btbyrd

You can also carbonate kimchi, if you're so inclined.

I haven't used a steamer to cook vegetables in years. Microwave all the way. Glass or ceramic bowl + veg + plastic wrap. There you go.

Even if you're doing the water displacement method for sous vide, it can still (almost) make sense to buy chamber vacuum bags. They're cheaper than Ziplocs and you can just clip them to the side of your SV container. I do this quite frequently even though I have a chamber vac. If I'm cooking a few items (like a couple of steaks, a chicken breast, or a single rack of ribs) I just put the food in, pop them in the water, and either clip them in or place the lid on top so the bags are secured. You see the ChefSteps crew doing this a lot in their videos. I mostly seal for large batches, long cook times, items that have a lot of liquid in the bag (which also tend to be long-cooking), and anything that will be chilled and stored (or frozen). I'm somewhat overstating the case here... it doesn't make total sense for someone without a chamber vac to buy chamber bags. But it also sort of does make sense. Almost.

Oil pumps in vacuum machines don't smell and they're not messy. Also, they make chamber vacuum sealers with dry piston pumps. They're still expensive and heavy, but there's no need to change the oil (though the pumps apparently don't last as long). Regardless, for any chamber machine the cost of the bags is considerably cheaper than it is for edge sealers. Over the course of the life of using the machines, the cost of the bags for edge sealers makes them much more expensive than they seem when making the initial purchase.

If your technique is flawless, you can put a monster sear on a steak with no sticking... like on this righteous pre-SV sear on my wife's tenderloin. Solid crust... totally raw inside. You may smoke out your house for a day or so, though... so ensure you have proper ventilation. I recently moved and this steak lead me to the discovery that... no, I don't have proper ventilation. The delicious smell of beef smoke has mostly subsided in the week that passed. Mostly.

There's no reason it shouldn't work in a heavy clad pan. I've done it with my All Clads before, but the reason I prefer cast iron or carbon steel is for simple thermal mass, which is a great asset when searing. (Seasoned cast iron/carbon steel also have some non-stick properties that help with release when searing, but if you don't try to move steak around before it's properly seared, that shouldn't be an issue.) If your burner can get hot enough for the pan to recover quickly, there's no reason not to go with the stainless/aluminum sandwich. Ha!

My wife likes tenderloin (bless her heart) and she likes it medium-to-medium-well (bless her heart). It can be a challenge cooking a thick filet through to her desired doneness in the center without turning the exterior to leather. But I can get easy, repeatable results using either sous vide or a very low oven. For both techniques, I sear the meat off hard in ripping hot cast iron or carbon steel pan... oil the meat, not the pan, to prevent fires and excess smoke. Then I'll either chill and bag it (for SV) or move it to a cooling rack set over a sheet tray lined with foil (for easy cleanup). In the latter case, I'll then move it to a 225F oven with a probe in the center for as long as it takes to come up to temp. The gentle heat generates a very little temperature/doneness gradient inside the filet. I've also gotten great results using the Heston method of using medium-high heat in a pan and flipping the steak every 15-20 seconds, but that takes forever with a thick cut and requires a ton of babysitting. The SV and oven methods are easy, hands off techniques (and both allow for sme wiggle room toward the end of cooking while you prepare other items).

I'd like to see more pics of it from the side as well as seeing it used on multiple containers (like a big Cambro or cooler or something with a wider lip). And also on taller containers.

The term "superfood" is a marketing ploy, but that doesn't mean that foods with that label aren't beneficial to health when incorporated into a healthy diet. A big problem with how the public views these foods is that many seem to think that adding an extra avocado or goji berry to the Standard American Diet will make them immortal. And that's silly. You cannot judge the healthfulness or "superfoodiness" of a food item in isolation, but must consider the entirety of a person's diet as well as that person's overall health (e.g. age, weight, insulin sensitivity, etc...). However, if one were to adopt a diet based on whole foods (for lack of a better term) that includes many "superfoods" as keystones.... lots of leafy greens, berries, brassicas, avocados, garlic, pastured eggs, and small, oily fish along, etc, and lots of "superfood" fats like coconut oil, EVOO, and grassfed butter instead of canola, soybean, and corn oil... perhaps replacing sugary sodas and juices with coffee, green tea, and mineral water... that can make a huge difference. But that's a systemic change, not an incremental one. Eating one extra serving of superfood a day won't do much (anything?) for you if the rest of your diet is garbage.

Great idea! I can see myself doing the same thing after Joule gets here. My Polyscience Pro is too big and the pump is too strong for that to work well in the time being. That makes sense. As a fun technical exercise I'm going to try to devise a few "one pot" IP meals to cook in the near future. We just moved into a new house and the kitchen is huge and the appliances are great, but it lacks a dishwasher (and proper ventilation). I've made my peace with washing dishes/pots, but the fewer, the better.

