Ttogull

Excellent suggestion on immersing the pot in a water bath! I need to try that. Makes perfect sense. I've marveled at the near perfect beans (texture wise) that come from a can (Eden, Ranch Style) and wondered how they get that texture. Low and slow is my best guess. Some references on a casual search suggest 24-36 hours at 180 F. Sealing them might add the additional benefit of keeping the aromatics trapped in the cooking vessel. I use beans from Rancho Gordon too. I picked up some gorgeous beans from Kalustyan's in NYC. I also use Purcell Mountain for favorites like Rattlesnake and black eyed peas.

Have you tried the "blowing on the bean" technique? When you pick up a few beans with your spoon, and gently blow on them, the skin will wrinkle if they're done. I've never understood *why* this works. I understand my methods, so I prefer them.

I just remembered that, after some Googling, I found some references to sous vide beans. It's been a long time, so I don't remember the details. Although I still want to give it a whirl.

I don't know what the minimum temp is, but I cook mine in a clay pot on the simmer burner after a 5 minute boil. I get occasional bubbles, one or two every few seconds. I cook them until a bean cut in half no longer has a spot and when the bean is appropriately soft. I never know in advance how long this will be, but the nice thing about low and slow is you can cook longer by a bit without messing up the beans. As I've said elsewhere, I let the bean tell me when it's done. The cooking time done this way is VERY dependent on the type and quality of the bean. I recently did pintos that took about 6 hours. I'd expect some do the larger runner beans to take most of a day. I did limas or something that surprised me by being ready after a couple hours. I would expect the same of favas. I do not soak. Add to the list of factors: growing conditions. I recently had an unusual heirloom bean grown under drought conditions without irrigation. An awesome bean, but a bit uneven in texture.

I often make risotto using pearled barley. It is my favorite, and I rarely use traditional risotto rice. I also found black barley, which has part of the hull? Anyway, it has something like 10x more fiber than pearled, so make a mix of pearled/black in about 80/20 for a wonderful, fibrous risotto.

I have always understood fat to be a better reducer of heat, such as the whole milk and cheese suggestion. Nuts could also be good. I read somewhere that chile pickers (often children in days past) would cover their hands in cooking oil to prevent burn. Regarding flavor, see myth#1 from Andy Ricker http://www.seriouseats.com/2013/11/debunking-thai-food-myths-pok-pok-andy-ricker.html

I eat beans frequently. The only time they have given me gas is when the are undercooked. The directions on many packages of beans call for a specific cooking time. I find that cooking times vary significantly even across the same type of bean, and the cooking time is almost always longer than given on the bag. One interesting test for doneness I read is that you should be able to pop the bean between your tongue and the roof of your mouth. Or you can cut one to check for uniform color. If there is a spot in the center it ain't done. A lot of people want to avoid mushiness and broken beans. In my experience, this is done by cooking the beans really, really low and slow. I cook my pintos, for instance, about 6 hours or so. They tell me when they are done. Undercooking will help keep the shape, but is gassy. I think rotuts might be mistaken about inulin in beans. I am a fiber junkie, and inulin is a special fiber that promotes bacterial growth (a good thing) in the large intestine. I've never seen anywhere that beans are a signicant source of inulin. Instead Jerusalem artichokes, agave, chicory, onions, garlic. I get farty easily when I eat too much J artichokes, but I can eat a pound of beans with no distress. I am taking inulin supplements to eliminate this fartiness, and I think I am there. From a fiber and gut microbe diversity standpoint, I think eating foods that make you gassy is good for you. As I understand (and I could be wrong) this sort of gassiness reflects a lack of gut microbe diversity (diversity is good) and eating such food will feed the bacteria reonsible for producing the right enzymes. Maybe this is why the fartiness goes away after eating beans often.

Chile peppers contribute significant flavors to dishes. A number of regional dishes owe their unique flavors to specific chiles. Bell peppers are a type of chile, and have flavor. Red and green bell peppers have different flavors. Jalapeños and habaneros taste very different. There are a zillion peppers Are you talking about dried chile peppers? You might have old ones or ones improperly stored. Then they might indeed have little flavor.

About a year ago, many of the chile growing regions that supply North America had drought. There were several news articles that stated the the resultant stress on the pepper plants caused them to bear extraordinarily hot peppers. There is also natural variation. I've had some poblanos that have had a bit of kick. Chocolate poblanos can be pretty hot.

