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Made a pretty good, quick and simple chicken, sausage and spinach alfredo last night. It was tasty, but green smoothie chat made me think of a weird question. I find cooked spinach significantly more palatable than raw - has anyone ever tried wilting spinach for use in a smoothie? I know that would (marginally) lower the nutritional value but it would probably cut down on smell and iron taste issues for a lot of people. Would it work or would the texture make it so it blends too poorly and you end up with a yogurt drink that has clumps of spinach in the bottom?
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Oct 17, 2019 14:21
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Steve Yun posted:How much is 1lb of 80/20 ground beef where you guys are? $3? $4? I just checked, and it's the equivalent of $1.95/pound for 18% fat irish beef mince in Tesco, and I think there's a cheaper one than that in their 'value' range but it's not on the website. I don't think any of the supermarkets sell non-irish beef as a fresh food.
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Oct 17, 2019 14:55
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There must be a meat over supply in the North East, because meat has been really cheap at the supermarket lately. I usually buy most of meat at Costco in bulk and freeze it, but the sales at the local market have been hard to resist: $2 for 80/20 ground beef, $4 for 10 pounds of chicken leg quarters. Whole chickens haven't been cheap, though.
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Oct 17, 2019 16:31
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The woman is having some health issues that restrict what she can eat, but she still loves cabbage. She gave me her Polish grandmother's recipe for galumpki, stuffed cabbage rolls. Those were super yummy, but drat what a pain in the rear end. So then I made a Japanese layered version, Kyabetsu no Kasaneni (this was one of the first things I cooked with GoWithChrist). Super yummy, less work. I also made a layered Japanese one in casserole style (think lasagne instead of a finely shaped mound), that was good too. I've got some Kraut fermenting in a bucket... Any other ideas on good ways to prepare cabbage? (besides slaw, she doesn't like it raw) Any other interesting things to stew it up with?
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Oct 17, 2019 16:39
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Squashy Nipples posted:The woman is having some health issues that restrict what she can eat, but she still loves cabbage. Quarter it and cut into 1/2-3/4 inch wide strips, then stir fry with sliced onions and peppers over high heat. It's sweet and delicious. Or make okonomiyaki. Also good is one of my favorite dishes and it's very quick, cabbage masala
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Oct 17, 2019 17:17
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if you're patient, sauerkraut
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Oct 17, 2019 17:27
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1lb of 80/20 was like 3.60-70$ something in Phx Az. Our local grocer is running a special which is 1.99 for 5lbs of 73%. Also going to have to pick up some whole chicken because it's .88$/lbs. This all got me looking though the add which made something catch my eye. About this time each year they start selling "Moon Drops Black Seedless Grapes". Are these any good? Taste/texture? Worth just popping off the vein and nomming or do they need to be processed in some way? sterster fucked around with this message at 17:31 on Oct 17, 2019 |
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Oct 17, 2019 17:29
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Yeah they're just grapes. You can just eat them like any other table grapes. Taste-test one in the store if you think you might not like them.
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Oct 17, 2019 17:31
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i like nice words
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They taste like a grape to me, just weird shaped. Way better than the hosed up cotton candy science grapes
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Oct 17, 2019 17:33
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Bluedeanie posted:Way better than the hosed up cotton candy science grapes I liked these, but I couldn't eat more than like 3 at a time
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Oct 17, 2019 22:00
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I was thinking out loud about this in the meat smoking thread but I think this is a more general question. I've been trying to do smoking in my pizza oven. I was thinking of having a water pan barrier between the fire and the meat because anything other than pork looks like it's getting the poo poo kicked out of it by the IR of the fire. I have a 13x9 roasting pan that didn't seem to be enough. In particular, it was too short. I was hoping to find a pan that is tall enough to actually block the meat from direct line of sight of the source of the fire. I was thinking of something like a 6"x12+" pan that is 9+ inches deep. I found an 8" steam pan online but it looked too wide. I know I can't go too high and narrow since the whole mess will become very unstable. I have to pull it out with a hoe and deal with it if it snags on an edge of the brick floor; something with round corners should avoid some of that. I also don't care if it gets a bit warped so long as it doesn't burst open. That's kept me away from a lot of garden planter kind of things; I haven't found one made in a solid, metal piece. Does anybody have any ideas of something with rough dimensions like that which I can fill with water and put between a fire and some meat inside a brick oven?
