btbyrd

Apparently Daniel Boulud uses dark meat from chickens to make the raft for his consomme. So... there you go! You can also use gelatin, freeze the stock, and let it thaw in a strainer lined with a couple layers of cheese cloth. Ice filtration has a lower yield and it takes longer to do, but it's an easy, hands-off technique.

In addition to being a sludge filter (nice phrase), the chicken breast will also lend its flavor to the finished consomme. If you wait for chicken breasts to go on sale, you can buy a bunch, seal them up individually, and freeze them for when it's stock-making time. But if that's still a bit too wasteful for you, you can always go with the classic technique and use an egg white raft. It's more finicky (and I'm not sure if Methocel would help that out) but it's certainly cheaper.

I'll also add that there are some decent canned refried beans out there. They're not fantastic or anything, but if you doctor them up a bit (combine them with some onion/garlic sauteed in bacon fat and thin them out with some chicken or pork stock) they can be quite tasty. No mashing required.

I'm not sure what bean powder is supposed to be, but if it's anything like bean flour, the texture is going to be all wrong. Instead of being like mashed beans, it will be closer to a puree. There are a lot of recipes for bean dip that call for bean flour, and that's the sort of smooth texture you'll end up with. Add more liquid, and you'll have bean soup. Not to say that what you make won't be delicious, but it won't resemble mashed beans (except in flavor).

Miso butter glazed corn, Benton's bacon, scallions, 63C egg. David Chang style.

Looks like standard mediocre chain restaurant food to me. Stacked food isn't exactly new school plating; it's somewhat dated at this point, smacking as it does of the 1990's. It's very "chocolate lava cake" in that way (which, surprisingly, isn't on the Lazy Dog menu). And as silly as stacked food can be, it sometimes has a place. Stacking a pot roast might seem dumb, but so does serving pot roast at a restaurant when virtually anyone can make decent pot roast with minimal effort. To make customers want to pay $15 for such an inexpensive and easy to prepare dish, you'll need a gimmick. And the Lazy Dog's gimmick is in the plating. Make of that what you will. I don't think it's especially objectionable. I wouldn't consider their presentations to be especially "artsy fartsy" unless you consider anything that comes with squeeze-bottled sauce to qualify as artsy. (It doesn't.) And again, I wouldn't consider "new school" to have a monopoly on "artsy fartsy" plating. Some of the most ridiculous and amazing presentations in culinary history are old school French preparations. All I see in the plating here is a bit of layering and squeezed sauces to make the food look more interesting than it really is. And you're right not to expect high quality food from a restaurant that sells brick oven pizza alongside burgers and wok-fried dishes. The menu at these places isn't meant to impress but to offer a huge variety of adequate (but not especially delicious or inventive) options at reasonable prices so that families and large parties can eat at the same restaurant without causing conflicts. The Johnsons want to go out for dinner, but they can never agree on what to have. Susie, the mom, wants Mexican food while Bill, the dad, wants to go to a steakhouse. Jane, their teenage daughter, is going through a vegan phase while Little Jimmy, their youngest, will only eat pizza. And Fido, the family dog, has separation anxiety so the family seldom leaves him for a night out at a "fancy" restaurant. But at the Lazy Dog cafe, Mommy Susie can have the fish tacos, Father Bill can have a steak, and Jane can have tofu stir fry! They can keep Little Jimmy entertained by making his own own pizza! And if they sit on the patio, Fido can have grilled chicken and rice! Sure, none of it's very good -- it's "3.5 star Yelp" material at best -- but everyone's happy. Especially the dog, who really doesn't know any better.

Some people complain about this phenomenon on the Raptor carafes used by the Waring XTreme blender. When I first got mine, I ran it for 60 seconds with some warm water and noticed some black floating bits. Then I ran it for another 2 minutes with warm water and soap, cleaned it out, and haven't seen any floaties since.

I've mostly seen it cold, but some recipes call for room temperature. I think cold is the way to go. Here are some plating ideas from ChefSteps.

I got one a month or two back and it's performed extremely well. I leveled up my omelet game after this pan arrived.

And "Just Spread" has some unsavory connotations.

Brined pork belly cooked SV @ 72C for 18 hours. Chilled and transferred to the smoker where it met with applewood smoke and a glaze made from Blis brand barrel aged maple syrup, fish sauce, sherry vinegar, and soy sauce. Plus some gochujang. Plated with sweet potato puree, fennel, fried shallots, pickled cauliflower, and Granny Smith apple.

I'm from the south and grew up with Duke's, and I'll pick up a jar or two when I go home to visit family. But I don't consider it to be vastly superior to Hellmann's. I haven't done a "Pepsi Challenge" blind tasting of either, so maybe I have a clear preference that I'm just not aware of. In most applications, I prefer to just make my own anyway. But sometimes only stuff from a jar will do.

Lamb kafta over zucchini noodles with tzatziki, feta, and charred tomatoes.

