nickrey

The recipe does say to seal the lot in the bag and cook. I assume that they have used some sort of equilibrium brine calculation so that it cures while cooking rather than as a separate step. The MC version is mix, seal, cook, recook, serve. If the turkey composition was different, as suggested, this would explain why it didn't work in this case.

Measured my ISI 0.5 liter unit and it measures 24.5cm/9.65 inches without the spout screwed on.

Looks delicious, well done!

I think this depends on your level of experience as much as anything. Over lots of years you can assess a recipe and know if it is close to what it should be. Even then, recipes will always require final adjustment that depends on the cook. I like the idea of crowd sourcing because it tends to approach a point of agreement. This is vastly different from taking the opinion of one cook: which is why wikipedia works for the educated punter. With all of the mistakes in recipe books plus the well-known fact that restaurant chefs don't measure and write scaled-down estimates of their recipes that may or not work we need to take all recipes with, dare I say it, a pinch of salt. Relying on old favourites simply means that you will always cook old favourites; not that this is a bad thing but progress is founded on mistakes, not on comfort.

You can also warm plates in the microwave. Just wet them and shake so there's a film of water, zap for a minute or two, then wipe off if there's any excess water. I also fill my sink with hot water and sit the plates in it. Take them out, dry them, and plate. Like in sous vide cooking, the water is a fast transmitter of heat so this takes minimal time.

I ordered mine through Amazon US and received it here in Australia a few days ago. I'm still working my way through it but -- wow! It comes in a thick cardboard slip case with a precision cutout of the title. There are two books in the slipcase, one the cook's book and the second containing step-by-step pictorials of several of the preparations from the book. Will post a better review once I get my head around it.

Love the Pacman do they eat charge ups of black pudding slices? I did this the other day. Cooked some eggs sous vide, placed in 500ml of water with 50ml of vinegar, stored overnight in the fridge. The following morning, the shells had been significantly thinned and were extremely easy to peel off.

Congratulations on being a non-French competitor! It shows a level of skill which is far above what others do. Well done to even get there in the first place. They've given you some great feedback and, from a personal perspective, I'd love to see you compete and move up the rankings next year.

I think the general consensus is to cook first and then brown. Doing it the other way around softens the crust and consequently seems to subjectively reduce the maillard effect.

This is the same problem that you have with chicken, which is how do you get the skin crispy while cooking the breast perfectly. Duck has the added complication of rendering off the extra layer of fat. My own preference would be to remove the skin and fat completely and apply the dry rub without jaccarding. Removing the skin means that you'll get better overall penetration of the rub over the 24 hr period and not jaccarding means you will not potentially be pushing potential pathogens into the meat. My personal preference for duck breast is to have it pink so I'd probably treat it more like a steak and cook it at 57C for an hour or so. To make the skin crispy, you cook it by putting it between two baking trays sandwiched two silpats with weights on top of the top tray. Given the fat that will render off, I'd additionally put an inverted tray on top of the bottom baking tray to give a place for the fat to flow into. So you'd have (bottom tray, inverted tray, silpat, skin, silpat, top tray). Cook it at 180C (350F) to crisp it and render off the fat. Trim the skin to make it neat and then serve the skin chip on top of your perfectly cooked duck breast.

+1 on this. I was given 2.5 kilos of chopped onions and was seeking something to do with it. The pressure caramelized onions was an ideal candidate. I was also given some garilc so this became the pressure cooked garlic confit. Not having time to make a beef stock, I purchased some packaged beef consomme. I combined the contents of one mason jar full of onion (400g of confit; I repackaged so this was the equivalent of two mason jars full of raw onions) with 500ml of consomme, heated it. Added some salt, pepper, and a dash of sherry vinegar. To serve each, I toasted a slice of baguette, drizzled some olive oil over it, spread half a confit garlic clove and then grated some parmesan over it with a micro plane. After a brief period under the salamander/griller/broiler, I ladled the soup into a bowl and topped with the garlic crouton. The result was quite simply the best French onion soup that I have had in a very long time.

If you have eaten out at high level restaurants, there is a strong chance that you have already had this form of cooking and not known it. It is now used routinely and not stated on the menu. I'm pretty sure they wouldn't use it if it wasn't appetising.

Loss of emulsification also happens when the meat is warmed too much when you are grinding it. Make sure everything is kept very chilled.

