btbyrd

If the last time you used bacon was 16 months ago, I dare say that you don't love bacon. Joking aside, I wouldn't attempt to freeze anything for 16 months and expect it to still be quality. That's especially true for bacon, which, as others have mentioned, is prone to rancidity. From a study: "Bacon slices were rated lower in flavor acceptability after 112 days of storage in all wraps compared to storage for shorter intervals. Bacon slices were generally rated as unacceptable in flavor after 112 days of storage. ... The flavor of bacon slices was rated as significantly more rancid after 112 days of storage (all wraps) than bacon stored for shorter periods." - Mandigo and Osburn, "Cured and Processed Meats" in Freezing Effects on Food Quality (ed. Lester Jeremiah) These findings were based on bacon stored at -30C, which is probably colder than your home freezer.

No, Baldwin is right. Storage temperature matters, but not that much for practical purposes. Obviously, you'll want to keep your fridge temp low, but so long as it's reasonably cold in there you can pull off a month of storage on a pasteurized meat product with no worries. Again, that's only under vacuum. Improvised Ziploc methods don't get you that sort of holding time, but I haven't seen any studies trying to test it. However, many of the sous vide studies I've seen mention that bags sealed under lighter vacuums (which might be used to preserve the appearance of the product) were prone to spoil much faster.

Export your cookbook as a Word document or export individual recipes as HTML files?

If I'm going to eat an whole ribeye or strip steak (and not cut it into strips for pretentious plating, which I sometimes do) I've found that I prefer straight grilling over sous vide. Your preferences may vary. I don't have the same view of cooking the same cuts from a pig, however. I've cooked plenty of steaks sous vide and have experimented with lots of techniques for searing/pre-searing. My favorite method has been a quick deep-fry pre-sear in 400F (or higher) oil, cook SV with a bit of butter, and finish on a screaming hot grill while dousing the grates occasionally with the bag juices (it will flame up like crazy). If you do it right, the results are very nice and consistently repeatable. I'm just starting to get the hang of the Searzall for these purposes. Anyway, pre-searing is highly recommended. In my experience, it makes a real difference in how quickly you can get a good crust during the final sear. I don't chill the steak before the final searing, but I do pat it dry and set it on a rack for a few minutes so that the surface moisture evaporates. Then brush with oil/butter and sear away. Anyway, what people like is a matter of taste... and sometimes just a matter of mood. Speaking for myself, sometimes I want that "perfect" edge-to-edge uniform doneness. But sometimes what I really want is that "perfect" steak that has a beautiful thermal gradient down to a warm, red center. Whatever you end up preferring, you should still cook a bunch of steaks sous vide to get familiar with the techniques and their results.

You don't get the extended storage benefits with Ziplocs alone. To store something for weeks on end, you need a stronger vacuum and to pasteurize to core. With Ziplocs I wouldn't push it longer than a week, and I wouldn't cook-chill beef (which, in my experience, develops "warmed over flavor" if stored in a Ziploc). If you're going to store, be sure that you follow the proper chilling procedures (use an ice bath) and pasteurize. And only store individual portions - or enough that you'd use in a single meal if you're cooking for more than one - so that you're not opening and closing a Ziploc to get food out all week long.

I sort of can't wait for my Cuisinart immersion blender to die so I can replace it with a Bamix. But the Cuisinart has been going strong for six years, so that day might not be coming soon. It was one of those appliances I registered for when I got married, but before I got insane about cooking and kitchen gadgets. It does a good job for my purposes, but it's not quite the beast that the Bamix is. This is similar to my experience with my Kitchenaid blender, which was the Cook's Illustrated best buy at the time. But now I'm itching to replace it with a Waring Xtreme blender. I guess the moral of this story is go big when you buy blenders.

One thing I like about my Cuisinart stick blender is that it has a mini food processor attachment. I never thought I'd use it when I got it, but I actually use it relatively frequently. For example, I really _really_ hate chopping garlic. I love garlic, I just hate working with it. Whenever I have to chop a head or two of garlic (e.g. kimchi) I break that thing out and blitz the cloves in seconds. No smelly hands, no sticky knives, no gross cutting board. It's nice for mincing ginger as well.

Rapid infusion is a different iSi technique than pressure pickling. From the Cooking Issues blog post I linked to:

If you have a whipping siphon, you can do pressure infusion. That's the closest thing to vacuum compression that's not actually vacuum compression. Otherwise, I'd just marinate the fruit in the wine. Using an edge sealer isn't going to do anything for you.

I run it wide open.

Since nobody's mentioned it yet, Booker and Dax set up a forum for Searzall users to ask questions and share their experiences: http://searzallforum.freeforums.net/

When you do the initial seasoning, you're burning off the binder they use on the insulation and that's why the flames are larger than during normal use. After seasoning, it's common for the screen to bulge outward a bit rather than being completely flat.

I was just about to say that. Trussing only exacerbates the problem if you're tying the legs close to the bird. The technique in the video trusses the legs together, but the bird is hung by the legs while roasting, which spreads them out and allows them to cook faster than if they were snuggled up to the white meat. Given that the white meat is thicker than the legs, I wouldn't be surprised if the dark meat's core temperature was 5-7 degrees higher than the breasts.

This is why I'm grateful to have an electric kettle to boil water -- it's faster than my stove and there's no risk of explosions.

This.

I misunderstood the setup... I was thinking that clear water turned murky for a moment after you put the spoon in, but before it exploded.

It happens because there are no nucleation sites in the container for bubbles to form and the water to convert to gas. When you stick something in the water, all of a sudden it's possible for bubbles to form (and they do en masse). The glass probably looks murky because there are thousands of tiny bubbles suspended in it.

Even the fatter camping bottles get a bit tipsy once they're running low on gas. I definitely wouldn't use a taller, slimmer bottle even if they didn't explicitly warn against it.

Ruhlman is doing a half off sale today. Coupon code "joy". I finally ordered myself a badass egg spoon, plus those offset basting spoons (they have a bundle with the Egg Spoon for only $15 total) and some of the straining cloths.

MAP is also not significantly hotter/faster than propane when using the TS8000 and the Searzall (also per Dave Arnold).

I'd do it for sure if I had a combi oven. But since I don't have an extra $10,000 to blow on an oven...

What's "M.R."?

No, I've got the pint/.5 liter one (which seemed to be the one that most of the recipes I found used). It's a great product and I appreciate the build quality every time I use it but I just don't use it as much as I could.

Centrifugal juicer: I got it for free from a friend who upgraded to a nicer model. I've used it probably five times in two years. Part of me wants a nicer Champion juicer until I remember that I don't drink juice and that would be a tremendous waste of money and space. Cuisinart Ice Cream Maker: I put it on my wedding registry before I remembered (too late) that we don't really eat ice cream. Much less make our own. We've made two batches in 6 years. Kitchenaid Mixer: This is the one I grew up on... my mom gave it to me when she upgraded. I never bake anything, so it basically serves as a meat grinder about once a month. I use its stainless steel bowl for various things. ISI Whip: I use this infrequently to make whip cream (which I seldom eat) or to injection-brine poultry (which I do more often). When I got mine, I hoped that I'd use it a lot more than I actually do. Even after taking ChefSteps' Whipping Siphon class, it sits largely unused. Mocking me. Polyscience Smoking Gun: I got this as a gift for my dad, but he never used it so he gifted it back to me. Now I never use it. I've used it to smoke butter a few times with some success but I find that it's too subtle on proteins and too intense on cheese (for the most part).

You should be able to get the tanks at any hardware store. Walmart also carries them.