BadRabbit

Since you pulled up this old thread, I wonder how Dave's batch came out after aging. I have been eyeing this recipe for a while.

The popularity of the Food Network would seem to indicate yes.

I ended up sticking with my original plan to no ill effects. I didn't have time to wait for it to thaw in the fridge so that wasn't really an option. I keep my fridge at 34F and something the size of a pork shoulder takes a couple of days to thaw. I wasn't really worried about the outside getting too hot. The brine came to <40F in less than an hour and I kept it stirred. It took several hours to exceed 40F. I also figure that a brine (even one over 40F) is not a very good environment for bacterial growth anyway. Edited for accuracy

I'm going to be making some pancetta over the next few weeks and have a few questions. My belly is Ossabaw (no skin) and is thus a little thin for regular bacon so I thought Pancetta might be a good alternative. The belly is no more than 1.5" at its thickest point and is mostly thinner than that (the entire piece is about 8" x 8" x 1.25"). I imagine that the actual rolling will be easier with a thinner belly but I'm afraid it will leave more places for air to be. Is this a time to break out the meat glue? I thought about curing it flat but I think it may dry out too quickly given its thinness. Thoughts?

I've got a frozen pork shoulder that I need to brine. Is there any reason not to defrost it in the brine? My thought is I can speed up the defrosting process by putting the shoulder in room temp brine. This should fairly quickly bring the brine down below 40F. I was then going to leave it on the counter until the brine rises above 40F at which point I'll put it all in the fridge. All that should still be within safe conditions, correct? I'll probably not brine much longer than usual as I'd rather err on the side of "not salty enough" and I will allow it to rest out of the brine for 8 hours afterwards to equalize levels. Thoughts?

Actually I do have some sympathy with that point of view. Very few of us would use our boutique salts in any situation that calls for the salt to be dissolved. My "nice" salts are only used to finish a dish. If I want to season, I use cheap salt. Furthermore, some of the "contaminants" in boutique salts might be volatile - such as truffle salt or smoked salt. Dissolve it into water at 15C and you probably won't taste the truffle. But "activate" the salt by throwing it on some hot food and the truffle aroma will be released. I certainly believe that finishing salts can make a difference in the experience of food even it it's just from texture and the rate it dissolves in your mouth. It's also not inconceivable to me that you could perceive some of the minerals in these salts when used in that type of application. I just think that anyone who uses Pink Himalayan to salt their chicken stock is fooling themselves and is essentially throwing money away.

The iodine in salt is nowhere near as volatile as chlorine. It's intentionally in a form that isn't very volatile. They are not comparable based strictly on concentration as you point out with bromine. I was saying that iodine in its form in salt is not perceptible at the concentrations listed. Even if they were equivalently volatile and perceptible to the human sense of smell, the comparison doesn't work since those ppm measurements are in different mediums (water vs NaCl) and once salt is added to liquid it would be in much smaller concentrations than 3ppm unless you are making a sauce with > 5% salt (yuk). To further separate those things, you are not actually smelling the chlorine at that concentration. That is the concentration in water. You are smelling at the concentration of chlorine to air where the chlorine have been volatalized and is sitting in a somewhat dense cloud on top of the water. Edited for clarity

I'm certainly don't agree with that. I just picked up a salt shaker full of iodized and I can't smell anything much less something that is offputting. Table salt contains 40 to 60 ppm of iodine and the rest is almost pure NaCl. There is no way that the tiny bit of iodine is perceptible in taste or smell. Edited to add: I vitually never use iodized salt except for baking but it's because I learned to salt using my hand and kosher salt and I have no feel for iodized. I am certainly not convinced that there is a difference in flavor.

