gdenby

The cut of meat makes a large difference in the quality of the burger. Chuck seem to be the standard, but sirloin and brisket are both often mentioned as better. General consensus is that a burger needs fat, and many roasts are just too lean. I bought a very inexpensive hand grinder. My few attempts have made mush, not ground meat. I've had better results from mincing. I do have a fairly sharp knife, and can make fairly small shreds. Just takes some time.

Umm, I took that to mean that 10 hours at 130 F would simply not set the proteins like a minute at 170 F, for example. Obviously, if you have a dozen yolks blended together they won't set as fast as a single one. So, am I wrong? Can an egg cooked at 120 - 130 for a day give the same result as a few minutes at 150? See the "Culinary Biophysics: On the nature of the 6XC Egg," article by César Vega & Ruben Mercadé-Prieto. Google it, as I don't have the link available right now. Strictly speaking, the answer to my loosely framed question, based on the cited research, is no. As far as I can tell from the paper (much of which I only partially understand,) the experimental findings, based on their figure 4, are that an egg yolk held at 127 F for 166 days will have the same viscosity as the same yolk at 158 F for 1 minute. However, if I had asked "Is a yolk held for a day at 140 similar to one held at 150 for 15 minutes," the answer would be yes. It does appear that MC might need revision of position. It is demonstrated that within the 6X C range, the viscosity of a yolk is time dependent. However, as the paper notes: "Short cooking periods at low temperatures do not increase the viscosity (e.g., temperature <61 °C for <50 min)" and so at temperatures below 140, one should not expect a set yolk in any time frame usually mentioned for boiled eggs.

Often, when I open a cryovac bag of ribs or a picnic, there is a fairly nasty aroma. I'm told it is because of the nitrogen used to flush the bags before sealing. Whatever it is, if it didn't break down during cooking, but infused the meat, I'd consider them ruined.

I doubt very much the culture could be left on the counter for a week. Here's what I know about culture growth. The yeast is alive from freezing to 105F. The rate of growth approximately doubles every 10 degrees. I've repeatedly heard keeping the culture in the fridge is certainly safe for a week, and possibly 2. So, if a culture is fine for 7 days at 40F (average fridge temperature) it should be healthy for 3.5 days at 50, 1.75 at 60, and .88 or 21 hours at 70. My actual experience has matched this pretty well. After 10 days in the fridge, it often takes 2 feedings 6 hours apart to get a nice frothy mass going. After 18 hours sitting at room temperature, the culture appears dormant. Of course, it depends on how much flour is available to the yeast. You don't have to keep much starter in the fridge. Just a couple of ounces. When you want to bake with it, just add a few more hours to get a larger mass going. Yes, you can feed it different flours. I use mostly AP, as it makes a good starting point for various breads. I fed my culture whole wheat once, and every loaf for weeks had traces of that.

I, too, have had a similar problem with retrograded 'taters. It seems that the 2nd cooking takes as much or more time than a first cooking without retrograding. I wonder if it is not a matter of perception? That is, the altered starch really feels different on the tongue, and so needs to be cooked as long as would ordinarily turn the mash to glue. And, aren't you happy you bought the sous-vide rig? As you said, all that brown stuff, but it tasted so good!

I got a couple of varieties from Sourdough Int'l. I used the Ischia for awhile. It was a fairly weak strain compared, say, to the classic San Francisco. I'm not surprised you are having some trouble seeing it being activated. Comparatively, it produced smaller bubbles and smaller quantities of them. As I recall, I got the best results when I fed it every 8 hours at room temperature for at least a day. I do a 50-50 mix by weight of water and AP flour for feeding, and add as much total as I have starter.

There is a fair amount of conversation about ceramic cookers. The Kamado brand may come up less, because it is somewhat more expensive, and harder to get than other brands. Some years ago, I was searching for a better cooker for BBQ, and came across an home-made blower rig a fellow had put together to control a Kamado to within 1 degree. At the time, I thought that was insane. So now I have 2 ceramic rigs, but no automated blower. They seem to do pretty well without. And they have almost replaced my kitchen stove. Not quite as convenient, what with cleaning out the ash, but a much better cooking environment. I'd bet you will be cooking a lot more with your new appliance.

