TdeV

Prior to this gift (link), I had no braising experience, and I don't have much more now. I have been reading the books on braising mentioned in the earlier thread, but many of those recipes don't relate to a specific cooking vessel. In my mind I'm trying to understand if there's a difference between using the slow cooker in the Instant Pot and using an enamelled cast iron pot in the oven. I need some help understanding what happens in a braise in an enamelled cast iron pot. (Do all closed Dutch ovens cook in the same way?) The photo below is my interpretation of a NY Times RECIPE for Jamaican oxtail stew, recipe here, which calls for almost burning sugar in the pan at the start. Instead I looked up (how to) and made a wet caramel. The oxtail were not sautéed in the caramel very long because I was afraid to burn it. With the lid on, I put the cast iron in oven at 300°F for about 4 hours, possibly turning heat down to 250°F halfway, removed from oven to stovetop without uncovering, and eventually put in the fridge overnight. In the morning I removed the fat layer. The oxtail meat was also not falling off the bone. So I put the cast iron back in the oven for some more, maybe about 4-5 hours, again starting at 300°F, then lowering to 275°F partway. I put the cast iron on top of the stove and the top surface of the contents was black. I wasn't sure if the blackness was because the dish was burnt or because the caramel had darkened. Took me about 2.5 hours to separate meat, fat, and bone. Some of the meat seemed dry and hard, some of it soft. I cut the black bits into very small pieces in the hopes that might minimize any burned flavour. It was pretty tasty, but I don't understand much. Sorry the photo below is so poor, four servings had already been dished out. It was served with red beans and brown rice with a side of asparagus. So here are my questions: Do the contents in a covered enamelled cast iron pot eventually reach the same temperature as the oven? How long does that take? Is the goal of using a covered enamelled cast iron pot to cook for a very long time at low heat? Is the goal of using a covered enamelled cast iron pot to use less liquid? When disassembled, some of the meat -- particularly the black bits -- was hard and seemed dry, and needed cutting with a knife. Some of the meat was very soft and could be squished between my fingers. Would there be a reliable way to get all the meat done to the same degree of doneness? What is different about the results from a slow braise in a covered enamelled cast iron pot and those from a slow cooker?

Here is a photo of my spice cabinet when it was new in 2018. It has considerably more types and quantity of spice in it now. It is 4.5" deep, 41" wide, and 87" tall. https://forums.egullet.org/p2174414 Asking me, and someone who has 4 spice bottles in the cupboard, about kitchen spice organization is asking different questions. Our answers are necessarily thinking about the organization in different ways. There's no way to collect that kind of information without asking different questions than you are. More probing questions (rather than a fixed multiple choice) will yield more information also. Good luck!

Hello @Rilwan, and welcome to eGullet. I'm afraid that one of the things I find very frustrating is your survey. The following are each reasons why I wouldn't complete the survey. The answerer is not allowed to see the survey in its entirety without answering the first page of questions. The first page of questions presumes quite a bit about my use of my kitchen without giving me any sense that you comprehend the issues of organization in a kitchen. If you ask a question and provide five possible answers, what happens if none of those answers is correct? And, as mentioned by others, my "normal" cooking life is variable, so your questions aren't general enough. So, Rilwan, I think the content of your survey needs lots more work. The folk here are experts in the kitchen and many have been on eGullet for years and years. You've just arrived. Perhaps the first thing someone in your position might do is to ask for: examples (links to eGullet posts of pictures and words) where kitchen organization works well. examples where kitchen organization doesn't work.

My experience also. I once called Zojirushi whose advice resulted in the net result that one side of the paddles are more extruded than the other. (Still stuck--in a worse position). Big holes in the bottom of the loaf. Regardless, the loaf still tastes good!

