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sativa dreams posted:I also plan on doing lots of other stuff that would be in there for much longer, like brisket. I love to grill and its about time I made the step up to smoking as well, and being a tech-oriented guy with money to burn (yay new job) I kinda want to be all fancy with my meat monitoring. As far as slicers go, I've looked on craigslist and they are all going for $500+. How do you get one for $20?? Are you talking about a motorized deli slicer? Just seems really cheap; I guess you just gotta keep looking and hope you get lucky? I'd still like to have a good knife anyways for slicing other meat and also for the simple fact that I just don't have a good one. The best slicing knife is the Victorinox Granton Edge Slicer with Fibrox Handle. 41 American and absolutely worth every penny. You can get a food slicer at The Sausage Maker for 72 bucks. Bonus if you're a New York State resident because the company is in Buffalo and it's nice to buy semi-local. The Sausage Maker has pretty much every single thing you could possibly need to make charcuterie of all description. Highly recommended.
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Jul 31, 2013 13:13
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Martello posted:The best slicing knife is the Victorinox Granton Edge Slicer with Fibrox Handle. 41 American and absolutely worth every penny. Thanks the for the reply. I had already made a purchase before your reply unfortunately. I ended up getting one of these which seems like a great price: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0036QVUM2/ref=oh_details_o00_s01_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 . It's reviewed well so hopefully it will suit me just fine. I picked up their sharpener as well. Pork belly will be acquired this weekend!
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Aug 1, 2013 22:57
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A butcher's knife is pretty different from a slicer.
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Aug 2, 2013 00:11
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Flash Gordon Ramsay posted:A butcher's knife is pretty different from a slicer. Yeah, I realized this after I bought it. Oh well. I got it today, and I must say its pretty sharp. I think it will be up to the challenge though, and if not, well then there is nothing wrong with having another sweet knife in my kitchen collection.
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Aug 2, 2013 05:07
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Martello posted:Who here makes salami? I want to start a soppressata but I don't have a good setup for fermentation. It's supposed to be 80 or so degrees F at 80 percent humidity for 12 hours, and then it can go in my basement with everything else. Anyone have any suggestions? Jason Molinari at Cured Meats has a fermentation box setup that I could definitely do but I'm wondering if anyone else uses a simpler setup. I did salami once, left it hanging from my chandelier for a day at around 75-80 in the house, in Arizona, then put it in my meat mini fridge for 3-4 weeks, then hung it back up on the chandelier for a couple months. It was delicious.
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Aug 2, 2013 05:47
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I like turtles posted:I did salami once, left it hanging from my chandelier for a day at around 75-80 in the house, in Arizona, then put it in my meat mini fridge for 3-4 weeks, then hung it back up on the chandelier for a couple months. It was delicious. I'll have to try something like that. I found that my basement being 20 degrees warmer and (probably most importantly) about 40 percent more humid in the summer vs the winter and fall makes a HUGE loving difference. To the point where my spalla grew horrendous mold over a weekend I was gone and I had to toss it. Really sucks, but at least I used the other half of the pork shoulder for sausage a while ago. It was amazing meat. Next time I get another cut I'm keeping it frozen until my basement gets dry again or until I pick up a cheap second-hand fridge to make a drying chamber a la Cured Meats.
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Aug 6, 2013 20:10
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So I'm doing my first duck confit. Unfortunately I misjudged the amount of duck at I would need. I wound up having to use almost equal parts duck fat and bacon grease. Did I majorly gently caress-up my confit? 
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Aug 8, 2013 03:40
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Oxford Comma posted:So I'm doing my first duck confit. Unfortunately I misjudged the amount of duck at I would need. I wound up having to use almost equal parts duck fat and bacon grease. Did I majorly gently caress-up my confit? No. It might be a little salty. Probably not though, I doubt it. You can confit in any fat, sure, the same fat as the animal is preferred but it doesn't really matter, you can use canola oil if you want. At least in my experience.
