larryroohr

100 sq ft? Think it's 10x20 including appliances and counter space, pretty small. The co2 setup is in the basement. The food processor, kitchen aide, dlx, souse vide, and the rest of the arsenal are in an armoire in the spare bed room edit: Just measured it and I'm aghast, it's 9x11.5. I compensate with my big tv and big pick-em-up truck.

I also drink a lot of carbonated water in the summer and got tired of lugging the 2 liter bottles around. I bought a soda stream and was happy with it until it came time to refill the co2. Their bottles have a proprietary fitting so you can't just have them refilled, and their refill's are pretty expensive, that's obviously where they plan on making their money. What I ended up doing is buying a co2 tank on ebay (think it's 20 gallons) which is dirt cheap to fill and lasts forever, and got fittings from a brewing store. Now I carbonate a couple 2 liter bottles at a time. It's way less expensive, you get larger bottles of carbonated water, and don't have to worry about running out of co2 and waiting a couple days for the new bottles to get shipped to you. The drawback is you don't have a kitchen counter size device anymore. Larry

Anyone else not care for the garlic and onion powder in the fried chicken coating? I made the chicken a few months ago and was so disappointed I assumed I screwed something up (still a large possibility). Now I never use either of these items so I had to go buy them for the recipe, and bought the most expensive brand at the supermarket (whatever that's worth). The reason this just came up for me is I'm reading Ruhlman's 'Twenty' and he includes his rosemary brine version of this recipe, stating it came from when he was writing Ad Hoc with Keller, but he omit's the garlic and onion powder in the coating. Made me go hmm... Anyway, I'm wondering if anyone else had this experience given all the raving over this chicken. Larry

Thought others here might enjoy this too. Love the charts. http://www.nature.com/srep/2011/111215/srep00196/fig_tab/srep00196_F1.html NPR story: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2011/12/21/144021294/what-a-global-flavor-map-can-tell-us-about-how-we-pair-foods Larry

Well I found a solution for waste oil that probably isn't for everybody, I'm going to build a waste oil heater for my garage/shop. I spend a lot of time out there on weekends and the propane and kerosene heat is getting expensive and it isn't even winter yet. plus I do my own oil changes on my and my two daughters cars. Here are plans for one in case there are any other egullet people handy with this sort of thing that might be interested. This is killing two birds with one stone. I believe you can buy commercially made waste oil heaters as well. http://www.motherearthnews.com/Do-It-Yourself/1978-09-01/Mothers-Waste-Oil-Heater.aspx This could be bad for the waist line. Costco has 5 gallon buckets of peanut oil for 35$, thats half the supermarket price I just paid. Larry

Thanks Bruce, I already do that with my big steel keg and hibachi. With the amount of oil I normally cook with that's been fine, but if I start deep frying thats a big increase in volume. Short of buying a diesel vehicle I can't think of a good disposal method. The idea of just tossing it seems a shame. Other questions: Re-use. I've read that once heated once oil's smoke point can change. Is that just specific oils or is it a concern with peanut oil as well? How many times are you out there comfortable re-using your oil? On Amazon with the model that has a built in storage tank some reviewers insinuated they just left the tank in the machine full of oil, and I'm probably safe in assuming they don't put the machine in the fridge. Food safety. In the oil is an oxygen free environment, is botulism toxin a concern if cooking late at night and the oil is left on the stove to cool until morning for instance? Thanks everyone. I grew up in Connecticut and deep fried seafood was a staple back there, find myself with a hankering lately which I satiated last night and so have a half gallon of peanut oil that I'm not sure what to do with. I used my large dutch oven on the stove, temp would drop from 375 to 300 with a pound of scallops and take 5 minutes or so to get back to temp on my glass top. I'm thinking either one of these fryers or an induction fob. Definitely need to improve my batter also. Larry

So what do you do with a used half gallon of peanut oil? What are reasonable disposal methods? I have no idea. Thanks, Larry

Rotuts, I bought the 3 sided jewel stick a bit ago after a recommendation here (that was you probably?), it's all I use now, very happy with it. I think it's mostly that it's so easy and convenient with the 3 grades on one stick to give whichever of my el-cheapo knives I'm about to use whatever it needs quickly. Thanks. Larry

Years ago I had friends that would enter the Colorado Springs chili cookoff every year. They consistently won the "peoples choice" competition. They would make a special batch of chili for the judges, and their motto was "they might not like ours, but they aren't going to taste any one elses afterwards". They would load up a batch with enough habenero's to kill a horse, and just watch the judges wretching wih evil pleasure. And their chili for the people was incredibly good, all I remember was the time and energy they'd spend cubing and flouring and browning their pork and garlic to get it right. Great fun, which is what it was all about.

