dcarch

That is basically the "Black Body Radiation" theory. What I don't understand (yet) is how the screen can reflect the IR energy, perhaps the screen's perforation size is such that the wave length of the IR ray cannot penetrate, just like the screened door of a microwave oven can prevent leaking of microwave energy. dcarch

I don't think those can help much in any IR cookers. However, a remote read non-contact IR thermometer ($30.00 to $3,000) can give you good readings of the walls of the cooker and the surface temperature of the food being cooked. dcarch

Hey now...don't be talking about the new super-auto espresso machine I'm lusting after... I bet the Char Broil thingy can make wonderful coffee too. dcarch

"-----How good is the temp control ?---" With IR heating, temperature control is kind of strange. As I said, you can cook and char food in freezing temperature. What do you measure? It also depends on the color of the food being cooked. The darker the color, the more IR energy it will absorb. IR cannot heat up a 100% reflective mirror, no matter how strong. The only way to control with IR cooking is by using a probe temperature sensor to monitor food interior temperature. dcarch

It is shaped like a turkey fryer. I think originally it was marketed as an oil-less turkey fryer. dcarch

For instance, 1. if you boil food in water, the heat is applied completely by conduction. 2. if you bake food in an oven, most of the heat is by conduction from the food making direct contact with hot air. 3. if you are at an outdoor bonfire, you can still be burnt even the air temperature is - 60, really freezing cold, because you are being roasted by IR radiation. 4. If you broil food, that is mostly IR cooking. Microwave heat is strange, it is neither conduction nor radiation. The food cooks itself. dcarch

Propane? My mistake. The picture looks like a power cord connection. If it is propane, it would be very dangerous to fool around with the flame. An ignitor or a pilot light will need to be fool proof. dcarch

Good ideas! A small wok will be a perfect cover. A smoke generator to pipe in smoke will make this an amazing appliance. Also, A PID digital temperature controller ($20.00) will give complete precise temperature to do low & Slow cooking. dcarch

I don't have one, so I am guessing. Based on the Big Easy design, It appears to me that the cooking (heating) of the food is mostly by infrared baking. Because of the circular shape of the heating space, the baking can be very even, unlike in a regular over, which heats mostly by convection, you have to keep turning the food upside down to help even cooking. dcarch

I have said you don't need expensive equipment, a lot of space or a lot of time to take very good food photos, but there are some easy things you can do to go beyond just "very good". You have noticed that professionals use lens shade for their cameras, that is because even multi-coated lenses have internal reflections which can cause lost of contrast and saturation of color, or lens glare. You can buy your lens a lens shade or you can make one with an empty medicine bottle. Cheap and easy. To determine the exact shape to cut, just mount the bottle on the lens and mark the inside of the bottle with a marker while looking thru the view finder. dcarch

Keith, it did have a bone, but I have a custom made press to press down the meat around the bone for the meat to make good contact with the hot pan. I sometimes use the grill also, actually that is my preferred way. dcarch

"----What that means is that there's practically not any container that's too big, just one that's too poorly insulated. ---" That's the whole story there. I have a smoker that was converted from a refrigerator, I use a 300 W halogen light bulb as the heat source for a 4.5 cubic feet interior. The light bulb works only about 1/4 of the time to maintain temperature because the refrigerator is so well insulated. dcarch

"----putting a steak in a 250 degree oven and a 500 degree oven will be significant, as will be the target internal temp for removing the steak." ???????? Have you read the OP's post? If the steak is seared on both sides already, why would you put the steak in a 500F oven? The OP wants to have a steak that's evenly cooked! not making beef jerky. I just don't understand the logic of making the temperature higher to get the internal temperature higher quicker, what if you encounter the famous "stall" for larger pieces of meat? dcarch

If you stack two identical containers one inside another, you will have an insulated container. The way most containers are made, there will be an air space between the two. You can heat up a lot of water with 1000 watts using an insulated container. dcarch

BTW Keith, Amazing post you did. It never occur to me that thin steak is a very good option. Tonight I went to Shoprite (supermarket here in NYC). Porterhouse was $4.99 a lb regular is $10.99 a lb. But the steak was like only 1/2" thick which I normally don't buy. I bought two, and did the same as your way, sous vided at 128F, seared on 575F cast iron pan. Amazing!. Back to OP's steak concerns, it is MHO that in any cooking, not just for steaks: The oven temperature should not be changed to control timing of internal temperature. External temperature is very specific for a given recipe to develop the proper caramelization, crust crispiness, browning of specific rubs, etc. In any case, within reasonable range of changes to external temperature, say +-20 degrees F, based on the laws of physics, the variation to timing will be insignificant. Given time, internal temperature will reach to desired temperature no matter what. Don't risk over cooking your meat. That's the absolute disaster in making steak. dcarch

Sigma, "I don't know if you are babbling to hide that you don't know what you are talking about, or whether you still believe that the time it takes a steak to get to temperature is not affected by the temperature of the oven so long as you are above 100 C. " ​I admire your great knowledge in scientific matters, as well as your sophisticated sense of humor. dcarch

That is a perfectly scientific way to make great steak. Just one small thing to be aware of, for thin steaks, the placing of the thermometer probe full time in the meat can effect the reading due to the higher conductivity of the metal shaft of the probe. Try this quick experiment: Wrap some paper towel around the probe's shaft just above the tip, and pour some hot water over the paper. You will see the tip will be reading a temperature rise from the paper towel even the measuring tip sensor is not in the hot paper towel. Also, butter has a very low smoking point. You may want to try clarified butter instead. dcarch

