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In defense of crock pots/slow-cookers, the point is that you can put food in, set the timer, and then have oatmeal or cheap cuts of meat tender and ready without having to be there to watch the stove. I don't know what the word of god is on how safe this is, but most people use them for unattended cooking. No way I would ever do that with a dutch oven on a burner/stove. I do wish that they would make a slow-cooker where the inner liner is cast-iron so you could sear on the stovetop, then take it directly to the slow-cooker. You also can't just throw food in there and expect to get decent food unless the recipe is modified, because all that long, moist heat with no pressure seal tends to drive out/wash out a lot of fhe more volatile flavors, and you also miss out on a lot of flavor due to the lack of browning compared to braising in an oven or even the stovetop. That said, anything more than maybe $60 feels like way too much money. I just use a cheap $25 oval one from Hamilton Beach stuck onto one of those lamp timers to turn it on and off. I chose that particular model because it has heating elements on both the bottom and the sides of the cooker, so you get more even heating. I've left it unattended and haven't burned down the house yet, but maybe someone can comment on this part. OXBALLS DOT COM fucked around with this message at 01:37 on Dec 14, 2012 |
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Dec 14, 2012 01:35
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As much as we want to believe that everyone is capable of being a great cook or doing things the 'best way' all the time, there are people who are better off because they have a crock pot. Like the friend I gave mine to. I use a dutch oven, but he is just not going to put that kind of effort into cooking. He loves the crock pot. In terms of using an oven not being as safe, my understanding was that most ovens these days are capable of being set to turn on/off with a timer. My oven is pretty old, but it does it.
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Dec 14, 2012 01:50
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GrAviTy84 posted:Crock pots are one of the most useless kitchen devices. Everything they can do can be done faster, The point of a crock pot is to do things slower dummy. Aside from the traditional "hot meal making your apartment smell great when you get home from a long shift" they're also really nice for making yogurt. There are a whole helluva of things more useless than a crock pot you can spend $30-40 on for the kitchen.
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Dec 14, 2012 06:27
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MisterOblivious posted:The point of a crock pot is to do things slower dummy. Aside from the traditional "hot meal making your apartment smell great when you get home from a long shift" they're also really nice for making yogurt. Anything you can make by throwing together in a glorified electric iron before you go to work can be made the night before the moment you get home from work and shut off before you go to bed and stored for the next day using far superior methods of cooking. Then it's just a reheat when you get in. If you want to just put food in a thing and set it to cook or whatever, then a puddle machine is a significantly better use of money and time. The point of a slow cooker is to trade quality of food almost entirely for convenience.
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Dec 14, 2012 06:41
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GrAviTy84 posted:Anything you can make by throwing together in a glorified electric iron before you go to work can be made the night before the moment you get home from work and shut off before you go to bed and stored for the next day using far superior methods of cooking. What's the proper way to cool a dutch oven full of hot food at midnight? During the winter I can put stuff on the rear window sill. The wind tunnel back there is like a blast chiller and gets the job done faster than an ice bath would. Exactly how dangerous is it to run a clean oven overnight at 300F? I mean, it runs all the time just fine when I'm awake. geetee fucked around with this message at 08:30 on Dec 14, 2012 |
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Dec 14, 2012 08:22
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GrAviTy84 posted:Anything you can make by throwing together in a glorified electric iron before you go to work can be made the night before the moment you get home from work and shut off before you go to bed and stored for the next day using far superior methods of cooking. Then it's just a reheat when you get in. If you want to just put food in a thing and set it to cook or whatever, then a puddle machine is a significantly better use of money and time. You know what else is a glorified electric iron? A stove. Putting food inside a slow cooker is basically identical to putting it in a closed dutch oven in an oven on low heat. Except the slow cooker costs less energy to run, doesn't heat the house as much, and possibly has better temp control if you have a lovely oven, since most cheap home ovens don't do low, constant heat well at all. The quality drop for the right kind of dish is pretty minimal, honestly, so long as you don't treat it as a magic food maker and take the time to do all your high-temp cooking stuff like browning first before finishing in the pot. A slow cooker is basically the ancient Nixon-era ancestor of modern sous-vide techniques (or at least the low-temp cooking part and not the vacuum part), except it costs like $30, and 1/3 of that cost is for the giant stoneware pot. The point of a slow cooker is that it's a moderately useful cheap kitchen appliance. It's basically one step down on the useful/gimmick spectrum from a rice cooker. Still useful if you're short on time or space. Or if you're not very good at cooking since, while you can turn your food into a disgusting mush, it will never burn. OXBALLS DOT COM fucked around with this message at 09:01 on Dec 14, 2012 |
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Dec 14, 2012 08:56
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GrAviTy84 posted:Anything you can make by throwing together in a glorified electric iron before you go to work can be made the night before the moment you get home from work and shut off before you go to bed and stored for the next day using far superior methods of cooking. Please explain to me how cooking a roast in a dutch oven and then reheating it the next day is "superior" because I'm just not seeing it. quote:The point of a slow cooker is to trade quality of food almost entirely for convenience. Duh? I sometimes even use a microwave to reheat my food too. Don't be such a loving elitist.
