JoNorvelleWalker

I may have to enjoy humble pie. And I may have to act my age. The Fissler is a beautiful pot. How could such a tiny vessel be so heavy? Admittedly at the moment my back is out.

Rant number 2: "Fill a large pot with water and add salt until it tastes like the sea." (p366). Rather depends next to which sea one lives, doesn't it? Not very useful if you are in Tibet. Why not just specify weight of salt per kg of water? Takes even fewer words.

I'd be happy if only my ice cube trays didn't break.

Tonight I made the meat sauce for a batch of Bugialli's lasagne al forno. I tried to follow the recipe exactly except I added more ground beef than called for, since it needed using up, and omitted the half chicken breast. The problem is I noticed an inconsistency in the recipe as written that eluded me before: The meats are "ground beef", "ground pork", "chicken breast", and "prosciutto or boiled ham, in one piece". At one point in the recipe Bugialli says to add the pork, beef, and chicken breast. Then later he says to: "Transfer the pork and chicken breast to a board and chop them very fine." Here then is the issue: it is difficult to transfer sautéed ground pork from a sauce to a board to chop it very fine. Prosciutto is pork and so I figured Bugialli must mean to add the prosciutto at the same time as the other meats in order to remove it later as called for. But then he says to add the meats back to the pan along with more broth. However sometime later one is instructed to "...chop the prosciutto, very fine, add it to the sauce, and cook for one more minute. Something does not add up. Now after I've thought about it I think I've found the problem. Rather than writing out the instructions for the meat sauce the lasagne al forno recipe directs: "Make the meat sauce, using the ingredients in the quantities listed, according to the directions given in cannelloni con carne on page 209, omitting the Parmigiano. Otherwise follow the procedure exactly." Well, that procedure does not work as written! Lasagne al forno calls for "1/4 pound ground pork". Cannelloni con carne specifies "1/2 pound pork". Doubtless it is easier to remove a piece of pork from a pot of sauce and chop it fine than to remove ground pork from a pot of sauce and chop it fine. I'm reasonably sure Bugialli did not intend for me to cook my prosciutto in the sauce before chopping it. It would have been better for everyone if he had just written the proper procedure in the lasagne al forno recipe. Worst case it might add a page to a 668 page book.

Blueberries (not my own), crème fraiche (my own).

It sounds like you need a toaster and something else for reheating small portions of things that need to stay crisp. What are the things that need to stay crisp?

Thanks!

No, the older units are not user-calibratable without returning to the factory for an upgrade...ask @Kerry Beal https://forums.egullet.org/topic/145431-anova-sous-vide-circulator-part-1/?do=findComment&comment=1930394 My anova is firmware version 2.02 and I verified tonight that I can get to the calibration screen. Temperatures can be adjusted plus or minus in 0.1C steps but I am not clear exactly what this means so until I figure it out I left the settings alone. In other words if I adjust the setting 0.1C cooler does that mean the bath heats 0.1C cooler or the readout reads 0.1C cooler? I suspect the former but I am not sure. No, I have not looked into basal thermometers because I seldom cook humans or at human body temperatures. To my experience such thermometers do not come with certificates of calibration. Though now that you mention it I was running a fever last night. I thought rather than testing at 55.0C I should also test at a couple of the calibration points of my Thermoworks. My unit reads slightly high. At a calibration temperature 40.00C it reads 40.02C. At 70.00C it reads 70.02C. With the anova stabilized at 40.0C the Thermoworks read between 40.11C and 40.12C. With the anova stabilized at 70.0C the Thermoworks read between 70.28C and 70.29C. I don't worry too much about the highest accuracy at 70.0C but it looks like my anova is off by about 0.1C at the temperatures of interest.

I know everything is big in Texas but I never dreamed your tomatoes are so early! One of my plants has a little yellow flower. (Though I did harvest three strawberries this evening.)

I lied. Through circumstance. Please forgive me. Tonight's burger was the best of the bunch. I only hope it is the Shingrix vaccine and not ebola.

Tonight I felt like a zombie. You may read that as you will. Last night I received a Shingrix vaccination. Shingrix is a new shingles vaccine, but it comes with side effects. This evening I got home from work, lay down and enjoyed a nap. Then realized I was missing celery for my dinner.* Dinner was supposed to have been Bugialli's Lasagne al forno. Wishful thinking. I mused I could just stop by the store tomorrow after work. Couldn't I? Then I recalled the forecast. I put my boots back on and set off through the wetlands. An hour later I was headed home with my celery through the glomming. However (back to topic) I picked up a grapefruit. Not a white grapefruit, a red grapefruit was the best that I could do. So I won't call this a zombie. It is my desperate attempt at a zombie clone: 1 1/2 oz S&C 1 oz La Favorite Blanc 1/2 oz Neisson l'Esprit 1 oz Hamilton 151 1/4 oz Taylor's Falernum 1/2 oz Small Hand grenadine 10 ml tincture of cinnamon (made lovingly with W&N) 12 drops Jade 1901 1 (generous) dash Angostura juice of 1 lime juice of 1/4 fresh red grapefruit Comparing the prior ingredients with the above, this is an improvement, authenticity be dammed. Styrene no longer overpowers everything. Taylor's is just enough to say I added it. Sweetness is just right. The fever may yet pass. But if it does not I have a lovely knife collection. *not that I didn't write up a shopping list prominently including celery before I headed to the store last night.