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Aug 8, 2013 19:18
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My curing chamber is ready! What should be first?!
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Aug 8, 2013 22:17
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No one gives a poo poo? Gotta show some flesh I suppose!
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Aug 13, 2013 04:28
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Looks good. I still want to get my mini-bar fridge working as a curing chamber. It is usually my beer-fermenting fridge but I hope I can duel-purpose it. I'll need to find a smaller humidifier than yours though. The set-and-mostly-forget factor makes life so much easier.
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Aug 13, 2013 04:56
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Lord of the Llamas posted:No one gives a poo poo? Gotta show some flesh I suppose! Yeah I hear ya. I wish this thread was a bit more active. My most recent experimental batch of bacon was Cinnamon Bacon. code:It was definitely good and I would potentially make it again but next time up the amount of peppers I use.
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Aug 13, 2013 13:53
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I'd like to make some sausage etc on the cheap and I've seen meat grinder / stuffer attachments that can be stuck to a Kitchenaid Mixer. Anyone have experience / advice with these? If those are not a good option, any recommendations for cheap meat grinders / sausage making materials?
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Aug 14, 2013 20:33
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Breaky posted:I'd like to make some sausage etc on the cheap and I've seen meat grinder / stuffer attachments that can be stuck to a Kitchenaid Mixer. Anyone have experience / advice with these? If those are not a good option, any recommendations for cheap meat grinders / sausage making materials? The grinder is fine, but it's not a high volume machine by any means. If you're just going to make stuff for your own family, it should do the trick. I haven't tried the sausage stuffer though.
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Aug 15, 2013 16:04
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Breaky posted:I'd like to make some sausage etc on the cheap and I've seen meat grinder / stuffer attachments that can be stuck to a Kitchenaid Mixer. Anyone have experience / advice with these? If those are not a good option, any recommendations for cheap meat grinders / sausage making materials? The Kitchenaid grinder isn't great, but it works. It was kind of a chore keeping the blades clear of gristle and keeping everything cold, but maybe all grinders have that issue, I dunno. The stuffer, however, is total poo poo, and you should not even consider using it. All it is is a little funnel that goes on the end of the grinder. However, once the meat is already ground, the screw is pretty terrible at pushing it along, so you're forced to use the plunger to push the meat through. To make it worse, the plunger doesn't fit into the throat tightly, so the more you push, the more meat squirts up around the sides. A miserable experience all around.
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Aug 15, 2013 16:12
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Sailor_Spoon posted:The Kitchenaid grinder isn't great, but it works. It was kind of a chore keeping the blades clear of gristle and keeping everything cold, but maybe all grinders have that issue, I dunno. Thanks that's good to know. This is just gonna be small scale, maybe something I do once a month at the most. Any recommendation on a stuffer?
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Aug 15, 2013 16:24
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Sailor_Spoon posted:The Kitchenaid grinder isn't great, but it works. It was kind of a chore keeping the blades clear of gristle and keeping everything cold, but maybe all grinders have that issue, I dunno. I also have one and this assessment is 100% correct.
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Aug 15, 2013 18:55
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Oxford Comma posted:I also have one and this assessment is 100% correct. I too have a Kitchenaid grinder and was really unimpressed. Did not use sausage stuffer. New to thread - went to get a copy of Ruhlman at the Good Egg in Kensington and was told it was coming in a new edition in October, so that at present it was out of print. Rust Martialis fucked around with this message at 14:32 on Aug 16, 2013 |
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Aug 16, 2013 13:45
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Obviously, at this point you might as well wait for the new edition. If you are too impatient for that though, my wife got me a copy for my birthday on Amazon last month.
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Aug 16, 2013 13:58
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I have a Kitchenaid as well and find the grinder is ok as long as volume isn't your objective. I use it to make ravioli filling.
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Aug 23, 2013 13:25
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I made my first duck confit recently, using Ruhlman's recipe. It came out...underwhelming. I don't know what I was expecting, but I thought it would be a lot more amazing than what I wound up with.
