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.

Unfortunately, most information on the web these days is about earning advertising revenue and that takes views. You wont earn much if people don't watch/talk about whatever you post. It doesn't matter what you (as the poster) know or believe, it is more about what will generate hits. Ideally, you want people on forums (like us) discussing it, because then those people (us) will view the video/blog. So to this end she achieves what she wants 😁 The very fact she says she doesn't use it but later says she does is probably just an attempt to inform/indicate (scam?) the viewers that she knows what she is talking about or to not alienate anyone that may use SV Pure politics in its basest form !

Aren't we getting a bit carried away here? If indeed the pot was opened, then there is a small risk of contamination, but that depends a lot on the general environment. If the stock was allowed to cool completely before it was opened, then even that risk is likely to be minimal. For meaningful contamination you need the bacteria/yeast/nasties and the right temperature range and sufficient time at the temperature for the bacteria to grow. If the pressure was released but the pot still closed then it will still be sterile. (yes OK if you cooled it down below ambient and the vent allowed bi directional gas flow then you may introduce contamination from the air) Another almost neglected criteria is the "surface tension" and the PH of the stock......real chemistry needed here.. By the way do prions actually multiply?

The price was right........😀 Just quietly bin them...you actually haven't lost anything.....😌

I have cut and pasted to make larger bags, but it is a fiddly process. The shape ends up a bit of a nightmare as it usually wont fit in the sealer. (each side can only be as long as the sealer). One thing to note is to let the sealer cool down a bit otherwise it gets too hot and although it still seals it melts the plastic and the mechanics of the seal is reduced. On wrinkles, i just make sort of stretch it before clamping in the sealer. It may mean making the bag a little longer so the vacuum process doesn't pull on the seal surface prior to sealing. The Foodsaver had the advantage of being a bit wider but it was obvious when I took it apart of a basic design flaw in the way the plastic was cast that the channel holding the rubber gasket was too close to the heating element. What made me go right off the company was that rather than fix the design they chose to repair it in a way that would almost certainly eventually fail, also that further cracks were almost inevitable and just hope people wouldn't find out what they had done. Very poor ethics for any company. The more ethical way if they didn't do a redesign was to sell them at a huge discount with a warning they had a limited life or not sell them at all.

Slightly off topic but might help 🙂 I use rolls to make bags. Do a search on ebay (or amazon) for "Food Vacuum Sealer Bags Rolls 12-30cmx500cm for Sous Vide & Storage" You then make bags of any size. Also after the food saver has finished, don't remove the bag wait a few minutes and hit "seal" again. If your food saver is faulty (doesn't seal or vacuum properly) the plastic inside may have cracked (look really carefully for hair line cracks particularly along where the heating/sealer is). I actually had a small crack and took it apart to find the crack was obviously a manufacturing problem and was sealed with some sort of silicon compound which had dried out. There were three more small cracks also sealed the same way. Not good for a rather pricey bit of gear. I will NEVER buy a Foodsaver gear again. I use one from ALDI and it works fine. You need also to check if the original packaging has those absorbent pads to mop up the juices. They (and their contents) may not take kindly to long temperatures, or may change and impart other flavors or smells.

Well, hopefully if the roast was originally butchered and handled correctly, there should be minimal bacteria inside the roast. The only way for it to get inside was if it "migrated" through the tissue. (much like brine...) but i am not sure bacteria would have enough difference in there chemical makeup to enhance osmosis. (chemist needed here 🙂) On the outside it is likely you would get an increase but the time the outside is in the critical temperature range should be pretty short. To help this, thaw in the fridge or go straight from freezer to SV, that way there will be minimum buildup on the outside. Also I think killing bacteria with heat is a time/temperature dependent process. You can sterilize with boiling water (100C) for a very short time but you can achieve the same thing with 65C water for 10 or so minutes. Even at 55C it will kill bacteria but it will take a long time. (actually like the increase, the decrease is a numbers game. Your body can cope with small amounts of bacteria, so even sterilizing may not kill all the bacteria, jut ~99%?)

There is also another "anomaly" with onions in most recipes. When it says fry/cook/sweat onions in oil/butter/fat for 5 minutes till they are translucent... Well you can do it on high heat and turn them brown, you can turn them into charcoal in no time at all but at lower heat (say frying butter etc) it will take 20~25 minutes. There has been various discussions online over the years and the consensus seems to be that if you put 20~25 minutes in a recipe, no one will cook it because it takes too long just for that first step and it probably double the overall cooking time. So many recipes with onions probably taste different because people don't fry the onions long enough, and so the onions never break down properly. Now in something like a stew or curry that cooks for a relatively long time it doesn't matter. I fact in curries you can use the onions as the basis of the sauce, provided you cook it long enough for the onions to completely break down. You get the onion flavor without adding the onion texture. Another tidbit about curies, stews and such, is the boiling temperature. I actually made a quick curry last night (using green curry paste). I firstly boiled and reduce coconut milk (which I bought cheap not realizing it was 50% water and they add thickener to pad it out. Any more than 50% water I suppose it couldn't be called coconut milk) Then sweated onions for about 20 minutes in lard, added pork (had marinated over night in 5% brine) and curry paste. Added carrot, sweet potato and potato. Then added the coconut milk (now thicker and creamy smooth) The boiling point was 77c-82c. I am pretty sure that would not be enough to break down the onions or cook the vegetables in reasonable time so it had to bubble away for over an hour. If I hadn't already sweated the onions for so long (and at the higher temperature) I don't think they would have broken down. The texture of the sauce was smooth and creamy and the flavors were very well combined. There was no onion pieces at all so they had broken down completely I will be reducing coconut milk from now on as a first step, at the same time as sweating down the onions for 20 mins or so.

No. Because of international differences, I put a link in to describe the biscuits. I wasn't sure if they were sold under the same name in other countries.

One out of left field... Talking on the phone to a friend while she was making dinner, and as part of the conversation I asked what she was making. "meatballs with ginger pineapple sauce". Details are make and cook meatballs. The a can of pineapple pieces plus some extra pineapple juice (and wait for it)..... 6 Ginger Nut biscuits https://www.arnotts.com/brands/arnotts-biscuits/sweet which actually dissolves in the pineapple and juice as it heats to form the sauce. Add the meatballs and a really quick and easy meal. I haven't tried it but just might.

Yep they are farmed in the north of Australia. Both for skins and meat. (here is a sample https://www.koorana.com.au/) They are protected in the wild because they came close to extinction. Now they are on the rebound. They can grow to about 6~7 meters (23feet) weigh in at a healthy 1000~1500kg (2200~3300lbs) and they eat just about anything up to (or over) their own weight that was or is alive. It depends on the size of the crocodile but they have been known to seize a full grown bullock and drag them under. A man is just a tidbit to the large ones (4~6 meters) A 1meter one will probably have a go at a leg or arm of an adult or a whole child, anything bigger will fancy their chances at a whole adult man or woman In most of the northern states you are pretty silly if you wade swim or camp next to tidal creeks and streams and you just don't swim in the northern waters, because of various marine stingers (jellyfish) and more important saltwater crocodiles. (we don't have to worry about sharks, the crocodiles ate them...🙂)