rustwood

My Darto No. 23 arrived yesterday. I seasoned it last night then cooked bacon followed by eggs in it this morning. The bacon I cooked always leaves a sticky residue, so that wasn't the best test. I am sure in time it will be great for eggs. I was surprised at how heavy it is. The No. 27 must be a beast. With that said, I don't think I would want one that was any smaller.

I am not sure if this is the right place for it, but I have a sort of newbie SV question. Chefsteps has an article about cooking chuck roast and near the beginning they say this: What bags should I use? You also want to make sure you have the right type of bag for this beast. When you are cooking heavy food, or cooking at temperatures above 158 °F / 70 °C, the seams of ziplock-style bags can fail and expose food to the water. In these cases, opt for heavy-duty sous vide bags. In a pinch, you can double-bag with two ziplock-style bags, but sous vide bags are preferable. The bags they link to are vacuum chamber pouches. It seems like a big leap to advise people to go from ziplocks to a chamber vacuum sealer so I am wondering (perhaps foolishly) if they are suggesting that you use the pouches without sealing them. I suspect not, but maybe I am missing something. I realize a vacuum isn't necessary to cook SV, but is an air-tight seal necessary? Could you just displace most of the air, roll over the top and clip it to the container? I own a basic FoodSaver but I usually cook in ziplock freezer bags so it would be nice to be able to use these for longer and/or high heat cooks. I tend not to vacuum seal before I SV because I often cook with some sort of liquid and that makes sealing hard, plus I am usually too lazy to get out the FoodSaver for just one bag.

I completely agree. Last night I was running very late so I tossed a small package of brisket in the pot, just covered it with water and started up Joule. It came up to temp and got it warmed up in record time. Very convenient.

I started to read reviews for the Tartine, Ruhlman, and Food52 books but decided for $3 each I might as well just buy them and see for myself. I bought the Roots book for the same price a month ago. It is great to get these deals, but I now own a long list of books I haven't even skimmed yet - including the roots book. On the plus side, I bought the Joe Beef book at the same time, "read" it, added some recipes to my database and made one dish. That is at least some progress.

Some people smoke before cooking SV. Part of their rationale seems to be that the smoke flavor permeates the meat during the SV stage. Another rationale is that they can form bark. I haven't done it so I don't know if X hours in a SV bath with the jus is any worse on the bark than 2 hours in foil with jus/brown sugar/honey/Parkay/butter/sauce etc.

@Paul Fink, I haven't done sous vide ribs, but I have done brisket. My family now prefers it to low and slow smoked brisket. I am still trying to sort it out, but IIRC, I am zeroing in on ~48 hours in the SV and ~2 hours in the smoker. It yields a more tender texture than a straight low and slow smoke. The amount of fat and connective tissue that is rendered in SV depends on the temperature you cook at and the duration of the cook. Chefsteps has an excellent comparison of the different results that you get with short ribs at various times and temperatures. Some of them are very much not like BBQ, some of them are closer. It gets more complicated when you add in smoking to finish them. I have had brisket come out without enough fat rendered and with them too dry. I doubt it is possible to smoke them long enough after cooking SV to get a good traditional bark. That isn't the be all and end all for me though.

Thanks. They are mostly air so "only" ~1.25 ounces of flour each, ~125 calories (plus marmalade) - when I don't cook them in butter or bacon fat! Of course starter needs to be fed often when it isn't refrigerated so there is no end to them. I am sure you don't want to hear about the sourdough pancakes.

Recently I've been maintaining some countertop sourdough starter by cooking a couple of sourdough crumpets at least several times per week. I halve the the King Arthur recipe. They are incredibly good for being so quick and easy - once you learn the stove setting required for them to set before they burn. I ate these with some lemon marmalade:

Same here - I own the hard copy but was still tempted to buy the Kindle version for that price. Glad to hear I am not the only one with such inclinations.

FWIW, I am a fan of Diva Q's competition sauce. I have the book, but I did a google book search for: diva q's "competition sauce" and the recipe came up for me. It makes 10 cups of sauce so I cut it in half, but even that was a lot sauce for me (owner of more than one smoker, occasional competition BBQer).

That sounds like an interesting suggestion, as is @DiggingDogFarm's. I will be adding them to my lists; however, I wonder if they contain more details than some might be ready to attend to shortly after having reversed course. Just a thought.

This may be somewhat obvious, but you might consider the Cook's Illustrated Meat Book Cookbook. I've owned it for almost 2 years now, have skimmed it, but I haven't picked it up in well over a year - probably because it got buried under a pile of other cookbooks, maybe partly because it wasn't that exciting to me (not sure).

@Chris Hennes - great posts and photos, both here and in previous Cooking with Fuchsia Dunlop threads. Amazon has delivered Land of Plenty to us so I hope we will soon find time to start following your lead.

I also use the thumbwheel on the Anova 95% of the time; however, I am willing to give that up to have a waterproof unit - not to mention the compact size. It takes less than a minute to start it with the app and you can stop it by pressing the top button.

