btbyrd

Maybe. I don't know, I've just tried the chicken, beef, and veal products. I usually keep a roast chicken one on hand and either a beef one (like glace de viande) or veal demi glace. If you use them kind of straightforwardly for pan sauces, I suppose they can taste similar because they're all reductions made from roasted bones. But the veal demi is probably the most neutral, followed by the chicken. The beef one I usually buy is roaster and meatier tasting than those two, but is still in a similar ballpark. I like them mostly because they're reductions of well made, gelatinous stock that isn't full of yeast extract and hydrolyzed soy protein or whatever. That stuff is fine, but if I'm buying stock, I'd rather buy actual stock than water that's been tarted up with exogenous glutamatic acid and had a chicken waved over it.

The best products of this type are made by More Than Gourmet. They come in small 1.5oz pucks or in a 16oz tub, the latter of which will make 5 gallons of stock. That's 19 liters. But I never use it that way... I just add it to stocks, stews, or sauces to enrich the flavor and add body. It's very high in gelatin, and sets up *very* firm in the fridge, where it keeps basically forever.

When life gives you zest, make oleo saccharum.

Taste it again.

I use it like salt. Salt has a definite flavor. So does MSG, contrary to what a post above suggested. You have glutamate receptors on your tongue, and that's what goes off when you taste MSG. I'd invite you to give the raw crystals a taste to get an idea of what it tastes like. It is a one-dimensional umami note. Delicious and mouth watering, perhaps, but still somewhat one dimensional. And if you add too much of it, that one dimension becomes all too obvious and the dish becomes unpalatable. In that respect, it's like salt. Salt pretty much just tastes like salt. When you season food with it, you keep adding and tasting until you get the level right. Food should taste delicious and flavorful, and salt helps you out there. But if you add too much, the salt predominates and it tastes *salty* rather than *seasoned.* The same thing is true of MSG. I like to use it in smallish amounts as a background flavor that you can't pick out, but which helps promote the overall flavor of whatever it is I'm cooking. If I take a bite of something I've made and think "Oh, I can taste MSG" then I have failed... even if I'm making some kind of umami-bomb dish. There are some commercial products I won't buy because the have too much MSG flavor to them. Most chili crisps, for example, have too much MSG in them for my preference. I want to add crispy chili garlic magic, not MSG. Lao Gan Ma and S&B chili crisps are more MSG sauces than chili sauces, and that's a shame because I want to love them. I also don't care for most off-the-shelf broths/stocks because they're mostly MSG or yeast extract and water. I add MSG to my broths too, but they're already extremely flavorful. The MSG in commercial broth is a crutch to make a lower quality product taste better than it otherwise would. Which is fine, I guess. But I'd rather have honest stock flavor please. There are other products I buy because they're tasty MSG bombs. Like Doritos. The most recent revelation I've had was Margaret Holmes's line of "seasoned" canned vegetables. I was served a tin of their Hoppin' John by my in-laws this new year and it was both delicious and tremendously MSG-forward. I joked at the time that Margaret Holmes's secret "seasoning" is really just MSG. But that's no joke -- there's a whole line of beans and peas and greens and everything else that's drowning in MSG and also tastes pretty good.

I use it often. It's especially nice in broths and as a seasoning on grilled or seared protein.

Thanks! The rest of my life is chaos.

Stir fried noodles.

"Cash," I think they're called.

You should be okay, especially if you're just looking for a beater. But the type of cleaver we've been discussing isn't designed for butchery, but instead is a much thinner general purpose knife sometimes called a cai dao. They're the Chinese equivalent of the western chef's knife, intended primarily for cutting plants and boneless meat. There are also thicker Chinese cleavers that *are* intended for butchery, but that's not what the OP was asking about. As for separating wingettes from drumettes, I suspect that this is a technique issue more than a knife issue. There's a small ridge by the joint between the wingette and drumette, and if you cut just beside it, the blade should slide cleanly between the bones in the joint. Once you can reliably find where to cut, you can do the task with pretty much any knife. So instead of buying a new knife, I might instead suggest buying a party pack of wings and just practicing. Worse case scenario, you have to eat a lot of wings. That sounds pretty great to me!

Some CCK from today.

It depends on the type of pizza you're making. I'm pretty sure that they go into home oven techniques like using a steel in a maximally preheated oven and cooking using the broiler. But that's mostly if you're going for a particular style of pizza. You can also use a stone with a less hot oven for thicker crusts. Or make styles that make use of special pans (e.g., Chicago, Detroit, Sicilian, etc. -- all of which can be made well in a home oven).

The official All Clad factory sales event is on now at Home and Cook Sales. Use code VIPSDMAR0923 to save an additional 15% and get free shipping. Be forewarned that the handling time before items ship is like 10 days or so.