Host's note: This topic is devoted to development and use of a cooking diary for the APO. Happy (or unfortunate) meals should be posted here: Cooking with the Anove Precision Oven: What Did You Make? I'm very confused about steam ovens, having no prior experience. I have been directed to printouts "Mastering the Convection Steam Oven: Techniques, Recipes and More" from Wolf Ovens, as well as from Wolf, the two page QuickSheet "Convection Steam Oven Reference Guide", and the Instruction Manual (with receipes) from Cusinart Steam Oven. I also have those excellent spreadsheets compiled by @Okanagancook from the CSO thread. Like other diaries I began the APO diary with with an office binder, multiple tab dividers. (Here are links to my other notebooks SousVide Diary and Instant Pot Diary both with homage to @rotuts for the suggestions) Binder Title: Anova Precision Oven Diary Began: Jan 2021 Index to sections: 15 tabs, mainly large food groups: Leftovers, Chicken, Duck, Beef, Pork, Lamb, Veal, Turkey, Bread & stale Bread, Beans, Grains, Fish & Seafood. I've created a separate section for casseroles because they sometimes involve many component vegetables, grains and meats. In this diary, Vegetables are #15 which conveniently leads to a whole 'nother index with letters of the alphabet, so filing vegetable pages will be less of a chore. Section: In chicken, there will be a separate page for every different cut of meat + treatment. Page(s): Each page enables documenting all actions related to that cut or meat + treatment. The actual details of the cook can be very complex, as the Anova Precision Oven has so gol' darn many possible choices. As it will be very hard to document all these choices accurately in a looseleaf notebook, I have created a paper form which I think includes the choices in the order they are presented to you (or me). AnovaSteamOvenDiaryForm_v1c.pdf Edit: This form has been updated to a better one in the next post. Don't use this one. Over time I will update the form as people report issues with it (Send me a PM). Then I'll post another form to eG, hopefully on this same thread. The version number and date will be on the bottom left of one or both sides of the page. If you contact me directly, I can resend you an old or new version of the form. I hope that others will become involved in this project and build their own binders of results, which have a good value all by themselves. Perhaps we can work on a project of summarization down the road. Edited to add: I could fill out a couple of form pages and post them, it you think it might be helpful.

Thanks. The one which is giving me fits is the one for the Anova Precision Oven, but I'll be talking about that soon . . .

I'm interested what different people do to record their cooking adventures. My first cooking diary was for sous vide (see TdeV's Sous Vide Diary) no doubt egged on by @rotuts. Binder Title: Instant Pot Diary Index to sections: 15 tabs, mainly large groups of food which do well in the Instant Pot: beans, potatoes, rice, other grain, meat, soup, stew, one pot meals, vegetables, dessert. Section: The Bean section (includes beans, cowpea and lentil) have notes of my experience, but many items in the binder are actually recipes which I have found elsewhere and modified with my experience (usually in dated notes at the bottom of the original recipe). Note that I appear to have purchased the Instant Pot in Nov 2019, so I do not have loads of experience. Page(s): Each type of bean gets its own page, the name of the bean becomes the highlighted title. Which contains dated notes about my experiments and experience.

I'm interested what people do to document their cooking experiences. Some years ago (2012), with my start of sous vide cooking (and probably with the encouragment of @rotuts), I began to document my cooking adventures, thus: I began with an office binder, complete with a write-on index, with numerous side tabs for filing the contents. This index/tab systems can have 8, 10 or 15 tabs, the alphabet, or 31 tabs for days of the month https://www.amazon.com/Business-Source-Index-Divider-01182/dp/B006P1HF8S/ref=sr_1_11?dchild=1&keywords=numbered+dividers+1-31&qid=1613157815&sr=8-11)) Binder Title: Sous Vide Diary Began: May 2012 Index to sections: 15 tabs, mainly large food groups: Beef, chicken, pork, lamb, duck, veal, turkey, fish, and vegetables. (In some diaries, I put the vegetables at the back and add a whole index with letters of the alphabet, so I filing vegetable pages is less of a chore. Section: In beef, there will be a separate page for every different cut of meat. Page(s): Each cut of meat or vegetable gets its own page, the cut of meat becomes the highlighted title. Which contains dated notes about my experiments and experience of the cut. During this sequence I started with an Auber scientific controller and a dumb slow cooker, eventually upgrading to two Joule immersion blenders. In later posts, I'll add links to my Instant Pot Diary and my fledgling Anova Precision Oven Diary. !) .

@rotuts, this is going to drive you bonkers but the Anova Precision Cooker is a sous vide immersion stick and the Anova Precision Oven is a steam oven which can sous vide food without a bag. My store clerk did not label the fish package which might have been mackerel (or possibly haddock). Mid afternoon, the filets were dusted with s + p, and a few grains of demerara sugar. Not long before cooking the filets were covered with my vague appoximation of Modernist Cuisine's Fish Spice mix which I keep vacuum sealed in the freezer. Filets were laid skin side down on a rack which went into the APO (set to 120°F) for 22 minutes. A few issues: one, the fish was still uncooked on the skin side near the middle of the fish. Two, how do people get a seared crust on the fish? (Mine had none). Can I turn on the broiler? Any idea how long it takes to get hot? Or should I use tried and true method of heating up a frying pan? One of the reasons for wanting to do sous vide in the Anova Precision Oven is that I think the fish might take less handling, thus be less likely to fall apart. Accompaniments were heirloom tomato diced, nuked for 15 seconds, fresh lime, fresh thyme, and smidgen of honey. Also leftover rice (nuked). Tasted okay, not stellar.

