dtremit

Really late to this topic, but we have been using the Oxo Compact Cold Brew Coffee Maker (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) for a few years now, and it has been pretty much foolproof. You brew in the filter, and then place it on top of the carafe which opens a valve allowing it to drain. The glass carafe is compact and feels a little fancy in a satisfying way, and the valve has been very reliable. They make a larger one (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) but it's only about 50% larger, and I don't like the design as much. But YMMV, particularly if you use it occasionally and need to store it away.

The details on the May pre-sale said they expected to deliver those pans into September, so hopefully they are just prioritizing those orders? The economic situation in Argentina is pretty terrible right now, though.

I haven't read it yet — I bought a hardcover version recently but it was damaged in transit and I'm waiting on the replacement. I ordered it after hearing her on the Splendid Table — she's a great storyteller in that medium as well. That was on episode 782 if anyone would fancy a listen (alongside Tamar Adler, who I also have long adored).

Why not just tie a length of butcher's twine between the two metal handles of the trivet when you need to use two molds?

I don't think I've ever had "nice" olives in a glass jar that were as good as what I get from a deli-type source. My guess is the heat of processing kills something in the flavor. (I'd love to be proved wrong; as the only olive eater in my house it'd be nice to be able to keep them in the pantry!)

I stumbled on something similar with some pre-made, individual potato gratins from Wegmans recently — have had them once or twice previously and they were good, but the day when I "overcooked" them they came out fantastic.

This has happened before with them — when sales of their sous vide took off, IIRC they were severely understaffed and emails ended up going into a black hole for a while.

Great if you have space for a large, 50lb device — which sadly I do not 😔 Given @rotuts experience with the bags, I wonder if the AvidArmor is worth considering as an alternative to the Anova — the vacuum chamber and specs on their cheapest model look identical to the Anova, which makes me wonder if they come from the same OEM: https://avidarmor.com/avid-armor-ultra-series-usv20-chamber-vacuum-sealer-machine/

In terms of leaving room to cut the bag down later — can you use a bag longer than the theoretical maximum if the excess at the closed end is folded? E.g., if the "max" is 11"x10" (with an 11" seal bar), could you use an 11"x13" bag as long as there's no food in the last two inches?

@curls Oh, thank you! Other than jars, I honestly don't think there's a specific thing that would be a deal breaker for me if it didn't fit — just trying to get a general sense of how limiting the dimensions are or aren't. Is there anything you've wanted to seal but couldn't? I don't have the counter space for a larger machine (nor the back to heft a 60lb one regularly!) so I'm really comparing this or something like it to not having a chamber vac for the foreseeable future. As an aside, the Anova looks awfully similar on the inside to this AvidArmor unit.

Curious if anyone here has one of the outdoor gas griddles (the most well known being the Blackstone) that seem to be all the rage right now. If so — do you like it, and what do you use it for? Finding myself tempted by them, though I'm not sure they're the most practical thing in the world. Figure one might be fun for outdoor dinners and breakfasts, and to have a large surface for big batches of things like tortillas. And it doesn't seem like you have to splurge on a high end model to get good cooking performance.

@curls — this may be a silly question, but as I've never had a chamber vac before — can you give an example of the largest food item you can fit in the Anova, vs something that didn't fit? Have you tried anything in a jar?

I've never had an issue getting credit for a mistake, but one thing I've noticed is that I don't think either service advertises their meat as frozen. It is, of course, but I've always wondered if they were avoiding making a guarantee that it be delivered without partially thawing.

At some point these were rebranded as "Goodful by Cuisinart" — those appear to be discontinued but available a fair number of places

I strongly suspect that the white nonstick coating on the hot pot insert is going to need to be babied — I don't know whether it came that way or if we screwed up when cleaning it, but there are a couple of tiny pits in it already. And I know gave it a small scratch when a utensil slipped the other day as well. Disappointing as the coating on all the black pans seems really solid.

I think @Maison Rustique was talking about Imperfect, not Misfits — and despite being the same company with mostly the same products, my recent experience with Imperfect was that they were sold out of a lot more things than Misfits. I skipped one week when I had the 50% off offer because I logged in two hours late and about 80% of the entire fruit section was greyed out. My guess is that it's because Imperfect only has the option for an auto-filled cart, whereas with Misfits that's a new thing and probably a very small percentage of their subscribers. I canceled after the discount ran out — if I order again the Misfits interface works better for me. (Unless of course they throw another 50% off coupon my way.) Unrelatedly, did a second Umamicart order recently and once again had a great experience. Splurged on the kaya jam trio with milk bread and have been enjoying it as a change of pace at breakfast. Next one will probably be from Weee! — though it may be a while as we're traveling in a few weeks and I'll be trying to draw down the stockpiles. Our dog sitters probably will appreciate having some room in the fridge and freezer for their own stuff...

