Keith_W

It looks like something you might find in the snack section of an Asian grocery store, actually. Which reminds me - dried squid tossed in spices and a bit of sugar is a common sweet-savoury Asian snack. It is usually rolled out flat first then sun dried. You can even pound it into a powder and use it to add an interesting textural element to your stir-fries.

For a thick cut of steak I prefer SV then sear myself. BTW, a T-bone steak should never be cooked on a pan. The reason - as the meat cooks, it contracts. Because it is attached to the bone, the meat actually lifts itself off the pan. The result is uneven browning. If you want a nice, even browned T-bone steak, the best way to do it is on the grill. Or with a blowtorch, but personally I prefer the grill. After the SV step, make sure the fire is roaring hot. There is a delicate balance when it comes to flames - too little and you get less flavour, too much and it tastes burnt. When I cook my steak on the grill, I tend to flip it often and move it around the grill to avoid flare-ups.

Yes I did rest it. MC@Home suggested brushing on the paprika on the skin, so that is what I did.

That is a very good point! Thanks rotuts!

Dinner tonight for a couple of friends. Entree: sous-vide mussels as per MC@Home. I followed the MC&H recipe to a point but substituted ingredients to make my own sauce. Alternative entree of panfried scallops for the one guest who didn't like mussels. Main: remember last night's photo? Well this was what it looked like after roasting. A bit of a disappointment, was not quite as good as the other chooks. The sauce had a bit of bitterness through it which I think ruined the whole dish. To make it worse, I wasn't sure what caused the bitterness either. Side: mashed potato from Heston Blumenthal at Home. I couldn't get his potatoes, so I used Royal Blues. Retrograded the starch via sous-vide at 72C for 40 minutes, then passed through a tamis twice and adjusted with butter, milk, and seasonings. This was truly spectacular (if I say so myself) - super smooth and creamy. Side: sous-vide carrots with cumin, fennel seed, and tarragon. 85C for 40 minutes then reheated at 62C. Side: sugar snap peas with Ortiz anchovies.

Hi MM, I brine mine according to MC@Home. If memory serves me right, it is a brine made of 10% salt, 4% sugar, and 3-5 hour brine. After you brine, rinse the fish to remove excess brine. I would have thought that your salmon wouldn't change any more once you remove it from the brine, provided you wrap it up and refrigerate it immediately? I don't know the answer, because I have never kept salmon more than a few hours before cooking it after it comes out of the brine. FWIW the MC@Home brine recipe gives a subtly seasoned fish. Depends on what your definition of "cooked" is I think most people would use the word "cured" because to say that something is cooked would involve applying heat.

Baselerd - beautifully plated dinner as usual. I struggle to make my food look pretty and dainty - I tend to want to eat, so I load my plates up with food! Maybe I need to develop a more dainty appetite first! rotuts - intrigued to see the final result! Callinectes Sapidus - interesting fusion food as usual. I would never think of those combinations. Steve - looks good! Simon Lewinson - you have trouble finding ribs down here? Strange, I seem to have no trouble. Maybe you need a good butcher Even the cheap Asian butcher in Box Hill Centro has entire racks of beef and pork and will carve them to your liking. Next time try to keep the piranhas away otherwise none of us will believe that you cooked dinner! Chris Taylor - your iPhone camera does not do your dinner justice! Anyway, dinner tonight was: Rockling with clam sauce, potato puree, and broccolini. Rockling - pan fried and basted with butter. Clam sauce - Cooked with shallots, garlic, white wine, and tarragon, then shucked. Juices separated from the meat then reduced. Broccolini - steamed 4 minutes then plunged in ice water. Potato puree - Russet Burbank potatoes (a rarity here in Australia) were sous-vided for 30 minutes at 72C, then peeled and boiled for 30 minutes. Passed through a tamis twice then adjusted with butter. Garnish: chives, salmon caviar, tobiko. Here is a sneak peek at tomorrow night's dinner: Yep, it's another roast chicken injected with stock made from roast chicken (stock pictured at left). This time I followed the MC@Home recipe and pre-gelatinized the skin by plunging it in boiling water several times, then thoroughly dried and painted with soy sauce and paprika. It already looks delicious and it hasn't been cooked yet! If you don't see me post tomorrow night, it either means I am too drunk or that dinner was a disaster and I am too ashamed to post

