kayb

Rat cheese. Haven't heard that term in ages. Used to get it on bologna sandwiches at the little country grocery up the road from my house when I was a kid. Loved me some rat cheese, especially when accompanied with chocolate drop candy and Ritz crackers.

@lindag, I've run into issues when I crowded the pot too much. Since it doesn't have as large a diameter and "floor space" as, say, my 12-inch skillet, which I'd normally use for browning, I find that I have to break more things into batches to brown. I usually use the "medium" setting to brown meat.

Turkey deviled eggs would be fun, I'd think. I used to get duck eggs at the farmers market occasionally, and I love one over-easy. Never thought of deviling one. I do love a deviled quail egg, though. But yes, they are an awful lot of work.

My only concern about it would be using the zip-lock (use the freezer bags; they are thicker/heavier than storage bags) and submerging the seal; I'd be real scared of a leak. I would go for a container in which it will fit horizontally, so you can keep the seal above water (chip clips around a piece of string/wire, or a wooden spoon handle, work nicely for this). Not having a lid is not a huge issue; you can simply add hot water as it evaporates away; you won't lose enough water overnight, say, to hurt things. Depending on when you plan to finish your SV, you can either chill it quickly in an ice bath, then refrigerate, or even freeze. For a long cook, why not just change your timing so it's through cooking about the time you want to take it out and finish the outside? As far as searing-crisping the exterior -- there are several options. I don't have a kitchen torch, but a lot of folks swear by them. I like, when I'm doing steaks, to SV, refrigerate, then throw them on a screaming hot grill to crisp/char the outside; doing that from chilled generally keeps me from getting the inside too done. I do things for which a rare or medium rare interior are not critical in a hot oven. If you don't mind the possibility of cooking your inside a little hotter than your SV temp target, then the oven is fine. In short, there are options other than stovetop searing, if they're suitable for the cut. And welcome to the forum. There are a lot of folks here that know a heck of a lot more than I do about SV, and I hope they'll chime in. Regardless, I hope your Christmas dinner is a rousing success!

In honor of @Anna N: I scooped the insides into a dish with a pat of butter and ate those while the skins were browning. Had no bacon bits and couldn't be troubled to fry any bacon. That's a salad plate, lest you think I've gone completely into carb overload. No sour cream in the house, but fortunately, there was plenty of homemade yogurt, which worked just fine.

If you live in an area where people have laying chicken farms, check to see if a locally-owned grocery or farm supply-type store carries "ungraded" eggs. I used to regularly buy double-yolk eggs, and the same store also carried small, or pullet, eggs.

No...the height of debauchery is spreading those emptied shells with butter or bacon fat, sprinkling on some grated cheese and bacon bits, and broiling them, THEN eating them. With more sour cream. And more wine. And I would know a LOT about that.

They weren't bad at all. I cracked them all over, rolling them around in my palms, and then put them back in cold water. Started peeling at the rounded end, and if you can get under the membrane, the shell comes off for the most part in a long spiral ribbon. One interesting note: I was peeling counterclockwise. I found that if the egg wasn't peeling well, I could change the way I held it so the direction was reversed, and it'd peel like a charm.

If anyone's looking for a glass lid for an Instant Pot, this one's on special for $9.95, not Prime, but free shipping. Been wanting one.

Sounds like a great evening. I love a silent auction. Years ago, I had taken my then-13-year-old daughter to a conference with me; one night, there was a reception with a silent auction. She fell in love with a "piggy bank" made from a small (gas-grill-sized) propane bottle, painted red, with a snout and eyes and ears glued on one end, a curly tail on the other, and four "feet" made of pipe -- an Arkansas Razorback. I bid on it until it got out of my price range, and told her I just couldn't do any more. A friend overheard us, bought it, and gave it to her. Now, it's in her son's bedroom. Like your salad spoons -- a new family heirloom!

Instant Pot, low pressure, two minutes, natural release, ice bath. I knew they'd get a little more heat when I processed them in the canner, so I decided to err on the side of maybe undercooking. Didn't split one open to check.

@Shelby, I drove an hour and 15 minutes, one-way, to get to the Asian market in Memphis, as the local Asian market didn't have any. Bought all they had in the cooler -- five dozen. They looked at me funny. The bacon jam rocks, if it IS my own recipe. This will be nice in gift baskets, and will be a good supply for me for a while.

