btbyrd

Welcome to the forum! Mandolines are useful, inexpensive, and don't take up much room. A good addition to any kitchen arsenal, and a very giftable item for Christmas. In my opinion, the Smoking Gun is more of a novelty than a useful cooking tool, unless there's some specific application you'd be buying it for. I have one but it mostly sits around. In fact, I gave it as a gift but the person didn't use it so gave it back to me... and now I never use it. I love smoked foods and hot/cold smoke outdoors all the time. But the Smoking Gun doesn't really provide significant smoke flavor on proteins. Cheese and butter, on the other hand, almost seem to take up too much smoke flavor. Cocktails are a wash. It can be fun to smoke herbs/spices and trap the smoke under a glass, but honestly how often are you going to do that at home? Konros are fun, but they're not great general purpose grills. Because you're grilling so close to the coals, anything with significant amounts of fat is a potential grease fire bomb. They work best cooking lean proteins like fish and chicken, and many vegetables also do well. The capacity is limited, and it can take a long time to get binchotan lit. They're not great for feeding crowds, and if you use binchotan (even the cheap stuff) it takes a hot minute to fire up the grill. If you're interested in getting into yakitori, though, there's no real substitute for a konro. As for stuff not mentioned on your list, a nice Japanese chef's knife can be a revelation. But be warned: nice knives are potentially an expensive rabbit hole. I'd also consider a pressure cooker. They're fantastic for making stock and quite useful for getting braises and beans done in a hurry.

Oh, I went LN crazy when I first got it. I powdered all the things! I segmented berries and citrus into druplets and vesicles. I cryofried a steak. I nitro-muddled cocktails and invested in a beautiful vacuum-insulated stirring tin for that purpose (also sadly underused). And, of course, I made ice cream (though I'm most partial to ChefStep's strawberry angostura sorbet which is remarkable both for its intense flavor and ultra smooth texture). In short, I had a lot of fun. But LN is expensive and can be a pain to source. I have to make a 15 minute trip to the welding supply to drop off the dewar in the morning and make a return trip in the afternoon to pick it up after it's been filled. That's an hour in the car for each refill. If I could just pick it up at Walmart like I can dry ice, I'd probably be using it a lot more. But I can't, so I don't. This was my first exposure to LN as well, though it was in my doctor's office at the age of 7. Nothing instills respect for the dangers of LN like getting cryogenic burns as a child.

I forgot about my liquid nitrogen dewar. 😩

My secret to creamy and stable emulsified vinaigrettes? Add a tablespoon or so of store bought mayonnaise to the mix. The word on the street is that you should avoid emulsifying EVOO in the blender, as it makes the phenols become bitter. Whether or not it changes things enough to bother you will depend on the olive oil and your palate, of course. I never bother blending for salad dressings, but do it sometimes if I'm making mayo.

Miso glazed black cod, scallion ginger donabe rice, sesame garlic baby bok choy, and carrots glazed with white soy, mirin, butter, and sake.

They're kind of dangerous that way. It's not really shaped properly to function that way (unless I'm misunderstanding the type of mold you're referring to). Here's a couple stock photos that show the lid design better. Each box comes with a wooden rice measuring cup that can stick to the bottom of the lid via magnet. The lid also has notches cut into it so you can rest it on the side of the box. For anyone interested, the company who makes them is called Masuda Kiribako. The ones I have hold 1, 3, and 5kg of rice. They make an even larger one that holds 10kg and is basically the height of all of mine stacked together. Seems like it'd get kind of cumbersome to move around and reach into, but I guess if I can move my stack around, it's not that much different. I keep the medium and large ones filled with @Katie Meadow's favored long grain (Lundberg basmati) and @JoNorvelleWalker standby short grain (Tamaki gold).

About two years ago while on a manic spree, I went container crazy trying to organize my kitchen. For smaller amounts of stuff, I find the Oxo pop containers to be a good solution, though the plastic is brittle and will shatter if dropped. (I had a couple arrive broken from Amazon.) But for storing larger quantities of rice, the undisputed baller option are paulownia wood storage containers. They're shamefully expensive, but the quality is obvious and they're super beautiful. I shouldn't have bought them. But bought them, I did so... might as well post them in the thread on rice storage. Here's my little rice corner: And a better look at the box stack: And here they are unstacked. The small one really is too small. It holds approximately 1kg of rice and even less with the lid scoop in. I usually use it for wild rice, since I seldom have much of it on hand. The larger ones contain short grain sushi rice and basmati. The pictures don't do them justice. Again, I shouldn't have purchased them. Again, they're absurdly expensive for food storage containers. Did I mention that I was on a manic spree? Anyway, they hold rice just fine. It's always fresh and fragrant when the lid is opened. The wood has a luminous appearance and luxurious texture, and the fit/finish is superb. But are they really any better than just using a Cambro? It's hard to say -- which is awful considering the price tag. But they sure are purdy. IMO, polycarbonate Cambros are the best solution for storing larger quantities of rice (or anything, really). They're the industry standard in restaurants for a reason. As for the rice itself, I've tried a lot of varieties over the years and have discovered the my favorites are the aforementioned sushi and basmati rices, the former for its texture and the latter for its fragrance. I want to like Carolina Gold more than I actually do, though the rice "grits" are an interesting product. There's just something about the texture of Carolina Gold that I don't love. If you're never had CG rice, the Brock / Anson Mills recipe for Hoppin' John is good enough to justify a special order from AM.