Hey Ben, the skin was nice and crispy when it came out of the oven. However, I rested it in foil for 15 minutes. After this, the skin became soggy, but it was still delicious. Anyway, dinner tonight. I had an incredibly busy day today. Fortunately for me, my sous-vide beef and pork ribs had already been in the SV bath for 72 hours by the time I got home this evening. Two hours in the smoker and they looked like this:

Had a couple of friends over for dinner tonight, so I went through a bit of effort. It was nice having the day off Sous-vide mussels with mussel broth, tobiko, and Japanese salad. Mussels: (as per Modernist Cuisine at Home) - steamed 2 minutes, then shucked, the SV at 62C for 10 minutes. Mussel broth: my own recipe. The juices from shucking the mussels were steeped with tarragon, garlic, and shallots, then strained. Adjusted with Yuzu and fish sauce. Japanese salad: dressing made from Yuzu, Mirin, and Sake. Sous-vide salmon with watercress puree, lotus chips, and autumn vegetables. Salmon: brined for 5 hours, then SV at 45C for 30 minutes. Watercress puree: shocked for 45 seconds in boiling water then blended with Xanthan gum. Lotus chips: thinly sliced lotus root, deep fried at 180C for 5 minutes. Autumn veggies: SV at 85C for 20 minutes then reheated in the bag.

jvalentino - the crumb on that pizza looks amazing! patrickarmory and Sapidus - beautiful looking dinners! Simon - nice looking salmon, what temperature did you cook it at? Dinner tonight was another attempt at the injection brined roast chicken, injected with the jus of another roast chicken. This time I doubled the volume of the brine (now 20% of the weight of the chicken instead of 10%), reduced the salt from 6% to 4%, and air dried it in my fridge for 72 hours, then rotisseried at 100C to an internal temperature of 60C. I then took it out to rest until the temp dropped to 55C, whilst cranking my oven to the max. I returned it to the oven to brown the skin. Result:

Frogprincesse: that halibut looks good enough for Jehovah! (Not blasphemy) mm84321: no truffles? Again!?!?!? Looks gorgeous all the same. FWIW I went to my cookware shop trying to buy the same plates that you have. No luck! Kim Shook: thank you! I know you like those glass pieces, but most of my friends seem to prefer the simple white plates, which cost 1/2 of what those Nachtmann glass pieces cost me. So - dinner tonight was plated on a simple white plate BTW amazing spread you put out there. Dinner tonight: crown roast of lamb. It was slow roasted in the oven with a rub made from coriander seed and garlic powder. I think it is a bit dangerous posting this with all the professional chefs on this board, with my amateurish tourne carrots and fluted mushrooms. It was served with a lamb red wine jus (not pictured):

mm84321 - thank you! Frogprincesse - beautiful looking cavatelli, and home-made to boot. Must have been quite an effort! Steve Irby - I would kill for those rolls! patrickarmory - that Ottolenghi book is on my wishlist. You make it look desirable. Baselerd - stunning dish and stunning photography! Kim Shook - great looking dinner. Those buttermilk rolls look the business. Anyway this was dinner tonight - John Dory with watercress puree, peas, and clams. John Dory was sous-vide'd at 47C for 35 minutes. The clams were steamed with white wine, shallots, and garlic - with the leftover jus incorporated in the watercress puree.

Thank you, Nick! I have bookmarked that page. He has plenty of nice little snippets in there besides the roast chicken. I spent an enjoyable couple of hours looking around at that site.

