jedovaty

Completed one more "seasoning" by filling each side with oil, heating to smoking, letting cool, draining, and wiping mostly clean. Then I baked on my grill for 2 hours (I had a call for work). It didn't get much darker, just a bit more bronze. The iron came with three recipes, I tried 1/3 batch of the country one, using some IDY instead of a bag of barm. Per AlaMoi's suggestion, buttered up the the iron generously. The batch made 7 waffles. Here are the remaining four. And the mess on the stove omg. I think I want to "season" the exterior sides of the iron as well before next time. But I finally had me some waffles. I'm happy. Next project, the swedish waffles from David Chang's recent live netflix show, and then try to make the hippie-compatible versions and their variations (no dairy, no eggs, no gluten, etc). I'll update over next couple weeks for sake of posterity. Recipe Waffles Stove

Here's what's on my aluminum sheet pan, the stuff is slick and nothing sticks to it. It's also quite resilient, hasn't come off despite scrubbing for several years now. Is this a reasonable goal on the waffler? Somehow, I suspect it won't be possible...

Hmm, interesting. I didn't think the recipe would matter, previously didn't have issues with random ingredients haphazardly mixed up into my electric iron (which was non-stick and no longer with me). FWIW, the iron was stuck closed and I had to use some force to open it up. This iron came with three recipes, I can try the one that doesn't call for a small bag of barm; I know what barm is, but I thought it was measured by volume, not bags. Otherwise, I'll search eg for recipes or go to my local library for a book. Google searches have gone way downhill, nothing but ad-driven and AI generated content

Hi! Does anyone here use or have used waffle irons that are cast-aluminum with no coatings? Not cast iron or various shades of non-stick? I need help. I picked up a French made, stove-top cast aluminum waffle iron, it was unused. Washed it, and after countless hours researching the internet, decided to try to "season" it like cast iron using the only high temp oil I had on hand right now (avocado oil). I couldn't get the handles off without damaging the them, however, found a way to use the outdoor natural gas grill, which can hold a stable temp far better than my oven, so I baked this thing at ~535F for 90 minutes at a time. Since many US made electric waffle irons from the 1920s-1960s used cast aluminum grates as well, I thought this would be fairly easy. 3 very very thin coats later and several wasted hours followed by stupidly sore fingers, decided I didn't want to do that anymore and would "season" it by just using it. Heated some oil in it to smoking, cleaned, let cool, heated again to ~350-375F on the stove, wiped with a little oil, poured in batter, epic fail. Fortunately this cleaned up easily with just a soak and no loss of prior "seasoning", then I performed a few more "seasonings", going a little heavier with the oil. I'm not sure I'm doing this right, it's barely changing. Thoughts? One of my aluminum sheet pans has a super slick black spot on it that occurred after a piece of parchment paper tore, and I think this is supposed to be the goal - I can see something like that on the center hinge here. That part wasn't wiped with oil, so I think it was lubricant. Wiping the oil to a very thin layer is really painful on my fingers Qtips, papertowels, my cast-iron oil rag, it's all kind of tedious. First time on the grill: after 3 seasonings Rate my waffle Few more seasonings, just a little browner, what am I doing wrong

Finally birthed a new sourdough starter after I accidentally baked my last one. Made a ~400g test boule and didn't feel like using the regular oven, so I tried in the CSO with a small kiln shelf I had. It worked with a ~20 steam bake followed by regular bake. I did preheat ~45 minutes to get the kiln shelf hot, however, bottom was a little bold so will reduce preheat time. I would not go past 400g loaf, maybe 450g depending on shape and expected rise. A small dish of rolls would probably work out very well. That said, this had a very strong oven-hei flavor to it so I would recommend anyone trying to bake break to clean the oven first (I've been roasting fish and veges several times a week in this for a several months now and.. ermm.. yeah.. I need to clean it).