Pan temperature is not commonly specified in my cookbooks. Though Kenji is pretty good about specifying pan temperatures. Oddly Modernist Bread seems inconsistent. Some recipes specify a pan temperature, other recipes say only "medium" or somesuch. My annoyance with McFadden is that as a professional restaurant chef he probably has an exact temperature for that recipe -- which he does not share because he believes his audience has no way to measure it. Same thinking that has most American cookbook authors calling out for cups of flour in place of grams. Not to mention British books of not too long ago specifying temperature by gas marks.

My anova is not the original model, it is the one that has provision for calibration in firmware. I used to communicate with @Anova Jeff although I've not seen him around for a while. @rotuts has a theory. I'm not using a thermocouple but if you know of any measuring solutions more accurate than what HP or Thermoworks have to offer I'd be interested. Unfortunately however I've blown my thermometer budget for the month. My Thermoworks reads to 0.01F but as I said it is only accurate to 0.06F, except at the calibration points.

I do not have any such sticky residue problem with my anova. I suggest you reach out to their tech support.

"Out of whack" is not the best expression. More like "very close but not quite right." The Thermoworks is rated accurate to plus or minus 0.05C. If so the 55.0C bath is most likely between 55.10C and 55.20C. The supplied certificate of calibration says plus or minus 0.06F, plus instrument resolution. At the 104.00F calibration point the Thermoworks is off 0.03F. At the 158.00F calibration point it is off 0.04F. For fun I also tried the Thermapen MK4 while anovaing my eggs. It read the bath as 55.1C. While my new Thermoworks waterproof with penetration probe read the bath as 54.9-55.0.

I do a lot of cooking at 55C which is, I would say, a rather critical area. Since I'm pasteurizing some eggs at the moment I took the opportunity and measured the bath against my new Thermoworks. The anova reads 55C and the water measures 55.15C. Better, I guess, a little high than a little low. I wonder though if it's worth trying to adjust the anova so it matches the thermometer?

Indeed. I have one. But it registers only to 300C.

When my landlord got me a new oven I bought a probe with grate clip: https://www.thermoworks.com/TW-113-442-GC This worked wonderfully (notice how I avoided saying "great") for profiling the oven. Indeed, I found a problem with an oven firmware setting. (Though if your oven hasn't a thermostat it may not have much firmware.) I do not leave the probe in the oven all the time. If the stove belonged to me I would find or make a hole and bring the probe cable out the back so I could monitor temperature all the time. As it is, the cable coming out the side of the oven door is inconvenient. But for me the probe did it's job. I have a WiFi readout so I was able to graph the oven on my iPad. For your application various Thermoworks mounting methods are magnetic. You could stick the readout right on the outside of the stove. The grate clip is not hard to mount. There are also clip on oven probes.

No, I have never had a non contact thermometer. Like @rotuts I wonder how this unit would compensate for black cast iron surfaces and bright stainless steel surfaces. Though I must say the price is cheap enough.

And other than thermometers they sell stuff from other manufacturers, for example pH meters. Still Theromoworks are probably the best choice out there for culinary use.

My most recent Thermoworks order arrived tonight. I must have looked most pathetic wandering around the apartment with two cases of thermometers, looking for a surface upon which to set them down.* I now have six thermometers from Thermoworks, not a few probes -- and my old standby from Hewlett-Packard...or whatever that company is called these days. I really love how firmly the magnetic boot of the Therma Waterproof sticks itself to the dashboard of my stove. That is beautiful engineering! It would have been most useful two nights ago when I was following a Kenji recipe to heat a pan to between 600 and 700 deg F. *they are currently on top of the guitar case along with the extra griddles for my DeLonghi grill. The door is barricaded in the event anyone was thinking of an intervention.

I fell for The Cottage Kitchen.

@Anna N did the old people facility at least pay for your meal?

Tonight was an anti-Kenji smashed burger. I formed a patty about an inch and a half thick. I was diligent with the Thermapen. I got it crusty on the outside with a trace of pink at the center. And now I am done with hamburger for another lifetime.

These are alpine strawberries. As best I remember: https://www.burpee.com/fruit/strawberry-plants/strawberry-alpine-fragola-di-bosco-prod002415.html