If anyone's savvy, the official All Clad factory sales event is on now at Home and Cook Sales. Use code VIPSDMAR0923 to save 15% and get free shipping. They have the 2 and 4 waffle version of my maker for sale, as well as the deluxe 4-waffle version with a display and removable plates. Be forewarned that the handling time before items ship is like 10 days or so.

The cast iron ones are great ways to start a kitchen fire. Ask me how I know!

I love when I see CCKs pop up on YouTube. Makes me feel legit. Lucas Sin regularly rocks a stainless CCK, like in this egg roll video: This guy's channel is a masterclass on how to use a CCK cleaver: I mean, he literally teaches a masterclass on using a CCK:

I went down this rabbit hole last year before finally landing on the All Clad 4-square waffle maker, model WD700262. It's usually around $200, but goes on semi-regular sale at the major culinary retail outlets. But if you're going to buy anything from All Clad, do what I did and wait for one of their seasonal sales of factory seconds at https://homeandcooksales.com/ . That's their official website for seconds, so don't feel weird about signing up on their e-mail list to get notified of when the sale is on. Alternatively, you can try to source one from Capital Cookware on eBay, which is an authorized retailer for factory seconds. Anyway, I got mine during December's Home and Cook Sales sale, when it was priced at $119.95. I used the Honey app to find a coupon code that got me free shipping and 15% off, so my total was $109. Hard to beat that! My original plan was to buy the Waring Pro flip over waffle maker, but Waring stopped selling consumer waffle makers due to some corporate restructuring. Cuisinart then started selling rebranded Waring flip over waffle makers, changing the dial/knob on the Waring to a slider. That seemed much harder to clean than I'd like. But the Waring/Cuisinart dual flip waffle maker was highly regarded. It's what I was looking for, but all of them were out of stock everywhere. Things don't seem to be much better now in terms of availability. Oh well. Here it is in action: But back to my iron. It is a beautiful hunk of metal, and it gleams on the countertop. The top locks so it can stand on its side, which makes storage less of a pain than with bulkier presses. The iron has has deep wells that produce crispy and delicious waffles. While I think I may prefer a round waffle generally, this makes four square ones at once -- and it's hard to argue with making four at a time. I wasn't really aware as to how well waffles freeze and reheat. I'd tried it with pancakes in the past, and the results were *okay*. But waffles from the freezer? A quick trip through the toaster oven, and it's waffle time, baby! It's my wife's birthday this week, so I made Funfetti cake waffles for her Sunday breakfast. Topped with Milk Bar's Birthday Cake ice cream. There was Neuske's bacon at the party too, but it's not pictured.

The standard knife-nerd recommendation for a thin slicing cleaver that won't be used on bones is from CCK, which is a company based out of Hong Kong. The usual recommended models are the KF1303 (which is made from reactive carbon steel) and KF1912 (which is stainless). These knifes look rustic but offer incredible cutting performance thanks to their thin geometry. They're much better performers than their rustic appearance might let on, and will leave most comparable European knives in the dust. One sad thing is that CCK changed the branding over on their knives. They used to be stamped/engraved into the side of the knife, but the new ones have a laser etch with a QR code. Kind of a bummer. But whatever. I got my CCK KF1912 from Chef Knives to Go, which has a wide-ish selection of cleavers. I'd also look at the Fook Kee slicers, as well as those from Chopper King. The ones from Fook Kee are very similar to the CCKs, but they have the older style, non-lasery branding on the side and come with a nicer handle. The Chopper Kings are also similar and have nice-ish handles. Both the Fook Kee and Chopper Kings are made in Taiwan with Japanese steel. If you do get a cleaver from CKTG, consider also picking up a cleaver saya for it. These provide such better protection than edge guards do. It's so nice to be able to throw a cleaver in my knife bag and not have to worry about it banging around in there.

Grits, smoked salmon, fried egg, brown butter.

Braised short ribs.

I make stock with the shells and gimpy shrimp. The bacon and andouille get cooked in a pan first, then the shrimp. That builds up a lot of fond. Drain the pan, then cook off some butter and flour and deglaze with the shrimp stock until it comes to a boil. Swirl in cubes of cold butter. I do a variation of this every time... sometimes there's vinegar or lemon, sometimes not. Sometimes I spice it up with some cayenne, sometimes not. I was also serving it with green chile adobo so there was plenty of heat elsewhere.

Shrimp and grits. Unicorn Grits from Marsh Hen Mill with some wild caught 16/20s. Garnished with andouille, bacon, and roasted chile melange. And shrimp gravy. Served with Rick Bayless's green chile adobo on the side.

Extra spiced Nuris. Eaten over the sink, like a rat. Man, compression didn't do that image any favors.

“Not A Chicken Parm”

Spaghetti pomodoro with olive oil fried Joyce Farms chicken breast stuffed with Genoa salami, pepperoni, and Tillamook provolone. Breadcrumbs made from a local bakery’s rosemary bread.