Cooking a Good Everything Else
Thought I'd take El D's advice and create another thread for cooking discussion, as steak is wonderful, but pork, meatballs, chicken, pasta, sausage, greens, and charcuterie deserve love too.
Also an appropriate place to discuss cooking equipment from knives to boards to ranges to sous vide setups, smokers, etc.
I'll get it started with a few pics of some of my current favorite dishes including:
Fennel Braised Baby Back Ribs
These things are amazing, and EASY. Absolutely delicious, easy to make in quantity, and a crowd pleaser for sure. I make em at almost every bbq (though the great thing is that you can do them indoors during the colder months)
Pork, Panchetta, Veal Meatballs
These are not a fan favorite, but only because when I make them, I horde them and eat them for a week straight. They're a bit time consuming, but once you have em, you're set for a few days.
Orecchiette with Fennel Sausage
This is a new favorite dish and I don't really even know where to begin describing how amazing the texture contrast between the breadcrumbs, semolina pasta, and sausage is, or how this dish singlehandedly sold me on the value of fennel pollen. It takes some time, but the steps are pretty simple.
My Masamato Gyuto
I love this knife, and while it's a bit pricy for your average housewife, it's a steal by japanese steel standards, and you'll walk away with a whole new definition of sharp from the moment you remove it from the box.
Just some random stuff to get this thread started. I know others have been chastised for posting pork in the steak thread, and the BBQ thread doesn't get much love, so get in here and post about food!!!
Also french butter is multiple levels better than what a lot of us consume.
Without searching, I think someone in this thread recommended this knife at one time or maybe I stumbled across on my own, I'm not sure, but I've had it in my "save for later" stuff on Amazon for a pretty good while and now it's 46% off and I think I'll go ahead and buy one. Seems like at this price even if it's not great I can just treat it as a disposable.
I ordered one as well
The best recipe I’ve found so far is in the Ben and Jerry’s cookbook
2cups cream
1cup milk
2 eggs (I used pasteurized sous vide)
3/4 cup sugar
2t vanilla
Beat sugar into eggs until fully incorporated and fluff and then add other ingredients and mix
Makes 1qt so ~1.5 deluxe containers or 2 normal pints
Running under hot water 15 sec before spinning is necessary, comes out perfect with 1 ice cream setting spin.
Having some success with “perfect ice cream” and “perfect sorbet” stabilizer blends from modernist pantry in lower fat recipes 1:1 milk:cream or just regular half and half but the eggs and extra fat in this one makes it unnecessary, and it tastes better.
Aye, this is Ben and Jerry's base recipe. It makes delicious soft serve
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The best recipe I’ve found so far is in the Ben and Jerry’s cookbook
2cups cream
1cup milk
2 eggs (I used pasteurized sous vide)
3/4 cup sugar
2t vanilla
Beat sugar into eggs until fully incorporated and fluff and then add other ingredients and mix
Makes 1qt so ~1.5 deluxe containers or 2 normal pints
Running under hot water 15 sec before spinning is necessary, comes out perfect with 1 ice cream setting spin.
Having some success with “perfect ice c
thank you sir, what do you mean by " I used pasteurized sous vide" eggs?
Used my sous vide to pasteurize the eggs since the recipe calls for them raw. 135 F for two hours
Jack,
Nice looking IC there! I'm curious about why the B&J recipe would call for raw yolks. Seems like a good way to get sued if someone gets a tummy ache from it. Do you have a link or is it only in a print book?
I'd never heard of a Creami before. I looked it up and it's basically a Pacojet for like 95% less money (not exaggerating). Sounds pretty awesome if it actually works. I used a Paco at my first restaurant job in 2011 and it was badass and always thought it would be cool to have one at home.
As far as recipes go, you really don't need a "recipe," you can use a formula to make perfectly consistent texture ice cream from any flavor base. The formula is used to get the right balance of water, sugar, fat, and non-fat solids.
https://www.icecreamscience.com/calculat...
I found this by googling and haven't used it. At a glance, the target %s are on the high end for fat and non-fat solids, so this might make slightly firmer than normal ice cream.
I did some clicking around on that site with the spreadsheet and he did a detailed review of the Creami NC301:
https://www.icecreamscience.com/blog/nin...
