btbyrd

Mine won't be here until Tuesday... silly holiday weekend. I'll post a picture of these alongside the Ruhlman spoons once they get here. I will say that the perforated BAE spoon from Ruhlman is quite large, and is more like a serving spoon (or something you'd cook with) than an oversized "regular" spoon.

I keep thinking to myself, "If only it were $350...". I'm glad these are going to be made, but they're a bit above my pay grade for the amount of use I'd get out of it. But if I were super-paid, or if I ran a bar program, I'd totally get one. Or three (in the case of the bar program).

You have to set the oven to higher than the oil's smoke point, so 350 won't work for most oils.

JB Prince is offering free shipping on orders over $49 (coupon code FREESHIP17). I picked up a set of Kunz spoons and some goodies from Cocktail Kingdom (including one of the large Yarai mixing glasses for stirred cocktails).

Drying oils will eventually harden if exposed to air at room temperature. They are super-unsaturated and therefore oxidize, crosslink, and go rancid quickly. This gives them some interesting functional properties that make them good bases for oil pants and varnishes. Some people think these properties also make them magical seasoning oils for cast iron and carbon steel. And they may be marginally better than alternatives -- maybe. But I've not personally found them to offer any advantages and wouldn't recommend anyone bother to spend the effort (or money) to track them down. Especially since they can leve a brittle layer of seasoning that is liable to flake off.

Have you checked the smoke point of flax oil lately? I use refined "extra light" olive oil as my neutral cooking oil, and that's what I use to season with (though I'll use EVOO sometimes if that's what's nearby). The smoke point of extra light olive oil is around 470F. I don't think that an oil's smoke point is a reliable indicator of its ability to season pans (provided that you're not using something like avocado oil that has a smoke point higher than your oven might go).

That product is more snake oil than anything else. Flax seed oil -- even magical organic, cold-pressed oil -- has a fatty acid profile that makes it prone to oxidation and rancidity. That's why the higher quality flax oils are in the refrigerated section. "Will never go rancid"? Ha! It'll go rancid before pretty much any oil in your kitchen. Flax is already an expensive uni-tasking oil, but the pricetag on this oil is astronomical. $15 for four ounces? Get out of here. The product description claims that flax is "the only drying oil that's edible." This is patently false. Walnut oil is another drying oil, and has a fatty acid composition similar to flax. And it actually tastes good. If you buy into the "gotta use a drying oil to season pans" mumbo jumbo, use walnut instead. When I last seasoned my pans, I was making salads dressed with walnut oil vinaigrettes every day for lunch for like a month. It was kinda nice, actually.

I have successfully used lard, walnut oil, and olive oil on my Matfer.

My suggestion is not to stress about it and not to buy a special, expensive bottle of uni-tasking oil that you have to source from a "health food" store and sit taking up space in your refrigerator. Especially if it leaves a brittle layer of seasoning that is liable to chip. If you want to use a "drying oil" with a similar fatty acid profile to flaxseed oil that actually has a culinary purpose and tastes delicious, use walnut oil. I mostly use "light" olive oil, but tend to use whatever I have on hand.

On a related note, people stress way too hard about what oil to use to season cast iron and carbon steel. Way too hard.

I've heard that flaxseed oil leaves a brittle seasoning that's liable to flake off. I never use the stuff (though I did use it for the initial round of seasoning on my first Darto pans). It's an expensive product that has no other use in my kitchen. And it's prone to go rancid. I don't know where the lore about using flax came from (though I suspect Sheryl Canter plays a big part in the story) but it's not worth tracking down and paying for in my experience.

They're a mix of green bells and jalapenos. I would have used pablanos, but the ones at the store were quite sad. I actually like green bells though, and prefer them to other bells for most applications. Yellow, orange, and red bells tend to be sweeter and lose all their... pepperiness. I almost regard them more as fruit than vegetable (even though they are fruit, botanically speaking). Reds and yellows are great for soup, or for adding some visual pop to a stir fry... but when I want something peppery without heat, pablanos are my top choice, and then green bells. (Unless I'm stuffing them, in which case, the shape of the bells wins out.)