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Dec 14, 2012 09:31
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The important point is that if you want an expensive slow cooker, you might as well buy a SousVide Supreme because thats exactly what it is.
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Dec 14, 2012 13:52
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MisterOblivious posted:Please explain to me how cooking a roast in a dutch oven and then reheating it the next day is "superior" because I'm just not seeing it.
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Dec 14, 2012 15:03
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When I got my crock-pot, I used it all the time, because it was great to be able to chuck a few cups of beans in, be off to work, and then have like five minutes of work to make a tarka. My mum and I never were huge on pressure cookers at the time we were in Florida, because neither of us was home long enough to babysit a stove for any length of time. She'd be at a thing, I'd be at work, and my dad would be at his job too. By the time we all got home on Friday nights, we'd all be exhausted, and have to rush about to get the house cleaned up, the rice made in the rice cooker, and to get showered to wash off the funk that inevitably builds on you when you live in the Florida heat. By the time we'd be done, and our Friday night guests would arrive around 6:00, I'd have roughly five minutes to get my poo poo together, and make the tarka for the daal. Our electric stove was for poo poo, and turning on the oven was a non option. Not only is it freaksihly expensive to do so, it would make the house entirely too hot. Crock pot made it possible for us to sort out dinner. I'd never expect to pull something from the crock pot, and eat it immediately. That would be as disgusting as pulling something from the pressure cooker and eating it immediately. It'd taste bland as heck, because flavours tend to get blunted with the pressure cooker and/or crock pot. Instead, what I'll end up doing is to cook the thing that takes forever to cook, then make the spices, aromatics, and quick cooking veg. In my current situation, the only reason I don't use the crock pot is because I don't have the counter space. It's why I had to switch to the pressure cooker. If I had the space, I'd definitely still be using one, even though I'd only be using it to cook beans. Why? Because beans really do cook up nicely in the crock pot, and I eat them every day. I see it like my rice cooker: Yes, it /can/ do other things, but I'm going to use it for what I need it for the most. It's just a tool.
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Dec 14, 2012 15:15
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dino. posted:If you don't mind getting an electric pressure cooker instead, get one of those. I read the thread here on pressure cookers the other day after I saw this. It is essentially a much faster version of a crock pot basically, correct? I think I might actually go this route. Thanks, and thanks to everyone else who responded!
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Dec 14, 2012 15:43
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THE MACHO MAN posted:I read the thread here on pressure cookers the other day after I saw this. It is essentially a much faster version of a crock pot basically, correct? I think I might actually go this route. If you really /want/ to slow cooker something, you can. It has that function built in too. It has a rice cooking button, but I prefer the control of setting the timer myself.
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Dec 14, 2012 15:59
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Y'all mad about crockpots. Buy a $10 one from Goodwill, go back to being a neckbeard. Why the gently caress would you want one that is $60+?