Cliffs: The machine is good, but the recipes that come in the booklet with the machine are terrible.
For all conventional domestic ice cream makers I've tested (the Lello 4080 Musso Lussino, the Cuisinart ICE-100, and the Cuisinart ICE-70P1 being three examples), I’ve found the optimum fat content of a recipe to be nearly 25% of the total mix weight (this is the fat content of my Vanilla Bean Ice Cream recipe, which you can read here). This high fat content produces ice cream that is rich, smooth, creamy, melts slowly, has a slow release of flavour that lasts in the mouth, and has a good shelf-life when stored in the freezer.
For the Ninja Creami NC301, however, I’ve found that a recipe’s fat content cannot exceed roughly 16%. Above roughly 16%, the significantly higher speed of the rotating paddle causes the fat in the mix coalesces, or clump, resulting in large lumps of fat and an unpleasant fatty layer that lingers in the mouth. This relatively lower fat content doesn’t, however, mean that a recipe churned with the Creami isn’t going to be rich, smooth, and creamy; my no-heat Tres Leches recipe, which has a fat content of 16% and you can read here, is very thick, smooth, and creamy. It just means that in a side-by-side comparison (I doubt there will be many people running this) a 25% fat recipe, with all other variables being equal, churned in a conventional domestic ice cream maker will very likely be perceived as being richer and creamier and having a flavour profile that develops slower, is less intense but lasts longer, than a 16% fat recipe churned in the Creami.
I followed the directions and froze the mix for 24 hours. After 24 hours, with the mix inside the pint at -19.8°C (-3.6°F), I loaded the pint into the Creami and churned it using the ice cream setting. Immediately after churning and at a temperature of -9.7°C (14.5°F), I found the ice cream had an almost dry breadcrumb-like consistency, was uncomfortably cold, and left an unpleasant layer of fat in my mouth. When I re-span (churned a second time) the pint using the respin setting, the texture at -7.4°C (18.7°F) improved slightly with fewer dry crumbly chunks but the unpleasant lingering layer of fat in my mouth was more pronounced.
These textural issues are the result of a fundamental problem with this recipe: a high freezing point.
Yes it's a light duty domestic pacojet. The blades arent quite as sharp or quite as big, and it's not quite as functional as a pacojet since you can't use air pressure for overrrun like in a real pacojet. But it does work well.
The recipes in the Creami book are barely serviceable. Not sure why B&J use raw whole eggs in their cookbook, but I'm sure that Unilever corporation straightened all that out years ago.
The reason why the B&J recipe is so good, probably, is that it's getting up around 25% fat content, just like your posted quote. I haven't noticed any fatty film or buttery characteristics from this recipe and I've made it a few times now.
US egg safety seems a bit mad. Wash them to prevent salmonella -> removes the egg's natural coating -> makes it porous and susceptible to bacterial growth -> need to stay refrigerated all the time
Marianne Gravely, who has been answering consumer food safety questions at the USDA for 27 years explains: “Eggs shouldn’t be left at room temperature for more than two hours. There is no way to know if a shell egg is pathogen-free. Food poisoning bacteria don’t affect the taste, smell, or appearance of a food...”
Two hours?! I've got eggs in my cupboard that were probably laid 2 months ago! 
Keep in mind that anything the USDA recommends is based on the assumption that all animal foods are produced in the worst factory farming conditions you can imagine.