Broke out the carbon steel and put a fierce sear down on some beef, peppers, and onions. My cheesesteak game is on point:

TLDR: There's actually no warping and the pans are totally fine. If you wanted to get them, get them. They're great pans and I'd buy them again. Okay, so... Upon investigation, it turns out that the pan isn't warped at all, but that all of my Dartos have a slightly rounded bottom so that they do not sit completely flat on a flattop. I'd never noticed this on my old gas burners because of the way the grates on those hold the pan. I moved about six months ago and hadn't noticed the wobble until the other night when, after a long night of cooking, a couple bottles of wine, and doing a big sinkful of dishes, I did a round of seasoning on my No. 27 (which hadn't been reseasoned since the move). I also did a round of seasoning of my 12" Matfer carbon steel pan at the same time. As it turns out, my No. 27. (and 23, 20, and 15) has a slightly convex bottom. This is only true of the bottom of the pan; the interior is completely even and flat. The curve on the exterior is very subtle -- so subtle that I hadn't noticed it on pans apart from the 27 until just now. The curve is least noticeable on the No. 15 and becomes slightly more noticeable as the pans get bigger... so it's most noticeable on the 27. But still, it's pretty subtle. I'll add that the curve isn't getting worse. I just noticed it less in the past because for the first 8 months that I had the Dartos, I was cooking on grates rather than a flattop. Now that I'm on a flat surface all the time, it seemed like it'd gotten worse. Really, it was just that my heating surface had gotten flatter. In practice, the curve doesn't impact the performance of the pans (at least in my experience with gas, electric, and induction) and my drunken complaint about warping was totally off the mark. It turns out that the pans don't sit totally flat and I didn't notice until I seasoned one alongside a Matfer (which sits completely flat). At any rate, I still love these pans and would buy them all again. The Matfer pans are great too, but the Dartos look and feel like something special whereas most other brands just seem like "a good, solid pan." Don't let my hastily composed, drunken offhand comment dissuade you.

EDIT: This post is actually not accurate and was written hastily. There is actually no warping at all, just a slightly rounded bottom on all of my Dartos that I'd never noticed before. My No. 27 came slightly warped, but it's gotten more warped recently. It wouldn't bother me if I still had a gas range, but now that I cook on a flat electric cooktop (or induction HOB), the wobble is annoying. Grr.

Apparently, more than 97% of graded Canadian beef carcasses score as one of the "A" grades. Sounds like a bit of a low bar. Luckily, the vague adjectives they use to categorize the various A-grades is of zero help. But that shouldn't matter so long as you simply assume that "small" marbling is better than "slight," which is better than "trace." LOOK AT THAT SMALL MARBLING! IT'S SO SMALL! I MUST HAVE IT!

Commercial mayonnaise is perfectly safe to leave out at room temperature. Its water content and pH are low enough to inhibit the growth of pathogenic bacteria. In fact, higher concentrations of mayonnaise in meat salads have been shown to retard rather than promote the growth of pathogenic bacteria.

Do the instructions on the rice you buy at the supermarket say to cook it in a slow cooker?

Quick followup: The olive oil is perhaps the mildest I've ever tasted, which will lend itself well to certain applications. I'm partial to super-burly, peppery, throat-burning EVOO.... but it's nice to have a quality mild one in the pantry for when the occasion calls for it. Looking forward to trying the vinegars.

Browsing the Williams-Sonoma clearance section, I found some great looking olive oil and vinegar from Massimo Bottura. I got them for a mere $5 a bottle; they sell for $40 or so normally. A very happy surprise indeed. The most interesting is the dark cherry balsamic; I'll have to put some thought into how best to use that one.

