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Charlatan Eschaton posted:That's cool sauce info there. Long pepper, cubeb, and voatsiperifery are really good. Don't forget grains of paradise, which is an incredibly tasty spice. Szechuan pepper of course is the source of ma la, and delicious to boot; I've never had timut, though, and I'm curious about it. There are also pink pepper and other maturation stages of black pepper, like green. I like green pepper a lot - make sure to pick some up, it's like a grassy, light, tangy black pepper. Why are you not just going straight to Penzey's? Great company, product, and prices - might as well get what you can there.
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Oct 9, 2018 07:02
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Weltlich posted:Low Pear This is amazing, thanks for the detailed and though-out analysis! I am going to go for the low pear and see what happens...
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Oct 9, 2018 08:02
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SymmetryrtemmyS posted:. Doesn't hurt that whenever Trump, et al do something terrible, Bill Penzey straight up calls em out and then posts what's usually a really, really good sale on their spice blends or bulk spices.
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Oct 9, 2018 13:55
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Casu Marzu posted:Doesn't hurt that whenever Trump, et al do something terrible, Bill Penzey straight up calls em out and then posts what's usually a really, really good sale on their spice blends or bulk spices. Just like Trump, the man knows his base.
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Oct 9, 2018 15:07
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Charlatan Eschaton posted:That's cool sauce info there. Szechuan/Sichuan peppercorns and their Japanese cousin sanshō are really unique and a lot different from black pepper. They actually will numb your mouth if you have enough of them. Just chewing on one will produce a localized numbing sensation.
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Oct 9, 2018 15:09
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I'm mostly looking at black peppercorns from those other stores because Penzey's only really has tellicherry and malabar and their description is a little vague. When I order tea they tell you a bit about the plant and then the location, year and season of harvest. Having that information colors my perception of the flavors and makes it more fun to appreciate. Those other two sites have lots of kinds from specific places like Malaysia and Cambodia and I'd like to think that buying their stuff is supporting them a little. Thanks for the info on the other ones, learning about new flavors is exciting.
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Oct 9, 2018 16:55
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Eeyo posted:Just chewing on one will feel like a triple dose of Novacaine mixed with anaphylaxis. Ftfy
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Oct 9, 2018 17:22
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SymmetryrtemmyS posted:Long pepper, cubeb, and voatsiperifery are really good. Don't forget grains of paradise, which is an incredibly tasty spice. Szechuan pepper of course is the source of ma la, and delicious to boot; I've never had timut, though, and I'm curious about it. Another shout out for both cubeb and grain of paradise. GoP is one that I'm not sure why Penzy's doesn't stock it, because it is truly wonderful. I've found that it can go really well in both savory and sweet dishes alike. A blend of GoP, nutmeg, cinnamon, and allspice on roasted acorn squash is one of my favorite fall dishes.
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Oct 9, 2018 17:53
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Weltlich posted:Another shout out for both cubeb and grain of paradise. GoP is one that I'm not sure why Penzy's doesn't stock it, because it is truly wonderful. I've found that it can go really well in both savory and sweet dishes alike. A blend of GoP, nutmeg, cinnamon, and allspice on roasted acorn squash is one of my favorite fall dishes. I just ordered 2 or 4 oz of grains of paradise from penzeys not a couple months ago. Did they discontinue it or something?
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Oct 9, 2018 18:28
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I would not be surprised if Penzey’s is still ramping up their supply chain. When they first ran a political promotion, they did several months’ worth of sales in a weekend if I remember correctly.
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Oct 9, 2018 18:44
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Hauki posted:I just ordered 2 or 4 oz of grains of paradise from penzeys not a couple months ago. Did they discontinue it or something? Oh snap, I'll have to check there again. For a very long time I couldn't find it via them. The last time I checked was ~8 months ago or so and I'd kind of lost hope.
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Oct 9, 2018 19:40
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Weltlich posted:Oh snap, I'll have to check there again. For a very long time I couldn't find it via them. The last time I checked was ~8 months ago or so and I'd kind of lost hope. Looking back, apparently what I meant by a “couple months” was actually April, but they had it then 
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Oct 9, 2018 19:48
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Is it more cost effective / time saving to buy pre made lemon pepper seasoning, or should I try to make my own? If so what brand should I buy?