According to a reliable source (ahem), Joule can be run completely submerged under water for at least an hour and then continue to run with a normal water level for the remainder of the day without any problems. It is not a recommended practice though - the official high water mark is just below the power cord.

I had been looking forward to vanilla beans showing up at my Costco but not so much now. I haven't tried them, but last year I went with the intention of buying them only to find they were no longer stocked. Still, I'd be interested in knowing the price at Costco just as a cost benchmark.

We made Tofu Coney Island last night. We skipped the raw onions on top but tried the mustard on some of it. I didn't think that was a plus at all - except if you were really going for the look. The miso mushroom chili on top was tasty though. We only had white miso on hand and not quite as much as was called for but it was still a very in-your-face sweet and sour sauce. I think it would really pack quite a flavor punch with the full amount of red miso (maybe too much). FWIW, we tried frying half the tofu as per the recipe and sprayed the other half with cooking oil and broiled it for about 20 minutes (turning halfway). I think the broiled was actually better - and it was a much easier cleanup. Now we have to figure out how best to use up the leftover "chili".

Paprika, my favorite recipe software/app, is on sale through the end of the month - as seems to be the case every Thanksgiving. I wrote about it here. There has since been an update which greatly improved the recipe import function. If you scroll down to the second blog entry in the sale link you can read about some new features that are in development. I didn't have to pay for the last update. It is still quite slow to start up on Windows though.

I succumbed to the Joule sale back in August - not long after my Anova died on me (it was subsequently replaced under warranty). My Joule finally arrived yesterday. I knew it was compact, but it was really striking to see it in person: That is a standard 12 oz beer bottle. The beer is a little closer and the angle distorts it a bit, but the Joule is quite compact. I will give it a try in the next few days but I don't expect it to perform dramatically better or differently than my Anova. It will be nice to have a little more room in the pots I typically use for SV though - not to mention drawer space. My Anova is probably headed for the back of a distant pantry cupboard. Chefsteps claims they will be caught up on their backorders soon. They are now taking orders at $199 including shipping. I am sure they would have liked to have kept the $299 price, but there are now many lower cost competitors.

I've been quite busy of late and haven't been home for dinner on the right nights, but my spouse has made ~5 dishes. Nam prik head is the favorite so far. It is a spicy Thai dip served with raw veggies and/or in lettuce cups. Kaddu was a close second (a pumpkin/squash and tomato dish).

We've had the Cole & Mason Derwent grinder that they recommend for a couple of years and have no regrets whatsoever. I can't imagine ever needing a one with better functionality, but you might want a different style to better match your decor. Amazon has several pages of models offered by them - including at least several in the same price range with very similar-looking mechanical designs.

I made the Buckwheat Crepes with Sauteed Apples and Toffee Sauce this morning. I don't have much experience with crepes (mostly just the Shopsin's fake crepes), but they seemed plenty good to me. Of course they would almost have to be good given all of the butter, cream, eggs, and sugar involved. I didn't make the malt ice cream, nor did I serve any other ice cream, although I am sure a little vanilla would be a great addition. After I had semi-manually added the recipe to my Paprika database, I stumbled onto the recipe here: http://www.extracrispy.com/food/912/these-buckwheat-crepes-stand-up-to-the-french-classic I should have searched for it first as it would have been a lot easier to import it from there.

@Joe Blowe, there is an Anova rep that follows the the SousVide forum on Reddit. Whenever anyone contacts that rep though a Reddit PM they seem to get a replacement, but it usually after they have posted their problem in the forum. It shouldn't be necessary to go that route, but it seems to work. My unit failed and I got a replacement on the first try with no questions asked by just emailing the support address. I have seen many reports similar to mine but also many like yours. Perhaps it depends on who gets your initial request. As for the oven, so far I am not very interested. Sous vide has a lot of room for error in terms of timing so I rarely use the app (although I will have to use an app if my Joule ever gets shipped). Oven cook times are not as forgiving though so perhaps a temperature probe and a smart cooking algorithm will be a real advantage. I will definitely need to be sold on the usefulness of communication between the PC and the oven though. I wonder if that is mostly an attempt to gain a marketing advantage over their SV competition.

@IANSTUART, clearly you are happy with induction, but if you were redoing your kitchen and had the choice, would you do induction again or go with gas? We are going to be redoing our all-electric kitchen (came with the house) and have been planning on running gas to it (we have natural gas heat). I was surprised to find that electric seems to be the way to go for ovens these days and now there is a lot of induction buzz so I am reconsidering the gas line. Neither the pan restrictions nor the wok issue is a deal killer for us. We currently have a 220V Bosch electric/glass cooktop that was once a high-end model. It has one high-power/instant element, but we aren't thrilled with the level of control it offers on any of the elements. Even after many years of using it, finding the right medium or medium-low setting always seems involve more trial and error than it should, certainly more so than the gas elements in our previous home. I'd be interested to hear if anyone has that issue with their induction hobs.

+1 for this what @Kerry Beal said. I did the same a couple of months ago and it was very well received by my fellow pitmasters at a BBQ competition. You definitely get the tender, tasty, pink beef inside, but the bark on the outside of true pit beef is tough to replicate with an eye roast cooked this way.