Dakki

Due to family circumstances, my sister has moved Thanksgiving dinner up to Monday (yes the 15th) and put me in charge of the turkey. I've found a source for an industrially-raised frozen whole bird and I'm fine with roasting the stupid thing but some typical stuffing ingredients, such as sage bulk sausage, chestnuts, packaged stuffing, USA-style cornbread/cornmeal etc. are unavailable in my area. So... I'm asking for a savory stuffing recipe, to be cooked separately from the bird, without any charcuterie (except bacon I guess?) or other regional ingredients. The recipe should be very typically American (ie, no chiles, chorizo, Asian ingredients, etc.) or the whole purpose is defeated. White bread is preferred, since this is the only kind my baker handles, but I can get rye, multigrain and (probably) sourdough sliced bread from the supermarket. Can anyone help?

So I came upon a description of this recently - supposedly an extremely spicy regional variety of fried chicken,native to the Nashville area. I like my chicken fried and I like my chicken spicy, so naturally this piqued my attention. What can you tell me about it? Does anyone have a recipe/technique?

This is awe-inspiringly dumb.

Toughness is the ability of a material to resist fracture. Hardness is the ability of a material to resist deformation. To give an example, a ceramic plate is very hard but not very tough, meaning it won't bend very far but it will break very easily.

This is absolutely correct. As you said below, our most important factor in maintaining sharpness is edge stability, not wear resistance. Edge stability is going to be determined by hardness (to prevent the edge rolling or otherwise deforming) and (perhaps less importantly) by toughness, to prevent chipping. For practical use, I'd add corrosion resistance as well, in an environment where the edge is going to be exposed to humidity, acids, salt and so on. I've seen lemon juice utterly ruin a perfectly good edge on a simple carbon steel knife in minutes. That said, titanium (or tungsten) carbide is just comically hard stuff, hard enough that you can't measure it on the RC scale. It's not all that tough compared to most steels, though. Here's where things could get confusing. Precipitated carbides in the steel, which appear as part of the heat treating process (depending on the exact chemistry of the steel) will behave exactly as you said. A cemented carbide edge, made by applying carbide as a coating or by forming a solid carbide blade (with the usual cobalt or nickel binder) could probably be made sharp enough for kitchen use (I haven't actually tried this so I won't swear it's true). The problem is that the edge would be ridiculously brittle at the kind of edge geometries we're talking about, defeating the whole purpose of the exercise.

What Paul said. Titanium carbide is a wonderful material; in my experience you can expect a 5 to 10 times improvement in the life of a wear surface, compared to D2 tool steel, not to mention the fact that it's virtually inert at normal operating temperatures. Plus, you can use it to coat a part made of inexpensive, easily machined steel and use that to replace parts made of expensive, hard to machine steels in many cases, so in many applications you can actually get those benefits -with a cheaper part-, and it can take an extremely fine finish relatively easily. That's actually tungsten carbide but you get the idea. (I love carbide coatings. They pay my mortgage.) Unfortunately, none of that is going to help with a knife edge. It's going to need diamond stones to sharpen, which are dear and IMO not as consistent as a good waterstone. Every time you sharpen it, you're going to be removing carbide, so sooner or later you're going to end up with a knife made of steel that's probably not very hard. I can't tell what process they use to coat from the advert, but every coating process I'm aware of that can give you more than a couple of thousandths of an inch of coating requires the steel substrate be rather soft, so unless they're using something I don't know about, the carbide coating is going to be paper thin, or the steel is going to be soft, or both! I also have to mention the ISO 9001 certification is pretty meaningless. Virtually everyone in my industry has it; all it means in practice is that you keep certain paperwork, basically so the buyer can cover his butt when the cheap crud he got from the lowest bidder inevitably fails. A bit off-topic but that's a pet peeve of mine.

Marcus - interesting stuff, dude. I don't really see anything that would put the objectivity of the review in doubt, just your unjustified opinion that Mr. Waring deserves our undying admiration and those who dare criticize him are simply philistines. Thus my query. Dragonflychef - I understand your and Mr Waring's frustration with the negative review and wish to suggest that this should have been dealt with constructively, as a source of information on the things that might be improved in his establishment. The fact that he preferred to attack the reviewer rather than the problem areas speaks volumes about his attitude towards the business and his customers. That's the most diplomatic way I can put it. Speaking as someone who runs a small business completely unrelated to the hospitality business, I find this whole thing beyond belief. Maybe my industry as a whole has a different attitude towards unsatisfied customers. I honestly don't know.

Afraid I disagree. Once a call touches on business (such as the OP's review of the restaurant) it ceases being a personal call and becomes a business call. This is in line with every company policy -I- ever heard of, anyway. Out of curiosity, what points raised in the OP's review do you think were not objective?

I use frozen. IMO it loses nothing.