My Yama vac pot with the cloth filter outshines everything else I have, except maybe a good americano when I have time to let the espresso machine warm up. For my tastes I like it much better than french press or drip. I've imagined that living at 5k feet where water boils at about 203 degF, and the needed vapor pressure in the pot comes at a lower temp as well, is helping, don't know really, but the coffee is very very good. For 60$ plus the (unnecessary) butane burner it was money well spent. I just made my morning pot and stuck a thermometer in the coffee sludge while it was brewing, 192 degF. Hmm, maybe I would get a better cup at sea level, hard to imagine though. The technivorm for instance regulates brewing temp to 198-205. Hard to believe these things were in wide use once, and got squeezed out by percolators, percolating is an evil thing to do to good coffee. I guess it makes sense since most were drinking pre ground robusto in a can, and it probably squeezes more cups out of a can as well. I just had one of those extra vivid memories involving all the senses of when I was a kid getting up in the morning and walking into the kitchen to my mom and dad and the coffee smells, the sound of the percolator going, Bob Steele on the AM table radio doing his morning talk show, was wonderful, especially the aroma. Then they let me taste it one day, yuk, needed a lot of cream and sugar for that stuff. Larry

Wow Robert, wish I was in Sante Fe, that all sounds fantastic. I want to thank everyone for the advice on trying to rescue my ribs last week and all the suggestions for making a sous vide rig larger than my demi. I had actually bought all the pieces months ago, when it was clear I wasn't going to get roundtoit I broke down and bought the demi. I need to revisit what I bought for a pump and heating element as I'm going to take the advice and make it portable for different containers rather than mount it into a cooler permanently, sort of an ugly sous vide professional. Try number 2 of my ribs goes on the hibachi tonight. I was going to eat very light all day in anticipation but Robert just put a kink in that idea, now I've got to have something tasty, and soon. Thanks again.

Thanks everyone. I did the right thing then. The beeping is low water circulation from having too much in the demi, so the temp in the bath wasn't evenly distributed either. I need to build a large version because I tend to cook in large batches on the weekend and stock the fridge/freezer for my busy week and my daughter (the one that's not a breatharian) when I'm gone every other week. Oh for more time, sigh. Thanks again. Larry

I have a question. I got home from work about 7:00 last night looking forward to taking my now 48 hour cook of dry rubbed pork ribs out of the sous vide, and browning and glazing on some sauce on the hibachi using hot burning hardwood lump charcoal for quick browning/glazing. It was the first time I've tried ribs sous vide and couldn't wait to see what the result was. Was pretty upset to find the demi unpluged, my stepdaughter had unplugged it earlier in the day because it was beeping which she found annoying, apparently I had too much pork in there and the water wasn't circulating well (something else to look into). They had been sitting there for who knows how long, I'd guess the water was down to 90degF or so. I tossed them. This morning I'm wondering if I had taken them back up above pasteurization temp for the required time, would they have been safe (ignoring the beeping issue)? Even if I had thought of it then without knowing for sure I would have tossed them. Could I have just turned it back on at 140f and gone for another 24 hours? Dag-nab-it, I was bummed. Heading out of town tonight for the week on business too so I have to wait to give it another go. Thanks for any advice. Larry

I made my daughter a hot wing pizza with ranch for the sauce, she loved it, me not so much but I usually don't care for ranch. What I did like was the pastrami pizza with mustard (on thick) for sauce. The dough in both cases was from my sourdough starter, two day slow cold rise. I think I saw both ideas on pizzamakingforum. mmmm... time for another round of that. The pastrami really was excellent.

Before anyone spends too much money on DOP tomatoes I'd encourage them to try 6in1 ground tomatoes. I love them and their a favorite on the pizzamaking forum as well. You can find them locally in some parts of the USA, not here in Colorado, I ordered them from the escalon.net web site and they charged me 3$ to ship me 12 28oz cans. When I open a can I can't help but dig in with a spoon. Tried several DOP brands and they don't come close to my tastes, YMMV. Larry

henry's chili for one:

An inexpensive option are some of the manual grinders. I have this one from Orphan Espresso: http://www.orphanespresso.com/PORLEX-TALL-Japanese-Ceramic-Burr-Hand-Coffee-Grinder_p_2299.html It's 75$ and makes an excellent espresso grind. Takes about 2 minutes to grind out a double shot. I converted mine over to a pepper grinder just this morning, amazed at the volume of pepper it cranks out and the top compartment holds a lot of peppercorns, so even if you upgrade in the future there are good things to do with these.