Dinner was a roast chicken, injected with stock made from another roast chicken. This double dose of chicken makes the bird incredibly juicy with a very strong chicken flavour. Here it is, just out of the rotisserie and resting:

Updated the opinions list Note: if you simply say "I use Keller's recipe" I will NOT include your submission, because it is too much work for me to go hunt down his recipe for this list. Really, my idea was to start a poll but eG doesn't seem to have the option of polls. So i'm doing it manually. It's a bit annoying that people aren't following the format because it is a pain to read through the post in detail, find that not all questions have been answered, and then manually updating the list. So - if people could actually follow the format AND answer all the questions, it would be appreciated! - Desired final cooking temperature: breast xxxC, thighs xxxC (or F). Keith_W: breast 60C, thighs 65C OliverB: 74C - Stuffing: Yes or No Keith_W: no stuffing patrickarmory: stuffed with pierced lemon mgaretz: no stuffing Mjx: no stuffing ChrisTaylor: no stuffing OliverB: no stuffing DiggingDogFarm: no stuffing rlibkind: no stuffing - Trussing: Yes or No Keith_W: not trussed Ttogull: trussed patrickarmory: trussed mgaretz: not trussed Mjx: not trussed ChrisTaylor: not trussed OliverB: not trussed DiggingDogFarm: not trussed rlibkind: not trussed - Cooking position: breast side up on a rack, or rotisserie, or vertical (beer can), or butterfly Keith_W: rotisserie FeChef: rotisserie JoNorvelleWalker: rotisserie Mjx: turned on a rack ChrisTaylor: breast side up on a tray OliverB: beer can or breast side up DiggingDogFarm: butterfly rlibkind: butterfly - Cooking time: low temperature and slow, or high temperature and fast Keith_W: low temperature with high temp finish FeChef: high temperature Ttogull: high temperature patrickarmory: low temperature with high temp finish rotuts: high temperature mgaretz: high temperature Mjx: medium temperature with high temp finish ChrisTaylor: high temperature OliverB: high temperature DiggingDogFarm: hot skillet then high temperature oven rlibkind: high temperature - Heat source: electric oven, combi oven, combined (e.g. sous vide followed by oven), charcoal, or smoker Keith_W: charcoal FeChef: charcoal or smoker Ttogull: oven mgaretz: smoker rotuts: charcoal Mjx: oven ChrisTaylor: oven OliverB: charcoal DiggingDogFarm: oven rlibkind: gas griller - Seasoning: none, or dry brine (includes rubs), or wet brine (includes marinades), or injection brine Keith_W: injection brine + dry rub FeChef: wet brine + dry rub Ttogull: wet brine patrickarmory: dry rub rotuts: dry rub Mjx: wet brine ChrisTaylor: dry brine DiggingDogFarm: dry brine rlibkind: dry brine Oh yes, here is my effort from last night. A "double" roast chicken. I call it "double" because the roast chicken was injected with stock made from another roast chicken:

What's wrong mm84321? Ran out of truffles? Having to slum it with morels and white asparagus? Looks delicious as usual!

Hi weinoo, i'm not sure if it would make much sense to you but I use a Bannockburn free range chicken. Over here, "free range" is not a controlled or regulated term in the same way that the French have an appellation or the Italians have a DOP rating. A French Bresse chicken specifies the farming density (i.e. how many chickens are allowed per square km of land) and mandates that the chickens are fed naturally - i.e. they eat worms, insects, and whatever they can forage. An Australian "free range" chicken can be anything from a real free ranging chicken (like the Bresse chickens), to a chicken that spends most of the day and night in barns and given an hour of fresh air every day. There are some terms that do irk me - "free range" is one of them, and so does "organic" and "chemical free". None of these terms are clearly defined under Australian law, so they are essentially meaningless. But that is a separate discussion.

