dscheidt

Our kitchen is sorely lacking in places to put stuff. (Who the heck remodels a kitchen without upper cabinets?) I've got a 30" range (bog standard american gas range), with nothing above it, and we'd like to put a shelf there. How high are shelves like that typically mounted? And what's a standard depth? I'd like to be able to hang some stuff (pots, or utensils, or both) from it, at least in the back.

There were three IP boxes where amazon's awful delivery service leaves packages to be stolen at my office yesterday.

Another thing that happens is that some chain or group of restaurants goes from using X piece of equipment to Y (or gets out of needing one at all), and a bunch end up on the market at the same time. But investigating why they're for sale is a good advice, for any used piece of equipment.

Spoons work well, and most people have some around the kitchen. I also use a spring clamp attached to the bag. Usually, just the clamp is enough to hold it down, but you can attach things with it if you need to.

There are a whole bunch of mango flavored products featured in this month's flyer. Some of it is old, soe of it is new.

This thread reminded me I should go to the Aldi I drive by when I pick my daughter up from daycare. I hadn't gotten around to it, and then two weeks ago, I stopped, only to discover it was closed. This week, a fence has gone up around the whole site, and the house on either side of the store. Don't know if it's being replaced, or replaced with a condo building....

They work a whole lot better when they're frozen. Lots of energy in the heat of fusion. Depending on how big the hole in the top is, you can fill it with cubes. I use a gallon milk jug, that I freeze in advance. Cheap and ice, works great. Smaller things, I use the blue ice packs for coolers, which I have a bunch in the freezer.

The vacmaster vp215 is on sale for $630 for the next two days. https://www.vacmasterfresh.com/vacmaster-vp215-best-selling-commercial-chamber-vacuum-sealer/

It's all about money. Canning lines are expensive, and small breweries don't make enough beer to keep one busy. If you don't run the line all day every day, you're not getting the most you could from the money. There are some mobile operations that come to the brewery and can, and there are a few companies that specialize in small canning operations (one of which has their corporate offices down the hall from mine, I've been meaning to talk to them if I ever see them...). And I suspect that there are breweries that are canning other nearby breweries stuff, because keeping the canning line running makes financial sense. One other issue is production run size. minimum order for printed cans is something like 50K to 250K, depending on size and where they come from. Small runs are done with shrink wrap labels, and their are some ways to print on the can post filling, but both add to the per can cost.

It does make a big difference. I've got a brandless[1] 130+ year old skillet. It's very smooth, and it sticks much less than modern rough cast stuff. I have a modern lodge skillet, which I suffered with for years, before sanding (~400 grit) the bottom smooth. It works much better now, when I bother to use it. Oh, despite the marketing bullcrap on the field skillet kickstarter page, it seasoned just fine after being sanded. [1] I originally wrote "nameless", but that's not right, it's got a name, named after its original owner who died in 1890.

That's the same price as it is in Chicago. It's also what the local chain store charges for their brand (Roundy's), which is just as good, and has the decency to be printed using an Elgin printer. Land o Lakes goes on sale for about that, sometimes less, at holidays, and its notably superior to either. The little greek/mexican grocery I buy produce from has a wisconsin brand, which I buy sometimes if it's on sale. It's hit or miss, sometimes I think it's very good, sometimes I don't.

USA-wide, as of March 1, 2016. Still need a quarter to use a shopping cart, though.

My wife bought some charcoal made from coconut shells. (Not, I think, actually TJ branded, but I'm not going to look.) It is awful. Actually, it would have to improve substantially to reach awful. It is non-flammable. I tried three times to get my chimney starter to get it going, and then walked to the store and bought some merely awful charcoal. the coconut crap felt threatened, and started to smolder while I was gone, so I let it go. It approached being ready an hour after I started trying to use it. And then it went out after it was dumped in the grill. It is going back, and will be the first thing I've bothered to return.

I got 8 pounds of strawberries at the grocery store today. They were $2 (for all 8 pounds!), so I couldn't resist, but didn't expect much. They were much better than I expected, so I made a pie. I love strawberry pie, and can never get good ones unless I make them myself. Needs a bit more corn starch, I think, it's a bit runny.

An electric oven might draw 4000 W. Assuming 50% duty cycle (which is probably high) during the hour pre heat, that's 2000Whr, 2kWhr. At my marginal cost of electricity that's about 12 cents. Anything I put in the oven that would take an hour heat soak (bread, pizza) costs a lot more than 12 cents in ingredients, never mind my time. I actually have a gas oven, so my cost is something lower than that.

Call GE and ask how long the oven is supposed to take to preheat. 1-800-626-2005 I was pleasantly surprised when I called them a couple years ago that I was able to talk to someone who knew something about my fridge. Have the model number and serial number handy, if you can.

