btbyrd

Chef does not recommend taking your knives to a mobile sharpener who operates out of a truck.

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.

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. 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.

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…

Cabbage rolls.

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.

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.

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).

This is how I do it, with freakshow amounts of butter. It produces excellent results. I like to butterfly them and then tuck them back into their shell before cooking. Untuck after cooking and serve or finish with the heat source of your choosing. You can sear or broil or grill them after to add some char and firmness to the outside or the shell. Save the butter, chill it down, and pour off the watery phase the next day and you'll have some nice lobster butter for cooking. Use it to make a roux for the base of a chowder or something.

The Bianco Napoli tomatoes have been on deep sale at my WF, and I keep stocking up. It's an almost perpetual sale, it seems. I also just discovered that Masienda's blue corn masa was on sale at my local WF for the sale price of 2 for $7.99. That's insane. The normal price from Masienda (direct or from Amazon) is 2 for $24, so that' s an insane deal. I bought 4 kilos...

Finished up this ribeye I started a couple weeks ago. Here was the initial sear: I cooked it SV for 8 hours at 130F. Then chilled and stored until tonight. Rethermed at 130 for two hours, then pat it dry and let it hang out on a rack until it was time. That garlic thyme butter is delicious.

Your probe is a knockoff of the Meater Bluetooth thermometer. There’s not really anything directly comparable to the Combustion Inc available. It has more temp sensors, non Bluetooth mode, predictive cooking, and the ability to find the core temp of your food even if your probe isn’t placed quite properly. All the other wireless probe thermometers I’ve seen are much less sophisticated.

Not to swamp the forum with Anyday discount codes, but I just got an email that Anyday is offering a 30% off discount with code COMMUNITY30. My set is arriving soon but I'm sadly not going to be able to enjoy them until Christmas because they're technically a gift from my parents. So I'll give it to them to wrap and put under the tree to act surprised. Though the surprise will be feigned, the enthusiasm won't be. I like nice lids and glass that won't explode, what can I say?

It's usually a mix of egg and stock (mostly stock). It's not like you're bringing a batch of stuffing together with 12 eggs.

I got the Everyday set, so one shallow and one deep of both the medium and large sizes. I’m thinking about getting some of the small bowls too just to round out the set. What sizes do you use the most? And you’re right, there are a lot of recipes that look usefully reliable. Cooking things like grains or potatoes in them is going to help me out. Or so I think…

I’ve been looking for a good deal on Anyday microwaveable cookware, and Food52 currently has the best prices I’ve seen with an additional 20% off using code CYBER. I’m sure that Food52 has good prices on other stuff too, but I was in it for the expensive bowls with fancy lids. You do have to pay for shipping, but it is still cheaper than buying direct or Amazon’s Black Friday deals.

Smoked Old Fashioned. Wild Turkey 101, Angostura, demerara, Luxardo cherry, orange, applewood. On some clear ice. Turkey Crown.

This year is a small crowd. I am roasting a turkey crown as well as making dressing and gravy. I’m making a double stock for the gravy, so that should be nice….

Iwatani torch heads are kind of the industry standard for smaller brûlée type torches.

The tips on the TiStix are so fine they disappear in your mouth. Almost all of the other metal chopsticks I've seen look like chonky, unappetizing dental instruments to me as well.

My wife has purple light sabre ones that she got from Star Wars land at Disney World. They're mostly for her hair though.

I don't know how much curve was in the original knife, but profiles vary a lot and what is good or not depends on cutting style and personal preference. If you had to remove a lot of steel to get rid of the chips, you may want to thin the blade to improve cutting performance.

Some of my fancy sticks. My favorites out of all of them are probably also the most expensive. And boy are they expensive! They're TiStix anodized titanium chopsticks by knifemaker Alan Folts, and you can find them for sale at EatingTools.com. Please nobody ever visit that site. You'll find yourself wanting stupid, lovely, expensive things that you can't forget about for years. Like a ****ing $85 pair chopsticks. Look folks, I know that's a crazy thing to buy. But I had these on my public birthday/Christmas wishlist for half a decade. And while I think that $85 is a reasonable budget for a special gift, nobody wanted to buy such an incredible extravagance. Nobody understood. For years and years and years. So after much frustration, I treated myself to a pair. As it turned out, the maker stopped producing the color scheme that I wanted (The Midnight Edition in "Dew") because it was apparently difficult to get the anodization/color consistent with that particular color combination. So I ended up with a pair of "factory seconds" for a light discount. In the photo below, the top one is more or less perfect, but the middle one has some purple tinges to the middle section instead of the sort of turquoise it was supposed to be. But I like the "wabi sabi" imperfection of it all. In terms of shape and size, they're like elegant tapered Japanese chopsticks with a bit of texture to the tip section. Korean metal chopsticks tend to be slightly wider and with less taper than Japanese chopsticks. They're also made of stainless steel, which conducts heat much better than titanium. The thin tip (low thermal mass) and relatively poor thermal conductivity (25% of iron) makes it a great pair to eat hot noodle soups with. And, dear readers, I eat a lot of noodle soup. The sticks don't get hot and the light bead-blasted-y finish on the tips makes them just grippy enough to handle slippery broth-coated noodles. The build quality and machining of the chopsticks is phenomenal. I do feel as though I could probably kill a person with them, as they are quite pointy, and quite rigid, and quite likely to be an heirloom that my children fight over. Or else they'll look at them with the same bewildered indifference that everyone else does when they contemplate my extravagant TiStix. I wish I had another pair. My second most favorite pair is a mystery to me. It's a pair of lacquered cherry bark chopsticks produced in Japan, but I have no idea where I got them or who made them. I went through all my chopsticks orders and emails and found nothing -- NOTHING! -- about where they came from. They're the pair to the immediate left of the titanium chopsticks in the first picture I posted. Japanese chopsticks are typically small compared to Chinese chopsticks, but the "serving" chopsticks are slightly larger than ordinary Japanese chopsticks and therefore better at shoving food into my giant American gullet. Anyway, I did some sleuthing recently and found a similar looking pair on Bezos.com. (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) They arrived a couple days ago and appear to be the "individual size" version. They're like six bucks and they handle *really* well, so I ordered another pair as a backup. The shape of both small and large is basically a tapered rectangular prism, and the tapered squared off tips make them great for grabbing noodles. Look, I eat a lot of noodles, okay?! Anyway, here's my old favorite along with the new pair from Amazon. Y'all go nuts and buy the rest of them, but someone find out who makes them so I can order a backup pair of the serving chopsticks! My other favorite pair are also Japanese serving chopsticks. They were also the second most expensive chopsticks. I think there are some trends forming here. Anyway, they're Kohchosai Kosuga Nedake bamboo root chopsticks I got from Toiro Kitchen. Again, wallets beware! These sticks feel elemental or magical or something. My wife thinks of them as the Elderwand from Harry Potter, though we know that's not "really" what the Elderwand looks like. They're her favorite. She liked them so much but was afraid to ever use them, so I gave them to her to use with reckless abandon. Reckless abandon: My overall preferences seem to be for the longer length of Chinese chopsticks but with the tapered tip and precision of the Japanese style of chopstick. And I also prefer for it to be made from a very nice substrate. The unreasonable pair of chopsticks I want for Christmas this year but nobody will get me is another bamboo Japanese serving style from Toiro, this time with a wisteria vine wrap at the top. I could totally eat some noodles with those...

Chickpea stew with coconut milk, chard, turmeric, and ginger.

Wood grilled chicken breas, creamed shishitos, and roasted ancho rubbed delicata squash dressed with hot honey and lime juice.