BadRabbit

He's never going to get credit for his book. I have to admit that even I thought Bittman wrote the book for a month after I bought it. It was only after I started reading it did I notice a considerable difference in the voice and writing style and look more carefully at the cover. As to the salt thing, didn't McGee determine that only people with hyper-developed palates could even discern the difference in salts and then there were only like 10 different tastes associated with them?

To really cook a steak to mush takes a long time although it's considerably less time with a super tender cut like filet mignon. I think you would still need at least 4 hours to be able to see significant texture changes.

So you can't come in and set up well ahead of time? If you can, I would suggest setting up a couple of hours in advance and do some steaks. I think they are the most informative thing to cook because you can visibly see the uniformity of the internal temperature and the look of a conventionally prepared mid-rare steak is something everybody knows. You could have them where they are ready shortly after people arrive. You could then remove them and demonstrate the effect as the eggs are cooking. Otherwise you could do a cook and hold technique where you cooked SV to temp and then rapidly cooled. You could then bring the food back up to serving temp in the class.

He was originally on PBS in the late 90s but now has worked with an NBC affiliate in Washington State to film his new show. It's not widely distributed so I've just seen shows that people have sent me and clips on "The Soup."

You should be able to look at the sodium on the package and get a pretty good idea of how much salt it contains. The only tricky part is that I'm not sure whether the sodium on the label includes the weight of the chlorine in NaCl (though I'm nearly positive it does not). If it does not, then you can just take the amount of sodium and roughly double it to get the salt amount (Sodium makes up about 40% of NaCl's weight). Edited to clarify.

Canellini beans work beautifully and are available nearly everywhere in the US.

I ate brains and eggs a lot growing up until the day that I learned what the dish really was. My mother told me it was ham and eggs until I was about 10 years old. I stopped eating them for 15 years afterwards before rediscovering them. Delicious.

Correction: The full name of the show is "Dutch Oven Cooking with Cee Dub." There are multiple scenes where Cee Dub just walks out of a tent and lifts the top off a charcoal covered cast iron dutch oven and stirs the contents. He does all of this silently and then returns to his tent without a word. The first time I saw it I thought it was a skit from a comedy show it is so bizarre. http://ceedubs.com/books_and_videos.html

Made the Duck Ham and the Duck confit with cloves this weekend. I had a couple of issues with the ham. First, the weight he gives seem unreasonable for the number of breasts listed. I had a pretty large Pekin and each breast only weighed 9oz as opposed to the 1 lb average he lists. I don't think he meant 6 whole breasts (i.e. 12 breast muscles) since the brine amount listed would not have been enough to cover that many (though I guess if the indicidual breasts were nearly twice the size of mine you would have the same issue). Also, I felt the salt content was a little high. I am not sure whether to brine for less time on my second attempt or lower the salt content by 10% (it's not a long cured item so I'm not real worried about changing the salt). Overall the ham was very good outside of the saltiness. Anybody found a good sauce to accompany it? I was thinking of making a sweetened bing cherry\red wine reduction. The confit turned out well though I thought it could use a bit more clove. Edited to clarify.

Two fat ladies now replays on the Cooking Channel. The worst cooking show ever is "Dutch Oven Cooking". It's so bad that it's a repeat performer on "The Soup" with Joel McHale.

I bought a bunch of piloncillo recently to make a couple of Bayless recipes and really like the stuff and don't see any reason why I should limit its use to just my Mexican dishes. Has anybody else found interesting uses for this sugar? ETA: I have already decided to use it in a Phan recipe that I usually make with Muscovado. I'll let you know how that turns out as a substitute.

But isn't that a good reason to use temps instead of bubble activity? The temperature is what is going to affect your end product not the amount and speed of the bubbles in the cooking liquid.

Most (if not all) dry ice is food safe as it's just frozen CO2. There's no real danger from adding it directly to food stuffs as long as the items being shipped to you in the dry ice aren't dangerous. If you're getting ecoli samples sent to you packed in dry ice, I would just throw it away though.

OK. Thanks. I might try it out sometime. They should really change the name to something more appealing. It sounds more like something that bodybuilders would buy at GNC than it does a flavouring.

I see Bragg aminos in the store all the time but have never tried it. Is it a seasoning, a supplement or what? What does it taste like?

I noticed this too but found that they were pretty close if you packed the garlic into the spoons. That's not how people usually use volumetric measures unless told to (e.g. 1 cup firmly packed brown sugar) but that seems to be their usage in the book.

I have never tried any programs but I have found that just using an app on my phone to track calories makes me lose weight. Obviously, entering the information doesn't burn that many calories but I find that I'm more careful about how much I put on my plate and the quality of my snacks if I track everything. I cook just like I usually do but I watch my portion size and just avoid obvious high caloric ingredients like cream and I avoid techniques like deep fat frying.

My wife would eat nothing else if I would let her. I think the Meyenberg is really spectacular and I don't find it particularly "goaty." To me, it is more rich and creamy than cow butter. It really shines on new potatos with mint but I like it in almost any melted butter situation. I haven't cooked with it but the fat content of the Meyenberg is higher than Land o' Lakes regular butter so I would guess it would do fine in that application. I just don't use it that way because it is really expensive.

Interesting idea. I'm hoping to make the flavor shine which is why I'm leaning toward hot sauce. Since it is my first experience with them I want to show them off . I love hot chiles and can handle eating whole habaneros raw but I have a hard time tasting anything but heat on Ghost Peppers unless I do a lot of work on them. My suggestion would be to filet them as best you can to remove the membrane, seeds, and veins before trying to make sauce or anything where you want to show off the flavor. The walls are very thin so this is a somewhat difficult process. I also don't really think the flavor of them is all that unique or interesting. They aren't floral like a habanero or deep and fruity like a poblano.

Cosentino's charcuterie shop Boccalone in the Ferry building. http://www.boccalone.com/

The one I was looking at is actually not mentioned in that thread of comments but may suffer from the same issues. I did just notice that the sensor actually detaches from the unit and can be placed a few feet away so the differential between the upper part of the chamber is likely moot.

Decided to change course and make a chamber from a full sized fridge. So I have a few questions: 1) I've seen people talk about humidifying and dehumidifying. Am I likely to need both in a fridge set up or just a humidifier? 2) Has anyone used a de\humidfier with the built in hygrostat? Are they any good or do I need to buy a proper one from Grainger? Would the humidifiers location at the bottom of the chamber cause it to register (and therefore control) a different humidity than would be found higher in the chamber? I've seen several humidifiers w\ hygrostat that are about the same price as the Grainger hygrostat (i.e. about $60) so this would seem an easy way to cut costs.

My water is pretty soft but I have never checked the PH. Does acid have a known effect on rice?

Del Dotto is a great wine cave tour. Also, Rubicon is Francis Coppola's place and it has both great wines and lots of interesting movie memorabilia. It's also one of the most beautiful estates in Napa. Both of these can be kind of touristy places but in May it shouldn't be that bad. If you were going during harvest (August-September), I would be more concerned about staying off the beaten path.

You can just put dried porcini's in a spice grinder but they are also available from The Spice House. http://www.thespicehouse.com/spices/mushrooms-porcini-extra-aa-whole-and-powder