btbyrd

I like cucumbers vacuum-infused with lime juice. If you want to turn it into a full "dish" you can just marinade cucumbers and thinly sliced red onion in lime juice with some sugar and a dash of fish sauce. Throw in some mixed herbs like cilantro or mint or thai basil or whatever at the end. You can do that with or without a chamber vacuum, but it sure looks prettier if you compress it. Cucumber and short ribs. There was a lime-zest and herb infused macadameia nut oil on the plate too. Citrus oils aren't acidic, but their aromatic qualities can help balance a dish. Also the Modernist Cuisine oxtail demi that has asian infusions. There's a lot of tamarind paste in the glaze to brighten up what is a quite thick and protein-rich glaze. That sauce is freaking magic, but it's a lot of work. If you make it in double quantity, you can freeze what you don't use. And here's a vacuum infused cucumber, red onion, and cilantro salad with that dressing I was talking about. Sometimes I use honey instead of sugar. And I usually use a less refined sugar if I don't have Thai rock on hand. That stuff can be hard to dissolve if you don't bang it out in a mortar first, and who has the time for all that?! Good god compressed cucumber is beautiful. Anyway, with wagyu you need to punch people in the face: Wasabi. Horseradish. Mustard. Acid. Fermented vegetables. In a 4-5oz portion, there is a lot of fat, especially if it's one of the higher grades. Give people big piles of different salts on their plate, and grind some fresh cracked pepper on the side for them. Allow them to season as they go (but season the meat when you cook it, obviously...). Let people be their own Salt Bae. And Pepper Bae. Some boutique soy sauces would be good too. I have a few on hand that would be bangers, including a smoked soy sauce I got from Toiro kitchen. I might also try curing the wagyu between kombu and/or using seaweed salt in your prep work. I have some Japanese ayu fish sauce that's amazing and very hammy -- one of Dave Arnold's favorites. It would probably be even better than Red Boat. Speaking of, Blis makes a barrel aged Red Boat fish sauce that would be great for dipping. Make some nuoc cham, in whatever form or fashion you want. The point is, there are options.

I treat everything like it's sushi, but I realize that I'm a bit of a spoiled weirdo in that regard. Honesuki for breaking down chicken; garasuki for turkey legs, hankotsu for deboning (also garasuki!), sujihiki for slicing raw and cooked protein, yanagiba for slicing raw fish. Raw fish slicing is a place where technique is very important, as the flesh is delicate and your technique can elevate or destroy fish flesh. The same thing is true of slicing meat, but "doing it wrong" is usually much less obvious. Unless you do something like cut flank steak or tri tip (or something similar) with the grain and make a potentially tender cut stringy and chewy. Understanding the anatomy of the meat you're cutting can be very helpful in some instances. I've posted this video elsewhere on eGullet, but it shows the inherent difficulty carving a tri-tip roast across the grain for maximum tenderness. "Correct cutting motion" is less important when cutting a tri-tip than knowing where to make your cuts. A lot of good technique is in knowing where and why to cut, not just how.

You're trying to reason your way into something that is a practice and a craft. Just go out and cut things and decide for yourself what works and what doesn't work with whatever knives you have on hand. There is no correct answer to the question you're trying to ask. I would cut the same piece of meat differently depending on the knife and the purpose. If you're not sure what to do, experiment. Or if there's a specific piece of meat you're interested in cutting, look on YouTube.

Man, I really want that error #27. I think I might do it just for laughs, but I think I'd get cross looks from my dear sweet wife. I've been waiting on a #31 forever, and it seems like they're doing a #30. But they told me last year that the #31 was coming this year... and I couldn't wait. I ended up with a 12" All Clad D7. It is the freaking truth. I love it as much as my Dartos, and the fact that I can do acid in it without worry is a boon. It's thick as nards and weighs 1965g. Only 4.5 pounds, but because it's D7 the evenness and heat-up time are unrivaled [relative to cast iron and reactive steel]. I got a new open box one direct from the factory for roughly Darto prices. I season mine with Bar Keeper's Friend because I like to ride eternal, shiny and chrome.

