btbyrd

I use a pressure washer to blast any particles off the Thermapen, then soak it in bleach, and finally sterilize it in an autoclave.

Apparently, Open Sky is doing a 30% off promo today as a "Mega Monday" lead up to Cyber Monday, so if you just can't wait, pay them a visit.

DDF beats me to the punch yet again...

They're mostly only sold on his site. I've seen a few places selling Ruhlman stuff online, but the prices were always much (much) higher than just getting it from the source. Like Martin notes, they also sell on Opensky, but the prices are the same. And like he suggests, wait until they run a promo for the holidays. Last year, they ran a 40% off promo on Cyber Monday (and again before Christmas). I'm seriously thinking about getting some offset soup spoons with my wood paddles and the meat mallet. They're made by JB Prince, and JB Prince is the best place to buy them. They're much cheaper on jbprince.com than they are on Amazon, and there's a new "XL" version with an extra long handle available as well. Can't really see a use for the perforated ones, but I'm sure that I'd find one if there was one in my possession. JBP also has some fancy looking tweezers if you're looking for an alternative to normal shiny stainless.

Turns out that I've actually had their bacon before. Zingerman's sells one of their products as "Arkansas pepper bacon," and it's fantastic stuff. I think they used to sell a "plain" applewood smoked bacon from there as well, but I might not be remembering that correctly. Whatever that was was also delicious. I haven't seen their products in the store anywhere before, but I'll give them a shot if I ever run across it in the supermarket. I suspect that the Zingermans stuff is an upmarket version that's made differently from what you can get at a normal grocery. But as for basic grocery store bacon, I agree that it's hard to beat Wrights. (Unless you've got Beeler's in your area.) That must have been a fluke. I've had a lot of their hickory and applewood bacon, and never run into that problem before.

Jaccard tenderizers are relatively cheap and are a great gift for anyone who cooks a lot of meat. Michael Ruhlman has a collection of kitchen stuff that's pretty solid and usually goes on sale around the holidays. The "bad ass egg spoon" is great, and not just for eggs. It's my go-to slotted spoon. I have the mixed-size set of offset spoons (basting spoon and two larger serving spoons) and like them as well. I also have the straining cloths (which are great) but they're apparently out of stock and have been for some time. The Acaia wood paddles and the meat mallet are on my "buy next" list. Just waiting for a coupon code...

Niman Ranch: Very good. Sweeter aroma than I was anticipating, but a good balance of sugar and salt in the finished product. Decent smoke. Probably the new supermarket brand of choice in my area. Boar's Head Bacon: Weaksauce. Almost no smoke flavor. Not a lot of flavor generally. Commodity bacon of the most boring variety. Nice slice sizes... okay for a BLT, but nothing I'd want to eat on its own. I also picked up a pack of Neese's bacon that I'll try soon. Neese's is a local North Carolina brand known primarily for their sagey-spicy country sausage. I didn't even know they made bacon, but I'm looking forward to giving it a try. Father's, Benton's, and Broadbent's bacon are all much better than you can typically find in supermarkets. But they're authentic country bacon, not brine-injected "city bacon," so it's sort of comparing apples to oranges. But... if you have the choice, real country bacon (with a hefty dose of smokehouse smoke) is a superior product, provided you like smoke and aren't averse to salt. Just don't overcook it.

Epicurean cutting boards are also good, inexpensive gifty things. They're made from a paper/fiber composite material that's durable, sanitary, and easy on knives. And they're dishwasher safe. They're apparently also "eco friendly" if you're into that kind of thing. They're nice and thin, so I can stack several in my board-storage drawer. I have 3 of my own (black, brown, tan) that I use for different purposes. It's nice to have a dedicated board for onions, garlic, and other stank vegetables so you can use another board for slicing things like apples or pears. I've had one too many "faintly garlicky" slices of apple in my life.