By the way, the reason I am asking is because I prepared a little post (reproduced below) and wanted to gather votes as to what some cooks whom I really respect tend to do with the staple. -- For many years I have been perfecting my roast chicken recipe. Each time I evolved the recipe and tried something new, it presented new problems. This is a discussion of various aspects of cooking roast chickens along with the pros and cons and expected results. At the end I will present my most recent recipe along with the rationale for doing so. TL; DR In summary, my current recommendations are: - Cooking temperature: breast 60, legs 65. - Stuffing: no - Trussing: no - Cooking position: rotisserie; alternative slow roast with high heat finish - Brining: injection brining, 4% Read the discussions below for reasons why. Recipe is at the end. Cooking temperature: in some other places my recommendation of cooking the breast to 60C and dark meat (thighs/drumstick) to 65C is controversial. However, Heston Blumenthal recommends it (see 3:30 point in this video as do a number of more modern books. Cooking a chicken to higher temperature results in overcooked chicken, which manifests itself as dry meat. Note that the different cooking requirement for breast and leg meat will strongly influence your choice of cooking technique. Stuffing vs. no stuffing: chickens should not be stuffed. Stuffing a chicken has a number of negative effects: it slows down cooking time by preventing convection currents within the cavity, the stuffing itself needs to reach a minimum of 60C and held for 15 minutes to guarantee safety (during which the vulnerable breast will overcook and skin start to burn), and the stuffing itself takes on a soggy texture. Contrary to myth, stuffing does not make a chicken more moist by "basting it from the inside". The moistness of chicken meat comes from other factors (see below). Trussed vs. untrussed: after years of trussing my chickens, I have stopped doing so. The reason being - trussing reduces the circulation of air around the thighs, effectively increasing its thickness. Given the thighs need to be cooked to a higher temperature than the breast, trussing only reduces heat conductivity and guarantees either undercooked thighs or overcooked breast. No matter what the cooking method, the legs should be splayed out from the chicken to promote maximum air circulation. Wet brined smoked beer can chicken. Despite the beautiful glazed appearance of the chicken and the skin, the skin was rubbery. See discussion on brining below Cooking position: should chickens be stood upright on a beer can, or cooked in a rotisserie, or cooked breast side up, or butterflied? Should they be slow roasted or roasted at a high temperature? If you think about it - your aims in cooking your chicken are: breast to 60, legs to 65, and crispy skin. - rotisserie: in this case, one side of the chicken is exposed to a high blast of heat before it is rotated away from the heat source. The meat then rapidly cools down before it is exposed to the heat again. Furthermore, the constant rotation of the chicken ensures even distribution of juices. This really is the ultimate way of cooking chicken, but unfortunately not everyone has a rotisserie. Most of the heat in a rotisserie is delivered in the form of radiation, rather than convection. - breast side up: (Assuming you are using a normal oven with the heating elements on the top and bottom). In this position, the breast meat will be closest to the heating element and most exposed to convection air currents, whilst the thighs (which need a higher cooking temperature!) are resting deep in the roast tin with less air circulation. This will overcook the breast. If you are going to do this, I recommend retarding the cooking of the breast by starting the cooking with the breast down so that the legs cook first on chicken rack set on a biscuit tin (not a roasting tin!) - this promotes maximum air circulation. When you turn the breast side up, check the temperature. If there is less than 5C difference between legs and thighs, place foil over the breast to retard cooking. In a kamado or Weber, the heat comes from the bottom. The chicken should be cooked breast up over indirect heat. Make sure you rotate the chicken 180 halfway during cooking to even out the cooking of both sides. - beer can: contrary to myth, it is not the beer in the can that keeps the chicken moist. It is the cooking position. In a beer can chicken, the chicken is vertical and the legs are closest to the heat source and breast furthest away. This naturally ensures appropriate distribution of heat. Butterflied chicken - note the breast is overcooked and slightly charred whilst the legs were moist. The major disadvantage of butterflied chicken is the difficulty monitoring the temperature and stopping the skin from burning. It involves too much guesswork. - butterfly: butterflying a chicken maximizes the surface area and promotes the fastest cooking. It is rarely possible to achieve a different cooking temperature for breast and thighs with this method unless the breast is foiled. Because of its shape, consideration needs to be given to how to cook it. It is easiest to cook a butterfly chicken in an oven. In a Weber, it is impossible to cook it over indirect heat in a Weber without creative arrangement of coals. Cooking it over direct heat will burn the skin before the meat is cooked. I recommend arranging the coals in a ring around the butterflied chicken in a Weber, with more coals towards the legs. In a Kamado, cook it direct but breast side up over very low heat. When the chicken is 10C from the desired temperature, remove it from the coals and open the vents. Place the chicken breast side down to crisp up the skin over high heat. - slow vs. quick roast: unlike pork or beef, chicken has very little collagen - so the idea of a slow roast isn't to render the collagen. Rather, the reason you slow roast is to make it easier to control the final cooking temperature. Imagine you are piloting a ship towards a harbour. You need to stop right at the jetty. You could either go full steam ahead and try to apply reverse thrust just before you reach the jetty, but chances are you will overshoot and crash. Or, you could steam up slowly and coast to the jetty. This is the same with chicken - a slow roast gives you a larger window of opportunity to remove it from the heat at the desired cooking temperature. How important this is depends on how good you are at monitoring your chicken! If you have a Maverick ET-732 (or similar) type temperature probe, you can react the moment the alarm informs you the temp has been reached. My peri-peri chicken, made with a brine-like marinade then cooked indirect until almost cooked, then finished over direct heat Brining and marinades: chickens should always be brined. The reason: the salt within the meat promotes structural changes within the proteins which make the meat more tender. If you want to get scientific about it: the proteins maintain their 3D structure via a number of different types of bonds, but the most important is the positive-negative attraction between different amino acids. Na+ alters the charge of the proteins, promoting its unfolding. Also, the salt helps the meat hold on to water, causing less moisture loss. If you look up brining recipes, you will find a multitude of them - dry brines, wet brines at different concentrations, and injection brining. Which is the best? Well fortunately for you, I have done experiments! - dry brining: not recommended. This method draws moisture out of the chicken and results in a taste and texture resembling cured meat. - marinades: a form of wet brining but using far more concentrated flavours with less precise control over salinity. I have yet to come across a marinade recipe (including my own) which isn't subjective and variable. The results can be delicious, but really I didn't intend this post to be a discussion on marinading. - wet brining: the most popular brining method. If you look up a number of books, you will see that some people (like Heston) recommends an 8% brine for 8 hours. Thomas Keller recommends a 5% brine for 12 hours. (NB: an 8% brine is 8g of salt per 100g water). I did an experiment where I brined three chicken breasts in different concentrations and found that the lowest concentration (a 4% brine for 12 hours) resulted in the most moist, succulent chicken - but unlike the other brines, a low concentration brine is not enough to season the chicken - so you have to add more seasoning afterwards. Wet brining was my go-to method for the past year, but it has a major drawback. The same effect that causes moisture to hang on to the meat also causes moisture to hang on to the skin. I cooked beautifully moist chicken with rubbery skin for two years, trying all sorts of methods to crisp up the skin before I realized what was happening and junked the technique. My current recommendation is: - injection brining: in this technique a 4% brine solution is injected into the meat and allowed to equilibrate for 2 hours before cooking. You inject 10% of the weight of the chicken in brine - for a 2kg chicken you need to prepare 200mL of 4% brine. At the moment I am still experimenting with the optimum brine volume and concentrate. The major advantage, apart from crispy skin, is speed (2 hours vs. 12 hours) and cost. If you want a lemon or bay leaf flavour in your brine, you need to add much less to make only 200mL of brine as opposed to 4L of brine you need for wet brining! Recipe - 2kg chicken - 300mL water - 8gm salt - 2 cloves of garlic - 1/2 lemon - 2 bay leaves - 1 tbsp black peppercorn First make the brine solution by bringing 300mL of water to the boil. Add the garlic, lemon juice, bay leaves, and peppercorn. Turn to a slow simmer for 10 minutes, and allow to cool completely. Strain the mixture and measure out 200mL of solution. Dissolve 8gm of salt into this solution. Load it into a brining syringe and inject into the breast and legs. Try to avoid piercing the skin. Rub the skin all over with a small amount of salt (or a rub of your choice) and place in the fridge for at least 2 hours. Note - if you are using a very salty rub, reduce the concentration of salt in the brine, say 3% or so. Remove the chicken from the fridge and allow to cool to room temperature. Place a bag of ice (ice cubes in a zip-lock bag) over the breast to keep it cooler than the legs. Fire up your rotisserie in the meantime. Rub the chicken all over with oil, mount your chicken in the rotisserie and cook to desired temperature. For other cooking methods, see discussion above.

