IndyRob

I think four hours might be too long for part of the steak - the eye, as opposed to the cap. Contrary to what I had thought for a long time, you can overcook meat sous vide. It may still be pink, but overcooked. This from Thomas Keller and confirmed by me. Ribeye is tricky because it is really two cuts of meat.

I've recently been reading (well, skipping around) my copy of Ruhlman & Polcyn's Charcuterie. My interest is primarily in dry cured products like prosciutto or bresaola. So I'd like to start a thread specifically about these variants. As my plans for building a curing chamber (and a proper place for it) take a back seat to other pressing home renovations, I'm in a kind of limbo between consumer and producer/both. But my imagination goes on and I keep finding new questions - among these are: 1) Commercial prosciutto: I've been doing taste tests with various super/specialty market prosciuttos and have found less differentiation than I would've expected. Even between a Walmart Del Duca and a Boar's Head imported Prosciutto di Parma, The Parma did take the edge in the judging, but not but not at a premium of $10/pound. Is actual prosciutto bought in Itally better? 2) The book Charcuterie seems to stop at describing the procedure for specfic things, That's fine, but what if I want to do something different (e,g, treat a pork loin as a breasaola)? Could science create a prosciutto in a shorter time by cutting it down into smaller pieces?

Was this also a roux based sauce? I've had very good results freezing the Modernist Cuisine Mac&Cheese sauce (actually, a nacho cheese sauce variant with chopped roasted jalapenos). 265g liquid (water, milk, cream, beer, etc.), 285g cheese, 11g sodium citrate.

The trussing seems a bit excessive. Nice looking skin, though.

For some reason, I really love pierogies with pork chops. With the butter and sautéed onions. One of the best chops I've had was lightly breaded and deep fried (still mostly pink in the middle). I suspect it was brined.

Isn't this like asking for an Apple Pie recipe without tree apples? Surely there's a backstory here. I'm intrigued.

As an extremely frugal person who invested $80 in a Thermapen because I do think that temp is that important, I also realize that it's just one measurement. It's one thing to have accurate readings, but it's quite another to become a slave to them. Time and temp is simply not enough. Especially if you're measuring a bath and not the product.

I think there's a saying that goes something like "A man with one watch always knows what time it is. A man with two never does." I'm curious as to the perceived temperature differences reported on Anova's forums. I've used a Presto Kitchen Kettle to good effect for sous vide in the past. It does involve working through an equalization phase to find the correct setting for the desired temp, but then it could hold a temp within 1 degree F for an extended period (and that's about 1/2 a degree C). That was measured by a Thermapen. IMHO, circulation in a home application is overrated. I've never measured any more than one degree of variation in my crude setup. But in any event, you have to cook to the equipment you have. Home ovens vary massively, but we can still figure out the best way to bake cookies in our own ovens. And even if we could control temperatures completely, that still does not account for variations in product and preference. And I think this sort of brings on the sense of derision for sous vide or modernist cuisine in general. The sense that it can all be reduced to numbers. That ain't so. It only narrows the window a bit. Just cook, man.

"Until smoking?" or "Until it begins to smoke"? I think that would represent a big difference.

I think I've spotted a few in this round. And surprisingly, when faced with a quickfire elimination, George chose none of them. Instead, George handpicks the guy who would send him home. #Badmove

Oh, I forgot. The best use of wax paper I've ever had was with chocolate. One year, for my wife's birthday, I decided that I'd come home from work early and make her a personalized art cake. I had written some computer software that could do color separations like those you'd need for silk screen printing. One color per layer that all composited into an image. I took an existing photo of a couple of our cats and reduced it down to a grayscale image which I then reduced into five levels of color. With the separations printed on separate pages of paper and five shades of chocolate ranging from dark chocolate to white chocolate, I was ready to go. Sheet pan, first paper template, and then a sheet of wax paper. I piped (from an improvised wax paper piping bag) the first layer of color (dark chocolate), using the wax paper as tracing paper. Then I carefully lifted off the wax paper and replaced the first paper template underneath with the second. I put the wax paper back, carefully aligned it, and piped in the next color. Repeat for all five shades. I let the chocolate cool while I made a cake. Then I peeled off the wax paper and inverted the chocolate layer with the image onto the top of the cake, glued with some ganache. Okay, the idea of putting a hard chocolate shell on top of a cake turned out to be an incredibly stupid idea for reasons I'm sure you all can imagine. But, the initial effect of the image on top of the cake created an impression that earned me a lot of husband points. And when it did prove, after my wife reluctantly relented to the notion of destroying the image, to be the structural failure that it was unwittingly designed to be, it was all a pile of mushed up and cracked chocolate. But, how bad could that be, really?

I often use it in lieu of a cutting board when the cutting will be minimal, or not involve the surface. For instance, if I have some chicken breasts I want to cut pockets into. I can work on the wax paper and them just throw the paper out rather than cleaning a counter or board. It's also good for when I make meatloaf - which is usually a sort of roulade in which something like spinach, cheese and mushrooms are rolled up. I can start with a long piece and mash out the meat mixture between two folded layers, then I can roll it up and transfer to a pan without my hands ever touching the meat. And I like it for rolling up around breakfast burritos for storage and eventual nuking. The American Wax Paper Council *is* sponsoring this topic, isn't it?

