btbyrd
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Posts posted by btbyrd
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Perhaps the best resource I've found is Rick Bayless's "Taco Manual" series on YouTube. I just kind of watch them at random whenever there's a new one posted, but it's really upped my game. Here's the first video in the playlist:
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I just want someone to give me 5 Staubs in various sizes. And let me pick the colors. Is that too much to ask?
And Control Freak Home. And an ANOVA Precision Oven. And some silver lined copper. Or just some straight up silver pans. A set of silver pans in various sizes, please. An enormous Blue Star cook top with either the griddle or French top. An enormous hood that vents the cooktop and the pair of combi ovens that you've mounted in the wall. Makeup ventilation. Solar panels and a RO filter on all the water coming into the house. Carbonation on tap with an ice machine. A low speed rack/table to hold the Minipack vacuum machine. Low boys everywhere. Stainless everywhere. Finished concrete counters. Salmon leather magnetic strips for knife storage. Some new knives... someone get me a pair of rehandled, spa-d out Fujiwara Denka in 230 and 270mm please. And a Takeda Cleaver and some custom blades from Ben Kamon
IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK?
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Porcelain will stain and discolor over time. Much of it can be removed with Bar Keeper's Friend, but it's the sort of thing I only do once every few years. Some manufacturers (notably Staub) use dark porcelain on the interior of their pans. It does take some getting used to in terms of judging browning, but I like the look and it looks less "dirty" over time (even though it's the same amount of crustified).
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If you're buying the small tubs for consumer use, the MTG stuff will last basically forever in your fridge. Like six months to a year. Just use clean utensils when you go in each time. If you wanted to freeze it in cubes, you could always dunk the bottom of the ice cube trays into warm water to help them release.
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Yesterday I got dressed up and went grocery shopping. Then I came home, changed into my cooking clothes, and spent the rest of the day in my back yard because the weather was *perfect*. I got so much sun. Anyway, everything I cooked and prepped was done outdoors, and I did a lot of documenting. This was both an extravagant meal and a bulk prep session for future meals. We've now got protein and veg coming out of our ears.
The menu was b 40oz porterhouse seared over binchotan charcoal, cooked again over wood coals on my gas grill, and finished in a low oven. Also some yakitori chicken. Grilled asparagus, red onion, eggplant, and purple cauliflower came to the party along with some binchotan roasted fennel bulbs that I cut up, tossed with charred fronds, and dressed with blood orange and lemon juice, olive oil, and some cilantro/mint. There was a classic arugula salad with shaved parm, lemon juice, and olive oil. And a cilantro yogurt sauce I got from Jean-Georges.
It was stupid you guys.
A bit of the grilling experience:
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Just preheat it longer. Breville’s smart ovens are real dumb about thinking they’re up to temp. They just lie about it.
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If you could deep fry them in schmaltz, that’d be winning. I’d salt them and put them on a rack in the fridge overnight, pop them in the freezer for like 15 minutes and then deep fry as your pre sear. You don’t get a pan sauce, but the uniformity of the sear is superior and there’s less worry about overcooking. You could even shock them in an ice bath after frying and quickly blot them dry.
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Definitely not. But I did once own a couple of knives made by this smithy and that may have been an inspiration for my flattening project.
One day I really want to get one of his cleavers...
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23 hours ago, Steve Irby said:
@btbyrd beautiful sear on that steak. Yesterday it was six dollar day at a local "bargin bin" store where I spotted a nice Mafter pan. Once home it took about two minutes with my vise to press the handle back to the original position. I'll start the seasoning process later today. Seared steak is in my future!
Great find and great work rebending the handle! Doing that sort of work can be nerve wracking. Some of my Dartos warped slightly and I mostly use them on an electric cooktop, so I went through the process of getting them close to red hot and then beating them flat. By the time I was done with them, the handle angle wasn't ever quite the same. But now they feel like they're more fully mine because I applied a heavy layer of Brandon's wabi sabi.