Okay, thank you for the feedback @gfweb, @Okanagancook, @Smithy, and @C. sapidus After re-reading my post, it may seem like my place is falling apart! It's not really unless you look at the details, I'm probably a bit dramatic since I'm just.. overwhelmed. The good news, what I really want to do is slowly becoming apparent - appliances, blinds, and some cabinetry/countertops. I think the rest, I should hold off. Bad news, how on earth am I going to make the decisions on colors, placement, material, style, etc. A friend and I will do most of the work. His wife is an agent and is consulting with one of her friends, a retired interior designer, they've been mocking up different examples for me in some 3D program and it all looks great - there's just.. the details uggghhhh. Next week we are going into some cabinet stores to look. I am almost tempted to just give them a $ budget and let them make all the choices, and treat the remodel as if I were buying the home again and dealing with whatever is the result. @MaryIsobel yikes and good luck!!! 😁 If you haven't done so already, you might want to consider what C. Sapidus suggested to me, i.e. talking to a trusted RE agent if you know of one, to help identify what would make sense. For example, in my neighborhood, a remodel for resale would likely be a waste of money and not worth the headaches, if the goal was to make as much as you can, it'd be better to just rough it out unless there were some serious health and safety issues (which issues would need to be addressed ahead of time). It varies by neighborhood, of course, and hopefully the agent could counsel you accordingly. Again, good luck!!!

The microwave is shot, oven makes boom boom noises, stove knobs are broken, dishwasher racks falling apart due to rust, parts for the 20 yo fridge are NLA, and laminate peeling off cabinet sides. I... I don't know what to do. I'm stuck in a loop. Been here for 7 years, and likely will be here another 5-10 years. My cycle of thoughts: - swap out appliances as needed, but then, the cabinet delamination is ugly - maybe resurface the cabinets, yah? - my kitchen doesn't have a hood wtf were the previous owners thinking?! let's put one in - would be great to have space, so keep general location of appliances, but okay fine, need new cabinets - the HVAC return will need to be moved, it's in the way - kitchen island has a raised side for "bar standing", and the "dining" area on the side wall is very narrow - So let's lower and extend kitchen island a little for seating, but okay, would help to take out a bit of the back wall - granite countertops will need to change of course, and I want quartz - maybe take advantage of empty space and consider a banquette - move bathroom over 1ft and turn coat closet into pantry - lighting is so randomly overdone and ugly, fix that, too - I hate the drapes, let's get some z-wave blinds for the living room, and consider plantation shutters in the kitchen - while we're at it, 15-20% of the travertine tile that spans the entire open floor plan is cracked and the entire look is dated - this travertine matches the outside porch tile so may be good to change as well - oh oh and while outside, let's replace or clean up the rusted railing for the port steps Considering I like nice things (i.e. higher end appliances), and all of a sudden the projected cost on this is going to be staggering and I'd rather save it for future health issues and maybe a couple vacations for some much needed time off. And then, I am absolutely horrible at making decisions, everything from placement to style to color to material. I like it all and skimming through magazines and online examples doesn't help. So rethinking.. since this isn't my forever home, let's just look at changing out the appliances. And then I see the delaminating cabinets, the missing hood, and the cycle begins again. I live alone, enjoy kitchen experiments, recently downsized all my excess stuff, but would like a little more space. Uggghhhhhh. Help?

Hi: When I make ghee, it is rock solid out of the fridge a few days later. I bought some "ghee butter sticks" from the supermarket the other day (found in the froo froo section), and the sticks themselves had nearly a butter-like consistency out of my fridge. They taste like ghee, and have a slight graininess to them like ghee. Ingredients are "clarified butter". If it's possible to make ghee have an elastic type property by simply manipulating its crystalline structure, it'll open up a world of treats for my friends/family with casein/lactose issues.

If there is cultural significance or history of its use, cool. It could also be as simple as some enterprising entrepreneur drawing a connection to citrus leaves, then decided to put them up for sale.

I was reading back through this thread and can't believe I missed this.. WOAH.. you are one of the dwarf project people and made Dwarf Metallica?! That's one of my favorites I wish I had better luck growing tomatoes. With my climate, I shouldn't be having so much trouble But, that's a topic for another forum that sadly can't seem to figure it out either. Oh, well. I'll keep trying until I get it or give up.

