btbyrd

Sodium citrate. Here's a recipe.

Well, there's table service and then there's table service. I've been to several fast food places where you're given a number and someone will run your food to the table when it's ready so you don't have to wait at the counter. But it's not a full-service thing... you still bus your own table, get your own drinks, etc. No tipping.

It was convex on mine out of the box. This seemed weird to me because they make such a big deal about getting the spacing right (to within 1/8") because you might melt the screen. But whatever... it's working just fine.

Mine's convex.

On the one day a year that I cook an entire turkey and serve it to my friends and family, I like buy the crappiest bird I can so that we can all complain about how flavorless it is. It's even better when the store gives it away for free with the purchase of $100 worth of Hamburger Helper and Campbell's Cream of Mushroom. </end sarcasm>

Pretty much the only thing I watch anymore is Iron Chef America. I also watch Chopped sometimes when there's nothing else on... and really enjoyed the one season of Masterchef Junior. Pretty much everything else (that's not on PBS) is either overproduced garbage that doesn't actually focus on food (e.g. Hell's Kitchen) or consists of advice for overworked housewives on how to get 3 dishes on the table in 20 minutes for $2 a portion. How did we get from Julia Child to this? Sometimes shows suffer from a bad concept or bad production. At other times they suffer from the insufferable host. The worst offenders in my book: Anything with Guy Fieri Anything focusing on cupcakes, bakeoffs, or sculpting sugar and marzipan Anything with "Wars" in the title Cutthroat Kitchen (Alton, what has become of you?) The Kitchen (It's like Kathy Lee, Hoda, and Geoffrey Zakarian) Nadia G's Bitchin' Kitchen Semi-Homemade with Sandra Lee Restaurant Stakeout (not technically a cooking show, but it takes up a timeslot that should be occupied by a cooking show)

You can pressure cook for much shorter amounts of time and retain the aromas that would otherwise be lost. Flavor infusion into the meat itself is also better.

For frying, I like to use lard which is relatively neutral in flavor but still has a richness that vegetable oils don't typically have. Apart from that, I prefer peanut oil but that's becoming harder to find because so many people have allergies. I use corn oil when I can't find peanut. I don't use canola anymore, since it ends up taking on a rancid fishy flavor and aroma when heated to high temperatures. I use non-EV olive oil or grapeseed oil when sauteing or pan frying, though this thread makes me want to check out rice bran oil.

They make a big deal about their product coming from pastured cows. On every package I've bought, it says "Milk from grass-fed cows." Butter from pastured dairy cows has a higher concentration of vitamin A, which makes it take on a richer yellow color. Presumably that's where the "gold" in Kerrygold comes from. From what I understand, pastured beef is the default in Europe and Australia/NZ, but I'm not sure how that applies to dairy cows. Plugra, for instance, doesn't source milk from grass-fed cows. I'll add that the one time I purchased Horizon organic butter, it was the most pallid, ghastly butter I've ever seen. It almost looked like shortening. I pretty much buy Kerrygold exclusively, unless I come across another pastured brand (which I seldom do).

Yep... raw brats cooked SV. I'm using a TS8000, but I don't think that should make as dramatic a difference as you're noting. How far are you holding it from your food? You really have to get up on it (like half an inch or so away). I'm not sure it would offer you more control when resealing bags. The Searzall's heat is much more diffuse and less precise than the flame of a torch. I also don't think it's a good way to roast beans because the heat's too intense even on its lowest setting. If you hold it far away, you might be able to pull it off but I doubt you'd be able to consistently roast an entire batch. Doing it on the stovetop would be a much better technique.

I just got mine but haven't had a real chance to put it through its paces. I will say, however, that after seasoning it and using it briefly a couple of times there's no way I'd ever use it with an unapproved hose torch. This thing gets so hot it's sort of scary. I didn't have any serious protein ready to go, but I did have a couple bratwurst on hand. Thanks for sharing experiments with us. It's interesting to hear about how the Searzall did on a variety of foods. That said, this was not my experience at all with my bratwurst. I was able to brown the outside in well under a minute. I split them in half and got a crust on the interior in about 45 seconds. Then toasted cheese on top in another 30 seconds or so. This thing packs serious power. I'll report back after I've had time to do some more testing.

Like some have mentioned already, the interior of intact cuts of meat can be presumed to be sterile. A quick blanch in boiling water will kill any pathogens on the surface of meat destined for long SV cook times. I usually don't even bother. The FDA pasteurization tables list a 112 minute pasteurization time @ 54.4C for beef and pork. A short rib and cheek (and most other tough cuts) are thin enough that they'll reach that core temperature in well under an hour and a half. There's no worry cooking at 130F for extended time unless you're using a large cut like a chuck roast that's been boned out and might have contamination deep inside the cut. Even still, it'd have to be a big hunk of meat to not reach pasteurization temps within 4 hours.

