btbyrd
-
Posts
1,803 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Store
Help Articles
Posts posted by btbyrd
-
-
If you're in the market for a thinner Chinese slicing cleaver, I highly recommend buying from a reputable brand like Shi Ba Zi (stainless model F208-1) or CCK (model KF1303 for carbon steel, KF1912 for stainless). Mystery Amazon brands are best avoided. My CCK cleaver destroyed almost all desire for a nakiri (though I'd love to test drive a tall 185mm Watanabe sometime).
-
1
-
-
Westerners primarily identify cleavers by shape. They're tall rectangles. But there are many types of tall rectangular knives. Butchery cleavers are extremely thick compared to standard western chef knives. They're not general purpose knives and aren't especially useful to ordinary home cooks. There are also thinner cleavers that are general purpose blades designed to cut basically anything boneless. They're essentially the Chinese equivalent of the European chef knife and are great for home cooks. Most Japanese made Chinese-style cleavers (chuka bocho) are patterned after this thinner style of cleaver. Including Watanabe. The lightest type of this cleaver is a songdou or mulberry knife, which is great for delicate work an
There's really an entire spectrum running from thin slicer cleavers up to thick bone choppers. Most cooks don't need a butchery cleaver, but could find a lot of uses for a thinner, general purpose cleaver. Here's a not terrible overview of some different styles of Chinese cleaver:
-
1
-
1
-
-
They're fine. They're just fine. Supermarket birds were designed to taste good despite being slaughtered at like 14 weeks and despite being cooked by rank amateurs who almost always do it poorly. That's why the birds are like 8-15% flavored salt/phosphate brine by weight. I don't know that I'd say they remain tasty, but rather that they're remarkably tasty in spite of everything that brings them to most people's tables once a year.
My local Whole Foods sells what they label as heirloom turkeys for $3.99/lb. I don't think that's an unreasonable price to pay for a whole animal. $80 for a huge 20lb centerpiece to serve at a huge family gathering? I don't think you even need a trust fund for that.
It's also nice that cheap birds taste good too.
-
3
-
-
Frozen supermarket birds are pumped full of brine, phosphates, and "natural flavors" to idiot-proof them. Not to mention their being genetic freak shows designed to produce giant spheres of breast meat as quickly as possible, rendering the birds flightless and obese (usually living entirely in an indoor grow operation having never seen the sun or breathed fresh air). Heritage turkeys have different proportions and require more work, but they certainly have more flavor because they've lived twice as long and actually, you know, been outside and done some real birdly things.
-
1
-
-
Made a riff on the classic club sandwich with some sliced leftover chicken breast (poulet rouge from Joyce Farms), Nueske’s bacon, avocado, medium cheddar, iceberg lettuce, tarragon dijon, and Duke’s mayo on toasted local sourdough.
Coincidentally, it is also National Sandwich Day.
-
10
-
5
-
-
One of my French girls. Joyce Farms poulet rouge a la Heston Blumenthal with chicken demi glace, mashed potatoes, and haricot verts. Kind of a hybrid between Heston’s recipe and ChefSteps’s recipe.
Brined, then blanched and shocked 3 times and left for two days for the skin to dry out in the fridge. Coated with olive oil, she glistens…
Then into a 200F oven for 3.5 hours, slow and low.
Several hours later, sides done, ready to fire the bird and sear that skin.
Yes.
Served up with a moat of homemade chicken demi glace mounted with butter and finished with thyme, garlic, and lemon juice.
-
15
-
1
-
6
-
-
Trying to put a PID controller in the loop by using a smart induction burner and a probe (or other thermometer) probably won't deliver great results. As soon as food hits the oil, the temp is going to drop hard and unless you're frying something really thick like pieces of chicken, your food probably won't be in there long enough for the heater to fully recover the difference. I usually fry in a dutch oven on a nice 1800W induction burner (Vollrath Mirage Pro) and even with the power cranked to 100, the oil temp never gets back up to its starting temp during the fry process. I sometimes start with hotter oil to compensate (like starting around 415F for the final fry where my target frying temp is around 375F, and even then I have to jack the power to 100% to make sure the oil temp doesn't drop too low. This is frying in reasonably sized batches.
