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Cooking with the Momofuku cookbook


MikeHartnett

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I know that the broth we make at Noodle Bar TO is pretty much identical to the cookbook, with an added pigs head. The freeze dried version is way too expensive to be viable at the moment, the biggest saving for it is time.

Thank you for your input. What do you mean by freeze-dried version?

For me the biggest issue was that the Lucky Peach version calls for only 2.25kg chicken necks and not a lot of butchers will sell you that in bulk. I do not own one at the moment, but I was thinking that this recipe could be probably be sped up in a pressure cooker.

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I know that the broth we make at Noodle Bar TO is pretty much identical to the cookbook, with an added pigs head. The freeze dried version is way too expensive to be viable at the moment, the biggest saving for it is time.

Thank you for your input. What do you mean by freeze-dried version?

For me the biggest issue was that the Lucky Peach version calls for only 2.25kg chicken necks and not a lot of butchers will sell you that in bulk. I do not own one at the moment, but I was thinking that this recipe could be probably be sped up in a pressure cooker.

Sorry, I skipped over the part when you mentioned the Lucky Peach version, and assumed you were referring to this ...

James.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Having been to Momofuku Seiōbo in the past few weeks and trying the pork bun, I've been dying to make it at home.

I made up the pork belly earlier in the week and today was bun day.

The mixture recommended in the cookbook makes fifty buns. This is my stash (less a few that made it into pork buns and a few that I decided to sacrifice to try out a more conventional pork bun to see what the dough was capable of).

This is a picture of the momofuku style buns:

Buns.jpg

This is a more conventional type pork bun cut in half to show the texture:

pork bun.jpg

The buns worked extremely well, as did the pork belly.

I agree with Scottyboy that it is good to follow the instructions in the book but I'd add a few caveats:

First, David Chang is very tactile and accurate in his descriptions. Listen carefully if he says that the pork belly needs to be spring like a pillow when it is finished cooking.

Similarly, his description of the bun dough as coming together on the dough hook and not being too tacky is very accurate.

This leads into my other hint. As with all dough recipes there is an illusion of accuracy in measuring. Particularly with the US cup measurements, which are so inaccurate they are frustrating. I consulted the web to get equivalents for metric measurements but this led to a dough that was far too sticky. I wound up adding over 100g extra flour to get the mix correct.

Even then when I went to shape the dough, it was not suitable for a rolling pin as was. I wound up squashing the dough balls into a disk shape using (dry) hands. I then used my (clean) cappuccino chocolate shaker filled with plain flour and lightly dusted the surface. This allowed me to roll the dough out into an oval as instructed. I then used a lard dipped chopstick to execute the fold, as directed. They worked extremely well with this minor modification and, as can be seen, were very light and an ideal counterpoint to the pork and pickle textures.

42 buns have gone into the freezer in vacuum bags. I adjusted the timing to get sufficient vacuum to remove most of the air, but not sufficient to crush the buns.

Nick Reynolds, aka "nickrey"

"The Internet is full of false information." Plato
My eG Foodblog

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  • 1 year later...

Anyone still cooking with this book? I return to it regularly. 

 

Tonight I made the pork sausage w/ rice cakes. A bunch of people ... somewhere--people suggested pan-frying them, as per the other dok recipe in the book--was the way to go. And random people on the internet must surely know better than David Chang. So that's what I did. Only I pan-fried them in wagyu fat instead of neutral oil. 

Chris Taylor

Host, eG Forums - ctaylor@egstaff.org

 

I've never met an animal I didn't enjoy with salt and pepper.

Melbourne
Harare, Victoria Falls and some places in between

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Anyone still cooking with this book? I return to it regularly. 

 

Tonight I made the pork sausage w/ rice cakes. A bunch of people ... somewhere--people suggested pan-frying them, as per the other dok recipe in the book--was the way to go. And random people on the internet must surely know better than David Chang. So that's what I did. Only I pan-fried them in wagyu fat instead of neutral oil. 

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