Clay pot cooking is fun and worth a shot if you come across a nice piece that you'd actually use. Things will taste different, but primarily for physical reasons having to do with heat and the nature of the clay than any sort of "terroir" effect of cooking in earthenware. But much clay cookware is porous and can retain odors -- a problem compounded by the fact that you can't put it in the dishwasher. I have 3 lovely donabes that I care for diligently, one of which is used almost exclusively for cooking short grained new crop rice. That rice donabe has a slight ricey fragrance to it at all times. Sometimes I de-aromatize by boiling some water with vinegar added, but that only gets you so far.

I started a thread on ChefSteps' forum telling them that they need to make a proper consumer countertop combi oven and sell it around this price point. I even did some due diligence for them and told them what to improve (mostly JUST MAKE IT BIGGER THAN THE CSO!). Cuisinart aren't going to do it, apparently. I bet that there's some stupid reason lurking behind Cuisinart's refusal, like the fact that making it take a quarter sheet pan would interfere with the ability to stack maximal units on pallets in shipping containers. At any rate, consumers want it. This Sharp thing isn't it. Too small. ChefSteps should make it. If they could look at the circulator and imagine Joule, I'm sure they should shrink a Rational combi down to size. Give it a temperature probe, even. Optional wood smoke mode? I dunno... just dreaming.

Deep frying in ghee is heavenly. And it is a very stable oil that can be reused. It also has a healthful lipid profile, if the cows were fed on pasture). Expensive, of course, but worth it for a special occasion. If you are going to reuse fry oil, you've got to filter it somehow. Some dedicated fryers have a system that makes this easy, but I typically fry in cast iron on induction so I have no fancy built-in strainers on hand. So I'll filter it through a chinois or a tea strainer depending on the quantity. But Kenji has outlined a fun and creative way to clarify fry oil using gelatin. It's not vegan, of course... but it could be worth trying if you need to get those extra tiny bits of potato starch out of your beef tallow. To get back to disposal issues, I usually pour my cooled fry oil into a ziptop bag and dispose of that with the other household waste. This is easiest with unsaturated fats, because they're liquid and you can just pour them out. Some find this method too messy or fussy, and the Japanese have a solution for them. There is a product called Katameru Tempuru which works to solidify used fry oil so that it's easier to dispose of. I cannot comment on the stuff myself, as pouring it into bags works fine for me. But there are several "cooking oil solidifiers" on the market, if you're in the market for such a thing. Some are even made by S.C. Johnson -- a family company.

We've made it. We also got almost "one of everything" to go at Milk Bar Vegas as dessert after our meal at Momofuku. I think we also got crack pie soft serve, but it might have just been two servings of cereal milk soft serve. At any rate... It's a sugar pie. It tastes like a sugar pie. It's good. I was actually pleasantly surprised with how balanced it was, since Christina has a reputation for being a sugar freak and I have reputation for never ordering dessert. My favorite dessert is a proper cheese course with a glass of port. And if not that, then a fruit pie with some cheese and maybe some iced cream. And if not that, then an acid-forward berry sorbet. I'm not the kind of person who wants to mow down on a sugar and flour and corn anything. But I'm a fan of Tosi and a fan of the Momo crew. When in Rome... I don't think "Milk Bar Pie" is a very good name for the product, for multiple reasons. And I cannot imagine taking offense to "Crack Pie," even tough anyone with a brain can acknowledge how horrifically destructive that drug has been (and especially so in the African American community, in part because of garbage and prejudicial sentencing laws that treat crack differently from powdered cocaine). Crack Pie is okay in my book. Just okay. It's nothing to write home about. I don't think I'd make it again, or order it again. And maybe I'd try to come up with a different name, but maybe not. But I'm not a sugar head, even if I did once order (basically) one of everything at Milk Bar Vegas on our way back home from the Grand Canyon. Needs acid. But then again, I acid adjust my juice. So....

