Marlene

Absolutely beautiful bread Duvel! What is that device for the cheese you are using?

I have a small chest freezer that is really cold. I put these on the baking sheet uncovered, lay it in the freezer and in about 2 - 3 hours they will be hard enough to vacuum seal without getting squished.

Made up a batch of burgers for freezing. I'll flash freeze these first then vacuum seal in a few hours. I will keep one out for dinner tonight though!

That's beautiful! I haven't done anything with sous vide, but my son does. he asked for and received sous vide equipment for Christmas two years ago and has done some experimenting with it.

I get my leg of lambs from Costco, always. One day I'll get a meat slicer cause this would be perfect for those sandwiches (cough cough, can you hear me Santa? ) and yes, my son will have some for dinner tonight likely then take some for sandwiches to work as well.

Thank you! We did it on the smoker at a temp of 225. It took about 3 hours and when we took it off the smoker it was 125 in the middle then rested for 25 minutes.

I have potato stabber envy. I prick my potatoes before baking. Every time I forget, they explode and cleaning that up from the oven is never fun. I usually rub them in olive oil coat with salt and bake at 400 for an hour a bit . I don't wrap them in foil because for me the best part is the crispy potato skin

Everyone's dishes look so good. Ann, that bread! And the chicken fried rice mgaretz! and so many more yummy looking dishes. As I said I don't cook much during the week so it was a few days of grabbing pulled pork, etc from the freezer. On Thursday, I woke up to the sound of a tree hitting the roof. We had a rather freak snowstorm here and my oak tree (perfectly healthy otherwise), literally split in half and one half landed on the roof. Fortunately, it was only the upper branches and no damage was done. I had a balsam fir that was bent over so badly with the snow load, it cracked, but didn't come down, so we had to take that down as well. Much of the day was spent without power in town though fortunately we have a generator, and there were downed trees everywhere you looked. Friday was a long day of clean up so we went out to dinner, to a local micro brewery pub which opened during the pandemic but I'd not been to yet, and I was incredibly impressed with the food. We went from snow on Thursday, to 20c today, so once again we fired up the smoker to do a leg of lamb. The rub is a mint, garlic rosemary rub. Mini roasted potatoes tossed in olive oil, garlic, and rosemary and a toasted almond cranberry spinach salad. Normally I would make a mint jelly to go with this, but I make it with red current jelly and I couldn't find any. Truth be told, our secret guilty pleasure is the green stuff lol which I did have on hand.

I really love the idea of the compartment containers. Not something I'd thought of before!

I'll get some from Amazon and give it a try!

I've never used it but I don't see why not, and probably a lot cheaper than the bernardin labels!

Ziplocks are great for freezing liquids and vacuum sealed when frozen. Its how I do my sttocks, and even better if you are space challenged in your freezer space. I totally love this for camping and it makes perfect sense! Bernardin labels have always stuck for me, but with ziplocks you can usually write on them then vacuum seal and the writing will still show through

I really got into more batch cooking 5 years ago, and the pandemic ramped that up even more as you never knew what the grocery store would be out of at any given time. One day you could buy bread but not yeast or flour for example. Currently I have on hand, spaghetti sauce, beef stew, chili, shepherd's pies, penne and cheese, brisket, pulled pork, small containers of beef gravy (because sometimes a girl just needs fries and gravy!), bacon , brioche buns and chocolate muffins I always make large batches of chicken and turkey stock frozen in 2 cup portions and those are easy to pull out to make up a quick soup. I'll buy chicken in bulk from costco and freeze them individually and then can take out say a chicken breast to roast up quickly to add to the chicken stock base for soup. The hamburger packages there are perfect for spaghetti and shepherd's pie batching. Over the next couple of weeks, I will need to work on some batch soups as dental surgery is going to require at least a couple of weeks of liquid and soft foods. Other things I regularly batch make in individual portions are: chicken pot pies (grocery store rotisserie chickens are great for these if you don't happen to have a left over roast chicken hanging about) Beef pot pies Cheese souffles parmesan gnocchi pizza dough bread dough lasagna (but I really hate making it so don't do it too often) Burgers I forgot burgers, though my son also makes an excellent burger and quite often he will batch enough for both of us. I'm thinking I'll get even more inspiration from you guys!

Oh sure I could put one of those right beside the commercial deep fryer system I've always wanted. Sitting in the living room is over rated anyway lol. Sure is pretty but yeah I think way more slicer than I would need or have room for.