My preferred method is to use a wok over a high powered wok burner, but that's an "outside only" situation. If you're lucky enough to have a high output gas burner indoors (like on a Blue Star or whatever) frying in a wok might be the best way to fry at home. At least if you have good extraction.
-
1
-
-
1 hour ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:
Your Japanese tagine appears to be glazed though?
Yes, not unlike something from Emile Henry. I have never really seen the virtues in unglazed clay cookware, but I see plenty of drawbacks when it comes to cleaning, care, and maintenance.-
1
-
1
-
-
Paula Wolfert's books on clay pot cookery and Moroccan cuisine are classics in the field and I've read a few of them, but I'm trying to see if there's a more contemporary resource with lots of photos that could provide some quick inspiration. It's hard to make sense of a lot of the recent publications, at least I can find on Amazon and B&N. There have been a lot of publications in the last ten or fifteen years, and while it's easy to weed out a lot of the self-published stuff and obvious low-quality offerings, I'm not sure what's really good out of the remainder. Maybe I should contact Kitchen Arts and Letters and see what they recommend (and then buy it from them like a person of quality).
I have a very nice Japanese tagine that doesn't get enough use, and I'm hoping to remedy that with cold weather and stew/braise season right around the corner.
-
3
-
-
That KO Med Mack is hard to beat. Sorry to hear about your bad oyster experience. Fresh oysters are somewhat of a luxury, at least these days. But strangely canned oysters seem to be almost exclusively low end budget brands that seem gross and scary. But lots of people seem to like eating them on saltines with hot sauce or whatever. Not for me. While there are lots of high end canned mussels and clams -- I dream of trying the Ramon Pena gold line clams one day -- premium tinned oysters are a rarity. Rainbow Tomatoes Garden, which boasts the largest variety of tinned seafood in the world, only offers oysters from Ekone Oyster Company. Oyster conservas don't seem to be much of a thing in Spain or Portugal. Maybe there's a lesson here...
-
1
-
-
What tagine cookbooks are people liking these days?
-
Grilled ribeye with bacon fat donabe rice, kimchi, and ginger scallion sauce.
-
13
-
6
-
-
Here are a couple products I always have in the pantry. The first are Ramon Pena spicy mussels in olive oil with garlic and chilli pepper (silver line, 16/20 count). Nothing in the tin but beautiful mussels and mildly spicy oil (previously infused with chilli and garlic which have since been removed). Despite being billed as spicy, they are quite tame. The slight heat and (very) light garlic flavor are a delicious alternative to the classic mussels in escabeche. These are the perfect snacking mussel with a beer and some potato chips. You can find these online from several vendors (and on Amazon). I got these from Caputo's Market for $7.99. RP's mussels are the best I've ever had.
I'm also a big fan of the Tonnino yellowfin tuna loin in olive oil, but particularly the jalapeno variety. The oil in this one has some heat to it, but nothing crazy. More than those Europeans seem to ever want to use, but nothing that will shock the American palate. These are always beautifully packed with great looking chunks of loin that you can easily flake into larger pieces. The oil serves as a really quite great spicy sauce to help lubricate the fish (which, being tuna, tends to be somewhat dry). It's good over rice. And strangely, I find myself eating it alongside (and sometimes on top of) a toasted English muffin. I don't know why. It doesn't make sense a priori, but experience tells a different story...
-
7
-
1
-
-
You could make essentially the same show with the same viewership without also making it garbage.