That would be a good test too but I don't think the salt in solution is as worthless a test as other have claimed. 95% of cooking applications are going to dissolve the salt. If you can't tell the difference in a pure glass of water, you certainly won't be able to tell the difference in a braise or even in a chicken breast that has been salted well ahead of time. The exceptions would probably be very strong smelling salts like the aforementioned black salt or smoked salts as our sense of smell is so strongly tied to taste. As for anecdotes of cooks being able to tell the difference in seasoned dishes, that sounds to me like a case of biases and egos. If one guy says he can tell the difference (and this could easily be caused by bias), there is no way the other guys on the line are going to say they don't perceive a difference. I've run kitchens and I've seen guys claim they can tell the difference in egg that has an expiration less than a week different from another. I'm not sure one guy's opinion is any more helpful in that situation than 10.

McGee has a nice dig or two at Bittman in that article. I like that. You mean Bitterman. He's the worse thing that ever happened to Mark Bittman.

I grill my wings. I usually coat them in oil and salt and pepper them. After grilling, I toss them in a slightly sweet Asian-style sauce of fish sauce, ginger, garlic, ponzu, kecap manis, brown sugar and bird chiles with a squeeze of lime and spinkle of fresh cilantro at the end. If I'm out of kecap manis, I use hoisin which comes out a little different but still delicious. I also often mix the sauce above with my Alabama red BBQ sauce and sriracha to mix things up. Edited to add: I also occasionally make wings with just Alabama white BBQ sauce.

Most of the ones I grew last year were true heirlooms (Brandywines and Flamme) but there was a Green Zebra as well.

Homegoods (the household item sister store to TJ Maxx) also has a lot of them.

I started about 16 tomato plants inside but my garden only has room for 7-8 so I planned on giving some away (I had no losses this year). I planted Green Zebra, Black Cherry, Flamme, Blondkopfchen,Dagma's Perfection, and Kellogg's Breakfast. Yesterday I went to start preparing my garden and to put down new soil only to find that my garden is covered in volunteer tomato plants from last year. There must be 20 of them. Now, I don't know whether to dig those up and try to give them away (I have no idea which strains they are as I grew 7-8 varieties last year) or carefully weed out the smaller ones and just let the hardy ones grow (they are bigger than mine I grew inside). My concern is that they'll all turn out to be from one strain and I won't get the variety of tomatoes I want.

Well my board must have been magic since I have now identified it and it had maple cutting surfaces as identified above. It was a board made by Snow River. I contacted them and sent a couple of pictures and they confirmed that it was one of their boards.

I tried the red curry paste recipe this weekend and the chicken curry that it goes in and was not all that impressed. I really think that the typical paste I can buy at any grocery store is more well rounded and tasty. All the fresh ingredients were of excellent quality so I'm guessing the shrimp paste was the issue (unless the recipe is just not good). The Asian food store I went to only had one type of shrimp paste and the description sounded like what the book described. The side of the jar said 77% fermented shrimp, salt. It was kind of grey which is also how the book described it but the Thai words were different than what was listed in the book. Any suggestions on a brand of shrimp paste I can order online?

I guess I had a freaking magic board then. now I wish it hadn't been thrownaway. The cutting surface was wood regardless of your declarations from authority. Was the fact that it lasted that long unusual? Perhaps, but it still happened.

It definitely said dishwasher safe on it. Here's a picture: Anyway, I think I have solved the mystery. I didn't actually see it once it was broken and my wife had thrown it away before I got home. Upon some pushing for some detail, my wife said that there were actually three layers. I'm thinking that maybe there was a middle layer of composite that had wooden veneers on either side as the cutting surfaces. I have no idea why I never noticed that before (maybe it wasn't obvious until it was split in half). That would seem to be what these Snow River boards are. These are composite with a maple overlay that serves as the cutting service. http://columbianhp.com/products/snow-river/cutting-boards/wood-pro-cutting-surface.html

