IndyRob

Here's Thomas Keller doing it for a whole roasted chicken. This one with Zimmern shows it closer, although his hand is in the way...

It would be an interesting thing to explore, but it would have to be defined further and have a focus (or a limited number of foci). Julia Child had to do a lot of painful editings down. I think this book, if in name only, seems to be close to what you want. But it looks like the reader reviews are not so great. I may have even seen this book in a store, but put it back on the shelf after browsing.

I think the procedure and recipe would be met with general approval with the pizza maniacs over at pizzamaking.com. I think almost everyone there swears by cold fermentation. The amount of sugar might raise some eyebrows, but it can work both ways. Yeasties like sugar, but the point of the cold ferment is to slow them down. But it also improves browning so it's not unreasonable to start here and adjust if you feel you should. The one part I may personally quibble with is the stone placement. They are correct in that it can make a very big difference, but different ovens vary considerably. For me the bottom is best. But when I took my show on the road once, I nearly burnt the bottom even though that oven could only go to 500 - whereas I usually bake at 550 at home. The top surface of the 'road oven' got extremely hot while the oven was on. Upon reflection I realized that the bottom heating element was working a lot harder to maintain a 500 degree temp than my better insulated oven was while maintaining 550. So I wouldn't say I'd recommend one or the other, but just be prepared to adjust accordingly.

Here's another video that shows him doing one chicken all the way through... Still hard to follow, but it's all there By his look at the end, I suspect he's tired of "Break down a chicken for us Hung!"

I don't think this s what you're looking for, but it looks interesting nonetheless... For the ingredient side, I just found the USDA National Nutrient Database. No descriptions, but as a list it looks pretty comprehensive and includes nutritional and weight data. It can be downloaded in ASCII or MS Access formats. It's possible that other resources could use the NDB_No ID to identify ingredients.

Yes, I think you'd want to let it rest properly and then bag it and plunge it into an ice bath. Then get it sliced and bring it back up to temp gently. But I don't think I've seen this thread before so I'd like to play the devil's advocate. Yes, clearly this works. But is it best? I have my doubts. ChefCrash took some nice pictures showing the sliced frozen roast but not the sliced traditional version. We lack a control. The pics of the slices clearly show some grey/brown overcooked sections on the outside (acceptable as they may be in proportion). But doing the same cut sous vide, I know that I got none of this. This makes me wonder about the traditional preparation. Certainly, as the heat moves inward, we're less concerned with transferring heat via air as moisture. And perhaps a colder center mediates this. It's an interesting question. But I still think I would do it sous vide and then heavily season the outside and blast the outside with heat before slicing thinly - folding the slices over each other to get some crust with every bite.

Something just occurred to me. While Alton Brown occasionally likes to mirthfully seem to end run the lawyers, he really has not ventured into sous vide or, oh, say, heating an indoor oven with charcoal to 900 degrees. Is Richard on a bullet train to barrister town? And what kind of charcoal was that anyway?

Tom C said, in her defense, that she had never had to have stitches before. So when they said "You're going to need stitches" she probably just accepted that as meaning "now". But now I know how I can get to the finals if I can ever get on. As soon as they start the timer, I'll grab a knife and give myself a whack. By the end I'll be bandaged up like a mummy, but I can challenge for the title with my fried bologna sandwich.

If the CO2 did anything, it didn't seem to be noticed. I think I like the cheese spheres, but would have to work out a different geometry. There was a lot of cheeseless surface area. The show seems to suffer for only being 30 minutes.

