dcarch

"-----Gung Hai Fat Choy, Everyone!----" Yes, good luck to all! Year Of The Horse apparently not too good for the Broncos. :-) I was responsible for a few items for a Chinese New Year Super Bowl afternoon. For dinner I understand a whole fish, head to tail is a must have. So I got a live tilapia from a Korean store, and made a poached fish dish. It is also traditional to have pot stickers for New Year. So I made pan fried beef pot stickers. Since it is the year of the Horse (Broncos?), I made smoked pineapple pork spareribs. What?! Pork? Horse? Oh, relax. I used a recipe from the Galloping Gourmet. LOL! dcarch

Some one is eating them. I find them in the (NYC) stores all the time. dcarch

You see this everywhere if you Google, "Americans to Eat 1.25 Billion Chicken Wings for Super Bowl XLVIII" So that works out to be 337 wings per person, new borne babies included? May be my abacus needs new batteries. dcarch

I visited a friend who worked for a hospital. I passed thru the autopsy room and medical workers were eating their lunch right next to stinky open up corpses. There is a term called " Olfactory Fatigue". After a little while your sense of smell will get used to odors. People who work in cheese shops and perfume shops know. However, there are three ways you can deal with odor: 1. Neutralize it - there are not too many ways to accomplish this. 2. Mask it - as have suggested, use a stronger scent to cover it up. 3. Remove it - A good exhaust system, or an indoor activated charcoal air filter are both effective. dcarch

I guess this may be a liability/lawyer thing in case a little kid gets choked. . A sign above cured olives, something like this: "Olives have pits, for adults only" dcarch

Would you siphon much like gas from a car's gas tank via hose ?You don't need to use your mouth. Similar to the video, but you don't need to submerge the entire length into liquid. Use a long enough tube, submerge most of the tube, then use your thumb to close off the dry end and lower the dry end to the other container. This way you can siphon boiling liquid, any liqid or gasoline. dcarch

If you get a length of nylon tube, you can siphon stock from the bottom up. You can get 100% fat free stock. dcarch

An 80 Qt pot will hold 150 lbs of contain. +20 lbs of the weight of the pot. Which comes to about 170 lbs to 180 lbs on the burner. dcarch You need this :-) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjFu7x8NpCg&list=PLs-EFwMFjlXLu_QSLIlO-fBb3QmKJ06Ly

All 50 lbs at once? With water, the pot can weigh 150 lbs. Can your stove support that? dcarch

Lets say you are setting the temperature at 225 F, and the oven is capable of 16000 BTU/hr. output It may not make perceivable difference in time for the temperature in the oven to reach 225 F whether you have one or two or three pieces of meat inside. dcarch

What kind of oven do you have? Convection takes a lot shorter. dcarch

Seasoning, if done correctly, is somewhat similar to tempering steel after hardening, it can relief some internal stress, therefore minimizes cracking. dcarch

"---I'm using it tomorrow night for a steak so here is hoping it doesn't crack." I have cooked many steaks, none of them cracked. :-) Don't forget to season it yourself. Factor seasoning may not be very good. dcarch

I wonder why they are called crackers. :-) I always turn the box and eat cracker and potato chips upside down. This way you finish the broken ones first. dcarch

Very interesting! I grind all kinds of stuff, including sticky stuff, oily stuff, smelly stuff, And here I have been using just hot water with a few drops of dishwasher detergent, run the grinder then rinse and dry. dcarch

When I make ramen noodles, I use real stock, not the flavor package that comes with the noodle, but I save the flavor packages to use when I don't have stock for a recipe. Those packages taste better than canned stock. dcarch

I will be doing a sous vided BBback rib this weekend. Sous vided, then smoked, than broiled. I can do this all indoors because my smoker is an indoor smoker, and my broiler has a rotisserie. I don't see anything wrong with Liquid Smoke in your case. I don't see using it will stink up the house. dcarch

I was making coconut ice cream using fresh coconuts. I decided I shouldn't waste the shell. So I made the shell into ladles. dcarch

If you are not interested in the skin and fat: Pork belly - $3.90 a lb Pork shoulder - $0.89 a lb. dcarch :-)

Now I know you have been deceiving us. :-) Looking at that wonderfulness piece of perfect crispy pork, you got to have done this a hundred times before. dcarch

And you can use a 1/2" variable speed drill set at low speed and high torque setting to drive a rotisserie. Very simple to do. dcarch

If you have a table saw or band saw, Wrap the large bones in plastic and freeze. Cut them open for marrow. Not much mess. dcarch

I never seasoned my cast iron cookware. If you cook with cast iron, seasoning will develop all by itself, unavoidable. I also scrub with steel wool, soap, detergent, dishwasher, ----- I can't get rib of seasoning on cast iron. dcarch

"---Pity what you got appears to have no skin---" I think I see skin tucked under. I am not sure I agree with many. Perfect pork belly is not easy. There is the meat, fat and skin. Each requires drastically way of cooking. So if you fail to end up with a "restaurant ready" dish, don't blame yourself, just try again. Sometimes you succeed in achieving the most incredible dish, then you can fail the next time using the identical method. It all depends on your preference, what kind of texture you would like to end up with, do you like crispy skin? Do you eat fat? How chewy you want the meat to be? Of course, you can always make bacon. dcarch I got lucky this time:

Thanks for the tips Simon. I'm a perfectionist, so at 171F 12 hours MOST of the meat is meltingly tender. What I'm talking about is the meat at the bottom part. Usually there is 3 or 4 layers of meat, and I'm talking about the very bottom layer that is dark colored. That's the part that is dry and stringy. Have you had issues with this bottom part? Based on the fact that (in my limited experience) I have never heard about this, and had never encountered the same situation in my pork belly cooking, I think it might not have anything to do with your cooking. It is possible that when the meat was packaged, it got dried out. Once the meat is dried out like jerky, it is not easy to make tender again. dcarch