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Oct 9, 2018 20:05
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If you really want, you can probably save a little money by buying giant bags of citric acid and crappy ground pepper, but that wouldn't be a good idea for many reasons, not least because it's not like lemon pepper is pricey. If you're doing something fancy occasionally, you can crack pepper and grate lemon zest over whatever the thing is. For everyday, Penzey's lemon pepper is good and p affordable. https://www.penzeys.com/online-catalog/lemon-pepper-seasoning/c-24/p-441/pd-s
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Oct 9, 2018 20:22
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i like nice words
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obi_ant posted:Is it more cost effective / time saving to buy pre made lemon pepper seasoning, or should I try to make my own? If so what brand should I buy? Grind pepper. Squeeze/zest lemon. Both the lemon and the pepper will be better than a premade seasoning. It's not something you should make in advance, as the both the pepper and lemon will lose volatile flavors if you do it ahead of time. Premade seasoning will be quicker, and also possibly cheaper. But not as good.
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Oct 9, 2018 20:25
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I'm about to make my first batch of seitan. Recipes seem to alternate between requiring 'yeast flakes' and requiring no yeast at all. What's the benefit of yeast here? Isn't seitan intended to end up as a dense protein lump?
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Oct 9, 2018 20:36
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obi_ant posted:Is it more cost effective / time saving to buy pre made lemon pepper seasoning, or should I try to make my own? If so what brand should I buy? If you're creating lemon pepper to store for future use definitely go with store bought. You'll naturally lose flavor as the oils evaporate to the point where your homemade stuff is indistinguishable from any other brand. Go with any brand that doesn't have added salt.
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Oct 9, 2018 21:21
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Hawgh posted:I'm about to make my first batch of seitan. Recipes seem to alternate between requiring 'yeast flakes' and requiring no yeast at all. What's the benefit of yeast here? Isn't seitan intended to end up as a dense protein lump? It's just for flavor and/or nutrition. It has a nutty, Parmesan-like flavor that adds a savory dimension that can be lacking in vegan foods. Marmite, tomato paste, vegan soy sauce, and mushroom stock are also popular additions for this same reason.
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Oct 9, 2018 22:36
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Hawgh posted:I'm about to make my first batch of seitan. Recipes seem to alternate between requiring 'yeast flakes' and requiring no yeast at all. What's the benefit of yeast here? Isn't seitan intended to end up as a dense protein lump?
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Oct 10, 2018 02:58
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Cool! Thanks for the responses. Tragedy has been sverted
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Oct 10, 2018 10:18
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Whats a fast way to prep pomegranates? Also I have a pomegranate tree up front and half of one hanging into my backyard, I'm the only person in this household who likes them. What can I do with the metric ton I got? Besides putting them in a bowl and eating them.
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Oct 10, 2018 16:55
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Leal posted:Whats a fast way to prep pomegranates? Also I have a pomegranate tree up front and half of one hanging into my backyard, I'm the only person in this household who likes them. What can I do with the metric ton I got? Peel out the membrane in water, the arils will float. Then you can freeze the ones you don't use right away. Pomegranate is great on salmon, lamb, pork.
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Oct 10, 2018 17:28
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I vaguely recall someone asking why lamb or goat aren't more popular in the US, and somebody posted info about how cow farmers in the US lobbied for laws that gave them tons of advantages over lamb farmers. Anyone recall what I'm talking about?
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Oct 10, 2018 22:51
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Leal posted:Whats a fast way to prep pomegranates? Also I have a pomegranate tree up front and half of one hanging into my backyard, I'm the only person in this household who likes them. What can I do with the metric ton I got? The water floating trick SymmetryrtemmyS posted is good. I like to halve them by making a shallow slice around the equator and pulling. Then you can try to invert each hemisphere, so the sections separate. One trick online says to whack the hemispheres with a wooden spoon and that kind of works.
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Oct 10, 2018 23:08
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Steve Yun posted:I vaguely recall someone asking why lamb or goat aren't more popular in the US, and somebody posted info about how cow farmers in the US lobbied for laws that gave them tons of advantages over lamb farmers. Anyone recall what I'm talking about? That's what I did my thesis about.  You're thinking of the range wars in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Essentially cattle farmers were able to permit public land for themselves in perpetuity, but the market for sheep was already declining (goats were never popular outside of the extreme southwest or home farms).
