btbyrd

Thank you. It does take a while to prepare, but the process is very straightforward. It's not impractical for a home cook, but it's also a somewhat ambitious "composed" soup. The impetus behind it was the fact that whole chickens were on sale this week, and it had been forever since I'd made a proper soup. Now that the weather is colder and we're in a pandemic, I figured some comfort food was called for. So I told my wife that chicken soup was to be on the menu and asked her what she wanted. Ramen was out. Pho ga was out. Noodles in general were out. She wanted a chicken and rice soup, which is usually somewhat homey and modest, but I wanted to do a take on a showstopper chicken and rice soup. And that's what I did. So I bought two chickens and broke them down. I deboned the legs and thighs and used the bones, along with the carcasses and wings, to make a roasted stock in a pressure cooker. While the bones were roasting in the oven, I brought the water to a boil and added half a head of napa cabbage and two sheets of kombu, and then turned off the heat to let it all steep. Once the bones were roasted, I strained out the veg, added the bones and meat, deglazed the roasting pan with water, and added a boatload of alliums. I used onions, shallots, garlic, and ginger as aromatics for a sort of vaguely Asian broth. Pressure cooked for 1.5 hours. Then I strained the stock, chilled it overnight in the fridge, and defatted it (reserving the fat). It was around this time that I thought about clarifying the broth to make it more upscale. So I used a technique from ChefSteps and blended the stock with a chicken breast and a couple grams of methocel, which I then brought to a simmer until a raft formed and I could strain out the clarified broth. I also added a spoonful or two of Minor's chicken base before clarifying -- a way to add salt to the broth along with some chicken flavor and MSG. I strained the clarified stock through a cloth and reserved that until it was time to make the soup. The broth is the complicated part. Everything else is pretty easy, especially if you skip the pretentious steps like using a tiny melon baller on the carrots. The carrots got balled, and the celery and napa cabbage got cut into large-ish, but spoonable pieces. I did a quick blanch on these in salted water and chilled them down in an ice bath. It sounds fussy, but really didn't take much work. I salted the chicken breast and threw it in a bag with a bit of oil and white soy sauce, and then cooked it SV at 64C for an hour. After an hour, I added a few eggs to the water bath. While the chicken and eggs were cooking, I made some rice and threw the mushrooms in the oven after tossing them with some chicken fat. At the end, it was just a matter of assembly. I mounded the rice in a ramikin and unmolded it into the bowl. Staggered the celery, carrots, cabbage, mushrooms and cubed chicken meat around the bowl. I brought the broth up to a boil and seasoned it with white soy sauce and a bit of salt. Poured in enough of the almost-boiling broth to come close to the top of the molded rice, scattered over some green onions, and added the egg yolk. Added a drizzle of sesame oil around the broth and it was done. So yes, I suppose it was a lot of work. But I went pretty crazy on broth-based soups a few years ago, including a deep dive on ramen and pho. I would never have made this dish without having done that before, but after cooking enough stock over the years, cooking something like this didn't seem especially extravagant. If you make the broth consciously and in large quantity, by buying a bunch of chicken backs or wings just to make the liquid, it can be really easy to do. If you're just trying to make the most of a couple of birds, it's somewhat more work than the payoff (which is why buying extra wings to make stock is a great idea, but one I didn't follow this time). But the idea of making a non-cloudy chicken and rice soup got in my head, and I decided to run with it. I love a rustic soup and stew, but there's something really special about a bowl that's filled with artfully plated (or "bowled"?) and intensely flavored ingredients that have been cooked separately and then get brought together by a well-seasoned, aromatic broth. If you're a hobbyist cook, there are worse ways to spend a Sunday afternoon.

Chicken and rice soup. With methocel-clarified consommé and 64C yolk. Blanched carrots, celery, and napa cabbage stems. SV chicken breast. Shiitake and hen-of-the-woods mushrooms roasted in chicken fat. 16-grain donabe rice. Sur la plate w/ Ruhlman soup soon.

I've done it, but never for that long. Sausage and other ground meats tends to get pappy and mealy after four hours or so.

Salt brings fluid out for like ten minutes, but it reabsorbs back into the meat. Salting well in advance gives the salt time to work its way beneath the surface of the meat and will help the roast hang onto moisture during the cooking process. And the workflow is much nicer if you season beforehand as opposed to vacuum sealing, freezing, unbagging, seasoning, and rebagging. That sounds awful and unnecessary.

Go ahead and season before. I also suggest a pre-sear. SV roasts are so easy, delicious, and convenient, I doubt I'll ever do one conventionally again.

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.

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