dcarch

Kim, Wow! what a feast for Easter! Regarding my potato "cakes", I have a few molds that I use to compress them into square or round shapes. It takes a few seconds to make. dcarch

constant temperature and humidity control is the key. Rice cooker does not sound like it will work. dcarch

Thank you Plantes Vertes. The first dish - prime rib on horizontally thin sliced portabella mushrooms and white asparagus. Tarragon sauce. The second dish - bok choy, micro bell peppers and compressed multi-color potatoes. Rosemary sauce. In general, I don't normally decorate food, carve food or garnish with unrelated ingredients, unless I get silly and try to be funny (for instance, Halloween dishes). dcarch

Here is the variable density cold smoke generator being tested: And the finished generator: dcarch

Mm84321 – outrageous! with or without truffles. C. sapidus – Very nice Crab and spinach quiche. Patrickamory – Life would be very good if I can have some of those roasted chicken with clementines. Simon Lewinson – I say your first sous vide confit chicken thighs is a success. SobaAddict70 – Very nice presentation, all the dishes. Emily R – what a beautiful bowl of risotto! Dejah – Incredible orchestration of flavors on your short ribs dish. Ann_t – perfection in Halibut cooking. Keith – great presentation of your calamari. Jason Perlow – I can really sink my teeth into that smoked beef on whole wheat matzos. Weinoo - Matzo ball ramen, very creative... Sapidus - garlicky oven-roasted chicken is my favorite way of making chicken. Kim – I have been waiting for you to post some more of your wonderful cooking and I was not disappointed. FrogPrincesse – impressive photography! ------------------------------------------------------- Prime ribs was on sale for Easter. So I made sous vided prime ribs rare and medium rare. For fussy eaters. dcarch

Not exactly what you are looking for, but it is a DIY smoker. I have a very complicated smoker which I built. It cold/hot smokes from 32F to 180F, PID controlled, moisture controlled, convection smokes, a 4.5 cu. ft. smoker smokes indoors. Yes, I can cold smoke salmon, cheese etc. on a hot summer day. Yes, I can smoke big time in the winter indoors without driving people out of the house and smoke alarms going off. dcarch Part of the system:

One more thing, I forgot: Labeling the bags is easy, and can be done the following ways: 1. For labels to go inside the bags, you can use aluminum foil and a Sharpie/marker to label. 2. For labels to go inside the bags, you can use Sharpie/marker to write on wax paper. 3. Or my preferred way is to print out adhesive labels to go on the outside of the bags. Very convenient. You can color code the years, so at a glance, you can immediately find the very old packages. Similarly, you can color code the kinds of meat. dcarch

Just reuse the ones come with the fruits and veggies when you shop. Save the gasoline not having to return them to the stores. They are not dirty and you are going to cook the food anyway from the freezer. Or buy them on eBay or Amazon. dcarch The bag in the video appeared to be new and unused. Which means only one thing: You steal produce bags Now you have done it! Just for that, I am not going to show you how I can convert Diet Coke into 2005 Chateau Petrus in three easy steps. dcarch

Just reuse the ones come with the fruits and veggies when you shop. Save the gasoline not having to return them to the stores. They are not dirty and you are going to cook the food anyway from the freezer. Or buy them on eBay or Amazon. dcarch

Thanks, DDF. I have no idea how long this ancient piece of flanks steak has been in the freezer. dcarch

No problem at all. Here is one Tenderloin 8 months old in the freezer. dcarch

Many of you have food vacuum machines. I am sharing with you on how to vacuum seal food for freezing for free. While you can save money buying food on sale, but the freezer bags such as Foodsaver bags are not cheap. So you can re-use them by cutting them shorter and shorter, but the time in washing them, drying them and store them each time is a pain. The video is self-explanatory. Feel free to ask questions if there is anything not clear. I hope you will find this method useful. BTW, I have searched the Internet and have not found anything similar. If you have, please let me know so that I don’t take credit for having invented this. Thanks. Dcarch Video:

I make corned pork sometimes. After the corned beef is cooked, I use all the salty seasoned liquid from the corned beef to marinate pork and cook the pork in. dcarch

I am not sure. Bricks have no ability to reflect heat. All bricks do is to absorb heat from the fire by conduction, than re-radiate the heat (IR radiation). Perhaps a flat roofed oven will give better even baking? dcarch

Currently it is not possible to make an oven with good temperature control. Too many variables involved. I suppose a convection oven will be better. You can check oven temperature better by placing cups of water (oil, if you are checking high temperature) in various locations for about 30 minutes, then measure each cup. dcarch

White potatoes and yellow potatoes. dcarch

Chop the slab of corned beef fat into 1/2" cubes. First just render the fat out using low heat until you can't get anymore fat out and the fat cubes (cracklins) are nice and brown. I had done it on low fire and I had done it using the microwave, both worked. Drain off all the fat. Get a lot of paper towel and squeeze the remaining fat out. I used a cleaver to press out the fat. There will be a lot of remaining fat. Once the cracklins cool down, they are nice and crispy. You can snack on them or use a little coffee grinder to turn them into powder like I did. Don't worry about the fat. They have a lot less fat than butter if you use them instead of butter. dcarch

Corned beef comes with thick layers of fat. Insisted of throwing them out, I make them into crispy corned beef fat cracklins. Amazing taste! I say better than bacon. Corned beef with potatoes topped with corned beef cracklins powder. dcarch Sous vided corned beef is indeed fork tender.

"------I trimmed off all the external fat----" Save the fat. I will post something later using corned beef fat. dcarch

May I go off topic for Scottyboy? Speaking of Costa Rica. Interesting true story. Many years ago, I made an ecological trip to San Jose, Costa Rica. I stayed at the Villa Blanca Hotel up in the cloud forest. It was Christmas time, and there was not too many staff there because there were very few tourists there, only the manger who also was doing the cooking because the chef was out, as well as front desk duties, and a couple of kitchen helpers. I complained many times to the manger on how nice the hotel was but how lousy the food was in the hotel and in Costa Rica in general. I made many suggestions to him on how things could be improved. I also cooked a couple of meals with him in the kitchen. New Years Day, the last day of my stay, I asked the helper how much I should tip the manager. He told me there was no need to tip him. “ He is the owner, also the former Costa Rican president Rodrigo Carazo Odio” President Odio couldn’t get me a cab because of the Holiday. So he drove me to the airport. That one hour trip took two hours because it was going thru a cloud forest. We keep in touch by e, mail until a couple of years ago he passed away. dcarch

Asparagus peeler works great for carrots too. dcarch

I have been to Paris a few times, but your wonderful write up is going to get me to go there a few more times! Thank you so much. Fantastic photographs, BTW! dcarch

Interesting. No coffee served? dcarch

Pretty much typical boiled corned beef texture. Falling apart, but not tender. The fibers are very tough, not very edible unless thinly sliced against the grain. dcarch

Did an experiment with store bought corned beef. Using the same batch of pre-made corned beef with all fat completely removed. For corned beef: Sous vided corned beef (48 hours at 140 F):before, 29.98 oz, sous vided 19.73 oz, 34.19 % shrinkage (10.25 oz lost) Boiled corned beef :before, 29.84 oz, boiled, 14.42 oz, 51.68% shrinkage (15.42 oz lost) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sous vided corn beef, Very tender, pulled pork style, no need to against-grain thin cut. dcarch