slkinsey

Which categories? Also, aren't makers of Scotch allowed to add caramel, etc? (Yes, I know this is whisky and not whiskey.)

So... it's used in rotgut to balance out added sweetness. Is there any reason anyone who was distilling carefully enough to make a spirit that you could at least choke down straight would want to do this? Part of what I gather is bostonapothecary's point is that he's contending that makers of quality spirits are adding acid. I can't see why someone selling at more than the rock-bottom level would want to do this (especially when, as you point out, acidity and sweetness can be tweaked with careful distilling and aging).

What spirits have added citric acid? I assume that some vodkas have trace amounts added, depending on how they want to tweak their flavor profile.

There are essentially three ways that a knife can cut. There is the push cut, in which the blade has no side-to-side motion and force is applied downward. There is the slice, in which the blade moves in a side-to-side motion and minimal force is applied downward. There is the shearing cut, which involves both significant downward force and slicing motion. Most of what we do in the kitchen is a shearing cut of one kind or another.

The doufeu design and concept has been around since before Staub even existed as a company.

If it's relatively clean beef fat or chicken fat from stock-making, I'm likely to filter and freeze it for future use.

You know... it's so rare that I have enough leftover cooking oil that I had to think about what I do with it. I guess that the few times I have more than perhaps a tablespoon of leftover oil to discard (which does tend to go into the drain), I tend to have a lot of leftover oil because I've been making fried chicken or latkes or something. That either goes into a container and into the trash or, if it's still in decent shape, filtered back into the container and saved for reuse in the next frying project.

You mean the Chicago "pizza style" casserole? It's tasty enough, but it isn't pizza. Is it too late for burning at the stake?

Absolutely. And you do need very high heat for this technique to work that well. Extremely high heat will give you a nicely maillardized crust on the outside without very much penetration into the steak.

Soot?!?! Really? Try the method and get back to me on how much soot you detect in the flavor. Make sure you take a pic of the outside as well so we can tell if you did it correctly... Yes!!!! Really! This is pretty easy to see, just by looking a the underside of a pan you have used over a dirty flame (as opposed to a clean flame like from a gas stove). And the effects of a dirty flame on flavor are well-understood, which is why good kitchens don't want their cooks flaming pans for more than a few seconds Some people like that flavor, so whatever floats your boat. Burger King, for example, differentiates itself on the basis of putting a little soot on its burgers. I can't say that I mind it myself in every context, but it's not something I'd be likely to do with an expensive dry-aged prime steak. More to the point, you don't really need the flame to get the extra-high heat you want for searing. I'd much rather have the high heat from properly configured and tended coals instead. Although it does produce flame, it's not clear to me that dumping the vegetable oil is boosting heat all that much.

A lot of the people from some of the more Northerly restaurants of note (Jean Georges, etc.) hang out at Landmarc after hours.

Plus, it can be a good way to control the cooking. Smoke only flavors the meat for a finite amount of time at the beginning of the cooking process. After that, there is really no advantage to keeping the meat in the smoker. If you are able to get some good smoke flavor into the meat, and then cook to exactly the texture you want using sous vide techniques, you should be able to end up with a superior product. In addition, you could batch-smoke a whole lot of ribs and other meats for the "smoke flavoring period," then bag, freeze and finish cooking them individually sous vide whenever you liked, which would be very convenient and attractive for those people whose living situation or schedule makes firing up the smoker more than a couple of times a year problematic.

What made you choose 68C? That temperature is way too high.

Soot. If you have actual flames, you're going to get soot.

Also, it's been a little meh lately. Does anyone really care that he gave one star to BarBao?

I suppose it depends on what it is. How do you suppose the acid might be added? If you're talking about spirits such as straight bourbon and rye, this would not be possible under the law.

http://www.unitedcityicecube.com/

I like Wild Turkey rye as much as the next guy. But Old Overholt is pretty awesome stuff. Jim Beam rye? Meh.

Why would there be legalities concerning acidity?

I used to have a standalone pasta extruder machine. It was a huge pain to use and the pasta was mediocre, so I stopped using it and eventually gave it away to some sucker, er, friend.

Yes. That is my argument. My argument is that it is impossible to make home-extruded pasta that is competitive with even, say, Ronzoni in terms of quality. Making dry pasta is an industrial process. The durum wheat is mixed into a very stiff dough with very little water, and yet needs to be worked with a very strong machine in order to develop the gluten properly. Few, if any, home mixers or standalone pasta extruding machines are capable of doing this. Certainly I've almost choked my heavy-duty KitchenAid on durum pasta doughs that were really already too wet. After that, this stiff dough needs to be forced through a die with a lot of pressure (again, something that few machines can do well) in order to get the correct coating, texture and firm bite. After that, the pasta needs to be thoroughly dried in a temperature and humidity controlled environment. All these things are difficult-to-impossible for a home cook, even one who may be willing to invest multiple thousands of dollars. What you can perhaps get is a not-so-great version of the not-so-great "fresh extruded pasta" you can buy in some supermarkets. If you like this sort of pasta (I find it neither fish nor fowl, having none of the properties I desire in either dry or fresh pasta), then you might find one of these machines worthwhile. But, in terms of making real dry pasta that won't make you think "this isn't as good as a $1.19 box of De Cecco" -- I don't think it's going to happen.

I think the new NP is pretty good. Perhaps even better than the old. My disappointment isn't necessarily that NO is shipping an inferior product (and for this we should be thankful, since it is the usual course of events) but rather in the loss of the old American formula. The only inherent downside I can see to the new stuff is that a Fitty-Fitty tends to look a bit like a urine sample with a lemon twist.

My going-in hypothesis is that the parchment is mostly useful because it reduces the effective "air space" in the braising vessel, which may have some effect. If one were to use a braising vessel with shorter sides, this perhaps wouldn't be an issue. I'm not sure I can buy the "burning off on the lid" theory. Presumably, if the heavy iron lid is above the boiling point of water, then vapors from the braising liquid would not condense there. If vapors from the braising liquid are able to condense there, then it seems likely that the inner surface of the lid is lower than 100C. This does obscure one important fact about enameled cast iron cocottes such as Le Creuset, which is that they're not particularly optimized for use in the oven. Rather, they're designed to be used on the stovetop, and I would actually argue in favor of stovetop braising (I would recommend the addition of an aluminum disk even when using enameled cast iron). On the stove top, the heavy lid stays relatively cool and recondenses cooking vapors back into the braise (Staub even has little nodules on the underside of the lid to facilitate this).

Actually, everything conducts heat. Some things just do it better than others. I'm not sure I follow the logic of including parchment paper if the braise is condicted in an appropriately sized vessel with a heavy and well-fitting lid. Using something like a Staub shouldn't result in much evaporation anyway. Perhaps someone can explain this a bit better.

I may have said this before, but it bears repeating: There is no reason to have a home extruder. There is a very simple reason for this, which is that extruder machines make pasta secca (dried pasta such as spaghetti, penne and so forth) comprised of water and durum wheat flour. This is an industrial process, and it is more or less impossible to make pasta secca at home that approaches the quality of even relatively pedestrian examples from the store, never mind a top quality artisinal brand. In this sense, pasta secca is entirely different from pasta fresca, which is most commonly made with eggs and soft wheat, and most traditionally made at home by hand. Homemade pasta fresca will almost always be better than anything you can buy in a store. I would rate home pasta extruder machines as the most common machine to live untouched in the back of a kitchen cabinet. I used to have one, but it was difficult to use and not much fun, and didn't make particularly good pasta.