poaching salmon in a dishwasher

[Kim WB]

I just watched David Burke on the Today show..he plastic wrapped salmon filet with lemon, basil. spices...7 min in dishwasher, top rack..voila!

Do you have a favorite non traditional method of cooking...?

[jackal10]

This is more for summer.

Fire up a BBQ. On the rack put a thickish layer of herbs. Put the salmon, whole but gutted, on that. Cover with some foil or the lid. After 10-15 mins turn the salmon over carefully onto freah herbs for another 10 minutes.

The herbs and the skin will char, but you peel that off to leave the deeply flavoured lightly coode fish underneath.

Also use a remote read digital thermometer. Fish is cooked at 45 - 50C

Edited December 4, 2003 by jackal10 (log)

[curlywurlyfi]

didn't Petits Propos Culinaires* do a piece last year about cooking things by strapping them in tinfoil packages to parts of a car's engine? there was a touch of the Heath Robinsons to it - making wire loops to hold the sausages in place against the induction coils, etc etc. the baked potatoes were cremated at 60 minutes at 70mph, but the stew (four and a half hours on winding roads through the Lake District) came out just fine, though they'll never get it out of the exhaust manifold. Or something like that??

Hmmm. this doesn't count as a favourite method, but it certainly is non-traditional...

Fi

* not convinced it was this journal but cannot for the life of me remember where I saw it, grrrr

[Carolyn Tillie]

I always liked the scene in the Jimmy Stewart movie, The Spirit of St. Louis when a young Charles Lindberg goes to San Diego Ryan Airlines Company in San Diego and Benjamin Mahoney, president of the company is grilling sandabs on a slab of sheet metal with an acetylene torch.

Being a jeweler, I have several types of acetylene torches lying around and during a power outage one year, I tried it the technique. Messy, but it works.

[beans]

Pshaw!

Silly man Bob Blummer did that years ago. He also has something else with cooking fish (? i think), again well wrapped in foil under the hood of your car. He has specifications on travel length, speed and time travelled.

The first time I went camping I marvelled at the pies that can be made with bread and pie filling. I suppose that is what I'd consider to be the only non-traditional.... Or ironically, of all things coming from me, all things Alaskan kind of gal that I am, roasting things in the oven on a cedar plank board. (an ancient Pacific Northwest native American method of preparing food)

[bpearis]

There's also the roasted chicken with the beer can up its butt.

[NeroW]

There's also the roasted chicken with the beer can up its butt.

Beer can chicken? It really is juicy. We do it every 4th of July, among other things. Ha! Midwesterners.

I have to try that fish-on-the-car thing. I don't have a dishwasher.

Oh wait. I don't have a car either.

[FistFullaRoux]

There was the amateur (or he may have had some training) chef who wound up in Baghdad sitting on security detail around one of Saddam's old palaces, which happened to have a large selection of game.

One Humvee grill, one hole for coals, several cans of government issue orange juice, various spices picked up from somewhere, and one antelope later... The entire company was eating something besides MRE's for the first time in weeks.

That is an alternative cooking method. Dig a hole and kill something. Let's eat!

[Mayhaw Man]

This guy probably doesn't have a dishwasher, but has found a way to prepare tasty meals.

[mstillman]

i remeber a show that was pitched to me when i was at Food Network that was all about cooking things while camping.

the pilot tape had this woman take hot rocks from a camp fire and dump them into the cavity of a chicken. baste chicken with barbeque sauce and ketchup and mustarad. wrap in multiple layers of foil. then wrap in newspaper. place the whole parcel in your backpack and hike for 45 minutes to an hour...voila! roast chicken.

we rejected that show.

stillman

[Carolyn Tillie]

we rejected that show.

Pity - it probably would have ended up more interesting than Rachel Ray!

[beans]

-- the roast chicken in backpack part

-- Ms. Tillie!

GREAT to see you around Matt.

[jhlurie]

Since this is focusing more on bizarre techniques in general than on the Today show appearance, I'm moving this from the Media forum over to Adventures in Eating, which is our home for explorations of the bizarre.

If we get into the real nitty gritty of dishwasher/beer can/car engine/acetylene torch techniques--the nuts & bolts instead of broad discussion--perhaps we can drive this over to Cooking later. Then again, each technique might demand its own thread in that circumstance. Here, we can be shallow and mostly talk about how neat something is! Magic Toaster bag anyone?