This isn't really disposal related... but I just wanted to encourage people to get frying.

No joke! This is a rule I also follow. People should have a thermometer in their oven, but they should also have two in their fridge -- one on the top and one on the bottom shelf. And you should organize it so that perishable foods that can contaminate things (like raw meat) are physically lower in your fridge so that they only "contaminate downwards." It's the "trickle down" theory of fridge safety. Anyway, double check that your fridge is actually cold where you plan to store your food, and keep it as cold as you can without things freezing.

My immune system is a beast, so I usually just use the "sniff test." I'm very sensitive to off-flavors in poultry, so microbial safety is usually less of a practical issue for me than palatability. So if you're feeling frisky, I'd say give it a sniff and roll with it. But caveat eater. I probably wouldn't serve it to my grandmother or kid sister.

It may be bunk, but the fry oil people have thought to add it in. I'm sure your scientific chops are better than my own. The use of silicones in fry oil might be a bunch of stupid industry nonsense (like vacuum marination of meat) but there's at least a purported rationale at work. I look forward to hearing what you're able to find out. I did a quick glance through what I have available to me, and found a couple things that may be interesting on the topic. Here's a relevant literature review and critical discussion from 2004: Effectiveness of dimethylpolysiloxane during deep frying Author: Márquez-Ruiz, Gloria Journal: European journal of lipid science and technology ISSN: 1438-7697 Date: 11/01/2004 Volume: 106 Issue: 11 Page: 752-758 DOI: 10.1002/ejlt.200400999 And another one purporting to establish the utility of DMPS in continuous frying operations. Polydimethylsiloxane Shows Strong Protective Effects in Continuous Deep-Frying Operations Author: Totani, Nagao Journal: Journal of oleo science ISSN: 1345-8957 Date: 2018 Volume: 67 Issue: 11 Page: 1389-1395 DOI: 10.5650/jos.ess18047 Maybe it's all a ruse by Big Silicone. Or maybe the food science guys just don't understand the mechanism properly. In any event, they're adding silicone to commercial fry oil in minute quantities in an effort to stave off oxidation.

Meh?

Okay... some nuggets from Shirley. Cookwise is an AWESOME book, and her section on frying is fantastic. "New crops like high oleic sunflower oil and low linolenic soybean oil maximize single double bonds and minmize double and triple double bonds, making for more stable and healthful oils. The more healthful unsaturated fats can be used if the oil is not going to be re-used. Considerations like flavor and smoke point may be more important than saturation." (158) That's basically why I keep HO sunflower oil and tallow on hand. Tallow is super stable (and not terrible for you, if your cow didn't spend the last two months of its life in a concentration camp). But for a vegetable-based option, HO sunflower oil is pretty dang good. She does not recommend re-using fry-oil from home because it does not contain the common additives (like anti-oxidants) that help keep commercial fryer oil from breaking down. I don't fry that hot and I use relatively stable fats, so I don't know that this nugget applies across the board. You can always add some mixed tocopherols to your oil if you want to, and create your own "commercial" fry oil. Commercial fry oils contain trace amounts of certain silicones, which form a film on the surface of the oil, preventing direct contact with oxygen in the air (and thereby limiting oxidative rancidity). Solid vegetable shortenings often contain emulsifiers like mono and diglycerides, which makes them good fats to use in cakes but lowers their smoke point and makes them bad for higher temp frying. I couldn't find anything on polarity and browning, but KennethT is right on the money that you don't need to add much "old" oil to fresh oil to reap the benefits of slightly damaged fry fats. The key is that the damage is *slight*. You don't want to slop back a bunch of burned up fishy-smelling rancid garbage oil into your jug. That's not going to be good for anyone.