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Oct 10, 2018 23:17
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Steve Yun posted:I vaguely recall someone asking why lamb or goat aren't more popular in the US, and somebody posted info about how cow farmers in the US lobbied for laws that gave them tons of advantages over lamb farmers. Anyone recall what I'm talking about? While I'm sure there is always lobbying by the beef industry, I'm not sure that this is a case of "big beef" keeping lamb and goat out of the market so much as it is economic, cultural, and pragmatic reasons. From an economic standpoint, beef and pork (and lately chicken) are tops when it comes to raising lots of quality protein on the cheap. Beef cattle tend to eat whatever pasture you put them on, and they just keep putting on weight as long as they have food. The US tends to raise mostly Angus, Charolais, and Hereford and all of them have been bred to be very feed-efficient. Contrast this to lamb and goat, which tend to have a big growth spurt early, then taper off in weight. As a rule of thumb, farmers don't like to overwinter lambs and goats meant for the meat market, so it means that fall is really the prime lamb "season" when all the farmers are trying to sell off lamb at the same time, dropping the price for everyone. Great if you want some lamb in November, awful if you're trying to make a living. Final weight is also a big deal. A lamb, having been put to pasture, might be lucky to get a 90lb hanging weight. A two year old steer may weigh between 700 to 800 lbs. Add in modern feed-lot practices, and the price to get beef that big plummets, compared to lamb or goat. (I'm not saying feed lots are good, just that they have a big impact on the final price.) Pragmatically, sheep and goats are nightmares to work with at a large scale. I've raised all three, and I can say without any hesitation I'll never have goats again. They can clean up scrubby land, but they don't respect fences, at all. If you've got goats, just be ready to be woken up every morning by one of them walking around on the roof of your car, or having to chase them around through the neighbors land because they decided they'd rather be over there than in the pasture you put them on. Maybe they found a weak post they could push over to get out. Maybe there was a thunderstorm and it shorted out the electric fencing. Maybe they found a branch they could push into the fence so they could climb over it. Doesn't matter - they don't stay where you want them. For people on the internet it's cute and endearing, but for a farmer/rancher it's the most miserable thing on earth. Sheep will generally respect a fence, and they're a little easier to work with, but they like to get themselves into some weird and often life-threatening situations. (Tangled in wild rose thickets, etc). Goats and sheep (especially sheep) are way less hardy than beef cattle - they are prone to flystrike, hoof-rot, and all sorts of other conditions unless they're kept in fairly pristine pasture. You also have to shear any adult sheep you aren't going to be keeping over winter unless they're a "hair sheep" and unfortunately "hair sheep" don't produce as big of lambs as wool bearing breeds. If you're running sheep for wool, well then that's fine and you're probably set up for shearing, but if you're running them for lamb, it's just cost and hassle. Predators are also much more likely to stalk and harass your goats and sheep than they are your cows. A coyote can easily kill and carry off a lamb or kid, whereas they'll stay clear of either cattle or pigs. Lastly, I think it's a cultural thing as well. Not to get too deep into colonial history, but the immigrants that settled in the US, and then proceeded to push westward were generally of Anglo-Germanic origin, and they favored beef and pork. Sheep were big in the British isles, because land was at a premium, and what land that was available for pasturing sheep was generally well kept and had been that way for centuries. North America was scrubby, huge, and full of indigenous people who didn't engage in terraforming-scale agriculture - in short, the perfect environment to use pigs and cows who ate everything left fertile farmland. Goat has largely been a Mediterranean thing, and those immigrants didn't arrive until much later. And when they did it was usually as industrial labor. So yeah, the beef lobby is certainly huge and powerful, but even without them I don't think sheep or goat would really catch on as protein sources in the US.
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Oct 10, 2018 23:35
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Isn't goat a bit more complicated to butcher than beef as well? I'm pretty sure I recall them having scent glands that can foul the meat if butchered wrong, which probably contributes to its being less popular. It only takes one taste of fouled meat to turn off an already skeptical diner from a gamey meat.
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Oct 10, 2018 23:36
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Annath posted:Isn't goat a bit more complicated to butcher than beef as well? I'm pretty sure I recall them having scent glands that can foul the meat if butchered wrong, which probably contributes to its being less popular. It only takes one taste of fouled meat to turn off an already skeptical diner from a gamey meat. Yes and no. Buck goats (un-neutered males) will develop scent glands that will give them a game-y taste, but the butchery will make no matter. If you've got a Buck, Bull, or Boar, they're going to have a stronger flavor than their neutered counterparts no matter how carefully they're butchered. But that said, butchery of sheep/goats is just as labor intensive as it is with beef and pork, but you get a lot less meat out of it in the end. That's part of why lamb and goat is more expensive at the butchers' shop.