Another significant variable in pepper heat is apparently plant stress. The newspapers had several articles in the summer of '12 about peppers being much hotter than usual because of drought in the growing regions. You could get some feisty jalapeños in grocery stores not known for having them. As said above, this year everything is mild again. I too am in the flavor first camp. Chiles are about the flavor, and the flavor controls the amount of chile. Long ago I stopped asking for "hot and spicy" versions of dishes in, say, Indian and Thai restaurants because the dish would come out bitter and unbalanced because the chili overload. Likewise, in many chain restaurants, it's usually unwise to order anything purporting to have habaneros. I've seen it happen many times: the dish is great when it is first rolled out, and then later all the habanero flavor goes away. When I ask why, I am always told that people complained about the heat and management dialed it back to mild jalapeño level. It doesn't take much habanero to do that, so away goes the flavor. I want to scream at those people. At home, I do just what bear does: add mildly flavored chile sauce with good heat. I made my own.

I LOVE Jerusalem artichokes. I bought about 3 lbs last week at the farmers market, ate them all, and then even more this week. I made roasted Brussels sprouts and J artichokes (with bacon) to serve with roasted chicken (cooked at 700 F on a BGE) for dinner tonight. I'll eat them all this week. J artichokes are one of the best sources of inulin, a fiber that is a great prebiotic for the large intestine. Until one gets used to eating inulin, it'll make one explosively farty. Comically, sometimes without warning. Great health benefits though. IMO, the substitutes listed above capture only part of the J artichoke taste and texture (none the inulin). They come out in Spring and Fall, and this is the perfect season in the Atlantic region. I only see them at farmers markets. Although they are tubers, they do not seem to age as well as others. I wish I could say how long they last in the fridge, but we eat them before it's an issue.

I have lots of cast iron, pizza stones, metal, fire bricks, Big Green Egg, grills, etc. I experiment with them, mostly with pizza. For me, the biggest difference between cast iron and stone (and metal) is how fast the bottom of a pizza (or your naan) cooks in relation to the top. That kinda depends on your oven and how you are set up in it - whether the top is hotter than the bottom, one side hotter than the other, and so on. I like stone just because that keeps my bottom from over cooking before the top is done. For many, if not most grills, you can really only cook pizza and bread on one side at a time. Grilled bread is good, but I don't think of it as naan. IMHO, naan is more like pizza in that is not usually flipped to cook both sides. That's why I like Heston's method in my previous post. Even though I have not tried it, I'm sure it will work once the bottom and top cooking rates are equalized.

Heston Blumenthal has a method for the home oven. See reply #13 at http://www.curry-recipes.co.uk/curry/index.php?topic=4528.10 He puts a lot of research and thought into his stuff, so it's probably good. I haven't tried the naan, but the accompanying chicken tikka masala is outstanding. Takes a few days to make though.

My favorite method of cooking greens is roasting them. It has been since I tried Thomas Keller's in Ad Hoc At Home. Clean and dry the greens. Preheat a Dutch oven on stove. Add oil. TK uses bacon grease; I use minimal canola or grape seed. Wilt the greens in batches. Put them all in the Dutch oven and cover, and put Dutch oven in preheated 325 F oven. For hearty greens, like kale and collards, I do 45 minutes. For less hearty, like chard or beet, maybe 30 minutes. After, I pull the Dutch oven out and let it sit until dinner is ready. TK says leave in the oven, but I don't like as much. Bits will be crispy, but some soft. I separate the stems and put those in too as they will be mosly tender after cooking, depending on your fiber preferences. You can also throw them straight on a grill grate. Amazing the heat they can survive! I do this, but don't move them. Scoop up and plate upside down so the top is crispy and charred and the bottom is soft and sort of "steamed." I read that a vegan restaurant in NYC does this, and I love it.

To further emphasize gfweb's point, salt isn't even necessary for fermentation and making sauerkraut. The food is preserved by the presence of good bacteria and the corresponding acidity, not by salt itself. http://www.wildfermentation.com/vegetable-fermentation-further-simplified-2/

Cabbage is now looking great in my area, so I bought some. I vastly overestimated how much cabbage will fit in my containers. I bought about 15 heads, I think. I have tons of sauerkraut in the works. I have plain, red, plain and red with carrot, plain and red with carrot and garlic, plain and red with cayenne, kraut-chi with ginger, garlic, and New Mexico chile powder, sauerkraut with habanero. Several quarts of each. I still have 3 heads to process. Oh yeah, I have a few quarts of pickled cauliflower with cabbage leaves. My basement is now cooler, so I hope for good results!

There is no problem! I do not regularly soak for making straight-up beans, but I do soak them first before sprouting them. (I like sprouted beans a lot too.). My soak for sprouting is always 24 hours or more for things like pintos. Don't worry, your pintos will not sprout as there are a couple more steps. The beans are well hydrated after that time, but nothing bad happens. You might consider sprouting beans sometime too. After a significant time - 48 hours? - the beans might show fermenting. I do this too, particularly with black-eyed peas. Even then they are still good (unless they are not, which you'd know).