I actually like to use a food mill as an intermediate step for hummus — or frankly anything else where there's an annoying skin that needs removing. Still needs to go into a blender or FP for later but the food mill with a coarse blade does a good job on the skins. Adding to the list, I love the FP for anything that requires a huge quantity of thin slicing or grating, particularly of potatoes. A gratin goes from a huge pain to a five minute dish — the FP takes care of slicing the potatoes and shredding the cheese. Years ago, we bought my grandmother a food processor* when she'd just about sworn off making potato pancakes because of the pain of grating the potatoes; from then on she made them all the time. *It was a Sunbeam Oskar — @Alex, thanks for jogging my memory! Maybe it's a Michigan thing.

Pai from Hot Thai Kitchen recommends the Breville stick blender @JoNorvelleWalker mentions upthread as specifically being good for making curry pastes — I ran across that recommendation when I was looking to replace my stick blender, and I've also been very happy with it. I have one with a slightly different set of accessories. I find it's replaced my other mini-prep type devices.

They're not cheap, but the Nest Protect smoke alarms from Google can be silenced from a phone app (at least for low levels of smoke). Unless things have changed, they also give you a spoken warning that the alarm is about to go off before the actual siren sounds.

I am late to post here, but ended up grabbing one in Moon Blue during the Christmas sales. Have used it a couple of times now for table cooking to great effect. I was particularly impressed with how the grill pan performed for Korean BBQ — probably no great surprise as I am pretty sure the company behind A4Box is Korean. Great browning on the meat with almost no smoke at all. The griddle pan also cooked pajeon nicely to accompany the meat. Just got the three additional pans set in — will be experimenting with some hot pots soon, and maybe budae jjigae on a cold night. We are traveling to Japan soon so both okonomiyaki and takoyaki seem likely to make an appearance at some point! I'm also tempted to use the six pancake insert to make something like crumpets or English muffins. I'm not sure if the wells are tall enough for the extremely fluffy Japanese-style pancakes that are so trendy over there now, but it might be worth a try.

It looks like the N1C is the Canadian model? There's no listing for it on the US website. It does show as active and in stock on cuisinart.ca . As for the Amazon listings, all of them seem to be obscure third-party resellers, so I'm not sure I would put much stock in whether Amazon in particular says it's discontinued.

Placed our first Imperfect order in ages because of the 50% off promo @Maison Rustique mentioned. At that price, it's hard to pass up; we'll do one more before the promo ends. Without the promo, a lot of their pricing isn't particularly attractive compared to other options we use regularly. I'm not sure if they've gone up, or if shopping elsewhere has just gotten easier. The produce selection was also really bad just a few hours after the shopping window opened; it seemed like 80% of the options were sold out. Surprisingly the box showed up with a Misfits logo on it — apparently they are further along in their merger than I'd realized. That prompted me to look at the Misfits site today, and the shopping experience there seems to be somewhat improved. It sounds like it's being rolled out slowly to areas served by Imperfect's drivers. Minimum order is now down to $20 (with $7 delivery waived at $70), and there's no longer a cold pack minimum — which deterred me from ordering interesting refrigerated stuff a few times in the past. They also now have a lot of items from Imperfect — both the Imperfect house brand stuff, and some other things I remember ordering (we love the Capra tamales). It sounds like you can opt for either a pre-filled cart each week (netting you more reward points and first dibs at limited selection items), or an empty cart that ships at the minimum. The latter works a lot better for us as occasional orderers.

We fell in love with Thai-style sriracha at breakfast in Bangkok — it's often served with the sublime Thai puffy omelets. Since then it's become our go-to condiment for scrambled eggs and the like. We have tried a few Thai brands and find we have a very strong preference for Sriraja Panich. When there was an import problem a couple of years ago and we couldn't get it, we were very sad. We can find 20oz glass bottles of SP locally for ~$5 — it's available on Amazon but the pricing is absolutely unhinged. (Shark is definitely easier to find, though.)

I ended up grabbing a blue one; figure I can add the pans later when they have another sale. I would really like the deep pot for hotpot and the like. They always had more colors for the 240v version (I think the company is based in Korea) — wondering if they just did a run of 120v units with different housings.

They are being very aggressive with promos right now — I just got an email noting a new light grey version, and a 50% off promo, which I think is the best we've seen. Code for that is COOK50. Sadly the extra pans are sold out at the moment, only the cookers themselves are in stock.