Honey! Not cash! Grr

Lecithin is an ingredient in commercial pan sprays, and it does dramatically improve release. I use Parway Tryson's Bak-klene, which I find far superior to stuff sold for home use. I get it at GFS's cash-and-carry stores; any similar outlet will sell it, it's the best selling commercial product. I have a couple of the larger USA pan pullman pans. They're great. I just served french toast made from the cinnamon bread I make in them for breakfast. Here's the formula for that, it would scale to the small ones directly: Measurements in grams, percent of total, baker's percentages: FLOUR 561.80 56.18% 100% WATER 252.81 25.28% 45% milk 84.27 8.43% 15% egg 28.09 2.81% 5% butter 28.09 2.81% 5% honey 28.09 2.81% 5% salt 11 g 1% 2% IDY 5 0.5% 1% 1000g total weight For making cinnamon bread, add 1/2 T cardamon to flour. (This formula makes an okay sandwhich bread, too.) put liquids, softened butter, egg into bowl of mixer, whisk to combine. Add dry ingredients, knead with dough hook in the usual fashion. Transfer to oiled mixing bowl, cover, let rise to doubled. Gently deflate, then roll out to about 3/8" thick, mist or brush with water, spread cinnamon sugar mix, roll up, put in greased (see spray recommendation above) pullman pan. Allow to rise until 3/4 or so to top, bake 40ish minutes at 350ish. This post has been moved from the Please tell me about your baking pans topic.

There's nothing new or monster about the torch. It's a Bernzomatic BZ4500HS; the HS is "heat shrink" -- it's got a spread out flame to make shrinking heat shrink tubing and film easier. Heat shrinking is much the same problem as searing food, and so a spread flame makes sense for both. It's basically a TS4000, with a different nozzle and tip. Actual heat output isn't any higher than a 4000 or 8000, so it wouldn't get you anything attached to a Searzall.

Economies of scale. The customers who really use these things, really use them, and use lots of bags. So buying a thousand bags isn't a hardship, it's just a few (days/weeks/months) supply. Splitting cases for relatively small number of home users doesn't make sense. Doesn't mean you can't find someone to split a case with.

I bought 7X9 and 10X15 bags when I bought my vp215. I use the 7X9 a lot, they're the right size for about a pound of ground meat for freezing, a serving or so of soup or chili, hold a chicken breast or chop for the sous vide They'd be the right size for many left overs, were I allowed to keep the machine somewhere that was practical. I use the 10X15 bags (which is bigger than Vacmaster says fits in the machine, but as noted above, a three dimensional object in the bag makes them effectively shorter, and they work fine.) for anything too big for the 7x9, or where I want a single layer for sous videing. I cut them to length for things like steaks or roasts, where I need the width, but not the whole length. I might see if I can find an 8X9 bag next time, the 7 is just a touch too narrow for easy loading. 8X10 is too big, and cutting an inch or two off the bag is a pain.

I've watched the power use of my Anova with a kill-a-watt a few times. (it's a pain, I don't have enough outlets in my kitchen. Sigh.) I did a 48 hour cook this summer, at about 140 F, in the above mentioned pot, with a plastic wrap cover. Average power was 50W. Just the pump is about 15. Higher temperatures (and lower ambient kitchen temperatures, it was hot) will have higher power draws. 185 F was about 150w recently, if I remember right. The things are designed to cope with heat loss, and maintain the proper temp. on the kill-a-watt, you can see the heater come on for a few seconds, then off for a few, and come back on, etc. The biggest source of heat loss is evaporation, so a simple cover takes care of that. AT 150 W, it costs me about 1.25 cents an hour to run; if a cooler saved 2/3 of that, it would take a long time to pay for a cooler! (Something like 3000 hours to pay for the cooler linked above) 1.25 cents is rather less than it costs to run my oven, or a stove burner, so I'm not terribly worried about it.

The claimed water capacity of the various models (I forget which one you bought) average around 5 gallons, 20 quarts. In a cooler, you'll be able to do more than that, but probably not twice as much. And you don't need a cooler. You can use any container you can clip your circulator to. I do most of my cooks in a 20 quart enameled steel stock pot, because I have it. Works fine, and with a piece of plastic wrap as a cover, it doesn't lose much to evaporation.

Since the gas that comes out of the cylinder is the same, regardless of the format of the tank, the only reason to use a squat tank is so the combination of torch, tank, and searzall are less tippy. Not using a hotter fuel (Map-pro) is probably to protect the elements of the searzall from burning out.

So, some general information about chamber bags. They're usually made of multiple layers of plastic, which are co-extruded at manufacture time. That lets the manufacturer produce bags with different properties to suit different purposes. The typical bag sold for chamber use has two layers. The inner (food-side) is polyethylene (PE), which is entirely food safe, water proof, but not terribly oxygen impermeable. The other layer is a polyamide (PA, nylon); it's got desirable mechanical properties (strong, tough, puncture resistant) and is oxygen impermeable. Fancier bags add additional layers, or substitute one plastic for another. "high barrier" bags add a layer of PVC or ehylene vinyl alcohol (EVOH) between the nylon and the PE. EVOH is super oxygen impermeable, but expensive. A thin layer in the middle keeps the cost reasonable, and still has very good storage performance. Mylar bags add aluminum laminated to something (it could be a number of things, and probably is, depending on the bag) "high temp" bags substitute polypropylene (PP) for the PE. PP is food safe, but it's got higher temperature range (It's used for things like diary products that get pasteurized in the tub). A standard PA/PE bag will take boiling temperatures, but not for very long. (15 minutes is the typical spec, I think.) a PP bag will go rather longer. PE will take more typical sous vide temperatures for a longer time, well in excess of what anyone is likely to cook for. Food processors pick bags (or get them developed) that match the product they're packing, and how long they expect it to be stored for, and the price point. Small users don't have that luxury, but at the rate most of us use them at, buying a bag that's 50% more expensive than the correct bag isn't a big expense, and is vastly easier than stocking too many different kinds.