I've only used SV for meatloaf a few times and have stuck with my standard recipe (which is light on panade and also includes almond flour) each time. It may be worth doing a couple smaller test batches with more/less bread the next time. I don't have a steam oven but it's on my want list, especially if they come out with a slightly larger model. It does seem close to ideal for meatloaf purposes, since you can cook in a moist environment and also generate some nice browning (which is a separate step in SV). As for the meatballs, there's a gap between them but there's no air (on account of the vac). I space them out pretty well, so it's not much different than cooking two steaks or chicken breasts (or whatever) in the same bag, except that the meatballs are much smaller so there are more of them.

It seems strange, I'll admit. But the results are interesting enough to try at least once. I typically cook at 140F/60C for 3 to 4 hours; the actual cooking time will vary depending on the shape of your loaf. Because you're cooking low-temp, the proteins don't constrict as much and therefore retain more moisture than they do in a conventional preparation. After cooking, I chill it down completely, remove it from the bag and drain/scrape the juices from it before slicing. The chill step makes it easier to slice without it breaking apart. If you do a gradual chill (let it sit for 15 min at room temp, then move to a cool water bath for 15 minutes, then do an ice bath for 15 minutes before going to the fridge) it helps it retain even more moisture. When it's time to serve, I portion and sear the slices in beef fat, flipping constantly until they're browned on both sides and warmed through. I use a similar protocol on meatballs (which are basically meatloaf in a different form). After I have the meat mixture together, I form it into balls and freeze them on a Silpat before vacuum sealing. This keeps the meatballs from getting crushed by the bag when you seal. I do several batches at once so I have meatballs in my freezer whenever I want them. I'll drop them into a 60C bath about 1.5 hours before I want to eat. When they're ready to go, I deep fry them in 375F+ oil for 45 seconds or so just to get them brown and delicious on the outside. In both instances, the resulting product is fattier and juicier than I typically get using other methods. It's quite rich. That's not always what you're going for, but if you are looking for a fatty, flavorful, juicy meat-bomb, then give this method a try.

I haven't tried it pressure cooked, but can vouch for SV. I bag it in the loaf pan, cook, chill, slice, sear, and serve.

Like many others have said, $100 is a lot to pay for a Kitchenaid attachment when you can get a standalone manual unit for a third of the price (or less). I have a Paderno World Cuisine spiral cutter ($30) that works great. It doesn't peel like the Kitchenaid model (functionality I would never use) but it does everything else. I don't think I'll ever buy spaghetti squash again as a substitute for pasta... spiralized squash/zucchini is so much better. These are some spiralized zucchini noodles with the pistachio pesto from Modernist Cuisine at Home -- before I buried everything in Parmesan : You can do a lot more than squash noodles though. I like to spiralize root vegetables, roast them, and serve roasted beef on top for a fun twist on pot roast. These are potatoes, parsnips, butternut squash, and turnips: The best resource online for recipe ideas and techniques is Ali Maffucci's Inspiralized. She also has a cookbook and sells her own brand of spiralizer. If you're curious about what can be done with one of these machines, head over there and check out the blog and recipes (and maybe the YouTube channel) to get some ideas. If you're trying to avoid grains or are looking for interesting ways to eat more vegetables, a Spiralizer is well worth the $30. But I'm not sure I'd pay $100 for a model that turns the crank for me. Not as funny as "Veggetti."

+1. This is exactly what I do.

It's a "Grip-n-Whip" bowl made by West Bend.

Dave Arnold suggests setting your circulator's temperature a few degrees below 0C and circulating an ice bath (with a ton of ice) for a few minutes. It should read 0C. If it doesn't, adjust the offset to compensate for whatever the difference is.

I'm betting this is the clip Melissa is remembering.

I don't think it's that silly. Cast iron is great for some things precisely because it is heavy. The sheer mass of cast iron is what makes it so good at what it does. But it doesn't heat evenly at all. The D7 stuff looks to give you the advantages of cast iron but with superior evenness and at a lighter (though still heavy) weight. Sounds more expensive than silly to me. And when you compare it to pricier, French enameled cast iron, it doesn't really seem *that* expensive.

This series looked amazing, but it wasn't broadcast in the US -- at least I never found a listing for it when it first aired (and I did some real digging). Many of the chefs covered are personal heroes of mine, and those who aren't are interesting enough for me to want to learn more about them. There are episodes dedicated to Massimo Bottura, Michel Bras, Andoni Aduriz, Joan Roca, Grant Achatz, Jose Andres, Alex Atala, Gaston Acurio, Juan Mari Arzak, Michel Guerard, Daniel Humm, and Ferran Adria. I would love to watch them all, but can't find it anywhere. Did anyone manage to watch this series? Does anyone know of a place or region where you can stream it online?

If you want the burger to bind together a bit more, fold in a small amount of salt to the ground beef about an hour before you're going to cook. This will draw out sticky myosin protein from the cells and help everything cohere. But if you let it sit for too long, it can bind it a little too much for my liking. I notice that you salted the meat before grinding, which will do the same thing, but you have to let it rest for the salt to do its work. So salt, grind, form patties, and then rest in the fridge for an hour before cooking. Keeping the patties well cooled before cooking them will also help them stay together. Butter will add fat to the burger and help it become juicier, but won't help things cohere. In fact, because it will render out during the cooking process, larger cubes of butter will actually harm the texture. If you do add butter, freeze it and then grate it over the beef.

I can't vouch for timing, but 55C sounds way too low unless you want the yolks to be basically raw.