There's some surface activity stuff going on there too, for sure. I'll go reread Shirley Corriher, as it's been a while. She doesn't get nearly enough play! I don't know who McGee's agent is... but maybe she should switch over. 🙂

It was on one of the back episodes of Cooking Issues. But the issue of polarity impacting the consistency of fried foods is well documented at the commercial level. Here's an article on monitoring polar compounds in fryer oil. A relevant nugget: "Total Polar Compounds affect the consistency of deep frying by increasing the release of water and the absorption of fats into the product. French fries, for instance, will brown but will be hollow because the moisture has been released too quickly."

There is no "best" or "correct" way to do anything. There are just better and worse paths to specific goals. But I don't think that you fell into that trap. The Platonic metaphysics have corrupted our thinking about value in so many domains... but the quest for the One "best" way to do _________ in the kitchen is one of the most obvious. This is a stupid quest. There is no Platonic form of the French Fry that our methods are failing to live up to. There's just a bunch of techniques to do particular things to achieve some desired result. All of them involve trade-offs. All of them are better and worse in various respects. None are "best." None are "correct." I wish we'd all stop thinking like Platonists about value in the kitchen. It'd take a big weight off our shoulders and free our minds to explore the world of culinary technique free of guilt and shame. Some outlets have built their brand on Platonic "best-mongering." They shell out recipe after recipe for "the best roast chicken" or "the best pumpkin pie." They're hoping that you're afraid in the kitchen. Afraid of not living up to that BS Platonic ideal. Because they've got a solution to sell you. They're counting on your fear. They might not know that's what they're doing, but that's what they're doing. And they need to knock it off. We have enough neurotic cooks as it is.

If you haven't tried the modernist triple cooked chips, you're missing out. Heston invented it, but there are a bunch of variations out there. I started out with the ChefSteps version, but now have my own approach. Start with Russet or Maris Piper potatoes (depending on where you are). The technique begins with an initial blanching step to cook the potato and wake up the starches. You want to cook them until they are almost falling apart (and some will fall apart). Doing this in a water bath is more gentle because there's less agitation and bumping around; you'll break fewer fries if you blanch them sous vide, but if you don't care then that's not really necessary. Half the time, I just boil them on the stovetop. If I'm feeling precious, I'll go all-out. Everything's a trade off. Anyway, after the initial blanch, the fries are drained and allowed to dry. The easiest thing to do is move them to a rack, let them cool down to room temp, and then move them to the fridge to let the surface moisture flash off. Then there's a low-temp fry step. You fry the blanched potatoes at a low temp (like 275F/130C) to start to set the crust and to drive out moisture. Once that's done, you drain the fries, allow them to cool, and then freeze them. From frozen, it's just a quick trip through some hot oil. By the time the outside looks done, the inside will be thawed. And delicious. That freezing step is cool because it allows you to do all this pain-in-the-butt work before hand in a big batch, and then you have fancy modernist fries in your freezer ready to deep fry at your leisure. That's the only way I can justify doing all that work (unless it's for a special occasion or something). There are a lot of variations in this framework. People have put their fries in vacuum chambers, ultrasonic baths, and enzyme solutions to try to produce a maximally crusty and delicious surface. I've tried two of those three, and found the Pectinex SPL pre-soak on the raw potatoes to be the cheapest, easiest way to enhance the surface texture. That's Dave Arnold's trick. But it's not really necessary. None of the fussy Modernist epicycles are really necessary to pull off a delicious triple cooked chip. Just follow the formula: blanch/boil, fry, fry. Examples: 3X Cooked Chips with Methocel F50 battered fish. This was a lard fry, if I recall correctly. . Here are some sliders and fries. I made the slider patties from some freshly ground pastured chuck. Then I froze them. The "pickup" on this meal was to deep fry the fries, then deep fry the burgers. I used my late grandmother's french fry cutter instead of a knife on this one. It is not the best version of that tool, but it keeps the dream alive, so to speak. Here's a ChefSteps iteration doing thin-cut fries. They have a recipe for the thick-cut ones as well. Fry fry fry, agent Starling... Fry fry fry...

