How to Pan-Baste meats. Does anyone do this? Looks quite promising for steak/fish/burgers/etc.

Phaz

How much butter/oil/etc do you use? What temp do you put the pan? It seems like my problem would be the butter burning. I seem to be good at that.

Also, thanks for that link. That looks amazing.

Phaz

How did you do your carrots? I've done them following this a few times and they were amazing.

Here is my shot (with a crappy camera) of my SV steak. That was a NY strip at 131 degrees.

Chicken at 140 degrees (as someone else in the thread pointed out) is phenomenal, more moist than it should have any right to be.

For searing I've had better luck with a hot cast iron than with a torch, especially for chicken and fish. Though after discovering this pan-basting method I think that would be simply awesome for a lot of things. I'm going to start trying it.

Phaz

I'd imagine you couldn't cook the whole steak this way, just use it to get a really really awesome sear on the outside, then throw it in the oven till it reaches the temp you are interested in.

Burgers on the other hand....

Phaz

Most food grade bags are safe, even at the somewhat high temperatures somethings are cooked at (though still below boiling). There's no real worry of plastic making it into the food.

Phaz

This beautifully points out what I think is one of the major problems with people/the world/media/etc today.

Article: One of the smartest men in the world says the Universe was created by gravity and not God.

then it says... "Poll: Is Hawking right?"

Yes... because an online poll of readers of the Guardian is the way to determine if Hawking is right. Not the minuscule fraction of the population that is actually smart/educated enough to even fully understand/grasp the concepts he is talking about, but just a poll of the random population based on if they agree with it or not, even though they have pretty much no basis to form such an opinion.

fuck.

Phaz

There's a much much better movie about Darwin here, staring Dana Carvey, and others.

Phaz

Probably not.

There are some veggies you can do SV that come out really really amazing (such as carrots) but generally the advantages are really only seen with proteins.

Phaz

|Politicians see the writing on the wall, they know that being anti-gay is not going to be good for the future of their career

Or maybe they genuinely think gay people deserve the same rights...

Phaz

For meats that are supposed to be tender but don't start that way (Short Ribs, Pork Shoulder, duck legs, etc) there is a chemical process that needs to take place. Those cuts of meat all have a lot of collagen which holds the meat together. In order to make them super tender, you need to add heat to break the collagen down into gelatin.

With normal cuts of meat (like a NY Strip or ribeye) you are just trying to get the meat to a certain temperature. With the process that breaks down collagen, it requires both time and temperature. You must bring the meat up to a sufficient temp, then hold it there for enough time for everything to fully break down. The higher the temperature, the more it breaks down.

If you put the slow cooker on high you probably would of been ok, but on low you just need more time.

I cook my pork shoulders in the oven at 325 and they take about 6 hours. If I remember right, the low setting on most slow cookers is around 200-225 degrees. That's the temperature smokers usually run at, and when people smoke pork shoulders I think the average time is around 10-12 hours.

Generally, if you are cooking something for a while and it's not as tender as you'd like, cook it longer. Low and slow is the key.

Phaz

My favorite is first to blanch them (Give them about 2 minutes in boiling water then put them in an ice bath). Dry them, then wrap 3 speers together with a piece of prosciutto that has some cream cheese spread on it.

After that bake them in the oven at about 425 till they get soft and done. It's delicious and very impressive looking.

Phaz

Side point, if morality is objective, than saying "God is good" is a pretty meaningless statement. In order for it to make sense you would need a concept of good that exists outside of God, so you can compare him to it.

Phaz

I'm glad to hear that :)

I can say that all his books are pretty much like that. They vary from book to book obviously, and all have their strengths and weaknesses, but I think people who really like Mistborn will find the rest of them incredibly entertaining. His newest book, The Way of Kings is coming out on Tuesday. It's the start of his big series he wants to write during his career and the book itself is simply amazing. Well worth picking up (though you'll probably also want to finish the MB trilogy).

Phaz

Style is just like Trigger Happy TV. Same kind of stuns, filming, music, etc.

If you liked it google/youtube Trigger Happy and you'll be entertained for quite a while.

Phaz

Does anyone know which video it is with Hitchens where he says something along the lines of "the worst murder, rapist, etc can convert on his death bed and be rewarded, but someone like me, who honestly can't bring himself to believe, gets punished" or something? I've been trying to find it for 2-3 weeks now and haven't been able to.

Phaz

Beer is good, but hard apple cider is a nice choice as well. For a bonus throw in some onions to cook with them as well.

Phaz

If you cook all kinds of food some variety is probably best. Maybe two good stainless pans for sauteing and searing, a non-stick for eggs, a good large cast iron, etc.

There's some pretty good information out there if you are willing to research. Price doesn't always justify the quality as well, check out this showing a $25 pan from walmart is nearly as good as a $100 All-Clad.

I'd say you'll definitely be better off going with a good variety of good quality pans rather than a single set of really high quality ones.

Phaz

That's pretty impressive. How did you do the potatoes?

Phaz

Article is a little old. The top 10 are here.

Phaz

The Thomas Keller book is very geared towards very high end restaurants. This article sums it up pretty well. All the recipes are extremely fine dining oriented. It won't have a lot of tips on just how to cook x, y or z with SV.

I think the best resources are this one (when it comes out) and this one. Both of those authors are pretty famous for modernizing the sous vide trend in the last few years.

Another great source of information is this thread on eGullet. It currently has over 3600 posts and a great source of all kinds of information. Both authors above have been very very active in the thread (even posting yesterday). Lots of great info.

Phaz

I've done a lot of SV at home and love it.

However, I personally just don't find steaks really that great cooked that way.

Don't get me wrong, it makes great steaks compared to what most people are used to, but compared to what I can do on the grill or even in the oven, they fall short.

I think the biggest issue I have is that they look better than traditionally cooked steaks, but don't really taste better. For instance, take this one I did. It was a NY strip at 131 for about 2 hours. It looks very moist and tender and uniformly pink end to end. A perfect medium rare. However, a lot of people I've shown that too doesn't think it's done. They are used to medium rare having some areas that are more grey/brown. Even though this is a better medium rare, a majority of people don't know that, and people tend to be pretty picky about the doneness of their steaks.

The second issue I have is the fat. When I cook a ribeye on the grill, the fat just melts into the meat. I don't even trim the fat away, I just cut each bite so it's about a 70/30 mix of meat and fat. It's delicious. When I cook a rigeye SV, the fat is just different. It's much more firm and doesn't look appetizing at all. The fat around the sides of a NY strip are pretty much inedible. To me, even if the meat itself is consistently more juicy inside, if I can't eat the fat the whole experience is worse.

Finally, I tend to use some rubs on my steaks from time to time, and without the dry heat they just don't work. However, I will say a liquid marinade (like teriyaki) does work better SV since you can just cook it in the marinade.

That being said, there are a TON of proteins that I would highly recommend SV for. Lamb chops come out amazing and a perfect medium rare, salmon is simply stunning, chicken comes out great, etc.

Phaz

I really like this one

Phaz

If you want something fun check out these and I also feel like these breakfast kabobs would go over well in Texas. They are bacon, sausage and ham kebabs glazed with pecan-maple syrup, apple jelly and cinnamon.

Phaz

Completely. I use boneless ones for it every time I do it.

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Phaz

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