I have been pickling things and canning things that will go in Christmas gift baskets. First, the aptly-named "firecracker pickles," a recipe my daughter got from a friend who makes them; she swears they're wonderful, though they're certainly the oddest pickle I ever made. One takes a gallon of el cheap-o hamburger dill slices from the grocery, dumps them in a colander, and drains off the brine. Then one packs them back in the jar, layering them with sugar and a Whole Bottle of hot sauce. It only looks like someone bled in it. The sugar dissolves into a brine. I let it sit a couple of days, then transferred pickles with a set of tongs to smaller jars, poured brine over, and processed in a water bath to get a seal. I tried one before I canned them and I think it singed a hole in my tongue. Then I decided to combine two childhood standbys into a single jar, and pickled quail eggs and chunks of Boar's Head ring bologna, sliced about 2/3 of an inch thick and cut in quarters. Each jar had a half a serrano pepper, half a red jalapeno, a clove of garlic and two tbsp. of salt, with a brine of 4:1 white vinegar and water. They look pretty, and there's certainly a novelty factor. Finally, I made a double batch of bacon jam, simplified greatly by cooking the bacon (two three-pound packages of Wright's ends and trimmings) in the package from the store, sous vide at 147 degrees for about 18 hours. Drained the fat, dumped bacon in Dutch oven, added the caramelized onions, brown sugar, maple syrup, brandy, a couple of cups of strong black coffee, Aleppo pepper and allspice and simmered for two hours. Processed it in batches to semi-smooth consistency, and canned in half-pint jars. Marvelous on biscuits, grilled cheese sandwiches, and grilled burgers!

I have saved bacon fat for as long as I've been able to stand up at a stove and cook. Can't bear to be without it. Got nearly a quart in the fridge, and a pint in the freezer as a just-in-case. Oddly, I have never saved beef or chicken fat.

Same general process as the loss-of-copyright for words that go into the general usage. I won't swear this is correct -- there may still be copyright protection on these, but things like "kleenex" for facial tissue, and "coke" for any sort of soft drink (OK, maybe that's just in the south). If I recall my Journalism 1011 class correctly (and that would have been, ahem, some 40-ish years ago), things like "foil" used to be copyrighted. Memory fails me on some of the others.

I am in shouting distance of StL. When you open, know that I'll be there one weekend fairly soon. Especially if it's during baseball season, as I have a buddy with season tix at Busch.

Off the cuff guess, but shouldn't it behave about like a cast iron muffin tin? If so, preheat it, film with oil, add batter, and probably drop two or three minutes off the baking time. I'd up the oven temp and then watch carefully. (i.e., if I do muffins in my corn muffin cast-iron pan, I grease the wells, stick it in the oven while the oven pre-heats, add the batter, and bake at about 425).

Since I just got around to downloading it, here's the pic of this morning's bacon-cheese bread and SV bacon seared off in a hot skillet. I would've scrambled eggs, but there was no room. Three pieces of bread because it was the last of the loaf. I took that one for the team. As the bacon-cheese bread is gone, I tried another iteration of this Buttermilk Quick Bread ( @Anna N, I will forever be indebted to you for posting the link to that recipe!), this one with chopped roasted-and-frozen cherry tomatoes from this summer's garden. Baked it up in small foil loaf pans for potential gift-giving, if the sample taste tomorrow morning is a good one! Stand by for report.

I finished off my loaf of bacon-and-cheese quickbread, with a couple of pieces of bacon on the side. Thought about eggs, but couldn't be bothered.

Another boiled egg question: I have 60 quail eggs to boil tomorrow, and I think I'll do them in the IP for, hopefully, ease in peeling. Due to the size differential, I find putting them in cold water stovetop, bringing to a boil, turning off, and letting them sit about six minutes yields a very nice hardboiled egg. Any thoughts on how I'd adjust that for the IP? I'm thinking if it's five for regular eggs, then perhaps three for quail eggs?

I thought of you today at the Asian market, where I'd gone to get quail eggs. They had oysters 2 for a dollar. I thought about getting some, but I've never been able to bring myself to buy any kind of seafood there because it smells so awful.

Thanks! (Have just finished the second eight dozen meringue cookies. Future egg whites to be frozen!)

Oh,my. That looks marvelous! I have been catching Wright's bacon on sale at Kroger of late, and buying 3 or 4 24-oz packages at a time. I've accumulated a fair amount of bacon (but at $4.99 a pound instead of $8.99, I'll spare that freezer room!). I am going to take a page from Kenji's Serious Eats sometime this week, and SV several packages as-is (why waste a perfectly good vacuum seal?) for a minimum of 12 hours at 145F. Allegedly this method yields cooked bacon that, after searing for a couple of minutes on one side and a few seconds on t'other, surpasses all bacon-y expectations. I will report.

Sister Schubert's are good. They make a Parker House style, as well as a flat, square-ish one that makes an excellent slider bun as well.

They didn't have that, either. It was not a good sausage day.