Hello again, original poster here. Not looking for suggestions with this specific post, just sharing an experience that happened this year for anyone interested or doing research. 2023 I had a sad modest little tomato crop, about 3.5 kg roma type, 2 kg of a multi-purpose green that's shaped like a paste but can be used as a slicer as well, and 2 kg of piennolo. My goal was to preserve them in jars. Reading the ball canning guide (the variation that doesn't can them whole in water, but rather crushed or skinned or whatever) suggests simmering tomatoes before jarring them in order to stop the enzyme from breaking them down and creating a layer of water in the jar. That sounds like a good plan, as I'd like to keep as much of the tomato original as possible. Life got in the way and I didn't have time to process and jar the tomatoes when they were harvested. I found a few suggestions on the internet which said to freeze the tomatoes, and I had forgotten about this thread. The thinking was to freeze, and come back later to preserve them. Also, I read freezing makes it easy to skin them, so overall this sounded awesome because it was convenient to freeze (at the moment I had freezer space woah) and skinning tomatoes is a monotonous chore I dislike no matter how easy many of you make it out to be. I also did not have time to roast the tomatoes. I had some time to finally cook myself a meal now few months later, and thought this would be fun experiment on a very small scale to see what happened to the frozen tomatoes. I pulled half a dozen of the roma-type from the freezer, thawed them overnight, and like the internet suggested, they skinned easily. There was, however, a pool of clear water, a raw tomato consomme. I removed the tomatoes from the water, ran them through my food mill. The pulp pretty much disintegrated and I was left with more of a V8 juice-like texture instead of a thick tomato mush. There was also not very much for six roma tomatoes. I was hoping for same amount one gets from a can of whole SM tomatoes. Despite all this, the two results were both delicious (if a bit sweet.. like drinking sugared tomatoes, very interesting). The plan to freeze and then jar later can still work, but if I combine the consomme I'll likely end up with a layer of water on top. I can separate out the consomme, but then there will be so little end product. Well, I guess next season I'm going to need to schedule time to actually process the tomatoes if I want to make some shelf-stable preserved tomatoes from my garden. Finding time is not easy for me these days. I am happy with the decision to at least freeze the tomatoes before cooking, it was a good overall experiment and now I can still enjoy them as long as they last. Just need to find a way to use sugary tomatoes.. they are borderline cloying - it's odd, because when I had a few fresh in August, they were nothing close to this level of sweet.

I generally have two kinds of chocolate I make, one is a super small batch at around 500-600g, and the other type at around 800-1,100g. While I *can* run a larger batch, it's not something I want to do until I have a way to roast enough beans in one session, for a batch of chocolate. My unit worked pretty well with the small batch sizes until the lock nut broke - there would be some product stuck to the top of the plastic lid, no more than maybe 10% which is a perfect little treat for me. I've not seen the micro-batch accessory before, I just checked the website and they write the yield is about 500g which is good for the first kind of chocolate I make.

Well, a few more months and I really don't like the stainless setup, it's not only loud, but somehow gets product everywhere and I'm losing about 30% to the floor. The loud part is easy to fix, I can just put felt strips on the lid, but the ejection... I have no idea. I've tried it both with and without the wheel covers. With the wheel covers, there's still quite a bit of ejection but product also gets stuck along the underneath and I'm too stupid to stop the unit, scrape down, and restart so it's a real danger to my digits. I haven't tried larger batches yet, maybe those would fix this but I think I'm going to have to reinstall the original nylon set, and simply get a replacement locking nut. Uggh I wanted to get away from the plastic.

Interesting, okay, I'll check the library, that's a great idea! Will check SDGE to see if they have any programs, I'd be really surprised given it's such a horrid utility company. I just read the NYT wirecutter review and they say all the portable ones have loud fans I may just have to put up with it.

Hi: Are there any portable induction burners that make very little noise? I borrowed a family member's Rosewill 1800 watt and aside from the UI being a total mess, it made so much fan noise I cut short the testing and gave it back to him with prejudice. I've read reviews on several and the noise isn't really mentioned. The goal here is to play around with one and see if I like induction burners before committing to a full cooktop in the kitchen. 🤫

Another idea: if it's a relatively sour pineapple that's out of season, blend it into juice and use it to brine/marinate chicken. Pretty much any kind of marinade will work with pineapple, I like to mix into the pineapple juice whatever I have on hand, ginger, garlic, soy sauce, sake/mirin, etc. If I have citrus, whether lemon, lime, orange, mandarins, etc, it always comes out super tasty If you need a starting place, google "El Pollo Loco copycat chicken marinade". Little bit of a waste possibly, since pineapple juice is way cheaper from the can versus fresh, but sometimes the grocery store pineapples are picked way too early for transport.