When in doubt, throw it out. A new package of Cabot Vermont Seriously Sharp White Cheddar is $2.77 at Walmart. If you'd rather risk foodborne illness than spend three dollars, knock yourself out. But please don't serve it to anyone else. I love an old cheese as much as the next person (I have a 3-year gouda in my fridge presently, and I'm trying to track down the special release 5-year Cabot) but aged cheeses are held whole and their exterior has been treated in ways that keeps spoilage bacteria from being able to penetrate into the part you actually consume. Once you cut into the cheese, however, all bets are off. Pre-packaged, cut cheddar isn't the sort of thing you can just age in your fridge. And if it's puffing up inside vacuum-sealed packaging... who the hell knows what's in there.

iSi has some nice silicone tools that are cheap and excellent. Their "scraper" dealie is awesome for getting bits out of bowls and passing things through a tamis. They also make some fine spatulas.They're much firmer than most spatulas (which makes them less useful for some tasks) but the firmness makes them much better than typical spatulas for many tasks. And they're all one piece, so they're more hygienic and easier to clean (plus, they're dishwasher safe). Get the slim and the wide (or the slim and the spat).

International price differences for books can be tremendous, especially for used books. I have no idea why it happens, but when it does, I'm flabbergasted. I'd been looking for an out of print academic book (non-cooking) for several months, but all the used copies available on US Amazon / Abebooks / eBay were $500+. The other day I decided to check Canadian Amazon and, lo and behold, there was a copy available for $15. The staggering thing was that the exact same copy of the exact same book from the exact same seller was $505 on US Amazon and eBay! I bought it without hesitation, using Canadian Amazon to buy from the US seller. Pricing algorithms run amok?

Those tongs seem well built, but I use (cheaper) culinary/surgical tweezers instead. There are smaller offset tweezers that are useful for plating (and other, stouter, non-offset kinds that are useful for pulling pinbones from fish), but the longer (11.5-12.5") straight tweezers get a fair bit of use in my household. It's the best way to flip bacon.

Jesus.

Salt pork doesn't refer to one particular product, but rather a range of products cut from different parts of the animal including the belly, the side, and the back. Where I come from (Western NC), salt pork refers primarily to fatback, which is dry cured fat from the back of the hog. It sounds like the same product that chromedome describes -- all, or mostly all, fat that is very salty. It is typically used in the same way that he describes as well... cut it down into small pieces, render out the salty fat, and remove the "cracklins" to use as a garnish for the finished dish. Unlike bacon, fatback (and other forms of salt pork) are not typically smoked, so bacon isn't a 1:1 substitution. However, if you like smoke flavor, using bacon in place of fatback or salt pork is a viable option. Being unsmoked, pancetta or guanciale would be good substitutes as well (though the latter tends to be coated with spices that would influence the flavor of the final dish). In the recipe you referred to, they're basically just using the salt pork as a source of fat. If you have rendered lard on hand, I'd just use that. (I have both lard and bacon on hand, and would use the lard. Smoke flavor doesn't seem right for that dish. But who knows, it might be delicious.)

Whether marinades penetrate depends on what's in the marinade. Molecular size is key. Salt is relatively small compared to most flavor molecules, and this feature (along with its ionic activity) help it penetrate where other molecules cannot tread. The best online (non-academic) resource I've found on testing brines and marinades is Greg Blonder's blog 'Genuine Ideas.' Here are some of the most relevant posts: This post uses chemical dyes with different molecular sizes to investigate how far into meat flavor molecules can travel. This post investigates the rates of diffusion for various salts (table salt, curing salt, MSG) into animal proteins. This post investigates the extent to which sugar in a brine adds flavor to the interior of meat. Lots of quality reading on that site.

That crap drives me crazy too. I'm not really that OCD, but it drives me up the wall when famous chefs (who know better) end up doing those things on cooking demos or on television. The pepper grinder and the salt well seem to get the brunt of it. I also hate it when chefs/personalities make a point of washing their hands after handling raw meat, but turn the water on by grabbing the handle/lever with their filthy hands. AND THEN THEY GRAB IT AGAIN AFTER THEY WASH IT! You know they never wash that handle...