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Aug 23, 2013 17:04
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Oxford Comma posted:I made my first duck confit recently, using Ruhlman's recipe. It came out...underwhelming. I don't know what I was expecting, but I thought it would be a lot more amazing than what I wound up with. There is five importants steps to follow to cook a duck confit with a great taste : - Meat quality ? Did you use duck from a farm or an industrial one ? - Salt time - How much time did you let the duck with salt ? Usually it's at least 24hours - Duck fat - Did you use it to cook the duck ? - Cooking time within fat, how much time did you cook the meat ? Usually it's 2hours around 32°F - Cooking within the pan, the duck must be golden If you need another receipe, I can translate one from French.
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Aug 23, 2013 18:04
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Do you mean two hours at 320F?
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Aug 24, 2013 03:33
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Chemmy posted:Do you mean two hours at 320F? Sorry my converter from Celcius to Farenheit was buggy, the real temperature is around 167°F (75°C).
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Aug 24, 2013 04:20
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Quick question about bacon. I just bought all the stuff I need for my first attempt but then realized I have to go out of town for a few days next weekend. Will adding 2-3 days to the curing make a major difference or become damaging in any way?
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Aug 25, 2013 23:17
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I've not really noticed a difference but from what I've learned with GWS is that I'm really lazy/careless about kitchen hygeine
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Aug 25, 2013 23:33
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lifts cats over head posted:Quick question about bacon. I just bought all the stuff I need for my first attempt but then realized I have to go out of town for a few days next weekend. Will adding 2-3 days to the curing make a major difference or become damaging in any way? I dont think so. It may be a little saltier than normal but you can always soak the belly in cold water for an hour or so to take out that salt back out.
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Aug 26, 2013 12:31
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lifts cats over head posted:Quick question about bacon. I just bought all the stuff I need for my first attempt but then realized I have to go out of town for a few days next weekend. Will adding 2-3 days to the curing make a major difference or become damaging in any way? I have left bacon for several days more than suggested and it had no problem, there is a bacon in my fridge right now that I am going to be curing for 10 days before I get off my rear end and borrow my neighbours smoker. Things just seem to get more tasty with time. I did a batch of corned beef with a friend where we each had several roasts in brine, the last one came out after almost a month in the brine and was fantastic. That said, there is some upper limit on how long the pink salt will keep things preserved for. I don't know what this limit is and hope to not find out the hard way.
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Aug 26, 2013 15:12
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So my culinary teacher is buying some pork bellies and has tasked me with finding a few recipes for them. The only thing we can't do is smoke them. I'm going to go through the thread and copy down all the ones I find, but if anyone has some good suggestions I wouldn't mind seeing them.
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Aug 26, 2013 17:22
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I'm not sure if this is the thread for this or not, but it seems possible - so I'm going to share my time-tested recipe for beef jerky. I am going to apologize for the less than stellar pictures - I used my cell phone and realized (too late) that the custom iPhone caseback was not designed with the camera in mind. In any case, I got the original recipe from the internet, but have modified and played with it significantly, so it's pretty much my own creation now. I am pre-diabetic and manage it (am holding it off) with a near-zero carb diet. That means I eat a lot of meat, and jerky is something that fits well with my diet. I was buying it off the shelf, but didn't like the idea of all the nitrates, nitrites, etc. so decided it was something I could make myself. It's a little cheaper, but honestly for me it's not about the cost but more about making it the way I like and without the preservatives. Also, I am able to keep the amount of sugar pretty low as well... The two key ingredients for jerky are the marinade, and the meat. I'll start with the marinade: You begin with some orange zest. Use all of the zest from one orange. If you think you can skip this step, don't. It adds a real flavor that you can't get from anything else. I've tried just using orange juice without the zest and there's no comparison.  