Broke in my IP the other day with a chuck roast from the farmer's market. Cubed, oiled, oven seared... then PC'd for 35 minutes in the IP in short rib stock with mirepoix, anchovy paste, tomato paste, Marmite, fish sauce, and MSG. Vented, removed veg, strained stock, reduced by half. Added a small amount of corn starch. Returned beef to broth and added sauteed mushrooms (seared in IP) and oven roasted turnip, rutabaga, carrot, and potato. Set to "keep warm" for 30 minutes to let things mingle. So far I like the IP a lot. I really appreciate how sturdy the stainless steel inner pot thing is. For reducing the stock, I pulled it out of the IP and stuck it on my induction burner, then returned it to the IP when that was done. I like the size of it... I may even use it to cook with when I'm not using the IP's gadgetry.

I can't even begin to imagine cooking broccoli in a pressure cooker unless my intention was to puree it (which I've done before for soup, with great results). If you want to eat it straight up, cook it in the microwave in a covered bowl for like 2 minutes. Or just steam it (more cleanup, but hey). Pressure cooking is best used for shaving hours (or half hours) off of long-cooking items like dried beans, tough meat, or stock. It's also great for cooking the bajeebers out of things you want to blend into an ultra-smooth soup or puree. But for quick cooking items? I just don't get it.

That said, I'm glad some of you are having fun with yours. But I'll stick to my dutch oven filled with lard or tallow if I want to fry something. It's cheaper... and it actually fries things!

Air fryers are lies. Needless kit like nonstick pans. Fat is not evil.

The article omits the secret ingredient that Lisa's recipe includes: MSG. The current version of the "original recipe" has been so tweaked out by industrial food chemists as to be basically unrecognizable. I wonder what the original really tasted like.

Just moved and broke in my circulator in the new kitchen. Sort of. Tonight was SV halibut -- 45 minutes @ 131F with olive oil and lemon rinds. Then a hard sear in cast iron before saucing with a dandelion/basil pesto (with mushy peas and a caprese salad). Tastiness all around. But I don't consider a 45 minute SV cook a true "breaking in" of the new kitchen.

I didn't have one yet... I have a stovetop pressure cooker and a rice cooker (which is going up on eBay momentarily), but no slow cooker (but several dutch ovens and an actual oven... and a circulator). So. I didn't really *need* the IP, but it will be a good addition to the batterie de cuisine. And my current rice maker (a Zojirushi NS-PC18) is designed to make a gigantic quantity of rice -- much too much for my 2-person household. So a downgrade there is actually welcome. And my 8 quart pressure cooker feels like overkill for smaller jobs, so again it will be nice to have a smaller option. I didn't force you to do anything! I just made you aware of an offer you couldn't refuse. I couldn't refuse either.

Yeah, so... I couldn't resist the Instapot deal. I wish it was the largest version, but whatever... Too good a deal to pass up.

Nice! Thanks for the tip Martin!

One thing I've been wanting to find is sucralose that isn't bulked with maltodextrin for use in sweetened beverages and cocktails. I know sucralose is very, very sweet by weight, but it would be nice if you could buy a 500ml container of a strong sucralose/water solution and then add it into things drop by drop (or dilute it down further to make a "simple syrup" from it). The maltodextrin in Splenda makes things extra foamy, and I'm not a fan of that.

Why do you want it? Is there a special application you think it would be good at? I wouldn't use it for sous vide, and circulators are cheap these days. Given that you already have a food processor, I think you'd probably be much better off getting a ciruclator and a standalone mixer than buying a complex and expensive multitasking platypus.

There's no mystery there. Low quality brands taste bad because they're low quality. They're sloppily processed, contain unnecessary ingredients and fillers (yes, water is a filler), and are made to be cheap rather than delicious.

The OP complained that canned tuna: 1) Contains soy 2) Contains flakes rather than chunks or slices of loin 3) Tastes dull, smells musty, and is unappetizing. 4) Had a higher tuna to water ratio than they liked. The reason we've been discussing our favorites is that the complaints just listed only apply to low-quality garbage brands of tuna such as those mentioned in the original post. Bumblebee, for instance, packs their tuna in vegetable broth, not water. This is presumably to make it taste better (because they apparently start with fish that don't taste very good... or they screw it up in the processing). The soy in the broth is most likely hydrolyzed soy protein... a source of free glutamic acid. Brands such as this also don't process their fish very carefully and basically grind up the tuna before it hits the can. That's an overstatement, but that's why it appears to be a can of tuna bits, flakes, and scraps rather than something identifiable. Good brands don't look like cat food. They also taste better, and often don't contain any added water at all. In short, if you buy Ortiz or Wild Planet (or another premium brand that others have recommended here), you won't run into problems with soy, texture, flavor, or wateriness.

The 6 quart Instapot is on sale at Amazon for $69.99 for Prime Day. I really, really don't need one. I have a rice cooker, pressure cooker, and a circulator. But damn that's tempting.

Your new kitchen looks So. Much. Better. than before the remodel. Well done!