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Oct 17, 2019 22:49
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Rocko Bonaparte posted:I was thinking out loud about this in the meat smoking thread but I think this is a more general question. I've been trying to do smoking in my pizza oven. I was thinking of having a water pan barrier between the fire and the meat because anything other than pork looks like it's getting the poo poo kicked out of it by the IR of the fire. I have a 13x9 roasting pan that didn't seem to be enough. In particular, it was too short. I was hoping to find a pan that is tall enough to actually block the meat from direct line of sight of the source of the fire. Why not just bend some sheet metal to shape?
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Oct 17, 2019 23:28
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can you maybe post a pic of your setup? im having a hard time picturing it based on your description (is the fire behind the food?) however my assumption is that you could try making something like this (or buy this) https://ceramicgrillstore.com/collections/big-green-egg-xl-accessories-by-ceramic-grill-store/products/xl-ang-l-brackets-pair-bge i have a pair of these for my bge and they work really well and i think they could work as a heat barrier if you want
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Oct 17, 2019 23:34
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Steve Yun posted:How much is 1lb of 80/20 ground beef where you guys are? $3? $4? $4.95/lb here (US East Coast)
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Oct 18, 2019 00:04
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Rocko Bonaparte posted:smoking in my pizza oven Sorry, maybe a stupid question, but what is the source of your fire? If it’s wood or coals, you could try letting it die down before you start the smoking process: I’ve had some success smoking things on my barbecue with charcoal, and it’s not large enough that I can put in a water barrier, so I just bank the coals and let them burn for a while, then put the soaked chip on top in foil trays, which creates enough smoke to smoke things, but not so much what that everything dries out...
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Oct 18, 2019 00:37
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Anyone got a good chili recipe since serious eats’ is way fiddly
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Oct 18, 2019 03:15
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whatever beans ya got, stock, beef and/or pork, lots of dried chilis, adobe chili, can(s) of tomato, whatever fresh you can get, onion, garlic, drink a bunch while it simmers and throw some beer in to top it off. season with fish sauce to taste. that'll be my sunday :V
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Oct 18, 2019 04:14
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Steve Yun posted:Anyone got a good chili recipe since serious eats’ is way fiddly Make the se recipe but cut out the fiddly bullshit and take shortcuts
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Oct 18, 2019 04:40
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BraveUlysses posted:can you maybe post a pic of your setup? im having a hard time picturing it based on your description (is the fire behind the food?)  Left: fire! Center: tall, narrow, long metal vessel filled with water Right: manga meat The interior diameter is 42" and it's built out of fire brick. The front of the oven has an insulated door. The main chamber is also actually further recessed, but I drew the interior in a more conventional shape. The main issue is with finding something of the right dimensions that can hold water and will continue the hold water despite having a warm cuddle with a fire. SymmetryrtemmyS posted:Why not just bend some sheet metal to shape? Artist's rendition of me trying to create a metal, water-holding pan:  I'm guessing everybody's missing the water part of it. The water gives some thermal mass to counter the direct fire while also providing steam. I also want to take advantage of it for baking bread without having to scrape out the oven. I've had some luck making some breads with the fire actively going and just a spray bottle, but I have to be much more involved that way. Having this for baking bread too is part of the reason I'm not just reaching for the aluminum foil. Also, I have a hard time getting any hint of smoke flavor already and that's using mesquite! It's burning pretty clean. Scientastic posted:Sorry, maybe a stupid question, but what is the source of your fire? If it’s wood or coals, you could try letting it die down before you start the smoking process: I’ve had some success smoking things on my barbecue with charcoal, and it’s not large enough that I can put in a water barrier, so I just bank the coals and let them burn for a while, then put the soaked chip on top in foil trays, which creates enough smoke to smoke things, but not so much what that everything dries out... Edit: What I think I want is basically an ammo box but they might be too tall. Rocko Bonaparte fucked around with this message at 05:55 on Oct 18, 2019 |
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Oct 18, 2019 05:51
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There are similar devices for kettle grills like the Slow N Sear
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Oct 18, 2019 06:03
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Steve Yun posted:There are similar devices for kettle grills like the Slow N Sear Yes that was the inspiration. I have one of those and it does a decent enough job in my Weber.
