Bernie

High heat 200C + Moderate 160C > 180C Low <140C Source: My opinion (and I am a know all so I am pretty sure it may be right -my better half says so) 😀 When electric & gas (not petrol!) ovens first hit the market, temperate control was VERY imprecise so manufacturers used low (yellow) moderate (orange) hot (red) on temperature dials and even these had wide tolerances and spread , depending on manufacturer. Most older cooks when using wood or fuel fired stoves and ovens could learn (by trial and error) and estimate temperature for their particular appliance.

Many years ago I did a few trips on a tuna pole boat (as an observer only). There was a crew of about 13 and one of the meals was oven roasted corn beef. It turned out to be reasonable taste wise but pretty salty, which wasn't actually a bad thing because the work poling tuna was very physical with little relief and nights spent catching bait, so everyone was generally permanently exhausted. But because of the nature of the work you would sweat buckets and just drinking water wasn't enough. The salt of the corn beef replenished the salt and allowed you to drink more water and actually quenched your thirst..

Yellow for cooking, white has more "tangy sharpness" for salads and red are usually much sweeter and not as tangy. I will use red onions for salads, just so I only have to keep 2 types. (also white can be a bit overpowering in some salads) I will cook red onions with fresh tomatoes for pasta or use red onions if I run out of yellow😀

went out to breakfast on Sunday on the menu was a couple of vegetarian dishes. One item in the list of ingredients caught my eye. "Vegetarian Butter" huh? Well its butter made from plant oils like coconut oil, olive oil, bran oil...........doesn't that make it margarine? (or as its commonly referred to processed industrial waste)

I now always add bread crumbs, which gives a smoother texture to the finally cooked product. I also make it in a loaf pan with grease proof paper and then vacuum package it and put it in the SV for a couple of hours. It will also break down some of the connective tissue which I think also "smooth out" the texture. This "cooks & sets" and a lot of the fat/liquid ends up around the loaf (like the loaf is floating in liquid). Then it is removed from the bag and goes in a hot oven to develop the crust. Depending how it is to be used (cold, sandwich filling, hot etc) I either remove the liquid and replace with gravy or sauce or I can remove it from the loaf pan and place on a tray in the oven to develop a crust round most of the loaf. If it is to be used as the main protein at meal times I will remove it from the pan (using the paper to hold it together, carefully unwrap and cut into serving size slices, re wrap and return to the pan, then the oven. That way the sauce/gravy can penetrate more. EDIT: SV needs to be hot enough to set the egg so arounfd 75C

here is an off center tip Keep sweet potatoes in your RED wine fridge. (if you don't have one, here the best excuse to get one..... then you have to buy better red wine to take full advantage of the wine fridge....win,win,win😁) In the normal fridge they will deteriorate, in the open air they deteriorate quicker (I guess depending on the ambient temperature). In my wine fridge they tend to keep for weeks without any noticeable change. (probably the combination of temp & humidity control)

Pretty obvious to me in this technological age we need an internet connected panini press. That way the press can use AI (Chatgpt👺)to tell us what we should and should not do. Just think, eGullet could make a fortune by selling all the data necessary to train our IPAIWP (Internet Panini Artifical Intelligence Wonder Press) (Actually i liberated mine the other night from the back of the hard cupboard to do a revisit. Now I am contacting the Kitchen installers to ask them to explain why I don't have a really really hard cupboard)

physics knowledge needed here 😀 You probably need to make sure you keep it somewhat agitated if it is getting close to freezing The advantage of using brine as a freezing medium is that it will freeze at a lower temperature or more importantly at below the freezing point of water, so it can be circulated to cool down product to water freezing point much quicker. (normally you use brine external to the product for short enough time - if it is in direct contact so you may get salt transfer) But I seem to remember (and that facility is indeed fading😒) if it is kept still some water may freeze releasing its salt. (that's where the physic knowledge is needed).

A simple white sauce (with cheese) crab mornay with lots of crab meat, baked in the oven. (not quite Italian but add some cherry tomatoes and Italian parsley 😀) Scalable from 2 to many.

Pretty sure adding iodine to salt is for areas where the soil is deficient in iodine. The resultant crops (of lots of different species) are deficient in iodine. Certainly, this was the case in SE Queensland. The easiest solution was to increase the iodine in salt because most people used to use it in cooking lots of different vegetables. Also table salt was heavily refined so most minerals were removed or reduced so it was easiest just to add iodine. So depends on where your table salt originates and more importantly where your vegetables originate whether you need to use iodized salt. Sea salt should have more iodine but it may not necessarily be so. Your body will reject excess iodine taken in food anyway so there is no harm in using iodized salt. If you can taste it, maybe there is too much iodine or it is actually a different iodine salt added to the salt. Chemist needed here.,

Potato Cake! 😁

doohickie is such an underused word. It is so appropriate for just about any technical discussion

I too am an old geezer (but my mind refuses to admit it) So while we on the subject of comparisons of cooking methods.. What is the difference between BAKING & ROASTING (I roast a leg of lamb but bake a ham) I don't roast cakes but I bake them. Is there a similar sort of distinction between "traditional" SV & Turbo SV (told you I was old and have nothing better to do than cogitate..😁)

The rate of heat transfer is determined by the characteristics of the object (in this case the food) and the difference in temperature. It will also depend on the interface, that is the hot oven air (which is a relatively poor conductor of heat). In SV the interface is water (and usually a single layer of plastic) and the water is a much better conductor of heat. In a "normal" oven, cooking say a chicken with the oven temperature set to 180C and the desired temperature say 60C it will take a certain time. If the outside oven temperature is 60C it will take a much much longer time time..... You can cook it at 180C but by the time the temperature of 60C is reached in the center the outside (the skin and outer layers) will be much hotter (probably 180C) In the same way you can "turbo" the SV by setting the temperature higher but the end result will be the internal temperature will be the desired 60C but the outer temperature will have been hotter and then (hopefully) will have cooled down. So if you don't mind the outer layers heating over the set temperature and then cooling back down then go for it Sort of defeats the purpose of SV doesn't it?

The only problem with long slow cook in a conventional oven is retaining moisture. You can fix it a bit by using an enclosed container to cook in... but it will take longer and the air around the food will take a very long time to heat up to oven temperature (because the air is enclosed and not moving). Your surface of the food will therefore be in the "dangerous" temperature" (bacteria growth) range for a longish time. The risk is developing some off odors, but hopefully normal kitchen hygiene has eliminated any of the real nasties Having said that, I used "Hestons method" in a conventional oven but it was 90c (from memory..which is usually faulty) and the chicken had been in brine for 24hrs to increase the internal moisture. It was superb. I do prefer a lamb roast in the conventional oven but the first hour in an oven bag (with rosemary), then removed to "brown" the outside, but the temperatures are higher else it would take forever and dry out. SV is my go to for pork.