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Dec 14, 2012 17:32
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MisterOblivious posted:Please explain to me how cooking a roast in a dutch oven and then reheating it the next day is "superior" because I'm just not seeing it. People said it all already, but yeah, letting the braising liquids redistribute and the ability to brown food and build fond. Sure you can do this in a different pot, but that defeats one major convenience of a slow cooker: the one pot meal. If you're going to bother with browning, you might as well do it in the same pot you'll cook in. The heating up the house, energy use, whatever arguments are trivial. Both are heat sources, both have inefficient lids, both conduct heat through the walls, both heat up the house. I don't know what kind of person is cranking the heat on their ish when they braise, but that's not necessary. And with a gas stove it is probably still cheaper to use than a crock pot. This is all moot with a pressure cooker, which can get you your braised oxtails in 45 minutes. And with a closed system pressure cooker like a kuhn rikon you're not dissipating all the flavor into making your house smell good, it ends up in your mouth where it belongs.
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Dec 14, 2012 17:55
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Someone recommend an all-metal saucepan with riveted handle that is < $50 please. Mine all suck (and my sister wants to get me one for xmas)
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Dec 15, 2012 20:17
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Cuisinart Multi-clad Pro 2 quart sauce pan http://www.amazon.com/Cuisinart-MCP193-18N-MultiClad-Stainless-Saucepan/dp/B009P4845K/ref=dp_ob_title_def Steve Yun fucked around with this message at 20:31 on Dec 15, 2012 |
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Dec 15, 2012 20:26
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geetee posted:What's the proper way to cool a dutch oven full of hot food at midnight? During the winter I can put stuff on the rear window sill. The wind tunnel back there is like a blast chiller and gets the job done faster than an ice bath would. Here's what I do: freeze four 12oz plastic water bottles (label removed and label goop scrubbed off), transfer whatever you're cooking out of the dutch oven and into either a large plastic container or an equally large pan (I have a 8 quart, round cambro that I bought a while back that works great), and throw the water bottles in there. if you also have cold water running around the outside of the pan/container, your stock/soup/stew/whatever will be cool enough to put in the refrigerator and not gently caress it up in about 30 minutes. If your oven is clean, there isn't any real danger in ignoring it overnight. If being extra-paranoid makes you feel better, make sure nothing is sitting on top of it and turn your hood vent on.
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Dec 16, 2012 01:01
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EAT THE EGGS RICOLA posted:Someone recommend an all-metal saucepan with riveted handle that is < $50 please. Mine all suck (and my sister wants to get me one for xmas) http://www.amazon.com/Cuisinart-719...fstyle+saucepan Cheaper than Yun's, and just as good.
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Dec 16, 2012 06:18
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No Wave posted:Because braised meat is better after you refrigerate it and allow the cooking liquid to enter the protein networks that contracted and wrung out moisture during the cooking period and relaxed during the resting period, and you're undoubtedly using wet heat inside of a dutch oven. Craft makes all their braised short ribs at least a day in advance then lets them bathe in their remouillage for a night or two to MTFU (moisten the gently caress up). Ahh, I didn't know that. Thanks!
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Dec 16, 2012 06:26
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Chef De Cuisinart posted:http://www.amazon.com/Cuisinart-719...fstyle+saucepan Well... it's a $10 difference between the 2 quart models of each ($40 vs $50), which is not a big difference to pay for more even heating. My disc bottom pans used to get hotter at the edge where the disc ends by about 40-50 degrees whereas the temperature difference in my clad pans is about 20 degrees. This is not a big deal with liquids that circulate well or if you're mixing diligently, but with thicker stuff it would cook the food unevenly if I wasn't moving it regularly. $10 isn't bad for a little insurance against that. Steve Yun fucked around with this message at 19:53 on Dec 16, 2012 |
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Dec 16, 2012 19:30
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Yeah, those temperature differences don't matter. Get the cheapest pans you can with tri-ply cores.
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Dec 16, 2012 23:59
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Well, they do matter every now and then. I've had food scorch on the corners in disc bottom pans because I wasn't mixing regularly. Maybe I should've been more diligent about it, but tri-ply is more forgiving for laziness like that.
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Dec 17, 2012 00:25
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Just buy the cheapest thing with an aluminum core, and stainless body. And stir your food often.
