nickrey

You definitely need to use insta cure #1 (which is a mixture of salt and sodium nitrite) to get the pink colour. Make sure that you are accurate in your measurements for adding this as too much sodium nitrite is poisonous.

They're neat. I've seen people attach motors to them as well. Very poor OH&S but really effective.

It's the principle of the thing ;-) I'm a bit surprised by the results my acquaintance got, but maybe the problem is the lack of proper insulation. I'd like to do a side-by-side comparsion of the VacStar SVC and my Polyscience SVP, since the VacStar basically looks like a clone of Polyscience's device. If you can't get a hold of both, once I get mine, let's see if we can replicate the cooking vessel as much as possible and run the experiment in tandem.

A tolerance of ±0.2⁰C is a lot better than the ±1⁰C I get from my homebrew rig. As I don't cook near dangerously low temperatures anyway, that tolerance sounds acceptable to me. Not ideal, but acceptable. But yes, more reports are always good. Thanks, everyone. This is not a science experiment nor are we making high tolerance drugs that may need extremely high thermal accuracy. We are cooking. Can anyone give me any sensible rationale that requires temperature to vary less than the reported tolerances?

I've got a Greisinger Pt1000 reference thermometer. Will post results once my unit arrives.

Nope, not me. When are you going to blog Keith?

This doesn't mesh with my experience at all; I've eaten fish (mostly trout, and some perch) caught directly from the river, and they've always tasted clean and fantastic. I've never quite seen the point of court bouillon, but these fish would probably make fine versions of it, for... whatever it's used for. You were probably not brought up on ocean fish like me. Seems like most others had different experiences to you as well.

There is a reason why river fish are cooked in herbs and other ingredients: It is to hide the taste. Personally, I always find river fish muddy on the palate. This is not pleasant and concentrating it would compound the effect. Use chicken stock.

If you look at what people did with so-called fusion food, you can see the horror of what he is talking about. As for sous vide, many top chefs still use it but have just taken it into their repertoire as a technique rather than as a gimmick. If David Kinch can't use it in this way, it is probably best that he moves on. But for crying out loud, please don't criticise those who can use it in an innovative sense combining the products with other textures and tastes. He is obviously trying to differentiate himself from the masses but wholesale generalisations on techniques that he seemingly can't use as well or as originally as some of the world's top chefs move him to a place where I wouldn't want to be.

Tetsuya Wakuda, who features relatively regularly among the world's top chefs, uses induction cook tops in his restaurant (Electrolux brand). Can't find the post off hand but Blackp, a member of this site, asked Tets if the response was slow. In response, Tets grabbed his hand, put it in a cold pan on the induction plate, turned it on and asked if he still thought the response might be slow (it wasn't and he didn't). Seems the response speed is as good as if not better than gas. Google Tetsuya and Electrolux to check out some of the info.

There's always a machine for everything.

Thanks Sheepish, great blog. And happy belated birthday Mrs Sheepish. Look forward to more contributions from all the sheepish clan.

I totally agree with lentils or rice dishes. Lentils in particular are nutritious and filling. If you want something scalable but with less of a one pot feel, I'd be thinking about a vegetarian lasagne served with salad. You could also do a vegetarian Moussaka.

If you can, get a whole duck, take off the legs for confit but also take off the breasts. Use the rest for duck stock. To cook the breasts, pre-heat your oven to 180C, put the duck skin side down in a cold pan and turn to medium-high heat. When the duck starts sizzling, time four minutes on that side. Then flip for a further one minute on the non skin side. Put duck in oven for 10 minutes. Rest, then serve. While I'm resting the meat, I'll often cold smoke the duck in tea smoke (tea leaves mixed with ground rice) or, conversely, skip the oven stage and hot smoke it in the tea smoke at around 180C for the 10 minutes. Duck is easy to prepare and a delight to eat. Don't forget to collect any rendered duck fat for cooking potatoes.

Someone from a traditional pedigree probably told Julia that and it has become lore. This really encapsulates a lot of what the self-taught Heston is about: kicking old cooks tales into touch.

"Mutt on" "Sheepish." I can see this going for another generation with "Lamb e" but what happens then? Enjoying your blog.

They had already been frozen and thawed Chris, it needed something more.

Seems you need some treatment before cooking to tenderise them. Many of my Greek friends put the thawed tentacles in milk overnight in the fridge to achieve a better texture. I'd then try cooking as described. This may invoke cries that it is unscientific and won't work but why not experiment by putting one lot in milk and another not and seeing what happens. If it works, the science can catch up with the facts later.

Lamb prices in Australia have been very high for a number of years. What used to be the staple meat is almost a bit of a luxury now.

You can't just give up an addiction like that! First it will be a clipping from a newspaper, no-one said they were harmful, then the odd free download of recipes to your iPad, next step Amazon with your credit card. Seriously though, I can see with the availability of electronic books combined a dearth of storage space my purchasing of hard copy cook books will have to fall. I've found that my purchasing decisions align with my use of cookbooks. I very rarely follow a recipe or, if I do, it's only the first time and then I modify it to suit my tastes and what is available. Once you cook like this, books are for ideas and inspiration rather than recipes. If you use them like this, the range of what you purchase reduces dramatically.

Looking forward to seeing more food on the hoof. Love the fruit bread on a Hello Kitty plate. This week should be fun. From perusing the web,looks like brith means "spotted," which makes sense.

For those who are considering this and worried about the heating up time, just run your tap water until it is a few degrees hotter than target (to allow for the drop in temperature when you add the food). Then fill your cooking vessel, inset sous vide setup and you're off and running - problem gone in one easy step.

If you are looking for a relatively basic but comprehensive Asian cuisine cookbook, I'd recommend Charmaine Solomon's The Complete Asian Cookbook. This book basically took Australians from meat and three veg as standard fare to most households cooking one or more Asian dishes every week. It's not an accident that 43 people on Amazon rated it 5 star and four rated it four star.

Ok, I'm game, is it Sheep(ish)? If so, we're off to Wales.

Dehydrated mushrooms deep fried make an interesting and flavourful garnish.