Brand new oil is actually not as good as "older" fry oil, as slightly heat-damaged lipids are better at making physical contact with the surface of food (I believe for ionic reasons, if I recall my Dave Arnold correctly). At any rate, brand new fry oil isn't ideal for producing a brown crust as easily. That's not why I save my oil... but it's a good story to tell to myself while I'm filtering the oil and putting it back in the jar. I "backslop" old oil back into the main container, but only if it's been used to fry clean-tasting foods like potatoes. If fish or brassicas or some other such thing got fried in there, I end up disposing it. I use high oleic sunflower oil for most of my deep frying needs. It hits the right balance between having a healthy lipid profile, high smoke point, neutral flavor, and relatively low cost. There's probably something better out there, but I haven't had the time (or the need) to explore the options in depth. Most industrial seed oils used for deep frying are a freaking nightmare on your body from a health perspective (though that's a matter for another forum). I also like to use lard and tallow from pastured pigs and cows. For different reasons, and for different applications. The flavor of french fries made in beef tallow is superb. Apparently, if Steingarten is to be believed, a mixture of half horse fat and half beef fat tastes even better. But that beef fat french fry flavor is the core of the OG McDonald's french fry -- the Original Platonic Form of the French Fry in the American imagination. That was before the damned vegetarians and their health-nut disciples forced an industry-wide switch over from saturated animal fats to hydrogenated vegetable oils. Stupid jerks. How'd that work out for us? Want to ban trans-fats now? Guess who brought those into our dietary system, jerks!!! But I digress.... Lard also makes good french fries. Great onion rings. But it's the bee's knees for fried chicken. Chicken fried in lard? Yes. Throw in some fresh bacon fat and some rendered fatty funk from a country ham? Hell yes. Lard has a lot of monounsaturated fats compared to tallow, which makes it much more fragile from a heat stability standpoint. You can't reuse it over and over like you can with tallow. But if you're making fancy fried chicken for family supper on a Sunday afternoon? Boy howdy, get you some lard and get frying. You may well have to throw the fat away afterwards... but to think of the spent fat as "waste" is to have missed the magical work it did for you.

Bingo!

I bought a leather welding apron with no pockets for using LN in the kitchen. And some cryo gloves. Need some new shoes to complete the ensemble...

Elastomer/rubber boards are harder on your edge than the polyvinyl acetate in Hi Soft boards, but they are more durable and can stand up longer without needing to be resurfaced. They're both good choices, but Hi Soft is the softest and most forgiving on your edge. Neither are dishwasher safe, so in a home environment where you're not going to be really hammering on your board it makes sense to opt for the softer material. Both are going to be way better than cheap plastic boards that people might be used to. I have an end grain butcher block, but I cut on Hi Softs literally all the time because it's (1) softer and (2) easier to clean. While end grain cutting boards are nice and all, they're mostly expensive art objects. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I have knives that are arguably more "expensive art object" than utilitarian cutting device. But sometimes niceness gets in the way of functionality, and I think that end grain boards are one of those times. Or at least they can often be. To be sufficiently robust, end grain boards need to be over an inch thick, and that kind of weight adds up quick. It's not pleasant to move even medium sized end-grain boards to and from the sink. Maybe I'm just a hater, but I think I'd rather stick with my super soft synthetic boards for actual cutting and save my nice wooden boards as serving boards for cheese, charcuterie, and roast meats.

Hinoki boards aren't good all-arounders because the wood is fussy to care for. Most quality end grain boards will cost you. If you want something that will be gentle on your steel while being easy to care for and sanitize, look into Hi Soft boards. I end up using them more than my end grain boards out of convenience, but they're also gentler on edges than wood is. Hi Soft boards aren't pretty to look at, but they're one of the best cutting surfaces available.