What Makes Sous Vide Mode is Different? Traditional ovens aren’t capable of sous vide cooking for two reasons. First is temperature stability. Very precise temperature control is the cornerstone of sous vide cooking. And, as you may already know, your traditional oven is not great at maintaining a stable cooking temperature. Moreover, the temperatures used in sous vide cooking are low: typically 122°F / 50°C to 212°F / 100°C. Most home ovens aren’t designed to run at such low temperatures. Second, even if your oven allowed you to set a low temperature, in the sous vide range, you’d still have a problem. Traditional ovens only measure dry bulb temperature — the temperature of the air — but your food cooks according to the wet bulb temperature. Wet bulb refers to the temperature that foods actually experience in the oven, though it’s new terminology to almost all cooks. Here’s why it matters so much. Food contains a large amount of water. As your food heats up in the oven, some of that water evaporates off the surface, carrying heat away with it. This evaporative cooling effect means that the surface temperature of wet foods will be cooler than the dry bulb temperature of the air around your food. Wet Bulb = Dry Bulb minus Evaporative Cooling So, if you set your traditional oven to a sous vide cooking temperature, the actual temperature that your food experiences would always be lower. And that’s why you can’t cook sous vide in a normal oven. So how is the Anova Precision Oven different? It measures the wet bulb temperature directly. In the back-right corner of the Oven, there’s a very small water reservoir with a temperature sensor suspended within it. This is the Oven’s wet bulb sensor, and it’s the key to Sous Vide Mode. As the Oven heats up, water evaporates from that reservoir just as it evaporates from the surface of your food. The corresponding temperature that the sensor measures is the exact same temperature your food experiences! (Of course, the Oven automatically replenishes the water in the wet bulb reservoir so it doesn’t run dry). The amount of evaporative cooling that happens during cooking depends on the dry bulb temperature and the amount of humidity in the oven. But the Anova Precision Oven’s direct wet bulb sensing accounts for both of those factors, which opens up a world of possibilities not available in traditional water bath sous vide. From Anova about sous vide mode

So, from my notes, my standard sous vide fish (fish + bag + water + Joule) is 114°F for 20 minutes. I don't know how to translate that to the Anova Precision Oven. Help?

What is the significance of setting the oven "sous vide" mode (or not)? The Wolf cookbook suggests poaching fish fillet at 185F for 15 minutes, full steam. I am thinking of trying this today. I'm trying to think of veg I can do at the same time . . .

I'm very undecided. I happen to really like ordinary toast–this is not it. However, it might turn out to be interesting in its own right. Mebbe.

Kim, could you tell me about your freezer bags please? What material are they? What size? Do you have many such dedicated bags in the freezer, and what do you keep in them? I have been thinking that I wanted one for stale bread, so that I wouldn't keep running into ends I had stuck in the freezer at some date in the past. Of course, I don't have room for dedicated bags of anything right now, but I am planning to add a standup freezer shortly. I have a terrible time organizing stuff in the freezer. (I know, I know -- adding another freezer is not a good way to solve the problem!)

My DH was making remarks about not remembering the last time we had meatloaf (so he had nothing to compare). I pointed out that prior experience was "dry". This was a "meatloaf mix" which required only water and beef. I added some ground mushrooms. Cooked with probe to 165°F, 80% steam; took about 40 minutes (?). Then turned on broiler, but only for 5 minutes. Then rested. Very moist and tasty. A bit salty (from the mix). Also had steamed red potatoes alongside. With previously made pickled red cabbage. If dinner had looked better I would have included a photo. Pretty good though.

Is it customary to preheat the Anova? I'm going to make meatloaf, so I shall be using the probe. Which might be more difficult if it's hot.

A recipe, please?

My regular oven has a self-clean option. In the Anova, steam doesn't seem to do much. The Anova strikes me as quite troublesome to clean. P.S. I admit I don't know much about this oven.

Hello @HélèneJ. There are many fine folk here at eGullet – incredibly full of information you had no idea you wanted to know! Welcome.

Eel tastes great, but I couldn't imagine skinning one! 😨

You found a recipe for Kerry's Basque Burnt Cheesecake? Do tell.

As a reply to @TicTac and others who like their guests to go shoeless, and I always wear shoes at home, I had the misfortune, in stocking feet, to slip on a stair. In the first place, I slipped because I was in socks. In the second place, my foot slipped over the top of the stair, slid, and I landed on my toes (bent) one stair down. Very, very painful. I was furious! This would never have happened in my home (because I would have been wearing shoes). So, FWIW, every shoeless household should advertise they are a shoeless household, so that those who aren't can know to pack an extra pair of shoes. Grump 😡

@suzilightning was named Susan Simovich from northwest New Jersey. She was a retired library Director.

Oh, rats! Last year Suzi sent me a pile of cookbooks, and as padding for the box, she used many copies of food magazines. That means that, somewhere, I have her real name. I liked her so much. I will miss her.

That means I have to know the answer to a question before I ask it . . . ? 😜