btbyrd

Update:

If "seasoning" means adding a durable, non-stick layer of polymerized oil and carbon to cast iron or carbon steel, it cannot be done at low temperatures.

The No. 27 is bigger than I thought. I just put an epic pre-sear on a 3-bone rib roast and it performed flawlessly. So nonstick there was basically zero cleanup. Baller. Before: After:

It doesn't remove it (if you're talking about the black layer of pre-seasoning) but it's not really supposed to. I gave the pans a quick wash in hot soapy water, then did the peels/salt/oil scrub to soak up whatever is allegedly on there. I don't know how necessary the step is, but it's recommended by ATK/CI as well as Matfer, so I figured it couldn't hurt.

You don't really need to season the handle. Whatever the black pre-seasoning is is robust enough to prevent rusting.... Not that you'd want to leave it sitting wet or anything, but it's effectively preseasoned for rust-prevention purposes. If you're going to season it in the oven for whatever reason, there's no reason not to go ahead and do the handle too.

I have the full set of Darto pans and like them a lot. I also have a larger Matfer coming as a Christmas present (because sometimes you need 12.75" for searing extra big things like roasts). I like the Dartos quite a bit. Like many, I learned about them from ChefSteps where they were used in a pan sauce video a while ago. There are a bunch of threads on these pans over on the ChefSteps forums, including a number of recent ones from people like Rotuts who picked up pans with the free shipping offer. My favorite aspect is the single-piece construction that eliminates rivets. I HATE cleaning around rivets... they never seem to get completely clean. I'm glad the Matfer has sanded/finished rivets so that it will be easier to clean. As for seasoning, I always do it on the stovetop by burning off a very thin layer of oil and wiping down as the oil starts smoking. I follow the ATK/CI method of initial seasoning for new carbon steel pans of cooking potato peels with a lot of oil and copious amounts of kosher salt. After that, it's the stovetop oil method. I find that doing it in the oven can leave a spotty finish, even if I wipe the layer of oil very, very thin. Others apparently have luck with that, but I don't. The Darto pans come semi-pre-seasoned with that black layer of finish that makes them resemble cast iron. They still need to be properly seasoned, but the initial base layer gives the pans an attractive and uniform "black all over" look that I like. I bought my first two pans without the free shipping, and the price of getting them to me was as much as one of the pans. The free shipping offer is worth taking advantage of if you're looking for some carbon steel. The pans are quite heavy, and the handles quite broad (which might be an issue if you have small hands). I have smallish hands, but find them a pleasure to grab with a side towel. The small pan is really quite small, but it can be useful for cooking smaller items and toasting spices if you have a bunch of other big stuff on the stovetop. The handle can heat up quickly if you use it on higher heat, but that's to be expected since it's rather short. The 15cm size is a "maybe" for me, but the rest of them are in constant rotation. The 20cm pan is just the right size for frying two eggs and having them come out in a perfect connected circle. The 23 and 27 immediately became good friends. They sear almost as well as cast iron and have good nonstick performance with very little fat. I reach for them much more often than my All Clads for most cooking tasks, though I wouldn't want to be without quality stainless.

You can get the Fatworks stuff online; Amazon sells it, but the prices are insane... currently $25 for a 14oz jar. My local Whole Foods sells tallow from the company Epic (that makes jerky, pemmican, and other paleo-ish meat products) for much more reasonable prices (though they're still quite expensive). I'm currently swimming in beef fat after a round of stock making (including the meat and fat I removed from the roast above), but it's from commodity beef so it doesn't have an especially healthy fatty acid profile. I'm saving it anyway... just going to double (or triple) up on fish oil on the days I use it. Tallow-fried potatoes are a magical thing...

My best friend was looking extra hopeful as I Frenched up my rib roast. I'm doing the ChefSteps recipe... pre-sear, SV @ 136F, blast in the oven with an herb crust.

Making a recipe for chili con carne that I've had floating in my head for a while. Did some short ribs at 130F for 72 hours, chilled them down, cut them into cubes, and froze them solid. I'm going to deep fry them from frozen and move them to a 130F bath with the chili base to let the flavors mingle. There will also be ground and braised short rib in the final version... I'm thinking these little cubes of medium rare short rib will add a special steaky meatiness to the dish. Froze them on parchment... Then sealed them up until it's time to fry. Planning on holding them in the sauce (post-fry) for an hour or so. Worth a shot, right?

I've never even seen medium.

If you're feeling extra-baller, you can finish it in a turkey fryer.

Yep. And presear the roast (if you can).

If you don't care about the crust, go for it. But if you put seared meat in a bag and hold it in a bath for any length of time, it's going to come out with a soggy bottom. If you need to need to speed up the pickup on SV short ribs, deep fry them. You can go from bath to plate in under 2 minutes. And that's including the time it takes to pat them dry.

Really sorry to hear about the bad luck you've been having with this. To avoid growth of spoilage bacteria during extended cooks, it's recommended to either pre-sear or do a quick initial blanch in boiling water to kill any surface bacteria. I almost always presear. I almost never blanch. Never had a problem.

This is my take as well. Is there anything round is actually good for? I know it's cheap, but that's about the only thing going for it. Unlike other inexpensive cuts, there's nothing you get from round you could get better elsewhere (if you're willing to pay) more. Is it ever delicious? Or is it only ever "just okay" -- the sort of thing to pile high on a sandwich before drowning it in horseradish sauce?

Exactly. They're just different. It's like comparing quality canned tuna to still-purple-inside seared yellowtail. "Which is better?" Wrong question. Anyway, here's a guide from ChefSteps on SV short rib time and temps. You will get similar results with cheek and shank.

And produce a radically different outcome. You can't make medium rare short ribs in a pressure cooker.