Thanks! Yep, there wasn't really a finishing step apart from the pre-sear. Of course, I would have done something extra if I was planning on serving the skin. The thighs finished cooking the night before and I cooled them down in an ice bath. Then in the morning I unbagged them, patted them dry, and threw them in a 225F oven with convection until they were warmed through and the skin was de-sogged. The meat is easier to pull if it's warm. I had planned to make cracklins by crisping up the skin between silpats in a hot oven, but ran out of time. I still have the skin, so if I get bored over the weekend I may try making a skin snack.

We did a Lexington style BBQ take on Thanksgiving this year. Pulled smoked turkey BBQ with a spicy cranberry bbq sauce and red Brussels slaw. Served with Alton Brown’s mac and cheese, fried okra, and deviled eggs. Cold smoked SV turkey thighs Okra and turkey A messy but tasty plate of food Perhaps the biggest star of the show was my wife’s pumpkin apple pie cake inspired by some Milk Bar recipes. Brown butter cake, spiced apples, pumpkin ganache, apple cider soak, and pie crumb. I’m not a big dessert person, but this was goood.

This is post sous vide. Note how much darker the color got.

MC cranberry consommé. Using some of the cranberry solids to make a bbq sauce. And smoked turkey thighs. These got a presear to brown the skin and a few hours worth of cold smoke. This is just before going in the bag.

NC native here. I've never heard a barbecue sandwich called "a barbecue." Round these parts, the noun "barbecue" refers to smoked pig -- typically pulled, but sometimes sliced or chopped (or totally mutilated). It might also refer to an event at which a pig is smoked. As an adjective, it can apply to other meats that are smoked or served with barbecue sauce. It is also a verb, what pitmasters do.

So where did we land on the toast front? The only way I think I'll ever be able to swing one of these is as a bonkers unnecessary upgrade to our toaster oven (which, frankly, isn't very good at making toast in the first place). Toast-making wouldn't be its primary selling virtue, but it would be our only toast maker / bagel toaster. Not that we eat that much toast (or that many bagels). I only know that I don't have room enough for both the Anova AND a standalone toaster...

I believe Masaharu Morimoto originated this dish. There's a recipe for it in Morimoto: The New Art of Japanese Cooking. (eG-friendly Amazon.com link)

The pasta attachments for my KitchenAid. I couldn't justify the expense myself, so put them on my Amazon wishlist a couple years ago with the intention of upping my ramen game as well as making ravioli on a semi-regular basis. It's all still in the box. On a related note, I also have a lovely brass pasta wheel and a gnocci paddle that have never been used. Ooh! Also my high output wok burner, I'm sad to say.

If you try it, let us know how it worked out. I've done the popcorn grits thing before but never used the liquid for anything apart from the grits themselves. I've always thought it would be a good addition to a chowder or tortilla soup, but never got around to trying it. Patterson can give of a bit of a Norman Bates vibe, but he puts out some thoughtful and beautiful dishes. If you're at all interested, check out his MAD presentation "A Short History of The Beet" to get a sense of his approach to food (and to hear David Chang laughing too loud on the mic, which was apparently just beside him). Patterson's beet rose is a thing of beauty, as well as a real pain in the ass to produce. A few simple ingredients, clean flavor profiles, insane technique. It's an inspirational invitation to look at familiar ingredients in an unfamiliar way. Why not make a popcorn stock? Why not make beet gummy bears?

It's not really a thing, but a little while back making grits out of popcorn was a brief trend thanks to chef Daniel Patterson. (Check out the link for a video demo of the dish.) That recipe basically consists in making popcorn and then boiling it in water with some butter and then passing it through a sieve. A byproduct of this process is the intensely flavored popcorn cooking liquid -- basically buttered popcorn stock.

You could try making popcorn stock and using that to flavor the soup. It's probably not what they did at the restaurant, but it will provide the note you're looking for.

Free shipping from Darto from now until Dec 22.

Pulling out the tendons is tedious but worth the effort.

You're welcome! Archive.org is a great resource when things go missing from a website.

I can't find the PDF version, but the HTML one is available through the Wayback Machine @ archive.org

Looks like a worthy upgrade to the older Polyscience units targeted at professionals. Easier to clean, integrated probe, better clamp system, IPx7 waterproof rating, HACCP manager app, built in "SV toolbox" and recipe/setting saving so your idiot employees can use it without killing people. I can only imagine that, like the crossbranded Control Freak, it's going to cost a lot more than I'd be willing to pay for it. But home users aren't the target market, so...

What about it are you trying to replicate? I don't know why one would cook tomato juice in an oven as opposed to on the stovetop, but using either method I'd wager that much of the result would be a consequence of evaporative flavor concentration (which you wouldn't get in a bag). If you're looking to actually cook the juice to deepen the flavor, this takes quite some time using SV at high temps.