I'd say I'd agree with almost all of that list. I agree with the butter comments already made - freeze/refrigerate/not depending on, and tailored to, your needs. Bread and pastry, especially those baked fresh without preservatives should be frozen ASAP. I don't personally care for coffee, but from what I do know about it, it makes sense to freeze the beans. With very few exceptions (e.g. cold fermenting a yeast dough), I don't think refrigerating ever really does much more than keeping pathogens at bay, and can cause moisture issues with many things.

In his later years, my father was quite proud to have discovered Betty Crocker Complete Cheese Garlic biscuit mix. You just mix with water. They were pretty good, actually and I think reminded him of the biscuits he'd get at Red Lobster. More recently, I've found that baked biscuits freeze and revive quite well (sans outer crispness). Just wrap one in paper towel and nuke for 15 seconds, then flip and give it another 10 seconds on the other side. If desired, a brief stay in a toaster oven might revive the crisp, but I haven't tried that. A regular oven may do both just as well. Add a heated, fully cooked sausage patty for a breakfast biscuit.

I'll just leave it at my post #14 in this thread and point out that the commonly used phrase "Google is your friend" is not always true.

You put 'Hen Eggs' on your menu, didn't you. You must be using a different Google than me. "Hen Egg" (with quotes) produces about 793,000 results. I can get a bunch more if I take off the quotes. But this is not how common usage is measured. God help us if we start searching for "Kardashian". In America, we says egg(s). Unless we're trying to differentiate them. Organic eggs? Check. Free range eggs? Okay. Quail eggs? Thanks. Hen's eggs? Well, duh.

Well, not really. "Hen's egg" on Google - about 276,000 results. "dihydrogen monoxide" - about 220,000 results. "Pork bacon" - about 770,000 results. "chocolate chip cookies" - about 886,000 results. "quail egg" - about 1,340,000 results.

Well, yes, in American speech, a hen is generally presumed to be a chicken hen. And a hen's egg would be presumed to be from a chicken. But also in America, an egg (menu-wise) is equally presumed to be a chicken egg. And a chicken egg must necessarily come from a hen (for no other thing is possible). However, the word 'hen' is clearly not limited to chickens, as your own Mirriam-Webster quote shows. Many other reference works in include all fowls as well. So by specifying 'hen's egg', the description begs interpretation. It could be a) misguided pretentiousness (this is going to make me look cool) , b) deceitfulness (this will fool them into thinking it's something special), or c) near fraudulent deceitfulness (I said it was a hen's egg, it's a quail hen's egg). In any event, it's a rare case that justifies dragging out pedantry as a tool of mockery.

Unfortunately, sending incessant e-mails hardly makes them unique among companies, judging by my inboxes.

At first, I thought it might be meant to distinguish it from a quail egg at a place that might serve such things. But then I thought, "Wait, aren't quail hens a thing?" Upon reflection, it's worse than not specifying at all. I think if I ever see this on a menu I'll have to ask the server if this refers to a guinea hen, a quail hen, a Cornish hen or (thanks to Wikipedia) a lobster hen.

Cooking wine is a wine rendered undrinkable by the addition of salt. Here in Indiana, it's the only type of wine you can buy on Sundays. It has acquired a very bad name for two reasons. The first is the same reason that high sodium broths or stocks (or bouillon cubes) are discouraged. It takes a lot of seasoning (salting) decisions out of your hands. The second reason is the probably valid assumption that any winemaker willing to pour copious amounts of salt into their wine so that they can sell it, is probably not a very good winemaker. That said, there's no reason you couldn't (generally) adjust for the added salt. You could also make a huge mistake by using an expensive Riesling when a dry white wine was what was intended. Whether expensive or cheap, ingredients are not universally interchangeable.

I don't think so, especially if I qualify the statement by saying 'for me'. I'm not cooking for people in France. I don't really care what they put on their English Muffins (if in fact, they would deign to eat such things). I've just found that I like their cultured Norman butter - shaken, not stirred, so to speak - in the way I like to enjoy it. And if I have a choice between two products, and one is more expensive but offers nothing other than a possibility of not detracting from the dish, why would I use that versus the cheaper option? Sometimes, fat just needs to be fat. When I make a French style omelette, I use good ol' 'merican butter. Because in that case I want subtlety. But if I want a rustic American frontier omelette, I'm bringing sausage fat to the party, and butter, of any sort, is simply not invited. .

I've just read through this entire thread, and this question, I feel, encapsulates the issue rather nicely. To me, the answer is yes, and no. I went to some lengths to procure a supply of a specific brand of cultured butter from Normandy. I absolutely love it. But not for everything. I also keep a ready stock of plain old American store-brand butter. Generally, the French butter is best for spreading on a great bread. Simple applications where a very few ingredients take a starring role..However, I don't usually want that in any melted butter application. It's usually a waste, or worse, is detracting from some other element that I want to come through. Similarly, a really great olive oil can be a disaster if you try to use it in a high heat application. 'Better' is a word begging for qualification. Is a bread flour better? Maybe for bread, but not for cakes.

I dunno, but it makes me want to make a pie out of funnelcake.

As I understand it, food safety is probability game. You can do all sorts of weird stuff and come out okay - maybe. Or, you could kill a child or an elderly person. I would not do what you propose - and I'm a devil-may-care kind of guy. In my mind, why would I spend 9 hours making a large batch of stock only to then thrust it into a fridge while still hot? Why? It would only take 15-20 minutes to get it down to a reasonable temp Your sink without ice can do much better. And with some ice even better.