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Dec 17, 2012 00:50
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Btw Ricola, currently at tjmaxx: 2.5 quart triply calphalon saucepans for $40
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Dec 17, 2012 01:47
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Ricola lives in Canada
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Dec 17, 2012 05:21
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So instead of TJ Maxx, Home Goods and Marshalls, it's Marshalls, Homesense and Winners
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Dec 17, 2012 05:28
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Marshall's is the best.
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Dec 17, 2012 05:29
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Steve Yun posted:So instead of TJ Maxx, Home Goods and Marshalls, it's Marshalls, Homesense and Winners Haha I recommended Winners a few mins ago
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Dec 17, 2012 05:31
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Whenever I watch videos of chefs on the internet, a lot of them seem to have these knives that are between a paring knife and a chef's knife. It seems smaller than a 6" chef's knife would be, but they use them to finely mince shallots/garlic. What is it, and is it a good thing to have?
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Dec 17, 2012 16:32
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Doh004 posted:Whenever I watch videos of chefs on the internet, a lot of them seem to have these knives that are between a paring knife and a chef's knife. It seems smaller than a 6" chef's knife would be, but they use them to finely mince shallots/garlic. What is it, and is it a good thing to have? In western knives it is called a utility knife. In Japanese knives it is called a petty. I have a Tadatsuna 150mm petty.  Tadatsuna 150mm petty by gtrwndr87, on Flickr I think the Japanese knives win fantastically in this purpose. The thin profile, aggressive edge, and rigidity is just delightful.
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Dec 17, 2012 17:27
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GrAviTy84 posted:In western knives it is called a utility knife. In Japanese knives it is called a petty. I have a Tadatsuna 150mm petty. Man that's beautiful  What exactly are their uses? (aside from finely mincing garlic and shallots)
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Dec 17, 2012 20:23
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Doh004 posted:Man that's beautiful I use mine for most things where I'm just doing something fast, which implies that it is my daily use general purpose prep knife. Slice breads, salume, cheese, tomatoes, chiffonade herbs, the allium duties. It's even taken to some mild chicken disassembling. No breaking bones, but it is perfectly fine for cutting through tendons.
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Dec 17, 2012 20:32
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Doh004 posted:Man that's beautiful $40: http://www.chefknivestogo.com/toshitk15pe.html Don't have the petty but I do have their 240mm gyuto and nakiri. Like them a lot.
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Dec 17, 2012 20:52
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I have this guy (Shun DM0701 Classic 6 Inch Utility Knife). It's Japanese, but still labeled as a utility knife. Mostly just use it for quick, smaller tasks where I don't need the bigger santoku.
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Dec 17, 2012 20:56
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Don't get a utility/petty. Just learn to use the tip of your chefs properly. Or get a CCK cleaver. Best all purpose knife ever.
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Dec 17, 2012 22:36
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Chef De Cuisinart posted:Don't get a utility/petty. Just learn to use the tip of your chefs properly. Or get a CCK cleaver. Best all purpose knife ever. Well yes, from a purely practical POV all you really need is a comfortable gyuto/chef's knife but I have to disagree. Buy all of the knives, they're so pretty 
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Dec 17, 2012 23:34
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Well yeah, pretty is best. I've got like, 4 slightly differently styled gyutos, and can use them all as well as the others, but sometimes I like looking at hammered steel all day dammit.
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Dec 17, 2012 23:44
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Look at you elitist snobs with your fancy knives. I've been sharpening my old credit cards with the Edge of Glory and they can cut vegetables just fine
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Dec 17, 2012 23:57
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Steve Yun posted:Look at you elitist snobs with your fancy knives. I've been sharpening my old credit cards with the Edge of Glory and they can cut vegetables just fine I don't actually use that knife to cut anything. It just hangs on the wall as a decoration. All I really need knife-wise is a good wooden doorstop.
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Dec 18, 2012 00:24
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Steve Yun posted:Look at you elitist snobs with your fancy knives. I've been sharpening my old credit cards with the Edge of Glory and they can cut vegetables just fine Every time they swipe the blade through that thing I involuntarily cringe in pain.
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Dec 18, 2012 01:07
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