Yeh I guess. We just vaccinate them, so have to deal with microchipped autistic chickens, but more room the fridge! :p
parents live nearby and went on a lengthy cruise, being olds who have memberships to both costco and sams club and drive over an hour each way to go them (lol) they had a ton of perishable food in the fridge so i grabbed it all
also went through their pantries as they tend to just buy stuff up, leave it in the pantry for a decade, then when you visit the subject of loving the coffee in vietnam comes up and my mom will mention "oh i can make us vietnamese coffee now" and of course the can of condensed milk she wants to open expired in 2004'''
so also just raiding their pantry with everything near expiry (there's a lot) with the intention of taking them shopping to replace it all with fresh stuff that they'll have another 5 years of "good storage" time
the main things have been asian rice noodles (they have so many old packets of pho style noodles and they aren't even asian and rarely eat the stuff), about 10 dozen eggs, a ton of peppers, and two gigantic tubs of ricotta cheese
so I've been making myself some version of pho a few times a week, having eggs nearly daily, and finding all kinds of uses for the spicy peppers and ricotta
really enjoy baking the peppers, chopping them up and then adding them to things where i'd otherwise be dousing in hot sauce, ie making tacos, just throw in a ton of the chopped peppers, having beans and rice, throw in a ton of those chopped peppers
ricotta I've tried all kinds of ways, first i tried subbing it for cream cheese on a bagel and that was ok but not good, as a sub for sour cream in tacos it's decent but lacks kick, tried adding it to sandwiches like pimento cheese and that was bust, mixing with salsa for a dip worked but it was kind of bland as it neutralized the heat so needed to add those peppers
best use of ricotta i found was in a crab rangoon kind of thing, liked it even more than the original with cream cheese - was a lot harder to cook, the wetness of the ricotta made it difficult to keep them firm while cooking but will stick with it until i perfect (also mixed in chives, chopped peppers, & ham)
with pho, i can make really good pho style noodles now, just start boiling water, throw in some kimchi and Vietnamese pickles and some ham, this makes it really brothy and then when it boils i throw in the noodles and when they are about half done start adding eggs (which i break after forming so the yoke permeates the soup), obviously adding chopped peppers, and the real key is oyster sauce which i love (i put oyster sauce on everything) but i guess hoisin would work fine in a pinch, also throw in some Chinese vinegar and it's been elite every time
sometime i sear porkchops and leave interior uncook, slice in strips and throw them in as well
big thing i discovered with the eggs is to make a sauce that's like 2 part mayo, 1 part spicy mustard, half part horseradish, 1 part hot sauce, & 1 part ketchup and that's like a faux hollaindaise sauce, an astley sauce if you will, because it's never gonna let you down and it takes seconds to make - would probably be a bit much on naked eggs, but since i nearly always have my eggs as open faced sandwiches on english muffins and are usually poached (2.5 min is the time IMO) then it's pretty dope
been enjoying this "have tons of random ingredients that i should eat now or they'll go bad or stay in my parents pantry for another decade" adventure, learning lots of new styles of cooking
US egg safety seems a bit mad. Wash them to prevent salmonella -> removes the egg's natural coating -> makes it porous and susceptible to bacterial growth -> need to stay refrigerated all the time
Two hours?! I've got eggs in my cupboard that were probably laid 2 months ago!
Do Euros refrigerate eggs?
When I first moved to Thailand and saw all eggs are stored and sold at room temp I was taken aback. Storing eggs in 90 degree weather can't be safe? Since then it seems like most of the world leaves their eggs out at room temp.
Nah, well some people do, but that's probably just because there is the rack thing in the fridge door. Never seen supermarkets selling them from a fridge.
As long as they're not damaged and nothing can kind of get in them, they seem to be fine. I guess I probably would be a bit more wary if it was very hot and humid.
The FSA here fairly recently even ok-ed them for vulnerable people, which was traditionally always a concern:
The Food Standards Agency (FSA) has today (11 October 2017) changed its advice on eggs, confirming that British Lion eggs are safe to be eaten runny, and even raw, by vulnerable groups such as infants, children, pregnant women and elderly people. These groups can now enjoy the nutritional benefits of eggs, without having to fully cook them.
The new advice follows a year-long risk assessment by the Advisory Committee on the Microbiological Safety of Food and is the result of extensive food safety measures introduced within the British Lion Code of Practice since its launch in 1998.
Anyways, apologises for derailing, it was late and I though I was in the egg thread before.
Do Euros refrigerate eggs?
When I first moved to Thailand and saw all eggs are stored and sold at room temp I was taken aback. Storing eggs in 90 degree weather can't be safe? Since then it seems like most of the world leaves their eggs out at room temp.
u can google, its explained somewhere. It's been too long, i forgot the information at least a decade ago 😃 . The eggs in north america have something different that dont allow them to stay at room temperature. The thai ones are safe.
I’m in the US and leave my store-bought eggs on the counter and never refrigerate them. Haven’t gotten sick yet ( knock on wood)
