UnCulinary

I actually just bought a copy for myself finally and it arrived yesterday! I've been looking through the consommé stuff but the entire book is pretty overwhelming. You have any favorites? What sauces do you specifically like to use it in?

So I have been cooking a lot of chicken and as a by product of that, making a lot of stock. From my last batch of stock this weekend I made some (chicken) consommé. And its good. Really good. But I want to figure out some things to do with it other than serve it straight. So what does everyone else like to use consommé for? Any great soups, sauces, or other things you can recommend to try? As an additional question, I used the freeze clarification method to clarify my stock. Should I be using that left over gelatin for anything?

Yeah I am in total agreement that Sous Vide is not the way to go with this, although that was disappointing because I was sure that it would be a great way of holding the chicken cooked perfectly for service. I also agree that the best results I have gotten are when you grill them up from raw with no sous vide, however I would like to cut that cook time of 6-8 minutes in half. I guess what I am looking for is the parcook method that none of us can find... I wouldn't be opposed to the chicken being cold if it yielded the best chicken sandwich possible, but in my opinion the best chicken sandwich is most likely going to be a hot one.

These past few weeks I've been on a quest. A quest to figure out how to create the perfect chicken sandwich. My results however have not been to my liking, I'll tell you more about them in a second. It's my opinion that this forum has some extremely smart and talented cooks, so help me out, how would you go about creating the perfect chicken sandwich? Here are the constraints: Must use the breast Must be able to be served quickly in a restaurant setting (preferably a cook time of sub 5 minutes) Use a combination of Sous Vide, Baking, Frying, or Grilling So for simplicity sake we are solely talking about cooking the breast for a sandwich. Not the bread used or the toppings on the sandwich (I believe I have a great bun and topping combinations). So here have been my results thus far. First I have found (I'm sure as most of you already know) that the breast must be brined to have any sort of flavor at all. Currently I am using a citrus based brine (salt, lime juice, lemon juice, orange juice, zest of all three, and water) which I have liked the results so far. I usually vacuum seal the breast with the brine, pound it out, and let it sit for at least 6 hours. Secondly, my original idea was to sous vide the breast (63C for 1 hour) and then finish off on either the grill or the skillet. But what I have found is that the breast loses something in texture through the sous vide process. The flavor is OK, it is just off texture wise for a sandwich. Further more it is very hard to get a texture on the outside. Which (kinda) brings me to the third thing. A good sandwich needs an element of crunch. I was trying to avoid frying it, because I wanted to see if a great grilled chicken sandwich is possible. So I have been taking the skin and baking it in the oven (400F for about 25-30 min) to get it crispy and then adding that to the sandwich, which has actually turned out great, but sometimes i am not sure if it is enough. All in all it still needs a lot of work. So what is your approach for the perfect chicken sandwich? (I will not except an answer of "It can't be done.")

Hm... I am really not familiar with Lactisole at all. What does it do exactly? If it neutralizes the sweetness it could be a very useful tool indeed. I am going to start experimenting with all these different approaches this week. I will report back as to what my best results are.

So I have been want­ing to serve some savory pop rocks for a lit­tle while and was won­der­ing if any­one here has had any expe­ri­ence with fla­vor­ing them. More specif­i­cally I am talk­ing about these http://www.modernistpantry.com/popping-candy.html . It says on mod­ernist pantry that they can be fla­vored with any fat based sub­stance. The fla­vors I want to do would be Bacon, Chicken ‘N’ Waffles, Foie Gras, and White Truffle. My thought is to take some N-Zorbit and make a pow­der from these sub­stances and sim­ply toss the unfla­vored pop­ping candy in my fla­vor­ing pow­der. Am I way off? Any dif­fer­ent way to do this? Has anyone experimented with this before?