btbyrd

Caprese salad. Blanched heirloom tomato vacuum infused with some quality EVOO and Zingerman’s ten year balsamic. Buffalo milk mozzarella, basil, salt.

My wife has been known to put condiments on her sandwich that some would consider to be... unnatural.

BLTs. And peaches and cream.

Or is it?

It's basically a seasoned salt product that is most often used on roast chicken and fried potatoes (think cajun fry seasoning in the USA). Here's a quick "recipe" by one of the alleged inventors of the product. The ingredients he gives are "Salt, msg, paprika, chicken flavoring, onion salt, celery powder, rice flour (as an anti-caking agent), and garlic powder." I also watched a close to useless VICE video touring the Mitani brand chicken salt factory. The only ingredients that are specifically mentioned "on the record" are salt, rice flour, onion, garlic, and paprika. Plus "secret herbs and spices." The official ingredient list on the label is: "Sea Salt (81%), Rice Flour, Spices, Vegetable Powders (Onion, Garlic), Natural Flavour, Yeast Extract, Anticaking Agent (551)."

I mostly use blender parm.

Mussels and Utz original.

How do the haters feel about poblanos?

I used to have a similar system to your "redneck SodaStream," a 10lb tank with pressure gauge and ball value that used a Liquid Bread carbonator cap to carbonate in 2L soda bottles. Though the carbonation it provided was excellent and the CO2 was inexpensive, the setup was ugly and ungainly in use. So I'm back to using a SodaStream to carbonate water and a DrinkMate to carbonate everything else. I've been force carbonating a lot of gin and tonics this summer (along with a lot of cheap white wine). The cost of the CO2 sucks, but the results are good enough and it looks good on the counter. If I do ever go the full "on tap" route, I think the coldplate in the freezer is probably what I'd do. Mostly because I'm not familiar with remote chillers and because I'm not nuts about the look of the "keg in the fridge" setup. But ice machines are big, loud, unreliable, and often heat up your kitchen. And it seems kind of excessive, but if you've got the desire and budget, I guess it's the thing to do (especially if you're already going through the trouble of a remodel). For people who aren't already hip to this kind of thing, Dave Arnold has a good, very lengthy overview of his home seltzer tap rig. Let's all agree to forgive him for that COVID19 mustache.

Watermelon and tequila (Espolon blanco) two ways. Vacuum infused watermelon tequila skewer with lime and Maldon salt: Pro tip: a byproduct of vacuum compressing watermelon with tequila is tequila infused with watermelon. Watermelon infused tequila Porthole with mint, jalapeno, and lime. Perilously drinkable. The mint and spice come through loud and clear. The lime? Not so much. But it sure looks good. Next time, I'll add some lime juice in with the liquor to get the acid up. The lime was mostly ornamental, which was surprising because it was a good lime.

I don't see the need for a mushroom brush unless you're foraging and want to knock some of the dirt off at the source. And if that's what I was doing, I'd get the Opinel folding mushroom knife. Otherwise, just wash your mushrooms like a person and then send them through a salad spinner (another favorite small kitchen tool).

We have one of those, but since I'm not allowed to bake and my wife never actually bakes, it hasn't seen real use. My two year old son really likes to use it as a magic wand/staff though!

Nice! I wanted the TimeStack, but it was a bit too huge so I had to settle with the TimeStick Trio. It lives on my fridge next to my Thermapen.

I'm fond of long tweezers or forceps. Gringo chopsticks. I use them all the time. I keep a silver and gold pair in my tool baine so that I can have a color coded "raw" and "cooked" pair. And a shiny copper pair for presentation. And a blue pair that lives in my knife roll. And a giant pair for if I need to reach behind the dryer. And... The cheap ones seem to be basically as nice as the more expensive ones. If you want a pair of these tweezers that stands up, search for Korean BBQ tongs. Cheap ones abound. If you want to buy the spendy one, Gestura is the one. (But I'd rather have their spoons.) I'm also a fan of a good offset spatula. My favorite one is the Richmond Artifex Mini Plating Spatula from ChefKnivesToGo.com. Mark also calls it the "Maruyoshi Mini Plating Spatula" in the product description. Really, it's a rebranded 5" Nisaku paint spatula that has a bend in it to make it offset. I liked it, noticed that it said "Nisaku" and "5" on the back, and quickly sourced some of their other spatulas. This was years ago, hence the potato quality image. The offset spatula is second from the left. Then it's four, five, six, and seven inch non-offset spatulas, followed by a tactical spatula that's designed to be struck with a hammer, should you need to remove some tiles or something. The first thing on the left is a palate knife designed for spackle and paint. It's a nice shape, but the plastic handle isn't my favorite. I told Mark he should make a wooden handled version and sell it as a butter knife. People seem to like it. I like mine (not pictured). I don't make a commission or anything, but it's satisfying to spread your cream cheese with, if you know what I'm saying. Not bad for $10. Gotta pay shipping tho. If you do order from CKTG, get the offset and the butter knife and then check out their spoons and accessories. CKTG makes a "Richmond spoon" that's a knockoff of the Kunz spoon, and people say they're indistinguishable. Do *NOT* get the damascus one. Also maybe pick up the stainless Kuhn Rikon vegetable peeler. The plastic handled ones are an industry favorite and have a carbon steel blade. The stainless one is fully stainless, including the blade, and just feels a touch classier. Of course, it's three times the price. But at $14, it's not a huge splurge. I'd like to give a shout out to the vintage Foley Fork. It's my go-to potato masher and avocado smasher. eBay or Etsy is your source for these. Janky tines -- they get the job done! If you want things smooth, you can smash all the lumps you want with this fork, but it's not overly aggressive so you can ease off before you're hitting smooth puree territory. Nice for lumpier mash, perfect for guac. I also use it to beat scrambled eggs and flip proteins in pans. It also brings batters together pretty well without working them too hard. It's wisklike but doesn't carry the risk of incorporating a bunch of air (unless you really want it to).