Given my general preference for pastured beef, I buy a lot of meat online and directly from local farmers. And I have a problem buying my meat online and buying directly from local farmers: you usually can't see what you're getting. Often, this actually isn't a problem. For many cuts, I'm not going to be too picky; I can't say that I've ever been disappointed by a beef cheek, oxtail, or shank that showed up on my door (or into my totebag at the market). The same goes for chuck roasts or anything else that I'd braise, grind, or slow-roast. But when it comes to steaks and other tender cuts, I have a huge problem with the meat we cannot see. To illustrate the problem, consider these two steaks I received from a large-ish online purveyor of (what they describe as) the best 100% grass-fed pastured beef you can get: To the left is a great looking ribeye with pretty incredible marbling for a non-grain-fed steer. I'd buy this happily if I saw it in the butcher's case at the supermarket. To the right is one of the leanest, least attractive NY Strip steaks I've seen. It looks more like sirloin than strip (and I never buy sirloin). This, I'd pass up without a second thought. But I paid money for it. I won't be buying from there again. When you buy online, you can't see what you're getting. This isn't a problem if you're buying graded beef from a reputable purveyor. If I buy A5 Wagyu from Debgragga or D'artagnan, I pretty much know what to expect. The same goes for USDA Prime steaks. But buying ungraded beef online? It's a total crapshoot. And, sadly, 100% grass-fed beef is seldom graded (given its typically poor marbling scores) and isn't readily available online. "So buy local!", you say. "You can see what you get!" But can you? Regardless of whether I buy directly from a farmer at their own farm, or if I buy from a farmer at the market... everything that I get is invariably wrapped in mystery by the opaque plague known as butcher's paper. This is true of literally every farmer I've gotten meat from directly. Ifthey instead packaged their products in transparent vac-bags like those pictured above, there'd be no doubt about the meat you're getting. But they don't sell it like that. They sell you a white brick for $30+, and you have no idea what's inside. And I have to bring the brick home and pray while I unwrap it. I'm not normally a praying man, but that butcher paper got me begging the meat gods for quality product. So what's a person to do? One thing I'm doing is asking farmers for transparency with respect to their product. Literal transparency. I will tell my farmers, in a friendly way while buying braising cuts, that if I cannot see their steaks, I will not be buying them. I don't think that's unreasonable, especially since farmer's market prices in my area are close to ridiculous. I urge you, my fellow eGulleters, to urge your farmers for that same transparency (if it's not there already). The more practical thing that I'll be doing from now on is simply buying Step 4 (or higher) steaks from Whole Foods. That way, I can see what I'm getting and it has the added bonus of never having been frozen. It's also locally sourced, so I'm supporting nearby farmers indirectly. And it tends to be cheaper than getting it frozen at the farm (or farmer's market). The only problem I have with this is logistical; I live in a small market, and Whole Foods only gets one Step 4 steer in per week. If I don't get there early on Saturday morning, I can miss out on everything good. I'm okay with that though. Missing out on the good stuff is better than paying good money for the bad stuff.

Nice. I just placed an order at The Spice House. There's free shipping on orders over $45, so go big. I did.

Asian noodle soups are my favorite "genre." "Asian is sort of a cop-out, meaningless term... but whatever, that's what I like. Beef pho is probably my favorite, and my own is my favorite. It's probably inauthentic in a thousand ways, but my broth is better (to me) than anything I've had out anywhere. That's probably because of the amount of meat and bones I use relative to water. In any event, it's deeply beefy, with tons of body, but is light on account of the anise, cinnamon, and clove. Also a fan of the OG Momofuku ramen recipe with the bacon-dashi base. I go a step further and put smoked, pulled pork shoulder on mine (as opposed to just pulled pork shoulder) as a nod to my North Carolina roots. My favorite soup that I've had out anywhere is probably the spicy beef tendon soup from Katy's Dumpling House in the Chicago suburbs. Spicy and aromatic with fantastic, toothsome hand-pulled noodles Mmm... hand-pulled noodles. They sell those noodles frozen to go, and I've even made a batch or two of Momofuku "ramen" with them. So good.

You can also prepare hot oatmeal overnight in a thermos. It helps to preheat the thermos by adding very hot water (and then dumping it) before adding your oats and hot liquid.

I've been confused about this for quite some time. In his Food Lab article on making the best carne asada, Kenji Lopez-Alt describes skirt steak as a "long, ribbony piece of meat, with a width of three inches or so and a length of at least a couple of feet." This is what I get 90% of the time when I buy skirt from the market (and what I've gotten %100 of the time when buying it online). But occasionally, supermarket butchers sell "skirt" that "is closing in on an inch thick" in places, and looks a lot more like flank to my eye than skirt. I recently got 2 packages of grassfed skirt from my local Whole Foods (where it was butchered) and one package contained 3 very long, thin strips of what I typically consider "skirt." The other contained a single, thick piece of meat that weighed as much as the other three combined. Everything I've read on skirt online seems to think that skirt steak, both inside and out, is very thin and ribbony -- and nothing close to an inch thick. I suspect that there's a lot of flank steak that is being inadvertently mislabeled. Either way, either I need a lesson on bovine anatomy, or many butchers do. In any event, I agree with you that whatever that thick "skirt" steak is, it can be delicious cooked rare.