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I have the Taskmasters, the Tojiro shears, and the MAC shears and snips. They're all a bit different. I like the Taskmasters as general use packaging scissors and use the others on (mostly) food. Not that the Taskmasters aren't well suited toward cutting food, but just that they've become the everyday scissors in my kitchen and so often have tape goop or other household dirt on them.
There are two or three other kinds of shears that I'd like to try but I already have too many.
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Those are great and that is a great price! Maybe even stock up for last minute Christmas gifts? In any event, I'm going to let some friends know.
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I have been waiting on them to drop a 31cm skillet for half a decade or more. I keep screaming it to the sky. I keep screaming it to their e-mail and insta accounts. I always get the same answer.... "next year, maybe..."
I do want one of those fatty No 27s though. But I have an OG No 27 and its performance is pretty spectacular, so I guess I can't complain.
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On 2/5/2024 at 3:53 PM, Dr. Teeth said:
BTByrd knows a ton more about knives than I do. One of my favorites is a knife I bought from him on another website (the shame) that was beneath his standards
You're too kind. But one quick point of correction: There was nothing beneath my standards about that knife -- I just needed to pay some bills! I still miss it sometimes, but it makes me happy that it went somewhere where it's being loved, used, and enjoyed.
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I occasionally go on long rants about induction, so here's kind of a recap and rehash. Induction has its virtues like its efficiency, cleanliness, and safety. There's no open flame to catch things on fire if a pot boils over or whatever. And I find induction to be extremely responsive. It can be like cooking with gas. Unfortunately, that experience can become blocked off because it gets locked behind a crappy interface. Cooking with gas is responsive in two ways: the cookware will respond almost immediately to a change in flame. If something's about to boil over, you can drop the heat and the boil will stop almost immediately. But gas cooking is also responsive in the sense that you can just reach right out and touch a dial to crank the heat up and down or nudge it ever so gently. Having a physical dial or control is valuable to me as a cook, and basically none of the 240V rangetops seem to have great control schemes. Some have touchscreens for God's sake. The idea that I'd want to touch a capacitive touch screen with kitchen hands in the heat of cooking... it holds no appeal for me. I need the heat to be responsive and I need a tactile interface that allows me to access that heating power with ease. Induction typically delivers on half of that promise. Pity.
There's all sorts of other stuff to complain about with induction. The uneven heat is perhaps the most bothersome. The other things I hate are a lack of fine grained temperature control (10 power levels isn't enough, people) and not having a control knob to control the temperature (membrane switches suck). I have a commercial induction burner in the form of the Vollrath Mirage Pro, which has 100 power levels and a knob so it avoids two of the three pitfalls. But it still unevenly heats larger cookware because of the relatively small size of its induction coil. As others have noted, cast iron is a bad conductor of heat but cast iron isn't the culprit here. I have a similar boil pattern in my All Clad Copper Core and D7 cookware, and it never gets better no matter how long you let things boil. And if I put something massive like my Modernist Cuisine baking steel on it and let it heat up slowly for an hour, it's still abysmally unevenly heated. It varies by hundreds of degrees from center to edge and has a noticeable colder spot in the center. I wouldn't even use it to make a pancake. This promotional photo from the Modernist Cuisine crew is a terrible lie:
Induction coils only heat what's directly above them. And they they don't evenly heat even that circle; they create a ring of heat with a colder spot in the middle. For some applications, like boiling water in a medium sized pot, this uneven heat is not really an issue. For other purposes, it can be intensely irritating. Trying to get an even sear on proteins in a 12" pan isn't going to happen. Trying to fry three or more eggs evenly isn't going to happen. It sucks. Even super expensive units like the Control Freak have this problem. Here's the scorch pattern of a cast iron pan on the Control Freak:
Try evenly searing scallops in that thing. You can mitigate this with more conductive cookware, but it never fully gets rid of the problem. Did I mention that you should be careful about slowly heating up your carbon steel and cast iron pans because they're liable to warp on induction? Grr... so stupid. I had to hammer the bottoms flat on some of my Dartos because I used them at high heat on induction. No longer. I now use portable butane burners for high intensity searing. For $100, you can get a 15,000 BTU Iwatani butane burner and have a high output gas burner that you can put anywhere and take everywhere. Every kitchen needs one.
