mgaretz

Tried something I'd never seen before - stuffing mix done as a tuna casserole. So it was the basic stuffing recipe with a can of tuna added in. Yummy. Served with roasted carrots and parsnips.

Beef stew cooked in the electric pressure cooker. Chuck, carrots (my wife likes some stew with her carrots!), onion, celery, potato, barley, porcini mushrooms. Dessert was a crustless cherry pie, which I affectionately call cherry glop.

It wasn't the salt so maybe I'm just not used to that strong of an aged steak flavor.

I use the technique from Chad Ward of marking the edge with a sharpie and then finding the angle that already exists. Saves a lot of metal and time.

What do you think about needing less when the bath times are long?

Stew. Cube the beef, add in 1 cup of chicken broth, optionally quarter cup of red wine, an onion, sectioned, a large celery rib cut to 1" sections, quarter cup of pearl barley, frozen peas, a large potato, peeled and cut up (or a can of new potatoes drained), a tsp of soy sauce, a tsp of salt, 1/2 tsp of pepper, 1/2 tsp dried thyme, optionally some dried porcini mushrooms and 2 tbs of tomato paste. All in the pot, stir and cook on high for 10 minutes. Release pressure and add as much carrot as you like (my house it's 4 large). Cook on high for an additional 6 minutes. Natural pressure relief. No need to brown the beef.

I have the Cuisinart version and here's what I do to minimize the gasket odor (and I've tried most everything - not the kitty litter though). First, wash it real good. Then I fill a round stainless or non-reactive pan, big enough to surround the gasket, with warm water and dissolve a scoop of oxygen "bleach" in it. This is commonly available as Oxyclean, but it's just sodium percarbonate, so any store brand will do. Let it soak overnight. Take out the gasket, rinse well. Most of the smell will be gone, but if some remains, let it dry in the air for a few days and the smell will dissipate.

Pizza. Store-bought thin crust topped with sauce, mozzarella, chicken apple sausage, mushrooms, green onions and red bell pepper. Cooked in the Breville Smart Oven. In case you are wondering about the weird edges, I had to trim the crust a bit to fit in the largest size vacuum bag by sealer will accommodate (bought a 4-pack of crusts at Costco).

Dinner the other night was sirloin tip roast, cooked SV at 130F for 8 hours with Sansaire Steak Aging Sauce (more here: https://forums.egullet.org/topic/152249-sansaire-searing-kit/?do=findComment&comment=2041134), seared with their searing kit, and served with steamed and buttered carrots and parsnips and salad.

Scott from Sansaire sent me a bottle of their Steak Aging Sauce to try. It uses a combination of ingredients (Fish sauce, soy sauce, molasses, Worcestershire sauce, monosodium glutamate, citric acid, xanthan gum) to simulate the flavor profile of aged steak. It's primarily recommended to use while cooking sous vide - they recommend 1 tbs per pound of meat. I tried it the other day with a sirloin tip roast. I used the recommended amount and no other spices or rubs, vacuum sealed with the beef and SV'd for 8 hours. It was then seared with Sanasire searing kit. It was then lightly seasoned with McCormick's Montreal Steak Rub (usually I season with this before it goes in the bath, but Scott recommended to season afterwards). First, the roast seared a lot faster with the steak aging sauce than roasts I've done without. I'd say about twice as fast. The flavor was very nice. A bit strong for me when served warm (but cold leftovers were great), so I will try using less next time. (Could be you need less with the long cook times.) My wife, however, went bonkers for it. She insists I make all beef this way from now on! So, bottom line, this will become a regular ingredient at our house!

Yes I know. The dish it's modeled after is from a local Thai restaurant and they just call it Thai Fried Rice. I added the "Thai-style" to imply that liberties had been taken!

I had a lot of leftover compressed pineapple so I made Thai-style Fried Rice, which I haven't made in years. It was basamati rice, chicken thighs, green onion, snow peas, carrots, peanuts, compressed pineapple, golden raisins and flavored with garlic, ginger, soy sauce, fish sauce, sugar, and sriracha.