My kneejerk reaction is that if you want to follow a specific recipe, but don't have the ingredients required, it's time to rethink your approach. But, while I haven't barded a bird, I am skeptical of barding. Brining seems to me to be far better for a variety of reasons. Or, if introducing fat is the desired thing, lardons, rather than barding, seem more appropriate (but then you're back to the original problem). Barding seems like it could be equalled with a good amount of basting. That's basically all that's happening there, right? Well, besides the bacon flavor. What about sausage? Can you get sausage? This might be crazy, and I wouldn't recommend it except as an experiment, but what if you cut a V into each breast and stuffed it with sausage (extra points if you can get this done while keeping the skin intact)? Meh, I think you'd have to cut the breast across the grain to get the fat to flow where it should. If sausage is available, and you have some butcher's twine, you could form some strips wrapped around twine that could be draped around the bird. Mash a bacon strip sized bit of sausage on a piece of wax paper, lay a couple strands of twine on top, and top that with more sausage. Press together and drape on bird. When roasted, strip the sausage off the twine and add to gravy.

I don't know about duck eggs, but a tip that helped me is to peel the eggs under running water. Once the water runs between the egg and the membrane it will help to separate them.

I have comcast and the science channel. You might check hulu.com. They do have a sneak peek clip up. Perhaps they'll have the full episodes. http://science.discovery.com/videos/blais-off-blais-off-sneak-peek.html

In his blog, Tom Collichio has clarified that the undercooked frittatas were not raw. They were safe to eat, but undercooked. On to this week, I just noticed that Rick Moonen is doing videos each week recreating the winning recipe. Dale's simply presented dish turns out to be suprisingly complex.

He makes a strong argument, but I'm not sure that I agree. Sure, the frittatas had a consistancy problem. Some may have even been inedible. But presumably some (if not most, or even possibly nearly all) were good. There were some scenes with enthusiastic conversations about which of the three varieties were the best. On the other hand, Casey didn't seem to like the braised bacon before it went out - even without the much criticized eggs. To me, it didn't seem to work on any level. I'm very glad that neither Ripert or Bourdain were judges for that one. Too many connections there.

I just went back and reviewed the dishes. I don't think either team did very good job of considering their options and working together. I think the problem was time. If they got to think about it overnight, I think it would've been much better. After thinking for a while about the T-Rex challenges I think that, yes, you are very limited, but having meat, eggs and dairy is huge. The eggs alone can do many things. I think if I were doing this I'd do... An omelette or other straight up egg dish A steak with a hollandaise* and bits of cooked seasoned egg whites A flourless cheese souffle Some chicharrones in some form to get some crunch * No citrus for the hollandaise, but perhaps some acid could come by making butter and using the buttermilk.

For experimentation purposes, I'd certainly give coconut oil a go.

“I don’t think it was an award-winning dish but all right for Top Chef. But maybe not.” Well, there we have it.

Oh, I think I would have definitely been on the stroll. It could lead to ideas that might get me hyped. Hyped would be better than semi-rested. I think the carnivore menu was tougher than originally thought. I don't buy into Tiffany's reaction that she thought she could use anything, but no pantry items? That's a severe limitation. In retrospect I can think of some killer options (egg omelettes/crepes is a good one, KTO), but could I think of these upon entering the coolers? Maybe not so much. My favorite bit about this episode was seeing Marcel, Richard and Angelo work together (even if there was some minor quibbling in the commentary).

One of the few truly OMG! inducing things I've ever made was Julia Child's Cream of Scallop Soup from Mastering the Art....

I think the emotional stakes have been raised in All Stars. Originally I imagined that the first chefs to be eliminated would be especially crushed. Everyone has a history of going far in the series. But additionally, Colicchio has blogged that it's tougher even on the judges who now have personal relationships with the contestants. And this probably makes the contestants more willing to speak out.

I was comparing the cost to soda. Carbonator: $29.99/130 liters = $0.23 Flavoring: $4.99/12 liters = $0.41 Name Brand Cola: $0.99-$1.89 for 2 liters Sodastream Cola: $1.28 for 2 liters (plus initial investment and shipping where applicable) Cheaper CO2 sources have been mentioned, but on the flavoring side there's also Open Cola.

You need to carbonate just the water and then add flavorings. I once absentmindedly added the cola flavoring to a bottle I had not yet carbonated. Faced with throwing it out, I decided to ignore the admonitions and carbonate it. Not a good idea. There was soda everywhere.