I have injected butts a couple of times, but found that most of what I put in seeped out before the meat got to the fire. Made for a quick marinade, but not much flavor was left inside. I had better luck with picnics, and even better for hams. They have larger muscle bundles, and the liquid seems to seep into the muscle fiber and stay there better. I prefer to do picnics over butts. There is a little less yield, but both the texture and flavor seem better to me. I find that if I add lots of sweet paprika to the rub, up to 1/4 the volume, it soaks up a lot of the smoke flavor, without adding much heat. And so, when the meat is mixed with the bark, there is a good flavor all thru.

Umm, I took that to mean that 10 hours at 130 F would simply not set the proteins like a minute at 170 F, for example. Obviously, if you have a dozen yolks blended together they won't set as fast as a single one. So, am I wrong? Can an egg cooked at 120 - 130 for a day give the same result as a few minutes at 150?

I don't have a steak knife "set." But what I have are pretty good, and fairly cheap. I started out with a fairly low cost manual knife sharpener, an Ozitech for about $15. Then hit the 2nd hand shops, looking for non-serrated blades (altho the sharpener works fine for serrated.) Bought about a dozen, and with a little work, I had some pretty nice blades. And 3 of them almost match! A couple of them actually have pretty good steel, and can be used for boning. They now get touched up with a significantly better sharpener. But I have contracted knife mania, and, um, well, I'd really like a set of Benchmade gold class steak knives. I got the kitchen set for my daughters' wedding gifts, and the knives are both astonishingly beautiful and astonishingly sharp.

There are a couple of things to check. Is there a statement about what the cookers highest temperature range is? Lower fire ceramics are useful for BBQ, but not as well suited for high temperature grilling. Its possible to make a ceramic cooker out of large flower pots, but at high temperatures, those will collapse. What is the internal set up? Is there a way to change the grill level with an accessory, or will you have to improvise with fire bricks, kiln shelves, etc? Assuming the vent system is tight, and will control air flow, this sort of cooker is very easy to master. If its anything like an Egg, it will have very good temperature control, and a full load of lump should easily last 24 hours. As mentioned above, the only real difficulty is cooling them down is they get really hot.

Guiness has a very different flavor profile than wheat beers. Guiness uses a very dark roast barley malt to achieve its dark quality. That malt is somewhat bitter from the roasting. Wheat beers are pretty much of an opposite. As the name implies, a fair portion of the grain bill is comprised of wheat. The result is a rather sweet beer, often with a light body. I haven't had any of the German wheat beers that were unpleasant, so you could use any of those. As mentioned elsewhere in the thread, many wheat beers have other flavors mixed in. "Radlers" and "Shandys" may have lemonade, or ginger, etc. that might make for an odd M&C. There are many American craft wheat beers. I'd taste any of those first, as many American craft brews have a stronger hop spicey/citrus flavor than the Germans.

I've been using an Edge Pro for maybe 2 years now, and am very pleased with it. Start with whatever grit stone is appropriate for the condition of the blade edge. The recommended method is to do "X" number of passes one one side, then the same on the other. Then do 1/2 X, then 1/4 X, etc, until down to 1 pass. Repeat with ever finer grits to whatever level of polish you like. At that point, just about every burr has fallen off. I check with a magnifying visor. If need be, I strop, but usually just a light pass over a ceramic hone removes the last traces of a burr. I've used this method on all sorts of steel, although I don't know if anything I've worked on was similar to Globals. As practice, I picked up some completely ruined blades at second hand shops for as little as 10 cents apiece. Some required lots of work, and a few rewarded the effort. I could get all of them to easily slice paper, but some steels were so soft that just a few cuts thru something as soft as a pork loin rolled them over. I did find a few, tho' that had surprisingly good steel, and have been added to my better knives. I'm sure you will get those Globals in fine shape.