I'm in the market for a meat slicer. Its mostly going to be for slicing homemade bacon because doing that by hand is a pain.. though I'm reasonably sure I can find other things do with it. Thinly sliced roast beef after making a roast would be lovely for example. Hobart is probably more machine than I need I think and without selling my firstborn child whom I'm rather partial to, more expensive than I need too. I have a Cabela's vacuum sealer and love it. So maybe cabelas? Smooth over serrated blade is preferable and needs to have enough draw to hand a pork belly in one go. I had a waring pro slicer for a while and I pretty much had to cut the pork belly in half lengthwise before I could slice it. On this page, I'm thinking the 10 or 12 inch commercial grade slicer which (I think has a smooth blade. Id' love the pro cut one but again probably more machine than I really need. I can't tell if the pusher is metal or not but that would be a plus. cabela slicers Thoughts anyone?

Thank you! A long day but so worth it

Thank you! I love it. So much so that my son gave me a smaller version of it for Christmas last year.

These I will thaw first if they are frozen, then cover with foil and reheat in a low 225 oven for about half an hour maybe 3/4 of an hour, and will warm the buns first too. (meant to quote you Smithy but managed to mess that up )

They hit the stall and we wrapped them and put them back on the smoker then I used my wireless probes to monitor to 205 then took them off and stuck them in the cooler for an hour. We sliced the flat for dinner and left the point in the cooler and when we took that out to package it is was just about pullable. We kept a couple of the containers aside for leftovers tomorrow, sauced the rest and they will go into the freezer over night and vacuum sealed in the morning. All in all about a 13 hour smoke and then an hours rest

Thank you! I'm very happy to be back

I'm using a pellet smoker, a traeger timberline 850. I'm using cherry pellets for this with beer based mop every couple of hours. I had a green egg and sold it and bought the Traeger 4 years ago and I love it. It also has a super smoke function so if you want a heavier smoky taste you can use that as well because pellet smokers do not give as much of a smoke flavour as charcoal and wood does. For the potato salad, I use baby reds, then quarter them, toss them in olive oil salt and pepper, and roast till they're done and browned. To the dressing, I not only add 1/4 cup miracle whip (yes I know lol) to the mayonnaise but also BBQ sauce. along with dijon, worchestershire, a pinch of old bay spice , and a bit of apple cider vinegar. Both the miracle whip and the bbq sauce give it an extra tang if you will that is not usually present in most potato salads. To the potatoes when they are done I add chopped green onion, crisp bacon and hard boiled eggs.

4 am sure comes early and it's dark! By the time the smoker was ready and I'd had a cup of coffee so I could open both eyes, these went on at 5 am. They aren't quite to the stall yet, but getting close, then we'll wrap them in foil and put them back on till they are 204 or so then into a cooler for an hour. Got the bbq sauce made (I blend it for a smoother sauce) and the bbq oven roasted potato salad. ( you'd think I'd learn to clean plates and bowls before photographing but um, no apparently not lol ) I've been experimenting with this potato salad for a couple of years and its really become our favourite.

We're going to do our Sunday dinner on Sat this time and we'll kick it off with putting these on the smoker at about 4 am. Whole brisket cut in half, rubbed with a chili garlic and a touch of cinnamon mixture. Its a lot of meat you say? well yes, yes it is. We'll serve this on buns with the bbq sauce I make up tomorrow and a roasted bbq potato salad that I'll make up tonight. The lad who is not a lad anymore, will take some for lunches for a couple of days and the rest we'll portion into single serve containers and freeze and we will split those between the two of us.

Love this for the potato bake. It's going on my list to try, thank you!

I"m sorry, I didn't see this! The mac and cheese is cooked in the sense the pasta and sauce is cooked, but it is not baked, though the pasta is cooked to less than al dente in this case. Its then cooled, then I put the containers in the freezer for 24 hours to "harden them" then vacumn seal them. If you try to vacumn seal right away the container just squishes. I do add extra liquid usually because freezing will dehydrate stuff somewhat. So for say a spaghetti sauce, I make it "soupier" if that's the right word,then when its thawed and reheated its closer to the consistency it would be if it were cooked fresh. For something like the mac and cheese, I thaw it first before baking and cover it with foil for the first 30 minutes. Shepherd's pie, I cook straight from frozen and also cover it for the first 30 minutes or so. Its not as much of an issue with straight liquids like a soup but for meaty dishes etc yes, I do and more liquid whether it be water or extra tomato sauce or extra broth. We did a pork butt on the smoker a couple of weekends ago and we froze the leftovers in the same sort of container and added some of the bbq sauce to it. When I make burgers to freeze, I add some water to the mixture before forming the patties. We're doing a brisket this weekend so will do the same.