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Oct 18, 2019 07:40
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Rocko Bonaparte posted:Yes that was the inspiration. I have one of those and it does a decent enough job in my Weber. A wall of stock pots.
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Oct 18, 2019 08:13
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I'd check with your local restaurant supply store for buffet steam table pans, like these guys. They're usually $10 to $15 a pop, and I don't think you could build something cheaper than that even if you just bought sheet metal. https://www.webstaurantstore.com/52489/stainless-steel-steam-table-pans-and-hotel-pans.html 
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Oct 18, 2019 13:57
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I was at the restaurant supply store yesterday literally looking at those. The ones that had a suitable length and width were a little short for what I wanted. I had also been to that particular site and found a few 8" ones, but they were too wide. Given they're all basically part of a system, I don't imagine I'll find any particularly better combinations with them. At this point I'm just looking at ammo cans and figuring out if I'll die if I use one next to food.
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Oct 18, 2019 17:54
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Long shot, I suppose, but how about a steel toolbox?
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Oct 18, 2019 18:50
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TofuDiva posted:Long shot, I suppose, but how about a steel toolbox? Hmm that's true...
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Oct 18, 2019 18:54
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Hmm idk about ammo cans and fire. The paint on those guys might have all kinds of fun chemicals. In fact, anything painted is probably bad. Might want to get stuff sandblasted beforehand or something.
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Oct 18, 2019 19:02
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spankmeister posted:In fact, anything painted is probably bad. Might want to get stuff sandblasted beforehand or something. Yeah that's fair. Even without considering paint, I have to look at how some of this is made. If it's folded into shape, then just a little warping can open it up at some corner to leak out all the water. I was seriously rooting for the steam table pans too because they're stamped out of one piece. I just imagine they'll get really warped from being next to a fire, but they only have one job.
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Oct 18, 2019 20:15
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Rocko Bonaparte posted:Yeah that's fair. Even without considering paint, I have to look at how some of this is made. If it's folded into shape, then just a little warping can open it up at some corner to leak out all the water.
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Oct 18, 2019 20:31
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My wife is really pushing me to try some cheap terracotta planters, but I'm really paranoid about those cracking from the temperature differential. That's assuming I found some without holes.SubG posted:Is there some reason why you're not just getting a smoker if you want a smoker? It's a totally fair question. I have two reasons in general why I'm trying to do it this particular way. 1. It almost does work unattended overnight so I'm trying to carry it over with hopefully just a little extra thing. I had a small offset smoker before and it required regular attention. Funny enough, I had to put a firebrick between the chambers to prevent line-of-site to the fire in that too. The fit-in for the Weber kettle is also pretty fussy for extended smoking. My goal here is to be able to slap some meat in the oven with a little more fuel overnight and have stuff ready at or before noon the next day. Pork shoulder seems to be working out but nothing else due to needing longer cooking and/or lower temperatures. So it's able to at least carry a decent amount of heat without me having to feed it more. Being able to insert a barrier like that basically gives me a two-chamber smoker. 2. Steam and a fire wall for bread. I'd still want something like this for bread even if I just gave up and got a smoker. I am also trying to get some method for generating steam and be able to block off direct line-of-sight of a fire in the oven if I'm trying to do some loaves without having to just pull out everything.
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Oct 18, 2019 21:08
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What if instead of a metal water bath you just put in some oven safe bricks or similar material with an air gap in between two layers to separate your meat and fire?
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Oct 18, 2019 21:19
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Could even soak the bricks or whatever before adding them. Really there are a ton of options here and you seem to be in a bit of a goldilocks situation of things being too big or too small by a matter of an inch.