Tried them yesterday. The bits of stem, and the long thin threadlike "spike" at the other end had become quite stringy, and needed to be nipped off. The pods remained moderately crunchy. They were less peppery, and seemed sweeter, which might just have been the flavor that remained after the heat lessened. Worked well in place of pepperoncini as part of a stuffed fattie.

Let me toss in another idea. The MC wall calender. A dozen images worth pinning to the wall. Don't quite know what they might add as daily subtexts. Maybe, "on this day in 1984, "On Food and Cooking" was released to the public", or "on this day, the first U.S. patent for the pressure cooker was released." Or perhaps a tip from the sidebar for each day. Or they could toss in stuff like "today is national hot dog day, " and add their own "today is national tapioca maltodextrin day."

I'm uncertain as to what differences there are between air drying and freeze drying, although I think freeze drying retains more flavors. And, I recall some of the MC recipes do specify freeze dried powders. However, if you want to dry your porcinis, and you have an auto and a sunny day, you have a dehydrator. I regularly dry herbs tossed in a brown bag on the dash of my car on sunny days. Mushrooms might be a bit harder. Maybe place some in foil trays, in case they weep a lot. Then reduce the dried 'shrooms to powder however you can. I'm going to try the pulled mushroom recipe tomorrow. It will be interesting to see if at the end the bag holds a mix of weakly infused oil, and a mushroom broth from rendered water.

Taste your roots first. I had the same situation last year with overwintered Italian flat leaf. Mine were both too woody and to bitter to be of any use. They certainly were nothing like the parsley root from the market. I'm growing parsley this year that is specifically a root veg. The leaves are different than any other parsley I have grown. I'm guessing there is a lot of species variation.

I'm not very familiar with CI. Can you clarify. Is the bottom of the pan, towards the burner, ridged? Or, is the cooking surface in the pan ridged? That is, anything in the pan would get grill marks from the ridges.

Ohh, and serve chilled. (see above)

Sugar snap puree soup. I made some just the other day. There are quite a few recipes available. I went with one of the simplest I found, but upon tasting added some parmesan, which was an ingredient from a "Splendid Table" recipe. I added just a half Tbl. of sugar, as per the recipe. The results were quite sweet, and I think the sugar could have been omitted. I only have an immersion blender, and a China cap, so the results were not quite as smooth as I might have liked. Also, a little watery. I used 3 cups fluids (broth, half-n-half) to 1+ pounds of peas. I think a half C less, or maybe a reduction simmer would be good.

I've been looking at various filter bags and sieves, centrifuges not being in my budget. It looks like the results from the filter bag are pretty good. Did it take "forever" for the basil oil to drain thru?

Thanks for the link. It appears that the radish pods should be easy to make into a cold pickle. Radish pods are great. A texture like snap peas, and a heat close to pepperoncini. There is a variety called "rat-tail" available from Seed Savers. They are only for pods, and produce no edible roots. I grew them for several years. They were extremely prolific, pretty much weeds. It didn't occur to me until just now that radish pods might make a good substitute for sport peppers on 'dogs.

Hello, all, Was just out in the garden, and see that the radishes I've let go to seed for fall planting have produced an immense number of seed pods. They make great peppery additions to salads, but I have way more than I can use. Has anyone made cold pickled radish pods? I'm supposing at least I want to blanch them, and dump them into the pickling solution. I'm not trying to can them, just trying to hold them for a few weeks to serve with hot dogs.

Again, spatter shields. For really intense spattering while searing and frying, I put 2 over the pan/pot. I rarely fried anything before using them. They do not give 100% containment, but it makes the situation tolerable for me. As for smoke, I would think that your HEPA filter systems would work. Some years ago, a neighbor had an interior wood stove whose chimney vented about 15 feet from my daughter's bedroom, and 20 feet from our kitchen. 2 Honeywells sucked up enough of the copious smoke to make the situation bearable.

From north central Indiana: Asparagus and rhubarb starting to wane. Buckets of snap peas available. Some kohlrabi, new potatoes and onions. Saw a basket of small cukes. Still lots of plant starts.