I suppose so. I hadn't heard of that cocktail until now and was making a birthday drink of my own creation. It was basically a Bushwick without the Amer Picon and with a dash of Ango. And served on a rock, not up.

Five years ago I bought a clear ice mold that makes two spheres at a time. This was an error. Square rocks are better. Spheres just clink and roll and fall everywhere. If you can only get one mold, go for the cubes. And after that, the spear. There's really something magical about a long rectangle of ice that disappears in a Collins glass (or other long drink glass). Spherical ice does have some fun optical properties though.

There are few ingredients that you really need to measure with this type of accuracy and precision, but when you want to use them (or run some tests with them) it pays to be able to weigh them properly. If you do any work at all with hydrocolloids, it's worthwhile to buy a cheap pocket "drug" scale that's accurate to a hundredth of a gram. You can get one on Amazon for around $15. I have 2 scales in my kitchen... a big scale that can measure in grams and a pocket 100g scale that does the hundredth-of-a-gram thing. That's all (almost) anyone could ever need. Perfect for your bromelain experiments! As for bromelain, part of me wants to skip the middleman and just jaccard the meat and then inject it with a pineapple brine. And then don't let it sit for too long. And don't sous vide it.

Exogenous enzymatic tenderization almost always leads to mush.

This guy seems to suggest that it's from the belly portion, just behind the spare rib bones. But he acknowledges that "there are a lot of opinions about where the secreto comes from." Campo Grande, an online purveyor of iberico pork, also suggests that there's a secreto in the belly. But they also sell a jowl secreto. And something just called "secreto." So I don't know...

You aren’t going to get any spore forming activity in the 15 minutes it takes to thaw a piece of fish. And once the fish is out of the cryovac machine it is no longer under vacuum, so that’s of no concern.

The texture's great! It's important to get vac-packed tuna that has been deep frozen. Virtually all tuna consumed in sushi restaurants has been deep frozen at some point in order to kill parasites. I thaw it in a bowl of cold running tap water and it's ready to go in like 15-20 minutes with little in the way of drip loss. And because you're thawing in the bag, the tuna's never exposed to oxygen during the thawing process. A cold (or even warm) water bath is the best way to thaw most frozen proteins.

Thanks! One of our upscale grocers (The Fresh Market) sells sashimi grade yellowfin tuna steaks. I buy them vac packed and frozen and then wait until I find the right avocado.

Spicy yellowfin tuna rosette with avocado and smoked shoyu. A few layers of thin avocado slices sprinkled with Maldon salt, with a "well" of spicy mayo in the center topped with the tuna dressed with smoked shoyu and avocado oil, and a sprinkle of schichimi togarashi.

ChefSteps has a course on whipping siphons and one on hydrocolloids. Those can help you understand foams. If you're interested in siphoned foams in particular, iSi (the siphon manufacturer) has a YouTube channel and recipes on their website. Modernist Cuisine is the best text resource on foams , creams, and airs and it's probably the best resource for a normal non-chemist to learn about hydrocolloids and their practical applications. For a good online text resource, check out Texture: a hydrocolloid recipe collection edited by Martin Lersch. Random tip: if you want to make an acidic flavored whipped cream (like lemon or lime flavor) you can set the citrus into a gel with agar, then blend it into a fluid gel and add it to the whipper with the cream. This will keep it from breaking. I think Dave Arnold came up with that technique.

I was feeling pretty good while typing, actually. I'd had four-ish strong craft gin and tonics of my own creation, and it was probably the ethanol doing the talking. What can I say? The spirits moved me. The thing was that I was doing the evening's dishes after a wonderful night and threw on a random podcast to help pass the time. And the intro was 6 irritating minutes of Chris Kimball. All I'm saying is, don't start an episode of Milk Street Radio and then immediately cover your hands with water and dish soap so you can't easily control a capacitive touch screen.