mgaretz

The meat was tender but dry, as expected with loin cuts. The iPot never got hot enough on low. After 8 hours things were still uncooked. Use Hi if you are going to try it. And use shoulder or butt.

Thick pork loin chops, slow cooked with carrots, potatoes and spinach in my new Ninja Possible Cooker Pro. My review of the cooker is here: https://forums.egullet.org/topic/167168-ninja-possible-cooker-pro/

I just got one of these at Costco. It's the Pro model and included a bonus steam rack. They had them for $89.95 while Amazon has them from $130 up without the rack (which sells for $21). I have never been happy with the slow cooker mode on my InstantPot so I decided to give one a try. It has an 8.5 qt capacity with a lightweight (aluminum?) insert that has a nice non-stick coating. Ninja seems to have upped their non-stick game. The pot is oven safe to 500F but can't be used on the stovetop. The appliance has 8 functions: slow cook (hi and low), sear/sauté, steam, keep warm, sous vide, braise, bake and proof. I have only used the slow cook mode on low, braise appears to be virtually identical to slow cook on hi, sear gets hot pretty quick and lets you know when it's ready to add food. I wouldn't trust the sous vide but I don't need to as I have other appliances for that. Probably never bake or proof in it either but might use the steam. Comes with a nylon spoon that fits into a hole in the glass lid's handle, acting as a spoon rest. Looks good in the picture buy once you use the spoon you wouldn't return it to the handle unless you rinsed an dried it first (unless you wanted to drip on the lid). In short, the slow cooker functions virtually the same as a crock pot, which is good and to me the lightweight pot is much better than the heavy crock. Much easier to wash and the non-stick worked well. Plus I used the sauté function to quickly heat the cooking liquid to thicken it with a cornstarch slurry. It heated quickly. As a test, I made a couple of pork loin chops (thick) with onion soup mix, water, carrots and potatoes. Cooked on low for 8 hours and it came out good. Now lets talk about the dubious claim on the box that it replaces 14 cooking utensils. Here's a picture of the label: I am sure you can tell from the list that the marketing department really had to stretch on this one. My favorite is that it replaces an integrated spoon. All-in-all I am happy with it and I just wish it had multi-phase cooking modes where you could start a slow cook on high for a couple of hours then switch to low.

A live edge board is one that still has bark along two edges. Like this:

I'd sub daikon if you can get it vs cucumber. Turnip might also be a possibility. And if your guests would eat it, beets would work too (golden if available, otherwise cut the red beets then soak in multiple changes of cold water to bleed them).

They’ve had turbo mode for some time, it’s even available with the original Joule. It works. When they came out with the turbo model, I couldn’t figure out what it did that the original didn’t do.

She's right about sous vide for chicken - not so great. But she's off-base about steaks. She is embracing inconsistency. She also likes sous vide for fish (at least halibut). I used to do fish sous vide, but now I prefer my Speedi which uses steam and air frying.

I don't think infrared air (oil-less) fryers are new at all. As I recall, the very first attempts at this were the round, glass-bottomed contraptions that used infrared heating (often from a halogen source). You can still find new versions of them out there. (I also seem to recall the very first attempts used a paddle to move the food around the circle.)

I have tried many different ways of making them. But favorite is still just grilling it plain and then salt and pepper when served. It's the most flavorful to me.

Grilled double-thick pork chop with bi-color corn.

Bought some more filets on the way home from an event and not enough time to SV them (my normal method). So cooked them normally on the grill - first time I have cooked a steak that way in over 12 years! Came out pretty good, but not as good as SV. Served with steamed cauliflower in butter.

Our last two dinners were sausage-based. Chicken apple breakfast sausages and potatoes: Bangers and beans:

Burger with sesame seed bun, lettuce, pickles and thousand island dressing, served with kettle chips.

I have never seen it powdered - only small crystals (about table salt sized). So that would affect the conversion.

A couple of recent dinners: Shrimp with pasta and peas in butter: Wife came down with cold, so even though it's 103F today, she wanted chicken soup. Chicken, carrots, celery, peas and onion. No noodles.