That's not really true, is it? Won't hotter air dry the outside layers faster allowing them to heat to a higher temperature which will increase the speed at which the heat penetrates the center? In other words, the boiling point of water is only limiting when the exterior surface is comprised mainly of water. The heat of the oven changes that variable. Also, the differential between surface and interior temp determines the rise in core temperature after cooking, so the different temperatures in an oven do have a significant impact on the calculus of cooking. The outside layer may get dried out, then there is the next layer, the next layer, the next layer ------- each layer has water, meat is about 75% water. Until all the water is boiled away, no temperature can get higher than 212F (normal atmospheric pressure). You may be able to find on Youtube many videos showing you can boil water on fire, using pots make of paper. The water will not allow the paper to get hotter than 212F. "The heat of the oven changes that variable." Conductivity is a constant, not a variable. Nothing can change thermal conductivity of a sustance. dcarch Uh, I never said that conductivity is a variable, I said that the temperature and thickness of the outer crust is dependent on oven temperature, a fact which none of your water boiling paper refutes, or even contemplates. The Point is that meat cooks as a result of conductivity, and the time to temperature of the center of the meat depends on the conductivity, the thickness and the exterior temperature, the last of which is determined, in large part, by the heat of the cooking medium. The fact that water cannot get hotter than 100 C is a limiting factor to how fast the center will cook, but it does not follow that the heat of the air inside an oven has no effect on cooking time once it is above 100 C. I am absolutely not sure why you need to get to that degree of details in the thermodynamics for the purpose of general understanding of major factors effecting cooking. I said "A little science", water boiling point, and conductivity are all you need to be aware of when you cook to control quality of the end result. Otherwise you will need to know the boiling point of fat, conductivity of bones, relative humidity of air, velocity of convection in the appliance, surface infrared radiation conditions, insulating quality of the crust, capillary action of the meat's grain structure ----------------------------------------------!!!! Of course the heat in an oven effect cooking, it burns the outside quicker, but water's boiling point and conductivity constant prevents the heat from getting to the center quicker. However, a 2,000 F furnace will turn your steak to vapor in a very short time. dcarch

There has to be at least a million. dcarch

That's not really true, is it? Won't hotter air dry the outside layers faster allowing them to heat to a higher temperature which will increase the speed at which the heat penetrates the center? In other words, the boiling point of water is only limiting when the exterior surface is comprised mainly of water. The heat of the oven changes that variable. Also, the differential between surface and interior temp determines the rise in core temperature after cooking, so the different temperatures in an oven do have a significant impact on the calculus of cooking. The outside layer may get dried out, then there is the next layer, the next layer, the next layer ------- each layer has water, meat is about 75% water. Until all the water is boiled away, no temperature can get higher than 212F (normal atmospheric pressure). You may be able to find on Youtube many videos showing you can boil water on fire, using pots make of paper. The water will not allow the paper to get hotter than 212F. "The heat of the oven changes that variable." Conductivity is a constant, not a variable. Nothing can change thermal conductivity of a sustance. dcarch

There is fat, and there is oil. In addition to taste, it's about mouth feel. Oil can't give the same mouth feel. Ice cream = fat Puff pastry = fat Bacon = fat Leaf lard is priced because it lacks flavor dcarch

1. Get a good probe digital thermometer. Put it in boiling water and time how long it takes to get to 212 degrees F. then put it in ice water and time how long it takes to get to 32 degrees F. Don't worry too much if it is off by one or two degrees. This test will give you an idea how long it takes for your thermometer to read the correct temperature. The faster the time the better it is. 2. You can take the steak out to measure, but not necessary. 3. Insert the probe into the center of the thickest part of the steak (the coldest spot), and the reading is the temperature you are looking for. 4. You may want to check temperature in a few areas just to be sure if you have gotten the coldest spot. Your oven temperature setting should be based on what the recipe calls for, not what the thermometer tells you. If the temperature is still low, let the steak stay there longer. ---------------------------- A little science here: not required for making good tasting steaks: Once the oven temperature setting is above 212F, The steak interior does not get hotter faster even you set the temperature hotter. The boiling point of water in the steak will keep the temperature at 212F, and it cannot get any hotter. The timing of how fast the inside gets hotter is mostly determined by the thermal conductivity of the meat, that is a constant which you cannot change. Have fun, and let us know how it turns out. dcarch dcarch

You know when you are cooking something you can smell it in the whole house? Because air molecules can move around by "Brownian Motion" and natural convection current due to temperature differential and even out eventually. Have you ever burnt something and the whole house is filled with smoke? If your kitchen is connected to other rooms with good circulation, you are probably OK. Again, a CO detector is good to have. dcarch

As I remember, CB 135F, B 131F. Yes, I have a special smoker, which has an ultrasonic humidifier. I can smoke at low temperature for a long long time without having the meat turn to jerky. dcarch

You often hear people say, "I made brisket, and it was falling apart tender". To me falling apart is not really tender, you still have to slice thin across grain to make it chewable. Sous vide, really low and really slow, can in fact make the meat fiber tender, and you don't have to slice across the grain to make it chewable. I did a side by side test. Sous vided corned beef had 5% less shrinkage, which means juicier and more tender meat, and it also means the meat is 5% cheaper. dcarch