing high temp stuff in a ziplock - like a confit at 176 for several hours - here and there one bag would leak. But for most things, especially below say 150degF I've had no problems, and it's much more convenient.

I find that 5 min. in the bath helps drop the surface temp while leaving the inside still warm. I find it helpful when searing in a really hot pan for 10 seconds - which is definitely not enough time to get a good crust. If you need to sear longer, depending on thickness, it's best to cook in advance and completely chill, and sear straight from the refrigerator.... as you have seen. I can relate to using an old phone... so, you can always go old-school and use the tables either in Douglas Baldwin's website, or in the relative beginning of the original sous vide thread provided by nathanm. I actually have these printed and I keep them in a file just in case. They were used with great success pre-app.

I'm not familiar with the Club cut, but I assume it's supposed to be a tender cut if it comes from a rib steak. If that is the case, I think 3.5 hours is way too long. The longer it sits at temp, more and more juices get squeezed out. Especially with beef, which is typically eaten rare or med. rare, really, I find the best results using a time that would just bring it to temp, which is dependent on thickness - but depending on what you're calling "rather thin" - that could be 30 min? Do you have eGullet member Vengroff's Sous Vide Dash app? It's very useful for figuring timing for thin cuts - but, unfortunately you need an Apple device - I don't think they ever came out with an Android version. In any case, I think Enrique's explanation of why the two came out differently makes sense. I find searing in a hot pan tends to raise the temp of thin cuts too much to do just after removing from the bath. If I do this, I usually set my bath temp a few degrees lower, or I'll do a 5 min. dunk in ice water to chill the surface a bit before searing. I find the torch the easiest way to do a thin piece - it doesn't require pre-chilling or other playing around.

When subbing in tamarind, how much should you use? Do you first prep it like in other SE asian cuisines and knead it with hot water and then strain out the pulp/seeds?

My mother's All-Clad LTD stockpot has some minor pitting on the bottom. Quite a while ago, I wondered how it happened, so without telling her and without her realizing that I was watching carefully, I observed how she prepared the water for boiling pasta or vegetables. She'd take cold water out of the tap, put it on the burner, turn it on, then immediately dump (literally) in a bunch of kosher salt. The kosher salt stayed largely undissolved on the bottom of the pot, even as the water heated up and came to a boil. At one point, while boiling, I took a wooden spoon and scraped the bottom and found a lot of salt "welded" to the bottom, which would come off with quite a bit of scraping. The reason why they recommend adding the salt to the water when boiling is that, chances are, it dissolves before it gets a chance to collect on the bottom of the pot. No matter how salty you make your water, salinity at that level for short periods of time will not harm s/s... but imagine the microconcentration of salt at the point of where the clump is welded to the bottom!