Then go ahead and juice the orange and add the juice. The orange adds acid, as well as just enough sweetness. As I said before, I'm on a near zero carb diet, so I try to avoid sugar in the products I buy, and surprisingly enough, most store-bought jerky has added sugar. I don't know how much sugar this adds to the final product, but I don't think much.  Next come the Chipotles. Any brand is fine.  Then add 1-2 tablespoons of garlic (a few cloves, or squeeze because I'm lazy), about 10 oz of soy sauce, and about 8 oz of hot sauce. Again, the brand is not that important. Surprisingly enough - it's this hot sauce that gives the final product the heat. I tried it with sriracha, etc. This is what does the trick.  Here it all is in the blender. That powder on top is ginger powder - about 1/2 teaspoon or so. I've made it with fresh ginger also - not a whole lot of difference. However if you make it without ginger, you will notice that it's gone. Blend it well until the chipotles are good and chopped up.  To make it even spicier I add some more chilies AFTER the blending. What this does is make for flakes of chili and chili seeds that stick to the jerky. If you blend it you don't get that, and it still tastes the same, but I like the look with chili flakes here and there and the seeds.  sorry for sideways pic - too much bother to fix now... So anyway, do all this and you will end up with a potent puree that will likely strip paint as well as it makes jerky. All you need is the meat. Now cutting and slicing jerky is a long and laborious process. Ideally you buy a relatively lean cut of (usually) beef, then freeze it for 30 minutes to get it solid, and then cut it into long thin strips. This means you have to freeze your hands holding the meat, and because meat warms back up it gets mushy halfway through the process. This combined with the less than incredible knife skills that most of us have means you go through a lot of effort to get a bunch of uneven, messy slices of beef. OR - you can be lazy like me and let WalMart do the work for you. Buy "Stir-Fry" beef. It's already cut into nice even thin strips and comes in convenient 3/4 to 1 lb packages. This means you can make a half-recipe by using 2 packages, or even a 1/4 recipe by using one. However for this recipe, use 4.  Pour the slurry from the blender into the GladWare 2 qt. tub that you see in the first image with the orange zest. This is important: open each pack of beef and carefully add individual strips to the marinade in a hodge-podge fashion. After each half package, stir it around with a fork. Don't be lazy and just plop the whole pack in there all at once and think that stirring will separate them. It separates a LOT of them, but you WILL end up with pieces that didn't really marinate because they were stuck to their neighbor. After packing them in there, you will be to the top of the container. If you run out of room, pour off a little of the marinade. Give it a good stir, put the lid on, and put it into the fridge. Let it sit for a day or so. You can probably get by with doing it overnight, but I like to think I get more flavor by letting it steep for awhile. Periodically stir it - perhaps 3-4 times total. I don't know if that really helps or not, but again, I can't help but think that it does. Now comes time for drying: You can use a dehydrator, you can use the sun, you can use a box fan (  seriously, that's what the original people who had this recipe I adapted did) or you can use something easy, convenient, and that you already have - your oven. Put the lower rack all the way down and cover it with tin foil. Then put the other rack at the top. Get some bbq skewers and start stringing the jerky. Here's a tip - lay the skewer on the rack and count how many spaces the skewer crosses. Then put that many pieces of jerky on it. Then space them out accordingly, carefully carry the skewer over to the oven, and place it on there so the jerky hangs down. Now the previous recipe said to carefully dry the jerky with paper towels before you dry it. I suppose you would have to do that if you're using a box fan (again, not kidding) or it would mold before it dried, but since we're using an oven there's no need. (One additional benefit of using an oven is we can be reasonably sure that we're killing a LOT of germs by controlling the temperature - more on that later.) Again, I think if we leave the pieces dripping with hot sauce and chili flakes, that taste will come through in the finished product. But of course, this does make a colossal mess. You will have to wipe up the floor, the counter, the oven door, and anything else that is in the vicinity.Set the oven to 150(f) or so. I don't know a C equivalent, but basically just so it's warm. I checked the USDA website and they do have guidelines for making jerky - they say that drying is an effective way to stop meat from spoiling, but as far as killing the germs that might already be on the meat, the only surefire way is to heat it to at least 140(f). So using an oven set to 150 accomplishes this. Be sure to take a wooden spoon or something and prop the door open a bit. This allows the moisture to escape and speeds the drying process. Here's a bad pic of my jerky drying:  Let it dry for about 6-8 hours. I usually do it overnight. In the morning, you pull it out of the oven, let it cool a bit, and this is what you get:  This ended up being 2 really full ziplock bags of jerky, plus a handful of strips (6-7) that couldn't fit in the bags so I had to eat them. Really hot, really good.