Thank you. I am keeping tabs on votes as we go along. Just FYI it would be helpful if you could answer every question clearly. - Desired final cooking temperature: breast xxxC, thighs xxxC (or F). Keith_W: breast 60C, thighs 65C - Stuffing: Yes or No Keith_W: no stuffing patrickarmory: stuffed with pierced lemon - Trussing: Yes or No Keith_W: not trussed Ttogull: trussed patrickarmory: trussed - Cooking position: breast side up on a rack, or rotisserie, or vertical (beer can), or butterfly Keith_W: rotisserie FeChef: rotisserie JoNorvelleWalker: rotisserie - Cooking time: low temperature and slow, or high temperature and fast Keith_W: low temperature with high temp finish FeChef: high temperature Ttogull: high temperature - Heat source: electric oven, combi oven, combined (e.g. sous vide followed by oven), charcoal, or smoker Keith_W: charcoal FeChef: charcoal or smoker Ttogull: oven mgaretz: smoker - Seasoning: none, or dry brine (includes rubs), or wet brine (includes marinades), or injection brine Keith_W: injection brine + dry rub FeChef: wet brine + dry rub Ttogull: wet brine patrickarmory: dry rub As for the chicken, it is a given that you choose the best chicken even before you start ... I mean, this is eGullet. I don't even need to ask.