My latest experiment: Pina Colada Spears (non-alcoholic) I took spears of fresh pineapple and brushed on some Coco Real, then compressed in the chamber sealer. They were good but not quite as much coconut flavor as I would have hoped, so I am going to look for different way to infuse the coconut flavor. Maybe rum would help too (but I don't have any). Before and after shots:

Yet another tri-tip.

Did another tri-tip with the Sansaire Searing Kit. Took some photos of the torch in action and the finished tri-tip. The tri-tip was cooked sous vide for 6 hours or so, then seared. Searing took 4 minutes.

Dinner last night was Ribs Two Ways: Half the rack was done as traditional smoked ribs, the other half as char-siu style. Served with steamed Brussels Sprouts and butter.

I just got the Sansaire Searing Kit from SLT yesterday and tried it last night on a sous vide tri-tip. I think it came out very well. The searing rack is super heavy duty and I like the fact that the drip tray is held in place below it. I didn't torch the tri-tip to get a super crust, just some nice browning all over. Took about 4-5 minutes, though I didn't actually time it. I put the tray/rack on my stovetop so I could use my extractor fan, and it produced minimal smoke using that setup. Overall I am very pleased with it.

I had not heard of this until you brought it up, so of course I googled it. If what you are talking about is the technique of doing an all grain mash in a bag with the full volume of water you need for the finished wort, then that's what I found. It's a very similar idea to what we were doing back in the 70's and 80's called batch sparging. Batch sparging works very well and only requires a beer cooler with a modification to the drain and some copper pipe inside (a manifold) to collect and filter the wort. (These days people seem to be using some stainless braid from a sink connection instead.) The idea was that you put your grain in the cooler and added your mash liquid and let the mash rest for a time (about 30-60 minutes) to allow for good conversion, then you added all the sparge water to the cooler in one big batch and then drained it into the boil pot. So all you needed was this cooler and the pot, no other equipment. I brewed this way for many years. I assume you brought this up because you want to play with your new toy (Oliso Smart Hub) to do the mash. For me, I think it's overkill and you're going to end up with a lot less beer for the same amount of work.

Meatloaf:

Reposting my latest dinner: Smoked pork loin roast with cherry sauce. The sauce was made with sour cherries, sugar, butter, seasoning, salt, pepper, balsamic vinegar and cream sherry. Served with steamed cauliflower with butter and crushed cashews.

My daughter is visiting for Thanksgiving weekend and she had the traditional turkey dinner with her mom. Tonight was our dinner but she didn't want more turkey. Instead she requested my Belgian Beef Stew. But she's on a gluten free diet so instead of the lambic I substituted a black cherry cider and cornstarch to thicken instead of flour. Came out good. Served with mashed potatoes. We were too hungry to pause for pictures. Ironically we're off to see the new Hunger Games movie after dinner. Dessert was a dairy-free, gluten-free pumpkin cheesecake, made with Tofutti cream cheese and sour cream.

A couple of nights ago we had some leftover chicken so I made a casserole with the chicken, noodles, onions, celery, peas and topped with panko. Kind of like a pre-Thanksgiving leftover dish. Didn't remember to take a picture until we'd eaten most of it. Then of course turkey for Thanksgiving. This was my first try at a spatchcocked turkey. Did it on the smoker. Came out very nice. The skin was crispy but didn't get that all-over golden brown color I'm used to. Served with stuffing and roasted carrots/parsnips.

Cold and rainy here yesterday, so beef stew was the ticket! Made this for the first time with tri-tip and it came out great. (I had cut some tri-tips into steaks and froze the too-small-for-a-good-steak sized pieces for later use as stew meat.) The stew also contained carrots, potatoes, celery, peas, onion and barley. It was made in the electric pressure cooker.

Hi Kim. Haven't tried it in baking but I've made some great PB "ice cream" (non-dairy) with it. I have made PB-only, PB and chocolate and PB, chocolate and banana.

Didn't take any pics, but tonight we had meatloaf with mashed cauliflower.