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Aug 26, 2013 19:44
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JDM3 posted:you can use a box fan ( Blame Alton Brown. http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/beef-jerky-recipe/index.html https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIK4DVLHf7Y JDM3 posted:Set the oven to 150(f) or so. I don't know a C equivalent, but basically just so it's warm. 65.6 Celsius. Also, I don't think my oven goes below 200, but it definitely doesn't go down to 150, so between the box fan and the oven I'd take the box fan option.
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Aug 26, 2013 20:32
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Does anybody have any tasty/fun uses for the skin I shaved off of my pork belly?
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Aug 27, 2013 15:11
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lifts cats over head posted:Does anybody have any tasty/fun uses for the skin I shaved off of my pork belly? That my friend is crackeling. Roast it crisp, say under a broiler at max for about 10 -15 min. Once the skin starts to bubble it should be good, I am not sure how thick the fatty layer beneath your skin is but so long as it is cooked through you should be ready to roll. It is what pork rinds wish they were.
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Aug 27, 2013 15:26
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I Lost My Password posted:That my friend is crackeling. Roast it crisp, say under a broiler at max for about 10 -15 min. Once the skin starts to bubble it should be good, I am not sure how thick the fatty layer beneath your skin is but so long as it is cooked through you should be ready to roll. It is what pork rinds wish they were. Don't forget to rub in salt/pepper/paprika/garlic to taste, duh!!
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Aug 27, 2013 22:15
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Corned Beef! I did a large batch of Corned Beef with a friend, we split a Cosco sized piece of cow into six roasts. Each This is my last roast so it has been in the brine for about three weeks. Waiting in the bag of brine  After cooking  Into the slicer (which was an impulse buy on Amazon thanks to this thread)  Upside Down and ready to eat  Bonus bacon getting ready for the smoker  Lord of the Llamas posted:Don't forget to rub in salt/pepper/paprika/garlic to taste, duh!! You are right! I did about 15g of fennel seeds with about 5g of Kosher salt rubbed into the scored skin. It was crazy good.
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Aug 29, 2013 17:06
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I just have to say what the poo poo to that slicer. Why would they design a deli slicer with a serrated blade? Corned beef looks good though.
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Aug 29, 2013 17:39
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Chef De Cuisinart posted:I just have to say what the poo poo to that slicer. Why would they design a deli slicer with a serrated blade? Corned beef looks good though. Yea, it shreds poo poo up a lot when I cut. I was thinking about looking for a non-serrated replacement blade. Oh well, it was $100 including shipping which is pretty drat good for Canada.
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Aug 29, 2013 18:31
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Chef De Cuisinart posted:I just have to say what the poo poo to that slicer. Why would they design a deli slicer with a serrated blade? Corned beef looks good though. The serrated blades are supposed to be for bread. Bizarre they would ship it with only that and not the regular ham slicer 
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Aug 30, 2013 14:02
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Question on your corned beef - did you use pink salt or similar? I have a brisket for pastrami in the fridge curing now using Ruhlman's recipe and he has it curing for 3 days which seems short, I've read much longer times like yours are also normal, but as this is my first corned brisket I'm not sure. It's a 3 kilo brisket with a 22g/250g prague/kosher salt wet cure. Looks like lovely beef you've got there, wish I had a slicer!
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Sep 1, 2013 04:20
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Fyi the new edition of Charcuterie is out. Should I post pics?
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Sep 1, 2013 13:28
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