-
The original British version of this show was actually quite good. Then it came to America with stupid American producers producing content for stupid Americans and they cranked all the wrong dials all of the way up. When you move from the BBC to Fox, everything good will perish. Fox is a trash brand. When Kitchen Nightmares came to the US, it introduced obnoxious voiceover from a narrator we neither know nor care about. They started overusing and abusing the same obnoxious ten sound effects also used on every other reality series produced in the same time period. And they urged Gordon to scream and yell and be mean. The vibe on the BBC was like a disappointed father who was staging an intervention to get his kid's life back on track. On Fox, the vibe is mostly abusive and theatrical. Because if there's one thing that Fox knows, it's that rage sells. At least to the kind of grubby morons who watch Fox.
Who knows what the Fox producers will be up to this season. Will they still have that narrator? Will they still use the same garbage sound effects over and over? Will they force Gordon to fight cooks to the death inside The Octagon? Will any of this seem relevant or worth watching in 2023? I know only the answer to the last question. I don't plan on investigating the answers to the others.
-
3
-
-
I've found that if I do any significant backpacking, it changes my appreciation of everything. Four or five days on a trail carrying all of your food, water, and shelter over miles and miles of wilderness shifts your perspective (and also makes you ravenously hungry). When you get back to civilization, wherever that is, there is splendor everywhere. Indoor plumbing seems like a miracle. Fresh water from a tap? And hot too?! Climate control? Electric lights?! Refrigeration! Taking a shower and going to a grocery store or restaurant after a week on the trail is like crash landing in the Capitol City from The Hunger Games -- everything seems like opulent luxury and every bite is the most delicious thing you've ever tasted. And you're cleaner and better smelling than you've ever been before in your life.
But in terms of things we take for granted, I think that high speed blenders (and to a lesser extent, food processors) are underappreciated. My bones ache whenever I see a video of someone using a metate to grind ingredients for mole. Blenders make luxurious sauces, purees, and soups in virtually no time. Doing it manually is just awful.
But comparing now with Townsend times, one of the bigger things we all seem to take for granted are advances in metallurgy. Stainless steel clad cookware (and knives) helped transform the home kitchen (along with our old friend aluminum). Prior to that, most cookware was either poorly conducting cast iron or expensive and fussy copper. Aluminum and stainless ushered in an era of low-maintaince, high performance, moderately priced cookware that we all are lucky to be able to take advantage of. That's to say nothing of how good knife steels are now compared to 150 years ago.
-
5
-
2
-
-
Pectinex Ultra SPL.
-
2
-
-
Fermentation produces lactic acid, and fermented pickles have a different acid flavor than ones made with vinegar. If you ferment pickles, you don't add vinegar at any stage. I'm guessing that the super secret sauce in these pickles is the 'natural flavor' that McDonalds, Heinz, and Weis all add to their pickling mix.
-
1
-
-
On 10/4/2023 at 6:44 PM, FeChef said:
I would rather not have to ferment my own if anyone knows a brand very close, but im not against it if there is no other option.
I know this isn’t really a helpful answer to your question, but I thought I’d mention that none of these pickles are fermented. They’re all vinegar pickles. But I’m happy that you found a tastealike pickle that tastes like you remember. I hate when a favorite product goes away and there’s no real substitute.
-
A review and interview with the owner of Darto:
-
1
-
-
Make sure everything is thoroughly chilled before pulling a vacuum on it. If you are sealing something that's a bit warmer, keep your finger on the seal button (assuming that there is one... I don't have the Anova unit) and press it whenever you see bubbles starting to form.
-
2
-
1
-
-
Congrats! Be sure to stop by the liquor store….
-
1
-
-
I used to buy Rao's tomato sauces, but now I can source inexpensive cans of Bianco DiNapoli tomatoes locally, I have no interest in pre-made sauce. I know they're pizza sauce tomatoes, but they're great on pasta too. And they're also a celebrity-chef-backed product.
-
Enchiladas verde.
-
14
-
1
-
The Soup Topic (2013–)
in Cooking
Posted
Chicken noodle.
Broth was poulet rouge and Nueske’s bacon with a shio and Yondu tare. Egg noodles, sous vide chicken breast, shiitakes browned in roasted chicken fat, 63C egg, chives.