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Oct 18, 2019 21:44
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Rocko Bonaparte posted:My wife is really pushing me to try some cheap terracotta planters, but I'm really paranoid about those cracking from the temperature differential. That's assuming I found some without holes. If you want to do long, overnight cooks I'd suggest something like a WSM or BGE, depending on how much you want to spend. Either will do an 18 hour cook without any problems by itself, and if you're really worried about it these days you can get electronic vent controls that make the whole thing more or less impossible to gently caress up. Even if you had a custom-built water-filled baffle for your oven, it would probably still be a lousy smoker just because the chamber isn't designed to be one---vent's probably in the middle of the ceiling and if your fire's at one end of the chamber and the food's at the other with a baffle in between you're not getting a nice flow of smoke around the cooking food like you'd want for smoking, and stagnant smoke in the chamber means undersmoked meat (e.g. poor smoke ring development) and a tendency to deposit creosote on the surface of the food. For steam yeah I'd just throw a hotel pan filled with water in there with the bread, but that won't make the heat indirect but, you know, you don't cook in a Roman oven if you don't want direct heat. Like I said, not trying to talk you out of it, and I'd be happy to be proven wrong by you coming up with a clever solution to the problem.
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Oct 18, 2019 22:07
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poeticoddity posted:What if instead of a metal water bath you just put in some oven safe bricks or similar material with an air gap in between two layers to separate your meat and fire? Nephzinho posted:Could even soak the bricks or whatever before adding them. Really there are a ton of options here and you seem to be in a bit of a goldilocks situation of things being too big or too small by a matter of an inch. Type 1 firebricks really do drink up water so they would give me a decent amount of moisture, but I'd be having to place these things after starting the fire and using a tool to do it, which I'm having a hard time imagining. The internal oven diameter is 42" and I built it with a longer entrance so that I could have a second cooking zone, so I'd have to reach over five feet for some of it. Or else I'm trying to slide these bricks down delicately with a hoe or whatever. If I had a longer log grabber then maybe, but that's another tool situation I'm dealing with (I do want a longer log grabber). Also, I might be dismantling that setup if I had to add some more fuel or I'd have to be generally pretty delicate about keeping that side open enough to sneak wood in. With a single vessel, I could grab the back of it with a hoe and slide it out. The height issue comes from two factors. The first is I get my best burns from using a fireplace grate, so the action is already a bit off the floor. If I disregard that, I'm dealing with a mix of ashes piled on top of the fire that still props it up a few inches. So I'm trying to make sure I'm covered either way. Six inches is too low. Eight inches is looking nice. I can still comfortably move a vessel that is 12 inches tall without banging into the entrance roof, and I fixated on that since I was thinking that maybe something that is a foot tall would be more standard (?).
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Oct 18, 2019 22:11
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SubG posted:If you want to do long, overnight cooks I'd suggest something like a WSM or BGE, depending on how much you want to spend. Either will do an 18 hour cook without any problems by itself, and if you're really worried about it these days you can get electronic vent controls that make the whole thing more or less impossible to gently caress up. Even if you had a custom-built water-filled baffle for your oven, it would probably still be a lousy smoker just because the chamber isn't designed to be one---vent's probably in the middle of the ceiling and if your fire's at one end of the chamber and the food's at the other with a baffle in between you're not getting a nice flow of smoke around the cooking food like you'd want for smoking, and stagnant smoke in the chamber means undersmoked meat (e.g. poor smoke ring development) and a tendency to deposit creosote on the surface of the food. Yeah I'm definitely doing something different here and I'm kind of writing it off as a science project. I hope I'm not pissing people off too much with my shenanigans. The fall back is to use a Nordicware stovetop smoker I got on an electric burner. I hate to say just how successful that thing is. It can even go overboard infusing smoke into the meat. I tried cherry wood chips in it once and the result tasted literally like cherries. It's annoying to use inside, but I have power to the outdoor kitchen and could just let it go out there unattended. I'm thinking of getting an induction cooktop and one of those steel pans that let you use aluminum stuff (Nordicware loves aluminum steel). What really worried me at the beginning was not having any actual controls--particularly in the flue--and have pondered if maybe I want a vent control there that I can close. The door theoretically controls air flow for the fire, but I usually have a pile of coals in there at the point I'm smoking. They don't give a poo poo even if I close the front door. The vent is at the ceiling of the cylindrical entrance, not in the roof of the dome. The general air flow is that air comes in from the bottom of the entrance, moves through the fire, swirls around the chamber, and twists out the top back towards the front--and out of the flue. The problem has not been with creosote but with getting smoke flavor. I've had to do some things that would be cringeworthy in normal barbecue. Basically, I add fuel fresh--not green, just not already burning--and I have started using giant lumps of mesquite charcoal. In a normal smoker, it would taste like an ashtray. The results have been much mellower. For this situation, I've pondered getting one of those smoke pans with pellets, but I'm thinking I should deal with one problem at a time. Also, everybody else seems to like the level of smoke.