[Derek Diggler]

I personally would never cook anything in the dishwasher, wrapped or not. You have no control over the heat, can't see what is going on in there, and there has bound to be traces of chemicals floating around in there. Not to mention it is kind of disrespectful to the food.

I would also be wary of cooking things on the BBQ wrapped in foil, especially when using something acidic, like lemon. The aluminium reacts with the acid and breaks down, creating a nasty aluminum residue in your food. Take a lemon, cut it in half, wrap in foil, wait a few hours and see what it looks like.

Bob Blummer ugh.

[mklynch]

I once had to make a Cobb salad on the fly - had everything but the bacon. The deep fryer was on, and it worked pretty well. I told all my cooks who saw me to NEVER do this!

[curlywurlyfi]

I once had to make a Cobb salad on the fly - had everything but the bacon. The deep fryer was on, and it worked pretty well.

this reminds me - my brother, aged about 15, voracious teenage appetite, blah blah blah, used to make fried egg sandwich with deep fried eggs. he would heat up the fryer, then crack the egg straight in. The egg puffs up like a hedgehog, goes brown and lacy on the outside but juicy in the middle, you clap it between the two waiting slices of ketchuped white bread, and serve with Irn Bru (incredibly sugary bright orange Scottish fizzy drink that tastes like Bazooka Joe in a can).

I'm seeing him at Christmas and am going to remind him of this...

[beans]

Does ironing a grilled cheese with a clothing iron and heavy weight foil count? Thinking of another university sort of food prep story, I remember the guys from the "B" hockey team would have access to a large van for some road trips. One frigid trip they bought a sack of fast food burgers that they left in the van and froze as hard as a brick. The third row of seats had a second automobile heater beneath, which they used to reheat their frozen sandwiches the next day.

[gsquared]

We were planning a modest BBQ yesterday lunchtime and two unexpected quests arrived. I had an extra piece of vacuum packed thick-cut rump steak in the freezer. Took it out, put it in a bread pan (still in the vacuum pack) and put it in the sun on the car roof (wonderful sunny day, around 88F in the shade) and hauled out more beer. When I eventually remembered the defrosting steak, it was around 1 1/2 hours later. The steak was medium-rare and beautifully succulent! We lowered the grill and gave it a short sizzle on each side to get some Maillard going- perfect steak!

[alacarte]

In our college dorm, we had no kitchen so we made grilled cheese a la radiator. You wrap bread, butter, and cheese inside tinfoil, place it on the radiator, and weight it with the textbook you were supposed to be using to study for your midterm.

We also used the Beans method -- heating the iron to make grilled cheese, also very effective.

[fresco]

Is it just me, or would anyone else like to poach the Surreal Gourmet in a dishwasher--or strap him to the manifold of a car before a long road trip?

[Human Bean]

Cooking with lava

[tim olivett]

Well, my favorite strange technique is to take some goat cheese and wrap it in potato shredded on the julienne blade on a mandoline (squeeze the water out and season heavily) then wrap the whole thing in plastic wrap and tie a knot to form a tight ball. Drop it in the deep fryer and watch the plastic pull away but allow the potato to keep it's shape and not explode. I always enjoy telling cooks it melts to the potato but you can't taste it, they get the funniest looks in their eye.

Another good technique is to dip your hands in ice water, then tempura batter and stick them in the deep fryer; of course then you walk around dipping your fingers and eating them. (by the way don't try this at home-only trained professionals and lunatics with diminished brain cells).

[sockettrousers]

didn't Petits Propos Culinaires* do a piece last year about cooking things by strapping them in tinfoil packages to parts of a car's engine? 

Specifically the exhaust manifold. It's an australian tradition - supposedly. Keith Floyd tried the same thing in Floyd Down Under. The piece was pretty ammusing and very Floydesque. He tried the steak, immediately spat is out and announced it was bloody awful.

This guy seems to have a lot more success and knowhow. I like the cooking times quoted by speed.

[Stone]

A friend reported eating great salmon that was cooked in the dishwasher. Aparently, a large filet was well wrapped in foil, along with lemon and aromatics. It was placed in the dishwasher, which was run (without soap). She said it was excellent.

She didn't know whether the pot scrubber setting was used.

[Gifted Gourmet]

If this is not simply the opening of a humorous piece and you are truly interested:

Bob Blumer, the Surreal Gourmet

and Blumer says that the setting for pots & pans is overkill ....