As far as cookware goes, I would totally avoid cast iron and carbon steel because they're such garbage conductors. Europeans, who have better technology and more experience cooking with induction, seem largely to prefer thicker disc bottom pans like those made by Fissler. The thick layers of aluminum in the disc help distribute the heat evenly and help avoid the "ring of fire" induction coil pattern. But because it does so by adding mass, you lose a bit of responsiveness. Everything in life is a trade off.
Just as important as cookware material is MATCHING PAN SIZE TO INDUCTION COIL SIZE. It don't matter how thick your base is if the coil only occupies a small part of the center of the pan. The big 240V rangetops usually have burners of different sizes or zones that cater to cookware of various sizes. But I've never used one that had an induction coil that was large enough to competently heat a 12" skillet. I have been told by Europeans that such units exist. But I've never used one. The one system that seems to avoid this problem is the Thermadore Freedom induction cooktops because they use an array of small induction coils instead of large ones. It dynamically detects the position and size of your cookware and turns on only the coils beneath it.
Seems like a cool system, but it it multiplies the number of parts that can fail because you're using like fifty induction coils rather than five. And it's very expensive. And you have to control your range through a touch screen.
Induction has so much potential but it also kind of sucks.
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So you’re saying it’s natural gas…
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Most of those people have no idea what they're doing. I refer to them as "Bubba with a bench grinder." You'll find them at the farmer's market or wherever. Some even work for professional sharpening services. I recently saw some horrorshow knife gore when someone from the Cozzini Bros sharpening services effectively destroyed the edge and finish on all two dozen knives in a commercial kitchen. "Professionals."
The folks with the truck in Brooklyn mentioned in the Eater piece seem good enough, but as a general rule most of the trucks you'll find in smaller-town America are to be avoided. If I lived in NYC, I'd probably just make a trip to Korin. Since I don't, I mail it into Korin in NYC or District Cutlery in DC. They both have great mail in services with fast turnaround (unless Korin has a backlog or is on holiday).
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Chef does not recommend taking your knives to a mobile sharpener who operates out of a truck.
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That's a relatively minor chip and can easily be repaired by a skilled sharpener. It is likely you'll have to mail it in somewhere, but it's better to do that than trust the knife to bubba with the bench grinder at the farmers market.
To repair a chip, you pretty much grind the rest of the knife down to the deepest part of the chip so that the edge becomes unified once more. This will cause the blade to lose a bit of height, but it will also become thicker behind the edge than it was before the repair. That can negatively impact cutting performance. That's why it's a good idea to thin knives that need major chip repairs. If you take it to someone who knows what they're doing, they'll do that automatically as part of the chip repair process.
In terms of good mail in services that have fast turnaround times, I can recommend District Cutlery in Washington DC. Chip repair will run you $45, but they do a proper job. Here's an instagram post showing a similar repair to a Miyabi with a bigger chip than yours. The knife looks good as new when it's finished... though the logos and whatever got ground away during the thinning process. And it will cut better than it did out of the box.
https://www.instagram.com/p/C0tvpCAO7CP/
EDIT: I remembered Instagram links auto-embedding here on eGullet, but I guess they don't. At any rate, I hope you can click through and see the repair and know that you have nothing to worry about. I've seen way, way worse.
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On 1/8/2024 at 11:27 PM, Laurentius said:
I got one of these for Xmas 2023. I like it, but don't see it being an improvement over any other glass bowl for the MW.
What do you think so far?