News has come through that Nahm in London is going to close on December the 15th. David Thompson cites the clash between EU import regulations and Thai food production methods leaving him unable to produce decent Thai food. Thompson is quoted as saying that Nahm lost some 70% of ingredients over the past few years and the fruit and vegetables that did come through were "depressingly tired and limited." London has lost its first Michelin-starred Thai restaurant because the quality of food could not be assured. It seems that predominately canned or pre-processed food is being let through. This does not augur well for providing a genuine eating experience in a quality restaurant. What is perhaps a happy day for regulators, who can have protectionist agendas despite there being no local competition, is a sad day for the rest of us who will have to once again resort to travel to broaden our food horizons.

In my opinion it is not just a regional thing. A lot of Sicilian-Italians settled in Australia and my experience with Italian food here is that it is very similar to what I have eaten in Italy. This is very different from what I have seen of American Italian food. For the record, in Italy I will go to a local osteria/trattoria/ristorante and communicate as best I can rather than going to any of the tourist-trap type restaurants.

My Goulash is based on an Austrian recipe. Central to it is equal quantities of onion and meat. The onion is cooked such that it dissolves to flavour and thicken the gravy. If you are going to sous vide the meat, I'd use the MC technique of using a pressure cooker to caramelise the onions and then make it into a sauce with some paprika, salt, caraway seed, garlic, and the liquid thrown by the sous vide meat (some also add a few tbsp of tomato paste but the traditionalists would frown on this). Cool sauce and combine the night before serving with the sous vide cooked meat. Reheat and serve with a dollop of sour cream.

I note that they now have a PiD controller instead of the bang on bang off they used to have.

Use it in a holiday ham glaze.

Your only issue may be dilution of taste. The cooking process works whether they're sealed in the bags or not as they're still surrounded by water.

The names that it commonly goes under are Prague salt #1 or Curing Salt #1. This curing salt, which is used for meats that are cooked contains salt and around 6.25% sodium nitrite. Curing salt #2, which is used for uncooked products contains a mixture of salt, sodium nitrite and sodium nitrate. As gfweb says if it dyed pink to avoid confusion with white salt, although in Australia we also have a lovely Murray river pink salt which contains no nitrites. During the curing process the nitrites turn into nitric oxide, creating a pink colour when it interacts with the myoglobins in the meat. Nitric oxide acts as a preservative that works against the development of botulism. The elements that most people protest about in using this product are carcinogens called nitrosamines, which are generated through certain high-temperature cooking methods. Cooking properly cured ham at the temperatures you're talking about is not going to generate these. As for cooking time, it depends on the thickest cross-section of the piece of meat.

The pink colour comes from the nitrites so you are going to get something that looks more like cooked pork than ham. 70-72 is going to be too hot. I'd be aiming for 60C if you want some colour in the meat. If you simply mold the meat without some form of binder (eg Transglutaminase), when you take it out of the mold, it will fall apart (think what happens when a piece of meat is rolled and held with twine. Bottom line really is if you want pink, deli style ham that sticks together in one cohesive block you would need to use pink salt and transglutaminase. I realise some people say that they don't use pink salt but they typically use a celery seed derivative which, surprise surprise, actually results in the formation of what you are trying to avoid - moreover, because the nitrogen levels vary between plants you actually have less control over the final level of nitrite than you do if you use pink salt. There's a fact sheet on the nature and use of nitrites on the University of Minnesota's website here.

You will get some evaporation, I'd keep an eye on your water levels with the unit sitting that high to make sure the unit doesn't cut out.

You can buy it here. Only problem is the package size, which is 22.65kg.

In Asian cuisine, it's a matter of balance of sweet, sour, salty, and hot. David Thompson of Thai food fame always teaches tasting the product (eg salad dressing) to ensure that these elements are in balance. Fish sauce provides the salty element (and umami); the sour can be provided by citrus (lemon, lime juice), vinegar, tamarind, etc.; sweet is provided from various forms of sugar; and hot from pepper or chilli. Fish sauce can be used as a flavouring element in many dishes, anywhere you would use anchovies and salt. Do not add extra salt. So use it in stews, pasta sauces, salad dressings, sauces, etc. The thing to remember is to balance it out with the other components. Sweet, sour, salty, hot works just as well in non - Asian cooking to ensure balance of flavours. You can use fish sauce anywhere you would use Worcestershire sauce in cooking: burgers, chili con carne, cocktails. How much do you need? Add a bit, taste and adjust. If the dish is a bit salty, add a sour and/or sweet component.

See "Cooking eggs" in the wikiGullet and the topic "All about sous vide eggs". In Onsen eggs (63°C/45') you will always have a runny white which is often discarded. With the delta-T method (e.g. 75°C/16' for eggs with 142mm circumference) you get a nice set yet soft white. If you're going to run higher temperatures and time, why not poach and be done with it? Heston Blumenthal recommends 80C for 4 minutes. This is a lot easier (and faster) than the delta-T method.