The other night a friend threw an impromptu bbq at her home and Yours Truly was drafted to do the actual cooking, I'm hoping because of my superior skills and not because my conversation would be missed the least among those present. My friend is an excellent hostess but her kitchen equipment is, shall we say, utterly freaking deficient - dull, knife-shaped objects, no cutting board, paper-thin nonstick pans and so on. This being a spur of the moment thing, I'd left my "outside" knives at home in a knife roll, so I ended up doing prep for 4 different dishes for 10 people with my trusty Swiss Army Knife on a plastic plate, hovering over the queso fundido so it wouldn't scorch (and having to watch it with the nylon spatula so -it- wouldn't scorch), using preground spices old enough to vote, margarine and "light salt." This time the kitchen gods smiled on my efforts (because I'm such a good person - this karma thing actually works) and dinner was a roaring success, but it got me thinking - wouldn't it be neat to carry the bare necessities around in your vehicle, so you'd be ready to cook anywhere at a moment's notice? I set myself some rules (no perishables, nothing I'd cry about if it got broken, stolen or left behind, the whole thing must fit in a standard-sized backpack or mail bag) and came up with this list. I haven't started assembling it yet and I'd love to hear any input from you guys. -Chef's knife The possibility of using a folder (as discussed in this thread) occurred to me but why compromise? I think a standard 8" chef's is compact enough as it is, and it has the advantage of being an actual chef's knife, not an adaptation. -Paring knife -Serrated bread knife -Shears -Sharpening stone Nothing big or fancy, just enough to do touchups "in the field," so to speak. -Tongs -Two flexible cutting mats One for poultry, one for not-poultry. -Small skillet Cast iron is heavy but I have a feeling this kit would be used for outdoors cooking more than half the time. What do you guys think? -Small pot See above. -Wooden spoon Hardwood. Gets harder as it scorches, doesn't ruin the food if it does, doesn't scratch your hostess' shiny new pans. -Spice mill The kind that you can attach different jars to. I'm pretty sure I've seen these at Ikea? -Salt and a few assorted whole spices Black pepper, red pepper, cumin and so on. Just the most basic stuff. -Cheese grater Folding is more compact, box gives you more grating choices. -Small bottle of neutral cooking oil I'm thinking canola or peanut here, just a plain general purpose oil. -Basic cleaning kit Sponge, scrub pad, small bottle of dish soap. -Sanitizing drops For fruit and veg. I'd like to hear your opinions on this matter. Did I miss something? Should I drop something? Do you have any suggestions for a particular item?

Way too many boards here too. Everything from a mystery wood butchers block inherited from a great-aunt (the greatest cook, God rest her soul) to flexible cutting mats. It might be related to my knife obsession. I use them all more or less indifferently but the one that sees the most use is a cheap little plastic thing with a frying pan sort of handle. Very nice for cutting smaller items that are going to be dumped straight into the pot or skillet.

Oh yeah, beef ribs are the way to deal with this. I know you're supposed to make them falling-off-the-bone succulent but sometimes the inner beast demands red and chewy.

Light roast, drip, no cream but sweet. Starbucks is pig disgusting.

Oh heck yes. If anything I get even more primitive; my meat hunger is only satisfied by great bloody chunks of red meat, preferably grilled over wood or charcoal.

I run a small business myself, not related to the food industry, and I understand that a review based on a single bad experience, whether it's because of an off night, unrealistic expectations or some other reason can be very upsetting and unfair. That said, I don't think that a reviewer, particularly a blogger, has any obligation to communicate their problems to the management separately. In my eyes, the only obligation a reviewer has is to describe things as accurately as possible - because their principal obligation is not to the business, but to other customers. In short, I don't think Mrs. CC had any reason to do anything other than what she did. I also think how someone handles criticism says a lot about them and how they run their business. Taking it as an opportunity to fix problems they were not aware of would tell me they'd probably make an effort to put things right with me if I had a problem in their establishment. Conversely, blowing up at an unsatisfied reviewer tells me the response I'd get if I found a fly in the soup would probably not be something I'd enjoy. Frankly I find Wearing's response incredibly childish and unprofessional, and it left a much worse impression of the establishment than any one negative review could have.

I'd never even heard of the guy before this, and now I have a very low opinion of him and his business. Streisand Effect?

Thanks again for this thread, I think it should be required reading for members (like me) who are far removed from primary food production. I'm interested in seeing what you did with the more "unusual" bits of the animal, such as skin, head, organ meats, etc.

There's an ugly strain of reverse elitism going around in Western culture at the moment and this sort of accusation is part of it. If someone comes at you with this I say you should mock the hell out of them, and do it in your best Redneck/Chav/Area-appropriate dialect for bonus points.

I say yes. Killing the animal is certainly part of the process being discussed here, even if you find it distasteful. And, hey, there's a GRAPHIC PICS warning right in the thread title.

Really interesting stuff. I'd like to see how you break the carcass down.

It might be a bit harder to quantify my improvement in cookery since I'm firmly on the amateur side of the community but my food photos have gotten much better (there's still plenty of room for improvement, though).

I'd love to hear your impressions of the knife once you get your hands on it.

Come on, you have to love Sandra Lee. She makes the rest of us look so good!

That Takeda really speaks to me. Hey, Xmas is coming up...

Toothbrushes (the disposable kind you get in hotels) are excellent for scrubbing small objects. 1/4" 320 plate cut to cover two burners in place of a griddle. Welding gloves in place of oven mitts. That's about it for me.