peterm2

All your pictures fill me with jealousy! Mine arrived last week but is dead out of the box. The temperature sensor is locked at thinking the oven's 613.8 degrees inside, so heat never turns on. Now I'm stuck waiting three more weeks for a replacement. Not the best first impression for me, but I have your pictures to tide me over until then.

To those who buy the pre-peeled Costco stuff, do you freeze the cloves laid out on a tray? Or are they dry enough on their own that you can just toss the bag in the freezer. I suspect the latter would work, but I don't want to end up with a giant garlic block if I'm wrong.

I'll have to keep an eye on how it works for you all - maybe I should give it another shot!

I had one of these a year ago and returned it. Glad it's working well for you all! I found it generated very little steam once it had preheated, even when using one of the steam settings - although while preheating with the heating elements going full bore, it injected a good amount of water into the oven that turned to steam. Like one of the posters above, even after running it for 2 hours I'd still have well over 2/3 of the tank remaining. And crispy skin, to me, is a sign that it's not really generating any significant steam, or else the moist environment should keep the skin from crisping. As just a toaster oven it was fine, but not deserving its relatively high price for a toaster oven - I thought it had relatively cheap construction, and not many heating elements which made the heat in the oven uneven. And the internal baking space is quite small compared to its footprint. A great idea, but I thought the execution was lacking.

I've actually had very good success with those cheap-o heaters. You have to make sure the curly parts of the heater are fully submerged in water, or else they short out as some sort of safety mechanism. I have three of those hooked up to my self-built system and they've been going strong since 2009.

I had my Smart Oven completely die on me, but my interactions with Breville's customer service were unparalleled. They were extremely helpful and paid for me to send mine back, then sent a replacement right away. Really a great experience, so I'd suggest giving them a call and seeing if they help you out before you junk it or do something locally.

I would certainly love to get an English copy.

I'm about to try the mac and cheese recipe, and it looks like the results have been pretty good from others. When I was comparing the recipe to that in Modernist Cuisine, I saw that the iota carageenan isn't used in the At Home version. Any thoughts on what that adds?

I've always wished the Thermomix would go just a little hotter. Current Varoma temperature is just below nut or spice toasting range, an application which I'd think it would excel at.

Thanks for the thoughts, I will look them over!

Yeah, thankfully she has a wheely check-on bag that is otherwise full of clothes and shouldn't be near the weight limit. You're right that I'm looking at ones not available in the same form via Amazon.com. (Ones where the weight measurements have been obliterated for the U.S. market are fair game).

My sister is in London for the next week and luckily has a bit of free space in her bag on the way back. Any recommendations for great cookbooks available only through Amazon.co.uk? I could always pay to ship them here any time of the year, but having them hand-delivered without paying to ship overseas is more fun! Plus there's no VAT on books within England, so you don't even have that savings from shipping overseas.

I'd be interested if you hear anything from the U.S. rep. The shipping quote I got was when I emailed the store on Rakuten directly.

As an update, it's apparently 6600 yen to ship to Connecticut. That is $85 on top of the machine cost.

I'm getting confused looking at all the miscellaneous Rakuten pages, but according to their US site (that actually ships directly) it's now about $100 plus the $50 ish shipping cost. I thought it was $30 less this morning but maybe I was looking at the Japan page. Does this thing come with a lead weight that lead to those kinds of shipping costs? Too bad I won't be going to Japan any time soon!

That could be great for grinding smaller quantities! I hadn't found a good way to deal with lemongrass.

Thanks for the thoughts. I'll probably end up going the pre-made route, but you're right that it's more fun to make your own!

Re-reading the recent topic on chocolate temperers here got me wondering about making my own. The temperature control part shouldn't be too bad - either a Ranco device or an external sous vide controller type thing (the fancier ones I could program to run warming/cooling cycles) would seem to do the trick. Both would require a probe to be stuck in the chocolate. I figured I could heat it either by hot plate or light bulbs and cool it just with a fan and the heat shut off. Where I was hitting a wall, however, was what to use for a holding apparatus. Ideally it will be something with a stirrer, so I was thinking of a food processor type thing, but all the cheap ones have the two beaters for mixing, which wouldn't scrape the walls. I also thought of perhaps just using my Kitchenaid and cutting some of the supports out of one of the beaters/scrapers so my probe could sit in there, and then surrounding the bowl with a couple light bulbs. But does anyone else have other great ideas? Something where there's a flat-bottomed bowl that I could add a heat source to? It may be a futile project, but I thought it might be a nice thought experiment, as well as a way to potentially save several hundred dollars. Thanks!

Do you use a computer fan for something like this? Can they run off regular wall current if they are spliced into a power cord?

Ooh, making your own sounds like fun! Great ideas dcarch!

Something to perhaps bear in mind - last time I was at WS a few months back they said they no longer take returns unless it's got the receipt, and it has to be within so many days. So like a real return policy. Have they gone back to the original method? Without it, they seemed like just an overpriced kitchen store.

I used to really like Munch-ems when growing up. We went on a cross-country trip right about when the salsa flavor, my favorite, was discontinued, so I had my parents stopping in the smaller grocery stores buying up their old remaining stock.

I'll talk about the Masterbuilt, since that's the one I've got. The temperature control seems spot on, with minimal variation over a long cook. It's also very well insulated, so there's no problem using it in the dead of winter here in the northeast. The smoke generation is okay, but it's nothing like a charcoal smoker. The Masterbuilt, and perhaps most electric smokers, have the wood chips deposited on a tray that seats on top of the heating element. The heating element heats the tray sufficiently so that the chips start smoldering, generating the smoke. That works okay, but it really gives off not all that much smoke, although enough for a somewhat smoky flavor, particularly if you're cooking thinner cuts like fish. You have to hold back from adding too much wood chips, since then they dry out before starting to smolder and you have to empty out the wood tray and start again. Also, once your smoker gets up to temperature the heating element turns on far less frequently, for short periods, so that it's tougher to get a fresh batch of wood to catch (which you're adding every 40 minutes or so). They are convenient, and where I used to live we couldn't have charcoal so that was my only option. And you do get some smoke flavor. But they have a tough time replicating a real smoker, in which you can throw bigger chunks of wood and have charcoal giving a nice flavor too.

Re-reading my comment I see I certainly could have been clearer! I have the metro one. It's made of plastic and definitely doesn't feel as solid as the metal one standard with the Kitchenaid. But it's held up fine and hasn't shown any sign of breaking. Whatever you're beating does accumulate along the silicone scraper parts. With the metro, you can just scrape a finger or something along the entire length of each side to drop the batter back into the bowl and incorporate it. With that side swipe blade, it looks like you'd have to do that with each individual scraper piece.

Well, these days I find I use it most often as a meat grinder. But when I go through baking phases, it's the best thing I have for whipping those batters around. Especially when you fit it with one of those after-market beaters with the silicone scraping, it works particularly well and you don't have to continually scrape down the bowl, which you'd have to do with the regular beater as well as with a hand beater.