I am very pleased with them so far. The materials, build, and fit/finish are fantastic and merit the prices they charge. Though much of the Anyday mojo is in the lid, the glass bowl itself is thick and heavy borosilicate glass that's nicer than anything else I've ever had in my kitchen. I like the fact that I can pop them in the actual oven and not worry about them cracking. Their shape is designed to be picked up with oven mitts, and the external surface of the bowls has this very fine, grippy, almost bead-blasted finish. It kind of feels like the abrasive surface of a 250 grit Shapton Glass stone. Anyway, the microtexture on the outside makes the bowls nice and grippy. It's also what makes the bowls take on that patinaed look as thought he glass wasn't quite evenly frosted.
All that's to say nothing of the lids, which are some of the nicest lids I've seen for anything. The gaskets just work how you want them to. Pull up to vent and cook, push down to store. The glass and metal are beautiful and the fact that they can also go from refrigerator to microwave and oven (and back again) makes the package very compelling. Prior to this, I'd been using some Pyrex bowls in the microwave with a silicone pig otoshibuta drop lid (or plastic wrap). The Anyday seems to work better (I don't know why) and it's nicer and more convenient to use and store food. Two big thumbs up for Anyday from me.
On 1/9/2024 at 10:37 AM, lindag said:I love the Rosle ladles...they're the best.
They are my favorite out of all the ones I've ever used. Lots of refinement in the details. Having a little set like that is kind of a luxury, but it is very nice to be able to match ladle size to pot size or application.
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I got a tortilla press for myself for Christmas and broke it in with some blue corn masa from Masienda that I got for an absurdly low price. I made quesadillas with king oyster mushrooms, poblano peppers, and queso Oaxaca. The mushrooms and cheese have similar textures when you break them up.
Sauteed the mushrooms in bacon fat.
The taco filling was sous vide pork shoulder. Boneless shoulder cooked for 48 @ 60C, chilled, and cubed. seared hard in copious bacon fat before being shredded and tossed with red chili sauce.
This is how it all came together.
Tacos got crema, cotija, onions, cilantro, and lime.
Served with rice, beans, blender salsa, and guacamole. 🥑 Next time I’ma have some spicy salsa verde on hand for those quesadillas…
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Cabbage rolls.
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I use a touchless foaming soap dispenser from Secura that I got on Amazon (eG-friendly Amazon.com link). It's rechargeable (charges last forever) and you can select the amount of foam you'd like it to dispense. I have bought a couple from that company and have been very happy with them, but it looks like there are a ton of similar highly rated products from different brands on Amazon. And my two year old loves it.
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This holiday season brought an embarrassment of riches, and I’m feeling a lot of gratitude these days. Now that epiphany has passed and all the reindeer have landed, here’s my holiday haul:
The starter set of Chef's Presses, the Everyday set of Anyday microwave cookware/bowls, the Zyliss/Olive Garden parm shredder, a Victoria tortilla press, a Takamura 150mm petty knife, tongs and a ladle from Rosle, and a Chopula from Dreamfarm.
The 1.4oz ladle nicely rounds out my Rosle collection.
I also got a set of 2qt nesting strainer bowls for washing rice and berries.
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On 1/4/2024 at 10:35 AM, rotuts said:
this style seems to me to be most useful
I have had many Microplanes through the years, but this style -- the paddle with a metal handle -- is my favorite in a home kitchen. I've broken the handles off of two of the plastic ones while not being especially abusive. The metal handled one is built to last. So are the rasps (no handles means nothing to break).
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Tacos, or perhaps more accurately, filled taco shells and flour tortillas
in Cooking
Posted
These are tacos filled with creamy poblano peppers, onions, and mushrooms. A hit with my wife, who is mostly vegetarian these days.
Making your own tortillas is a real game changer. Masienda's masa harina is fantastic and produces tortillas more beautiful and flavorful than Maseca. You can get a fantastic Victoria brand cast iron tortilla press for like $25. I haven't started making flour tortillas yet, but you don't need a press for those. I ordered a small wooden rolling pin in anticipation. There are few things better in life than fresh flour tortillas. Or fresh corn tortillas. Fresh tortillas rock.