This is true. I bought one a couple of years ago because I was so frustrated with pricing of soda. Buying it at the regular price usually means that you're paying twice the price of getting it on sale elsewhere. Having to constantly comparison shop for a staple had me very annoyed. Brand loyalty was the first casualty, but even then, I sometimes had to visit two or three stores. So I got the SodaStream. But I concluded that if you can find 2 liter bottles for 99 cents, you come out ahead of the SodaStream cost of about $1.24. Convenience is a trade off. On the one hand, you can stock a lot of soda syrup - and making up a bottle is much easier than going to the store. But there is a whole set of logistics required for maintaining a supply of syrup and CO2. A pleasant suprise was that I liked their diet cola formula as much as the 'Big Two'. I had never found a generic store brand I could drink. Even buying bulk brand name syrup from GFS was not a better option - either economically or quality-wise. Still, my SodaStream has fallen into disuse. But I may re-stock it now that their are more retail options. It looks like they had a failed distribution attempt with Kohls and Williams & Sonoma. But now they're back with more retailers. The best solution would be to hack it to use large CO2 tanks. This would reduce the 2 Liter price by nearly 40 cents. But this would be tricky, potentially dangerous, and legally dubious given all the legalese involved in with the SodaStream. Even that name brand name bag-in-box had a legal warning about using it in a non approved manner.

I really like my Presto Kitchen Kettle. It's a virtually identical setup to that which you posted, except it has thicker sides than that stainless model. I haven't used it for traditional slow cooking, but I use it mainly for sous vide. It's quite good at this. It's also good at deep frying and boiling pasta water. Although it doesn't seem as insulated as a dedicated slow cooker, I don't know why it wouldn't do the job. I routinely braise meat in very similar containers and the KK's sous vide duty has proved a good ability to keep a constant low temp. I believe that there are other models of the Multi Cooker that are more like mine. This may be one of those cases where paying a bit more for stainless steel will actually mean getting an inferior product.

There's another topic on this but I'll forge ahead anyway.... I got one of these for Christmas last year and so have about a year of experience with it. Lessons learned: 1) Because of all the proprietary bits, it's way cheaper to go with a homemade hydroponic setup. It's also better as it's more flexible. But this is true only if you like tinkering and have a place in your house where you can hide a big ugly setup. By contrast, the Aerogarden is extremely easy to set up and is very attractive. Besides cost, really the only big problems are a lack of flexibility and lights. The lights are very bright and will be on for 18 hours/day. So you don't want one anywhere near where you might be sleeping. 2) I think it would be better to have two or more three-pod setups than the bigger six or seven pod models. Buying one three pod model is also less risk as a starting proposition. The main issue I have found has been mixing different plants. For instance, growing basil and chives in the same unit is pointless. Basil grows like crazy and it (depending on how on top of your pruning you are) is going to grow up or out. One way or another, the basil is going to hurt the chives by either shading them, or causing you to move the lights up out of range of smaller plants. But growing chives in one of these things is pointless anyway since you'll only get a base that's about, at best, a dime's width. Cut off enough to use in meal and you'll have another week or two before you have more. A pot with some soil and seed, kept watered outside is just as easy (in season) and will give you a much better yield. Having more of the three pod models would give you the options to specialize each and keep them on different schedules. 3) They are really great for starting plants to be transplanted outside - even for a brown thumb like me. I have yet to have seeds not germinate (even my own), or not successfully transplant. I think this year I'm going to start sometime in February and transplant nearly mature plants in the spring. I've also had good luck starting peppers in it. 4) I think the transplanted plants have more aroma/flavor. The hydroponic herbs are not the best (but possibly better than nothing in the winter). 5) Don't plant things just because they came with your kit. If you let it grow but don't use it, it will be taking away from the stuff you want. Mint is a common culprit. You start out by thinking you'll find a use for it, but most never do. Overall, I think the Aerogardens are great confidence builders for people like me who are just not experienced in raising plants. Follow the instructions and you will have success. You just have to manage that success.