Anna N

No, I did not use oil on the skin. I don’t know. I just found it very strange how difficult it was to break into. Initially, it seemed to resist the knife so much that I wondered if it was even baked. I think some white small potatoes just might produce a better result. I would not have chosen such large potatoes, but I had no input into their size as I shop online.

I am clueless.

Sheesh. Talk about adding insult to injury. Good help is hard to find. I know you have been kind enough to share so much information about this gadget, but I would still like to know how it is used. Why does it have those funny feet?

So I was finally able to get a couple of potatoes for this experiment. I am unsure of how to describe the results and will probably end up contradicting myself. This potato was so big that even without supposedly making an experiment, I am fairly certain it would’ve taken close to two hours no matter what. I scrubbed it, stabbed it and put it on the rack in the oven at 400°F. (I chose a lower temperature because I was baking it in the countertop Breville.) Somehow I think my science is not the best! After two hours I attempted to cut a cross in the potato with little success. My paring knife would hardly go through the skin. I managed to mostly mutilate the potato. When I tried my usual trick of squeezing the potato to fluff it, it would not give. I eventually managed to open it out, using a couple of forks. I tasted the potato undressed (no, no I was wearing clothes — don’t go there). It tasted fine, but I was not in any way feeling transported. I dressed it with butter and pepper, and it was a fine potato. Again, nothing that I would write home about. I found the skin to be very tough rather than crispy. That was a definite disappointment. I have one more potato. I’m not quite sure what changes I should make to convince me that a two hour potato is so much better than a one hour potato. Given the size of the potato should I go for three hours? Or should I go for two hours at a higher temperature? I just looked at my shopping list and the two potatoes weighed .925 kg. They were pretty much the similar in size so that makes them about 16 ozs each! Holy cow I didn’t realize there were that big.

I don’t think we got even a guess never mind an answer.

Yesterday @Kerry Bealpicked up our lunch from the Owl of Minerva in Hamilton. Kerry had kimchi soup with rice. I had chicken wings with kimchi.

Not a thing, especially if you were able to make it. The filling for the little egg dumplings is cooked and then kept warm?

I am quite sure we must have discussed ketchup-flavoured potato chips at some point. These arrived in my grocery order today as complimentary. They are initially ketchup flavored, but there is a weird aftertaste, and apparently there is no longer any attempt to persuade me that these actually came from a potato. Or that they should be dipped into anything. Ballpen for scale. Having said that, like all junk food it’s hard to eat just one! I have no shame.

My daughter is into ways of preserving food. She has learned to can and is learning to pickle and has asked me about waxing hard cheese for storage outside of the refrigerator. I have absolutely no knowledge of this method of storing cheese. A very quick Google suggested it was a very bad idea! But she claims she has done some reading, and has not come across anything to discourage her. So I thought I would reach out. This is what I found. “Waxing cheese is a method to minimize mold growth on the surface of cheese. It cannot prevent growth or survival of many illness-causing bacteria. In fact, it may promote anaerobic (absence of oxygen) bacteria growth, such as botulism. The practice of waxing cheese for storage is considered extremely unsafe. https://extension.usu.edu › archive

Here. “I understood that I had to fight on this frontline – this cultural frontline,”[Ievgen Klopotenko] said. And then there is the unifying power of soup. Each Ukrainian family had its own, slightly different recipe, he said. “But it’s still borscht. Just like us Ukrainians – we are all so free and so different.” He added: “The only thing this country unites around is borscht. You can like [President Volodymyr] Zelenskiy or not, but no one in Ukraine would say: ‘I don’t like borscht.’””

Yes! There are so few cans now that pose such potential danger. There are still some sharp edges around, but nothing like we used to contend with.

I watched that video again, and finally decided what made it so disturbing. It is that edge on both sides of the opened can!

He makes it look so easy and it often was but if you got it off-center, you were toast.

I wondered the same thing. But then I worked out in my mind that it was easier to say you could not take more than X millilitres of liquid on board than to try to account for all the exceptions which common sense dictates would not matter.

Wow, I don’t know what I would do if I met a 2 kg bullfrog.