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Oct 10, 2018 23:50
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I would say that the wool trade, in regards to sheep especially, is the main economic reason for keeping sheep. Lamb meat is a delicious side business. I’m not a farmer so I may have it wrong, but the wool trade was of vital economic importance to the British and they extended that to their colonies in Australia and New Zealand. I mean Australia is not exactly teeming with bountiful pastures but wool is a big commodity here and lamb to eat is very popular. Of course Australia has a huge cattle farming tradition too.
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Oct 11, 2018 00:59
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Charlatan Eschaton posted:Where can I get really good black peppercorns? Had some at a restaurant that were really bright tasting and I don't know if they were fresher or grown someplace different? Seconding Penzey's. "Where can I get really good <spice_name_here>?" The answer is always Penzey's. They have never disappointed me. ...except for their slow-rear end shipping. Free shipping takes about a week, but often a week passes between the time I place an order and the time they ship it.
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Oct 11, 2018 01:57
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When I order not during big sales, it's shipped quickly. When I order during big sales, it takes forever because they get so overloaded. Even if you're not using the sale yourself, if their normal volume goes through the roof, you're stuck in line.
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Oct 11, 2018 02:00
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Bagheera posted:Seconding Penzey's. I agree for most things. For vanilla, I order paste from Beanilla, and I buy my chiles from Pendery's. When I can't source it at Penzey's, I order my obscure spices that nobody cooks with from anywhere that sells them. Dagad phool is a good example.
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Oct 11, 2018 02:07
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We bought some pecorino Romano in Rome and brought it back with us. It's vacuum sealed and was said to be good for a while until it's opened. We got home and there now seems to be some kind of oil in the vacuum package. Is it still safe to eat? Also we have a wheel of Gouda that seems to have developed mold on the outside of its shell. Could the inside still be good?
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Oct 12, 2018 06:21
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Beachcomber posted:Also we have a wheel of Gouda that seems to have developed mold on the outside of its shell. Could the inside still be good? It's probably just superficial, and easily wiped off.
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Oct 12, 2018 08:13
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so I've been thinking about food safety lately, and the danger zone for bacterial growth. I'll be honest and say my habits have usually been lacklustre in this regard, until recently. I'd regularly leave rice out on the stove overnight, and eat it for leftovers the next evening. same with curry, I'd cook it the day prior, eat it for dinner, then leave it out on the stove and reheat the following evening. I was fortunate enough to never become sick from it. though this was usually in the winter months when the kitchen was kinda cool, maybe 15c. how did our ancestors do it? back when refrigeration wasn't a thing. surely there'd be leftovers when they ate, and they'd eat it the following day with no issues, right? so is the food safety scare mainly to lessen food poisoning chances, or are the chances already quite low? my apartment is usually a cozy 20c.
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Oct 12, 2018 11:36
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Generally speaking, our ancestors died a whole lot. But yeah you're not guaranteed to catch something if you leave your rice out, it's more that you can easily almost guarantee you won't, and why wouldn't you.
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Oct 12, 2018 11:57
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Qubee posted:how did our ancestors do it? back when refrigeration wasn't a thing. surely there'd be leftovers when they ate, and they'd eat it the following day with no issues, right? so is the food safety scare mainly to lessen food poisoning chances, or are the chances already quite low? my apartment is usually a cozy 20c. I mean it's not like nobody ever left a hunk of something out and ate it the next day or whatever. The point I'm trying to make is that the idea of preparing too much food and saving it, in prepared form, for later is a fairly recent one.
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Oct 12, 2018 12:36
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Depending on how old you're talking about, but iceboxes were a thing, cold cellars and springhouses and icehouses were things, wrapping something up and putting it in a nearby running brook was a thing.
Anne Whateley fucked around with this message at 14:03 on Oct 12, 2018 |
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Oct 12, 2018 14:00
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Qubee posted:so I've been thinking about food safety lately, and the danger zone for bacterial growth. I'll be honest and say my habits have usually been lacklustre in this regard, until recently. I'd regularly leave rice out on the stove overnight, and eat it for leftovers the next evening. same with curry, I'd cook it the day prior, eat it for dinner, then leave it out on the stove and reheat the following evening. I was fortunate enough to never become sick from it. though this was usually in the winter months when the kitchen was kinda cool, maybe 15c. I must be paranoid as there is no chance I would eat curry or rice or something else like that after sitting out overnight. Why are desserts ok to sit out?
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Oct 12, 2018 16:03
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goodness posted:I must be paranoid as there is no chance I would eat curry or rice or something else like that after sitting out overnight. Sugar is an excellent preservative and most desserts are chock full of it.
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Oct 12, 2018 16:45
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