btbyrd

Wet brines draw moisture into the meat while a dry brine doesn't. I don't think you'll derive much benefit from a crust or pellicle if you're going to cook sous vide, since that part of the meat will be bathing in its own juices for 24+ hours anyway.

Whole cuts: buy it -> vacuum seal it -> pasteurize sous vide -> store in the fridge for a few weeks until I want to eat it. Ground meat or off cuts: buy it -> freeze it (optional) -> pressure cook it and make stock. Whenever I see bones, spare ribs, or oxtail marked down, I buy them all for this purpose.

I've almost purchased service industry wrap, but my main problem is where to store it. It's too deep for my drawers and it's too big to leave out on the counter. If I had a better kitchen, maybe there'd be a place for it.

It depends on your definition of "waste." If you pressure cook or simmer for long enough, all of the flavor in the meat will have been transferred to the broth. If you don't do that, you may be able to save some meat, but it won't be full-flavored and neither will your broth. That's sort of a compromise. Some flavor in the chicken was "wasted" in the broth; some flavor of the broth was "wasted" because it remains in the chicken. The sad truth is that most of the flavor in stock comes from meat, not bones. Bones contribute collagen but not a lot of flavor. If you're only using bones (and they've been thoroughly picked) then your stock isn't going to have nearly as much flavor as it would if you used wings or meaty carcasses. If you're going to use bones only, I'd try adding a couple pounds of ground chicken (browned up in the base of your pan) to the bones to up the meaty flavor.

I advise against a rapid release when making stock, as this can cause intense, spontaneous boiling that can cloud your stock. I'd cook for 1.5 hours in the PC with a slow release. I don't understand the rationale for the hybrid technique as you describe it. If you were going to do a hybrid technique, I'd cook with chicken only for 90 minutes, slow release, and then add aromatics and simmer for 30-45 minutes. That's how I do it.

Glad they turned out well, but I doubt that you'll never cook SV short ribs again (since you said that you like them with a medium-rare, steaky texture). Really, that's the glory of SV short ribs. If you're going for traditional braised results, SV is unnecessary and takes way longer than it needs to. A pressure cooker or an oven braise is a much better choice.

The problem is that whatever moisture evaporates from the surface of your product remains inside the canister. Unless you have something in place to capture the surplus moisture, the meat is going to be curing in a humid environment and won't lose enough moisture to properly dry out.

If you care about texture, you're going to be upset at the damage done to the cell walls of the flesh when the water inside them boils violently and converts to gas.

If you read the other thread, they explain that they cook it low temp, remove the steak and crank the Cinder to full power, then sear the steak and use tongs to sear the sides. I don't get it. But I think this product would be awesome if it were slightly larger and you could unfold and use both sides as a high-powered, super-temperature-stable plancha.

You need to salt it and cure it and hang it if you're going for this sort of result. Koshered meat isn't cured meat, and as it isn't salted for a long enough time. If you're using a Koshered breast, I'm not sure how much you'd need to adjust the recipe because Koshering practices aren't standardized. If you can find out how long it was salted, you might consider reducing the time. Salting isn't enough to sufficiently dry the protein. The general rule is that you're looking to lose 30% of the weight of the meat during the curing and drying process, and that's just not going to happen with salt alone.

That explains my déjà vu. The name switch threw me off. Anyway, anyone interested in this product should be sure to check out that thread. One of the designer/developers provided a bunch of information and answered a lot of questions.

Ruhlman's recipe indicates that a humid environment with a temperature of 50F - 60F is optimal for hanging duck proscuitto. So you should be fine.

You incorporated too much air (and likely used too much xanthan). Don't blend so aggressively next time and try using 0.2% to 0.4% xanthan by weight of your sauce.

Who needs a $200 circulator when you can have a $500 whatever this is?

Why would that be faster than taking them straight from the fridge and putting them into the bath?

Seems a bit misleading to call it "cooked." I was imagining something like fish cooked in a salt crust.

Sear/grill, pressure cook, sear/grill again, glaze. (Or glaze before the final grill if the sugar content isn't too high.) Be sure to heavily season your braising liquid. If you can bring in pork stock you made ahead of time to put in the pressure cooker, that will help too. If it's not a competition, you could always cook the belly sous vide before hand and do whatever you want to it. Maybe you can pull some ideas from this: The battle starts around 9 minutes in.

If you're just using meat, the result of this technique would be jus, not stock. But it works. The Modernist Cuisine folks have a recipe for beef jus made this way. Centrifuge optional.

Roasting is a dry heat method of cooking (unlike steaming or braising) and one of the usual goals of roasting meat is to dry out the exterior and form a nice crust. If you rest meat directly on vegetables, the bottom will steam rather than roast and it won't brown properly. A better method would be to use a roasting rack to suspend the meat a few inches above the vegetables you roast. This will allow the juices from the meat to season the vegetables, but also allow a nice crust to form on the meat.

Yolks start to cook around 58C / 135F, but it'll take a while for them to set up. If you incorporate them quickly, they won't have a chance to curdle. If you want to be extra careful, you can temper them with a small amount of the hot soup base (whisking it in slowly) and then add that mixture to the main pot. If thickening is the goal, you do want the yolks to cook, you just don't want them to scramble into defined curds.

On Iron Chef America I've seen challengers make bone marrow powder a couple times. I believe they rendered the fat from the marrow and blended it into N-Zorbit in a food processor. As for grating, I'd pop the marrow out of the bones after soaking and then cook the low-temperature (like 130-135F) for long enough to set any proteins and kill any nasties that might be in there. You don't need a fancy setup to do that... an improvised setup using a cooler, hot water, and Ziplocks would work fine. Then chill, pat dry, freeze, and grate.

No surprises here. The person who I thought would win did win; they were the most consistent and produced the highest quality bakes overall. But the top three were all brilliant in their own way... some with more pretty bakes than others, while some were less consistent. In the end, I think the right person won. As someone who doesn't bake, I do wish there was a bit more about technique presented on the show. But it was miles above any of the cupcake wars or sugar sculpting competitions on US networks. There was a real spirit of camaraderie and benevolence among the contestants, and the show wasn't an overproduced mess like most of the competition shows here in the states. I quite enjoyed watching this show even though I'm not much into pastry (and I don't even really enjoy sweets).

The TG in Activa is produced via bacterial fermentation and Activa TI is certified Kosher.

A possible issue with making slurries with TI is that blending it into water can incorporate a lot of air into the mixture which weakens strength of the bond. You can pull the air out of the mixture with a chamber vacuum machine if you have access to one. The Great Lakes company makes Kosher gelatin from beef. Their products are widely available online. I know Wylie Dufresne uses gelatine a lot in TG preparations and that he uses TI most of the time.

Just take an ordinary toaster and run it at 4000 watts / 500 volts. Not a great video, but proof of concept. "10 second toast" starts around the 8:30 mark.