Much as I envy the breakfast that @Ann_Tmade for Moe, I was more than happy with my poached egg. I have not had a poached egg in months. Somehow I lost the “recipe”. No matter what I did, I ended up with a lonely yolk and a mess of feathery white. And to add it to my misery, a pan that took forever to clean up. So I bit the bullet and tried Julia’s way (prick a hole in the shell, cook, still in shell, in hot water for 10 seconds, and then break into gently simmering water). It worked. Next time I might poach it just a bit longer.

Thanks so much for posting this. I was very curious, but did not want to ask for a recipe which I knew I would never make. That crumb. looks amazing. A very convenient dough to have in your freezer (baked or not).

This looks so good. I thought I might have to buy the book just to get this recipe. But I googled instead and found something which is very close here. (The video that accompanies this recipe is quite amusing.) Will I make it? We will see.

I must admit, I have never tried a grilled cheese sandwich. I did not have much success with chicken wings, but then they were these tiny things that might’ve come off an ortolan! I have not bought wings since because I can’t see them to see if they are reasonably sized. (I have to do all my shopping online.)

Well, I downloaded a Kindle sample of this book. I have to tell you that it takes very little for an author to completely lose my trust. Two recent examples: an author who described the yellow eyes of a turtle seen on a black and white TV and in a different book, surgeons left to clear up the sharps after a failed resuscitation attempt! No, no, no no. So Naomi’s sin? Spending far too long explaining why you must use scales to weigh salt in recipes, and then giving her first recipe in volume measurements. It probably doesn’t make a whole lot of difference for this recipe but…… After that, the few recipes that are given in the sample switch back-and-forth between volume and weight or use both - weight and volume for one ingredient and volume for another: the ½ cup/75 grams white sesame seeds 2 tablespoons coarse or fine sea salt this, after carefully explaining that the same volumes of coarse salt and fine salt will have different weights. Will I still buy the book? Probably not. The writing is repetitive and tedious. Sorry, Naomi, I think you missed on this one. Perhaps the recipes will redeem it for others.

Yes, you have me curious now about how they are used by the locals.

They are both methods of making potatoes, but I can’t see that they differ only in shape. The prep is very different.

I know you did not ask me and I know that Elsie can speak for herself, but I hope you don’t mind if I say a bit about your question. I do not think the air fryer is the appliance for you. Let me try to say who I think would most benefit from an air fryer. 1. People who just cannot resist the latest kitchen toy. That would’ve been me a few years ago when I got my first air fryer. I played with it for a few months and found it a new home in my bachelor son’s kitchen. 2. People who like to eat much more than they like to cook. It does a perfectly adequate job on things like frozen burgers, hotdogs, tater tots but is surprisingly poor at doing a good job on frozen french fries. That at least has been my experience. 3. People with very, very limited kitchen acreage. If you are stuck with this situation, you will still be able to feed yourself provided you’re not too fussy. Even then I would think, squeezing in a convection oven would be a better choice. 4. People with serious physical handicaps. This is why I have my second air fryer. But in this situation you had better be prepared to eat things you would never have eaten were you capable of preparing better things. 5. If you look on the Internet and believe what you see, there is very little that cannot be prepared in the air fryer provided you are willing to lower your standards enough. I have seen people prepare amazing things and post them on e.G. I cannot say that I have seen much that can be prepared better in the air fryer than with another appliance. I find it great for bratwurst because it doesn’t make a mess and it’s very fast. I enjoy doing hard cooked eggs in it because there is no clean up but I can’t think of much else. I am prepared to be proven wrong.

Thanks for this. I own both (and then some as I have a CSO and a BSO) and consider my Cosori to be a very different appliance. Since I almost always use a container of some kind inside, my Cosori I find the clean up quite easy. Much easier than either of my countertop ovens. To reduce the confusion, I really wish we could have stuck with the name “air fryer” for the much smaller footprint appliance.

To me the big difference between these and most roasted potatoes is that these are whole potatoes. The proportion of crispiness to creaminess will be very different than the usual where the potatoes are cut up. And of course they look quite different.