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Oct 18, 2019 22:28
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Rocko Bonaparte posted:Type 1 firebricks really do drink up water so they would give me a decent amount of moisture, but I'd be having to place these things after starting the fire and using a tool to do it, which I'm having a hard time imagining. The internal oven diameter is 42" and I built it with a longer entrance so that I could have a second cooking zone, so I'd have to reach over five feet for some of it. Or else I'm trying to slide these bricks down delicately with a hoe or whatever. If I had a longer log grabber then maybe, but that's another tool situation I'm dealing with (I do want a longer log grabber). Sounds like an awesome setup. This may be a silly question, but is there a reason that the fire barrier and water source have to be the same piece of equipment? Could you have a barrier of, say, fire bricks or metal, and put a separate container of water nearer the door where you can move or refill it easily?
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Oct 18, 2019 22:31
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TofuDiva posted:Sounds like an awesome setup. This may be a silly question, but is there a reason that the fire barrier and water source have to be the same piece of equipment? Could you have a barrier of, say, fire bricks or metal, and put a separate container of water nearer the door where you can move or refill it easily? Wood fire ovens are definitely fun to mess with. I saw some Christmas thing over a decade ago where they were playing around with hearth cooking and brought it up with my wife, who got oddly fascinated with it too. So when I got a bonus one year, I built one at the house I had at the time using a cob technique but with good sand and clay from a supplier. It worked much better than I honestly ever thought it was a great way to bake stuff in the height of summer without warming up the whole house. I'm sure everybody here has had that damaged notion that they really want a turkey or something else in the middle of the summer... I can do casseroles and stuff at the front so I imagine I could get water to boil off from there as well, but I'm also generally doing that when I'm running a pretty aggressive fire. That's my play space in the two hours or so it takes for the oven to get charged up and ready to party. After that, it becomes something of a cold spot. Regarding not using water for the main baffle: I'm afraid it'll just become a middleman bombarding the other side with too high of a temperature anyways due to conduction from the fire. That's roughly what I see with the Slow and Sear in the Weber kettle when it runs out of water. In that situation, the fuel is burning under the level of the meat so the metal is blocking line-of-site to it, but it's not enough and it starts to see some intense heat. Also, such a baffle is basically just wrapping it in aluminum foil. If I wrap the meat in the foil, I completely miss out on the smoke and might as well use a crock pot. That also doesn't help me for making bread, but I am now having funny visions of trying to wrap baguettes in aluminum foil to get the level of steam you need for them.
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Oct 18, 2019 22:53
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Steve Yun posted:Anyone got a good chili recipe since serious eats’ is way fiddly It turns out that there is an entire chili thread
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Oct 18, 2019 23:43
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Any of y'all know anything to do with Japanese Persimmons (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diospyros_kaki)? I floated the idea of preserves or jam but nobody was interested.
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Oct 19, 2019 01:56
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| # ? May 24, 2024 14:35 |
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Stringent posted:Any of y'all know anything to do with Japanese Persimmons (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diospyros_kaki)? I floated the idea of preserves or jam but nobody was interested.
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Oct 19, 2019 02:05
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