From what I understand, the VP112 and the 210 have the same pump but different housings. Given that the 112 has a 12" seal bar and the 210 only has a 10" seal bar, I don't know why people would pay the $200 premium for the 210. I'm not sure where you're buying from, but when I ordered my VP112, I got the same warning about it being a commercial unit but I don't think it's any quieter than the 210 or 215. I think that's a standard warning from Webstaurant (assuming that's where you're ordering from) since they cater to professionals rather than home consumers. Chamber vacuums are somewhat noisy, but so are FoodSavers. You'll get more vibration and a bit more noise, but they only run for 30 seconds at a time so it shouldn't be an issue (unless you're wanting to have a marathon vacuum session at 3am next to a bedroom where you have company sleeping). I've only had mine for six months or so, but I'm very happy with it and am glad I didn't spend the extra $200-300 to get another model. Also, I didn't have the vertical space to store a VP210 or VP215 (or the Polyscience 300 series, which is what I was initially planning on buying). I frequently use it to seal liquids and do compression/infusion and don't really have any worries about longevity. If I had a catering operation or restaurant, I'd invest in an oil pump model (probably a Minipack) but for frequent but light home use, the VP112 does everything I want it to.

It's a liability and safety issue. Using it with the TS4/8000 and the camping propane tank provides a sturdy base that won't tip over easily. Using it with a torch head that's attached to a tank by a hose is ill advised. In use, the Searzall is gets super duper hot and it's much larger than the existing torch nozzle; it needs a place to sit down after you're done using it (like on top of a camping tank of propane). You can't just plop it down on a table or countertop without melting something or starting a fire.

I started out with one of these about a year and a half ago, but quickly upgraded to a circulator and haven't looked back. This was before the recent round of cheap circulators came out, so I think it's a no-brainer to spend the extra $ to get a proper setup. The big drawback is that the temperature control isn't very precise (you can't cook eggs how you want them) and you have to come up with creative ways to keep your bags from sitting on the bottom of your crock pot or rice cooker. It's not a bad device, but it's nowhere near as good as a circulator is. Even if you're just wanting to try out low temp cooking, it's probably more advisable to start with an Anova or something... fewer headaches, more precision.

Cavitation plays a large role in reducing particle size when using high-powered blenders. Here's a short video on the subject from ChefSteps.

I really love this technique on beef, but I've never tried it with pork and poultry (which I almost always wet brine). I'll have to give a dry brine (cure?) a try next time I'm doing some pork chops or a tenderloin roast.

I like to cold smoke beforehand so the flavors develop in the bag. Then, after the SV step, remove your protein, pat it dry, and apply whatever rub you want. Then smoke it again at higher temps (like standard 225F or higher) to dry out the outside and develop some bark. Put some molasses in your rub to make a glaze if you want to form a more pronounced bark, since that will dry out and get hard faster.

The theory is that if you cook a smoked item in a plastic bag it's going to sweat its crust off because it's sealed inside an environment that's at 100% humidity. Bark development relies on dessication and the removal of surface moisture, which is pretty much the opposite of what you're doing when you cook sous vide. If you're going to do a smoke/SV combo, smoke the meat and apply the rub after you cook sous vide and develop the bark once it's out of the bath.

I've tried it with lots of stuff. If you haven't injected booze into watermelon yet, you should do it. Compressed melon is beautiful, and the fact that you can make it alcoholic is an even better plus. I've used it to quick pickle onions and summer squash, infuse olive oil and balsamic into tomatoes for caprese salad, and infuse gin into cucumber for an edible martini. For pickles, any standard brine recipe will work but you won't need nearly as much brine as if you were doing a traditional pickle. One of the coolest things is how the appearance changes as the air gets sucked out; cucumbers and onions turn transparent and you can see all their inner bits. Melon becomes darker and more vivid in color; watermelon looks like raw tuna and honeydew takes on a vivid bright green color (even greener if you add Midori). Cucumber pickles: Edible cucumber martini planks: Tequilla infused watermelon:

Fish/chicken/lamb tagine with preserved lemons.

Cellulose and polyethylene are fine at those temps. Cellulose is what makes up the bulk of cell walls in plants, so you're eating it whenever you eat veg. The inner layer of SV bags is made of polyethylene, so you'll be fine there. But I don't think this method will help preserve your bark. Finishing SV is a bad move if you're trying to preserve a dry, crusty exterior. No matter what, it's going to be a moist cooking environment inside the bag. You'll just have your meat in there with some soggy sponges. I cold smoke before SV and then finish by doing a hotter smoke to refresh the flavor and develop more bark.

The average preference for salt content in a finished dish is roughly 1% by weight. If you leave a piece of meat in a 6% brine for longer than initially suggested, it'll become overly salty and you will have wasted your meat. A better approach is to use equilibrium brining, where you measure the weight of the meat and the water you'll use for the brine and then add 1% by weight in salt of the total. This takes a bit longer to brine than a traditional (stronger) brine, but you never run the risk of over-salting and you can leave (basically) for as long as you'd like.

Cooking sous vide in a bath that's set to a temperature higher than the target core temperature of the finished product is called "Delta-T" cooking. As others have mentioned, using this method produces a temperature gradient in the finished product, with the outer sections of the meat cooked to a higher temperature than the core. Sometimes this is desirable; a lot of people prefer to cook fish this way. But it's a more demanding method in terms of time management; there's no room for error. If you don't pull the product at the right time, the whole thing will be overcooked.

The problem isn't that the vegetables were organic, but that they were either bad varieties with irregular shapes or they were improperly harvested/stored. I've purchased plenty of organic carrots and potatoes that don't have any of these issues.