Have you ever met short ribs, brisket, cheek, or oxtail?

Okay, so +1 on adding fat. Tonight, in an attempt to have a quick dinner, I made the first off-the-shelf canned soup I've made in years -- a tomato bisque. Sweet Jesus, they added so much sugar to it that it tasted like borderline tomato sorbet base. I'm not against adding sugar to counteract acidic ingredients like tomatoes and help round out the flavor, but this was insane. So I upped the salt content to round things out (salt, fish sauce, usukuchi soy sauce) and then added some cider vinegar for brightness. That balanced everything out, but while the intensity of flavors was balanced, the salt/sugar were still too intense. So I added in a swirl of cream and a couple pats of butter and things finally reached an acceptable level. It was a lot of doctoring for a can of soup, but oh-so necessary.

Dilution is the only solution. I make soup with unseasoned homemade stock and (mostly) only season at the end. If I'm sauteeing aromatics or something, I can season along the way without running the risk of making the broth too salty. Seasoning at the end is the easiest way to ensure that you have the salt/acid balance right. If you season too early, or if you use off-the-shelf chicken stock, the soup will lose volume as it sits there and get saltier and saltier. Another advantage of using stock rather than broth is that you can reduce it down if you want to amp up the flavor (without amping up the sodium content). I add herbacious notes about 25 minute out before I want to serve, remove them, season with salt/fish-sauce/soy-sauce and add some brightness in with sherry vinegar or lemon juice.

Cook's Science has a lengthy piece on koji in which they talk about letting koji fuzz grow on meat for flavor purposes. The Nordic Food Lab uses koji in many of their fermentations as a source of exogenous enzymes. They use it to make fish sauce and to cure anchovies, for example. Unrelated but sort of related... The MC "shortcut" emulating dry aged flavor is to brush the steak lightly with fish sauce, seal it in a bag, and let it marinate for three days.

The motor is designed so that it doesn't base RPMs on voltage; it'll work worldwide (you just have to use it with a transformer).

A few years ago Michael Ruhlman paired up with fellow Clevelander Mac Dalton to design an array of kitchen tools. I figured that eGullet could use a thread dedicated to discussing them. Dalton-Ruhlman's first product was an offset spoon designed for basting. Ruhlman apparently used to bend his Kunz spoons so they'd be better at the task, and realized that the world would be a better place if there was an offset spoon crafted for all your basting needs. In the years since, they've expanded their offerings to include other types of spoon -- offset and not -- including the "Badass Egg Spoon." Here's a shot of my Ruhlman spoon collection: From the top left we have a set of the offset soup spoons and three somewhat normal sizes of the offset spoon. The medium sized offset spoon is apparently comparable in size to the Kunz; the offset spoon on the far right is quite large and is suitable for serving things family-style. Beneath them is the BAE spoon and the offset serving spoon. I've had the BAE and the 3 non-soup offset spoons for a couple years; the soup and serving spoons just arrived, so I don't have much experience with them. One thing that I can say is that I was astonished by the size of the offset serving spoon. It is giant. It's the biggest spoon in my kitchen for sure... and it's longer than my 8oz Rosle ladle (shown below for size comparison purposes). It really is closer to a ladle than a serving spoon... for actually serving most things, the large offset is probably a better size. I mean, it's freaking giant. It's very well made and I'm sure I'll use it for some things (like serving dishes from a larger pot or dutch oven) but it's definitely in ladle territory in terms of sheer size. What's the point of offset spoons? Well, they really do make basting easier -- which was the way this whole thing started. But what I really came to love about them is the way the spoons will rest on the edge of a pan, dish, or bowl without sliding in. And the build on these spoons is just right... they're SOLID and have a good weight to them and behave more or less exactly how I'd like them to. Here's the product video demonstrating the 3 offset basting/tasting/whatever spoons: The Badass Egg Spoon is also a quality product. It's a large perforated spoon whose holes are just large enough to drain off the loose white from an egg without letting the firm white through. So you can crack an egg into it, drain the crap off, and then poach a beautiful egg. But I must confess that I don't make poached eggs that often (though I now make them a lot more often than I used to). I do, however, use the spoon all the time... it's a great size and shape for anything you'd want a perforated spoon to do. Ironically, I use it a lot of times to pick sous vide "poached" eggs out of my circulator bath. But I also use it to serve greens, beans, and other things cooked in liquid that you don't want to serve as a soup. Here's the product video for the egg spoon: I haven't yet put the soup spoons or serving spoon through their proper paces, but I anticipate that they'll perform splendidly. Did I mention that the serving spoon is BIG? They're a bit pricey at retail (and his shipping prices are quite high, but he's apparently working on that) but he runs promos around the holidays and Mother's Day that bring the prices into line. Even without the discount, the prices are competitive with the Kunz spoon (which I haven't used, but now don't feel the need for... though I'll probably get one eventually because I can't help myself). I also have a set of the acacia wood paddles, the meat mallet, and the "all strain" cloths (which apparently aren't available anymore). I rate them all highly and may post about them later. Anyway, if you've used these spoons or any of the other Dalton-Ruhlman products, give us your impressions.

And I always get them over easy at a diner. Unless it's Waffle House, in which case I always get their "cheese eggs." There's something magic about eggs scrambled with processed cheese...

I can't believe I'm the first to say sous vide/low-temp eggs. I love the meltingly soft yolk textures you get around 64C. Not runny, not set... gooey like honey. I also like the super-slow, lots of butter scramble. Heston does his in a double boiler, but I do them in a pan on the Vollrath Mirage Pro induction hob set to 65C. They take a good amount of time, but the creamy/custardy texture is worth it. It's also hard to argue with a proper poached egg.