[Culinary goals for 2014]

I have quite a few goals for this year.

One that's definitely queued up is to get a flamethrower of a wok burner to go with my spiffy new carbon steel wok. And use it.

Another is, for the first time (ever), to explore baking a bit. I'll probably start with some simple sourdoughs and expand from there. Always been a stove-top kinda guy, but I just got an oven. The absence of an oven may seem a bit unusual, but not here. I live in Bangkok, Thailand.

A couple more that I'll do, funds permitting, will be exploring sous vide (I'm keen, but may not have the budget this year) and a Thai cooking course (something more in-depth than the usual tourist courses, possibly studying privately with a restauranteur friend of my wife's, time permitting).

It's going to be a fun year.

[Precise Temperature Control – not just for sous vide cooking]

One non-sous-vide application for precise temperature control that I'm keen on tinkering with is deep frying. The precise temperature of the frying oil isn't necessarily all that important, but having the fryer reheat to temperature after cold food is added would be a big plus. Precise temperature control in deep frying might potentially have some safety benefits. For example, if you want to deep fry (or even shallow fry) in an oil with a low flash point.

Other than that I can see how it could be irrelevant for high-temperature cooking techniques but any variable you can lock down (such as temperature) is likely to contribute something toward making your results more consistent. It's overkill, I'm sure, but I love gadgets and interesting kluges.

I'm also interested in the possibility of hooking up a PID (and logger) to a chest freezer. Maybe even the fridge. Anyone tried that?