Zingerman's sells good product, but it's pricey and what you get through the mail isn't as good as what you can buy in person in Ann Arbor (at least from my one-time mail order from five years ago). When I lived in NW Ohio, I'd make regular pilgrimages to Zingerman's deli for bacon, jamon, cheese, and olive oil... pick up a fresh loaf of bread and a giant corned beef sandwich (the best you can get outside of NYC). I love that place. The only place I've been where they slice country ham off the bone by hand. They don't do that if you mail order... even for things like jamon iberico. (I've bought that both in the store and via mail order.) I guess the regulations are different for packaged/shipped product. I also liked the thickness on their bacon better at the storefront than the same bacon via mail order. This was several years ago, so things may have changed. They now advertise that the Neuske's applewood bacon is thick cut, which it wasn't back when I was ordering. Anyway... I love Zingerman's. They are an oasis of deliciousness, and all of their products are top quality. I should really give their bacon another try. If my wife or parents got me a subscription to their bacon club, I'd jump up and down like a child on Christmas morning.

Apart from Benton's (and even including Benton's), my favorite country bacon is from Father's Country Hams. It's supremely smokey. You can buy slabs and slice them yourself if you want to. But it should be noted that because of the different curing process, it's very easy to cut country bacon too thick and end up with a salt bomb. Both Benton's and Father's bacon is thicker than your standard crap Oscar Mayer bacon, but isn't super thick. And as much as I like thick cut city bacon, I wouldn't want their bacon cut much thicker than it comes.

Portable induction hobs are mostly crap. They're nice if you don't need any real control over temperature, as most of them only have ten power settings. A lot of them (like the NuWave "Precision" Induction Cooktop) like to market themselves as super-accurate models with a lot of control. They aren't. That may not be an issue for you, depending on how you want to use it. I liked my cheap model for boiling big pots much faster than my crappy rental-house gas ranges. But when I used it with a pressure cooker, it would either vent out too much or, if I turned it down a power level, eventually depressurize. The problem is that the burner couldn't maintain a simmer; it was either at a full-on boil or just about to break into a simmer. There was no in-between. For my purposes, that was fine. It was also nice for going outside and searing meat at very high temperatures. Higher-end induction hobs like the Vollrath Mirage Pro or the Cooktek units are much, much better. But they also cost a lot more. I have a Mirage Pro now and am very happy with it. I don't know that I'd buy another cheap model again (they're all basically the same) unless I had some specific tasks in mind (like operating a catering business or cooking at locations outside my actual kitchen). Higher-end induction cooktops are a joy to use though. And you don't need the makeup air required by big gas burners. Flat bottomed woks are sad, as Chromedome points out. In light of that observation, might I suggest that you go with an induction cooktop but also invest in a 50K-100K propane wok burner to use outdoors? They are relatively inexpensive, pump out massive heat, and you can keep using your round-bottomed wok. That's the strategy I've adopted; haven't pulled the trigger on the wok burner yet, but it's definitely on my list.

I've used potato starch instead of corn starch for gravy thickening purposes. It works well, but if you want a traditional gravy that has the roux-based, floury consistency and taste, you'll need to use wheat flour as well. The concentration of potato starch extracted into cooking water doesn't seem high enough to appreciably thicken a gravy. Maybe if you took all of that water and used it to make a turkey/chicken stock, and then reduced that stock down considerably it would change things. What's the technique exactly? Is the potato water used to thicken the gravy or is it mostly for flavor?

Very happy to learn about the My Weigh scales from this thread. My current scale turns off too frequently, takes strange batteries, and doesn't quite handle its maximum advertised weight. The KD8000 is going on my Wishlist for sure.

Ooooh... you mean he had a sitcom-type show. Yeah, I'd forgotten about that one. Most of the episodes are up on YouTube. Watch at your own risk.

Umm... he's had a bunch of TV shows.

And your liver...

I love my Nespresso machine. Push a button, get a decent shot of espresso. Now. It's small, fast, and of higher quality than a $110 espresso machine has any right to be. The espresso itself is better than Starbucks but not as good as you'll find in many specialty coffee houses. Which is just fine by me. I love it, love it, love it!