I thought I would take a straw poll to see what methods you guys consider "best practice" to cook a whole roast chicken. Please choose from the following options and elaborate as you see fit. - Desired final cooking temperature: breast xxxC, thighs xxxC (or F). - Stuffing: Yes or No - Trussing: Yes or No - Cooking position: breast side up on a rack, or rotisserie, or vertical (beer can), or butterfly - Cooking time: low temperature and slow, or high temperature and fast - Heat source: electric oven, combi oven, combined (e.g. sous vide followed by oven), charcoal, or smoker - Seasoning: none, or dry brine (includes rubs), or wet brine (includes marinades), or injection brine I think I have more or less covered all the variables. I would be interested to hear your responses.

I also have had some training in molecular biology. I am not sure if the average eG'er would know what a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) or restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) is without you explaining it in more simple terms

I thought I would add a picture of some of my fresh slimy friends that were staring at me at the local fishmongers. David, I bought the Trisol via a special order from a local supplier in Melbourne. I think you can get Trisol from Amazon. This blog entry goes into more detail on the effect of Trisol. The batter recipe is as follows: Flour 100% Trisol 40% Salt 2% Oregano flakes 1% Parsley flakes 1% Thyme flakes 1% There is no water in the batter, so perhaps I shouldn't have called it a batter. All I did was dredge the squid in the flour mixture, roll it in egg wash, then back in the flour mixture, then deep fry at 200C. The reason I use 200C is because the oil temperature drops by 70C the moment food goes in, so it has to start at a higher temperature. As for the smoked tomato sauce, I peeled the tomatoes, cut them into slices to maximize the surface area, and put them into my smoker for an hour at 105C. I used Apple wood. The end result turned out to be too smoky, so I ended up using only a third of the tomatoes I smoked and made up the difference with canned tomatoes (I was too lazy to go back to the shops for more). You live and learn! I don't think this dish is all that unique. Like I said, fried squid with tomato sauce is street food. You can get it in my hospital cafeteria (next to the fried chicken, fried chiko rolls, fried dimsims, etc). This dish is a re-imagining of what street food would look like if you were to all fancy on it. Here is a shot from another angle to show the cut of the squid:

For this cook-off I thought I would make fried squid with tomato sauce, but with enough twists to make it presentable to the eG crowd Rather than cut the squid tubes into rings, I left a central spine so that the rings would hold together and stand vertically. Rather than make a simple tomato sauce, I smoked the tomatoes then made a sauce and topped it with a fresh vegetable brunoise consisting of radish, celery, and onion. I deliberately chose pungent vegetables so that they would speak through the tomato sauce and richness of the calamari. The squid batter itself was made with 40% Trisol along with a selection of chopped herbs. The Trisol is the secret to the crunchiness of the batter. It even holds up to being drenched in sauce.

Dinner tonight was for the eG cook-off (squid): calamari with tomato sauce.

mm84321, that salmon with peas is actually one of the few posts which you have made which is within reach of my limited skill. I took a good look at your photo and I am convinced that half the reason your food looks so good is because of that lovely soft lighting and the nice colours. What photography setup are you using? What kind of lighting? If you tell me it's just your phone camera I am going to shoot myself!