I don't do well in the heat at all, I tell people my ancestors were Vikings and Eskimos (German and Irish actually). I used to travel to Singapore for months at a time, suffered, and finally figured out people just move slower there, and are much thinner. Had an epiphany when I was going into the Weston hotel once from outside and was right behind a woman heading up to a very heavy swinging door, the person in front of her opened it to a normal width and went in, I expected her to open it the same which would be followed by me opening it again and going in, instead she didn't touch it... she slithered in sideways through the opening as the door closed. All of a sudden I understood how some people could live there comfortably and I suffered so much on every trip. I needed to slow down, stop rev'ing the motor, not in my nature unfortunately. Don't see myself ever retiring to Florida or Arizona, but who knows when the ticker slows down. And yes I do lose my appetite when I'm miserable hot.

Anna, I've had a Big Steel Keg for a couple months now so have a little experience with this style cooker. The kamado style grills are great for low and slow temp controlled cooking. Once you get a feel for the venting you can set temp and leave it for hours on one load of lump charcoal. I understand the big green eggs are set and forget. My insulated steel version has difficulties dropping temp if you overshoot because it's so well insulated, the ceramics loose enough btu's through the ceramic that this isn't an issue, and they are still very efficient. To drop the temp effectively you have to be able to do so without letting additional air in which stokes the fire. I added a $140 pitmaster IQ-110 temp controller (a thermal probe and a fan controlling air intake) and it works great, wouldn't hesitate to run it over night with that setup. I've done mostly ribs low and slow this summer which my daughter and her friends love, and a spatchcock chicken or two on direct heat. One drawback is there is no door to get to the fire once you start it and put the grills on, so adding lump or wood chips after the fact is a pain because you have to take the grills off. As efficient as these are thats really not an issue for low and slow, one pile of lump goes for hours. For wood chips I add them in the pile of lump either near the middle of the pile for early smoking or out around the edge for later in the cook smoking, that's pretty loose control though. Have done pizza a few times and it's fine for 500 - 600 deg pies, I was hoping to get to do 800deg 2 minute pies when I bought it but at that temp it's difficult to control the pizza stone temp vs the heat to the top of the pie as needed for fast pies like that. For low temp pies in the summer without heating up the kitchen it's fine. So to me low and slow cooking and an outdoor oven in the summer are the reasons to get one. Next project is going to be a big pulled pork roast, that may be an overnight cook. A google search turned up several threads on this cooker in the bar-b-q forums. Good luck with it. Larry

Received my copy yesterday here in Colorado. I was on the fence over the price, but after a brief flip through and some reading I'm glad I bought it. The kitchen manual is such an excellent idea/thing. It's as though this is just what I was looking for, and I didn't know I was looking for anything. My copy does not have several errata items I checked corrected either. Larry

I cook outdoors, if you have a balcony or yard you don't need a lot of room. My coleman white gas camping stove just wasn't big enough, small pans only. So I found a 2 burner propane cooktop on Harbour Freight for 39$. It's big enough for two good sized pans and works well, stainless steel so it looks good. Use my Lodge Logic hibachi (I highly recommend this little guy) for high heat grilling. Use my Big Steel Keg (funny how that rhymes with big green egg, heh heh) for baking and low'n'slow, but this is not a small unit, probably not for balconies. If you can fit a charcoal unit but the smoke is an issue with neighbors the coconut lump charcoal burns pretty clean. I refuse to cook indoors with the AC going, and smokey greasy cooking is another good reason. Last night I parboiled a bunch of brats, then boiled the mashed potatoes after that. Did a buffalo spatchcock chicken along with the brats on the BSK. Need to do the buffalo chicken because I ate my daughters left over buffalo wings in a late night fridge raid, she wasn't pleased. All this and not a BTU added in the house, except when I brought the food in hot on a platter. Clean up with the garden hose (kidding, sorta). Larry

Thanks Avaserfi, Thats exactly what I made 8^). Can't blame my pressure cooker technique I guess. They were good anyway. Hope my MC set gets here soon. Larry

Thanks L, Well I forced myself to read the manual (I'm a guy). I can believe the valves are more accurate than older models but I don't see that you can turn the heat down to where no steam is escaping and maintain regulated pressure. On my Fagor the little pop up button is an indicator that it's ok to open the lid, not that your at target pressure. So without some sort of a gauge I think you need to see some steam escaping. I agree with you that it's a lot less steam than how I used to run my old cooker with the weighted regulator years ago, that son of a gun would dance and spit like no tomorrow but I probably was running it with too much heat. From the Fagor manual, need to maintain a little bit of steam: Enjoying your website. Thanks, Larry

Hi All, Can someone explain to me how pressure is regulated if no steam is escaping? Seems to me if the valve isn't releasing pressure you can't know you are at pressure (without a gauge), and the pressure can be anything below target. I just used my new Fagor duo for the second time last night to make stock, and I kept enough heat going to see steam escaping the whole cook. My first cook with it I did carrots in butter as I've seen described in the MC threads, they came out nothing special, like carrots cooked in a pan. I decided I really didn't have pressure because I turned the heat down too much, no steam escaping. Thanks, Larry