And your piping example in turn reminds me of heston blumenthal's chocolate mousse. I've made it a few times and funny, never drew the connection! Sorry to go off topic, this stuff is great as a filling for alternative diets and/or allergies. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4cMjxZc_54

When I was making my own hazelnut praline paste, I always wondered how to get it thicker.. running it in the melanger made it totally liquid. I tried varying the types and ratios of fat, including coconut oil and cacao butter, and I'd also try tempering. None really worked.. it would end up solid in the fridge and liquid at room temp/ Then I found it would nicely thicken up with water. VERY CAREFULLY, I'd add water drop by drop with the melanger running. Carefully being key, as just dropping it in could seize up and cause major problems like suddenly break the melanger. Later I switched to vanilla extract, again, drop by drop. Since I wasn't making this to sell or share commercially, and the paste never lasted more than a couple weeks in my fridge, I wasn't concerned about water activity, bacteria, mold, etc.

Slight tangent... for those of you suggesting MSG, errr... you do realize that the "S" stands for Sodium? I'm scratching my head why it is being suggested as a sub... so I've come up with some theories: - the sodium in MSG not as readily available compared to NaCl - fewer S molecules per unit of measurement since MSG includes the glutamate molecule which is bigger and heavier than chloride - less MSG required to make food "salty" - original post is about using less salt, not about reducing sodium - all the above - other Kindly edumacate me, (wo/it)mansplain away.

The end product here is similar to chicken paprikas. Neat! GERD will not be happy.

Hi! I have a nice crop of aji amarillo from my garden 😁. Sadly I cannot eat spicy foods like I used to, so I am trying to find ways to use them up and/or store them for a bit longer. I think I will wash, dry, and freeze whole for now. Meantime, while reviewing recipes and reading up on general use, I ended up with a few questions that I hope some of you more experienced with this might be able to help out. 1. To make paste, one blanches, peels, then blends with a little water or oil, and this can be stored in the freezer. The general recipes call for boiling the peppers 5-10 minutes, until the skin peels off easy. My eyebrow raises in response in an attempt to mimic the Rock: wouldn't boiling pull some of the beautiful flavor into the water? Why not roast and peel? I know I *can* do this, but I'm wondering why this is not the practice... I also generally like to try to attempt authentic techniques to learn about the flavors and uses, before playing my own. 2. Searching the forum here, I read many of you use the paste to make wings. Any other uses? 3. On a visit to Aruba earlier this year, I ate at a fancy pantsy fancy fance pinky out peruvian restaurant that had this amazing sauce alongside some grilled shrimp. They had same sauce for dipping bread into. When I asked what was in the sauce, they weren't keen to share. I just remember it was creamy, fruity, had that aji amarillo flavor right up front, and not overly spicy. They swore to me it did not have dairy in it, but there could've been errors in translation as our server must've been new and was not comfortable answering details questions. Oh, well. Anyone have aji amarillo sauce ideas that would pair well with seafood? I've been thinking of starting with a romesco-like technique, but feels like that might be too strong for fish. Lima Bistro's site only has an aji amarillo buerre blanc on their menu now, I don't see the dishes we had. Mmmm. GERD has already begun plotting its revenge on me just writing this 😭

Finally had a chance to make some chocolate with the new drum and scrapers! I usually start with a 2lb bag of beans from the chocolate alchemist, by the time roasting and winnowing is done, the weight of nibs comes to between 600 and 700 grams, and I generally make 80-95% darks. The stainless scrapers aren't really made for such a small amount, especially since the mass tends to be a bit thicker due to my humid environment. There are two solutions, either double up roasting or install the original scraper. I really wish there were a drum roaster that could handle 2-3kg cacao beans, all my troubles would be resolved!

Looks like it would be... grate... for the heels as well.

She must've had some mighty powerful arms, yikes!

Some people who know me in real life have called me "smart". I beg to differ, in support, here's exhibit A, which purpose I just figured out due to a completely random mistake this past weekend after 20+ years cursing the blasted (and now formerly useless) side of the box grater for scraping my hands to no end and failing to properly process lemon zest, ginger, and garlic. 🤦‍♂️