If I'm doing anything serious, the apron will usually come out. The primary advantage of an apron, for me, is that it gives you the ability to strap a side towel to your... side. It's also helpful in keeping you clean, but I don't often get food on myself when cooking. Baking or pasta making is another story -- anything with flour demands an apron. All of this is for "back of house" work. There are a lot of beautiful high-end aprons out there that I find attractive but would never buy because they're impractical to clean. Leather... denim... waxed canvas... gorgeous stuff that you either can't launder or wouldn't want to (denim). Useless materials for the cook. Front of house? Bartenders? Sure. Perhaps if you're a woodworker or a barber or a bladesmith, something like that might be useful. But I'd hate to wear one while cooking.

I own a Vollrath Mirage Pro which has 100 power levels and allows you to set the temperature control in 5 degree increments. I have owned cheap units that had 10 or 15 power settings, and while they were okay for some things, the lack of a finely graded temperature control made them awful for any task where semi-accurate temperature control is desired. This happens more often than you might expect. The biggest bugaboo in this department is maintaining a simmer (and, by extension, maintaining pressure in a stovetop pressure cooker). If all you have is 10 settings, your ideal temperature might be somewhere between 1 and 2, or between 3 and 4... or whatever. If you select the low setting, the bubbles will die down completely; if you select the higher number, the pot will reach a full-on rolling boil. If all you have is a binary between "no bubbles" and "rolling boil," you're going to have a bad time. Another place that having fine control is useful is at the lower end of the temperature spectrum, like for tempering chocolate or cooking eggs. Vollrath makes a big deal about the Mirage's ability to melt chocolate at like 85F (or whatever). I don't do pastry/chocolate, so I can't comment there... but I do appreciate the ability to dial down my pot or pan to a very low setting for various applications. And while the temperature control (versus the 100 level power settings) on the Vollrath isn't the most precise, it's usefully spot on in the magic egg-cookery range of 60-70C. At 60C with a very thick (and well pre-heated) pan, eggs will just barely cook -- you could walk away for 15 minutes and they'd be slightly thickened from the base, but not much else. At 65C, they thicken and cook very gently -- give them a stir every three minutes or so over thirty minutes, and you'll have perfect custardy bain marie style eggs. At 70C the eggs cook much more quickly, but still yield a nice slow scrambled style (just with a much tighter curd). At any rate, having 100 power levels is fantastic. But it would be less fantastic if these weren't tied to a hardware knob (or rotary encoder, in this case). Membrane switches on induction are a freaking nightmare. Do you want to poke at a panel 100 times to adjust the temperature? Or sit there and wait while you hold your finger down on the button? It's awful. 100 levels of power are useless if they're locked behind switches. You need a knob so you can crank things up or throttle them back quickly and easily and without having to look at a display while you fiddle with membranes. Apart from having a highly granular access to the unit's maximum wattage via some sort of knob/dial, the other important thing to develop is accurate temperature control. 1-100 is great for some applications, actual temperature control is better in others The units to beat with respect to temperature control are the Polyscience/Breville Control Freak and the burners from Hestan. Having a temperature sensor in the cooktop as well as a wirelessly connected temperature probe seems like the way to go there. That could be an upgrade/upsell, because not everyone would be interested. But there is no other induction unit under $1000 (basically) that has 100 temperature levels apart from the Mirage Pro, and the Mirage Pro is targeted exclusively at commercial audiences. Home consumer use invalidates the warranty, which is stupid. So the market is wide open for a quality induction burner with a lot of control at a reasonable price for a home consumer market. Wide open. The world doesn't need another garbage induction hob. What it needs is something that can sell for $200-ish with a big induction coil, 100 power settings, a knob, and a $50 bluetooth temperature probe that works in conjunction with a temp sensor in the base to deliver extremely stable PID-based temperature control. Shoot for that, or something very close to that. Anything else is a waste of your time (and everyone else's).