Whoa, whoa, whoa... Who do you think funds most studies on things related to consumer goods? Not a lot of people are sitting out there conducting studies on foods & materials for the heck of it.... it is usually people with a profit motive and talk about "self selecting"... corporations have the most to gain from self selective research. I've was an executive at a consumer product company that sponsored lots of research... and have seen the self selection first hand. Seeing a bunch of "positive / no real risk" studies, funded by corporations with very little research done by organizations not tied said corporations doesn't give me the warm fuzzies... say for example you have dozens of Tobacco industry sponsored studies suggest there is no proof of the link between smoking & lung cancer.. but a single government sponsored study suggests otherwise... I am am going to er on not giving the corporations the benefit of the doubt... just sayin' Profit motive and commerce are the reasons you live in a house and have a computer instead of residing in a mud hut. I would suggest not pretending like they are forces of evil. Also, the government that you seem to trust and think is both good and competent has killed, extorted, stolen and lied more than all the corporations in the world combined but don't let that get in the way of the string of logical fallacies in your post. Any chance you could back up some of your "claims" with actual facts/evidences beyond just repeating Foxnews propaganda. It's obvious that you have very little clue how research in industry and academia(government funded) is interwined and that with industry research alone we wouldn't be as advanced in many areas, e.g. IT, biotech etc. etc. And just to look into the food area and to see how many recalls (often enforced by government and against the interest/will of the commercial companies who would like to hide any problems with their products) we see every month/week from commercial companies shows that it is very naive to blindly trust commerce (which also means you shouldn't trust blindly government but the world is not only black and white) I guarantee you've watched Foxnews more than I have as I'm not sure it's ever even been on my TV. Though not exactly the situation I was referring to earlier, here is a meta-analysis on saturated fats relation to CDV where the determination was that the government agencies and advisory boards were found to be making claims and suggesting alteration of behavior that was not supported by the scientific literature. This was published in Nutrition. http://xa.yimg.com/kq/groups/14947167/286295948/name/NUTRITION%20sat%20fat.pdf There are other analyses that back up my statement about studies and the tendencies for outlier studies to get published though I don't have time to track them down now. Regardless, the study above makes the point that government agencies often make suggestions that don't reflect the real dangers (or lack thereof) involved. BTW, "follow the money" is a fallacy. If the studies showing no effect are faulty, they should be attacked on their methodology or blinding or some other part of the process. Saying "they benefit from no effect therefore their studies are invalid" is ad hom. Not to mention the fact that companies wouldn't be served long term by producing dangerous materials. Eventually the truth comes out and they lose more than they made in the first place.

I am pretty sure I have some pictures of it in an step by step tutorial I did for a friend on my computer at home. I will try to post them tonight after I get home. As an additional note: The process to make the thing could not have been some cutting edge technology or an expensive manufacturing process because I'm almost positive it was less than $40.

I'm nearly 100% sure that epoxy resin was not used in the making of this board. For one thing, I can't imagine that it would be considered food safe if it was since every epoxy I can think of is vulnerable to acid or heat or both. In addition, as someone with 35+ years of experience with guns and knives and the manufacturing of such I can tell you that it did not look or feel like wood from a stock.

I wasn't aware that was even a thing one could buy.

The wood was fairly light colored and very dense feeling. There was no finish on it but it was very smooth feeling. The cutting surface looked to be flat-sawn not end grain. I was guessing that the wood had been compressed and heat treated to prevent warping. Mine was as flat on the day it split as it was the day I got it. Edited to add: I've seen a few boards now that are wood composite (Boos even has some) but I'm concerned that they might be tough on a knife. http://www.amazon.com/John-Boos-Chef-Lite-Essential-Cutting/dp/B0028OZA7O

I'm looking for a decent quality wood cutting board that is dishwasher safe as mine cracked after 8-9 years of service. Unfortunately, the markings showing the company that made it have long since worn away or I would buy another just like it. I don't need any suggestions for non-dishwasherables, I've got a couple of good quality hand washable Boos boards but have found that I nearly always prefer using the one that I can just throw in the dishwasher and be assured it is sanitized. The Boos boards are outstandingly beautiful on the counter though.

Does that include Thailand, though? I've been wanting to break into Thai cuisine a bit, and bought Thompson to that end, but found him too intimidating, so Thai Food has basically sat on my shelf unused for almost a year. Something to bridge my current skill level with Thai cooking and Thompson's book would be useful to me. It definitely includes Thailand. I've just briefly scanned the book at this point but there were multiple Thai recipes like Chiang Mai Curry and Khao Neeo Mamuang.