I haven't pickled pickles, mainly because I have a great supply of pickles but can't find good cukes. But I've picked lots of other stuff. It's all basically the same, from pickles to hot sauces to sauerkraut to okra... If you haven't already, you should check out Sandor Katz's writings and books. He's been doing this for decades, and using him as a reference, I'm going to reiterate loki's statement that there seems to be a lot of misinformation. In my experience and understanding, no one can tell you how long to leave at room temp. Even if you were trying to replicate somebody's outcome, your environment is different from anyone else's. everything matters. Iirc, katz says even the air you expel from your lungs influences the outcome. Not only that, we might prefer different pickle properties, and thus that should influence the result too. Like all things, experience is the best teacher. I sample my stuff pretty much every day, and refrigerate one or two days before I think I will be happy (experience indicates for my setup the pickling will continue at a good clip for a couple of days in the fridge). I've had stuff go south, but it's been obvious so far. Your jar is fine. You can close it and latch whenever you want, remembering to release pressure occasionally. The stuff you want is on your pickles/cukes, and you are not trying to catch anything from the air. I use the same style jar, as well as mason jars.

I have gotten into fermented foods of late. I heated some leftover vegan barley risotto, and put cold raw sauerkraut over it. It was quite different from what I expected. The sauerkraut took on an almost buttery flavor (no butter in the dish), and was quite tasty. I'd do it again. Also, I sautéed/steamed some broccoli in vegetable broth, added some Red Boat fish sauce, and put that on top of steel cut oatmeal risotto (a la MCAH) finished with 3-year barley miso. THAT was good! Especially since I've seemingly lost a taste for noodles on my near-vegan, high fiber diet.

I did identical batches of cayenne peppers and garlic, one with mesquite chips and one without. Both my wife and I agreed that the mesquite version tasted thinner and less complex than the one without. I'm not sure how much weight I'd put on that though. My favorite thing to add, after garlic, is fresh tomato. It really seems to add depth and complexity.

Looks good. I did my first batch this summer, and have now done maybe 15 more. Yellow habs, red habs, chocolate habs, Fatalii, ghost, etc. You'll get over the hesitation. I had a similar 48 hour rule, but now I sample stuff every night. No, rotuts, it does not disturb the micro flora. I even stir mine up to get the pulp back in the liquid (your pulp is floating, but I don't think that is a big deal). The main issue with tasting is the increased possibility of mold. But I just scoop that out now, if I can. If not, it doesn't matter! A couple of things I learned. A starter like kefir is unnecessary. More importantly, it can be detrimental to the taste. The bacteria grow in waves of different types, with the following generation feeding on the byproduct of the preceding generation. By introducing culture, the earlier stages are skipped, changing how the nutrients are broken down and what bacteria dominate at certain stages. I used to inoculate, but no more. I see no real difference. As someone else said, there is no need to pay for culture when every fruit you buy comes free with everything you need. I have had good batches and bad. Oddly, I made two jars of identical habanero mustard. One is the finest smelling stuff - sweet, hot, mustardy. The other started smelling like stinky feet - that's being generous. Even the color looked odd. Tossed that one without trying it. I think whether you can go months depends on your environment. Mine have all settled down to listless at about 4 weeks. They tasted good, so I bottled Also consider other veggies. Okra pickled with habs and garlic are very, very good.

Yes, but Katz's point is that you cannot use those bacteria and yeasts to create a kefir curd, just like you could not create an oak tree or an elephant with the right mix of ingredients.

I don't personally know anything about kefir, but in matters like this I trust the book The Art of Fermentation by Sandor Katz. He is very good at "telling the truth." What he says is largely consistent with the info you linked. He doesn't address the issue of inoculating homemade kefir with store-bought, but makes it clear that commercial kefir has to contend with several issue like consistency and the avoidance of alcohol (regulatory problems). Also, he compares kefir to a living oak tree. Kefir is its own living thing, and having the parts (as in a powder) can't recreate the living thing. Just like one cannot create a living oak tree by having its parts. It sounds like having the grains is necessary, but they can live forever if they are fed. He suggests finding a fellow enthusiast as they often have more grains than they can use. Also Katz said he handmade kefir with raw, pasteurized, and ultrapateurized milks with no issues. He said he has a friend that uses no-fat milk and prefers it that way, but that he prefers fat.

OMG!!! I just pulled my cabbage from a Harsch pot after 3 weeks. I had to skim a lot of white mold from the top (I thought this would be unnecessary with the Harsch). Let's just say that this is without a doubt the very best sauerkraut I've ever had. Amazing! Crunchy, tart, just the right salt level. Normally I'd let it go 6 weeks. But my instincts were screaming 3 weeks. Dunno why. Instincts were right this time.

Another possibility is preheating your oven to its lowest temp, say, 170 degrees and placing the whole PC in it after it has depressurized. Turn the oven off when you do, i guess. I haven't tried this, so maybe some testing would be in order. Or put the whole pot wrapped in towels inside a good cooler and then cover the cooler lid with towels. I do this for smoked pork butt and that will stay hot a LONG time.