RichVR
3161
Ah, borscht. My friend Joe and I used to go to The Olive Tree on MacDougal St. in the Village. We’d rent a chess set and order bowls of borscht. This was back in the 70s. It was amazing stuff. I don’t believe they serve it anymore. Sad.
At first I read that as Olive Garden. And the idea of borsch from Olive Garden made me throw up in my mouth a little bit.
-xtien
JonRowe
3163
The Sous vide (Anova) is incredible. It resurrected some of the frozen for months chicken breasts I had in the back of my freezer, covered in freezerburn. It was the juiciest chicken breast I have ever made myself. Pork loin chops were incredibly juicy, and the sirloin steaks (cheap cuts) I made were ok, but could have used a marination step, which I will do next time.
The thing is incredible for cooking meats, particularly chicken, which doesn’t hold its juices well. You are able to cook chicken at only 145F, which allows the juices to stay in the meat, but you do have to let them cook for about an hour and a half to be safe. Pasteurization process. you know.
Really looking forward to trying these frozen tilapia loins I got from Costco. I hate cooking fish.
Timex
3164
Ya, the Anova is awesome for frozen meat.
That actually reminds me, I have some chunks of frozen chuck in the freezer that work really well in the Anova. Maybe I’ll cook one of them.
WHY YOU SUNUVA -
:: runs off to find a BBQ place with (mustard, hopefully) greens ::
Opted for Collards this time around cuz they were on sale, but in any case, sorry for the craving-causation.
On Day 4 at this point, and leftovers are still good, though the potato wedges and chicken are already done for. Alas :(
RichVR
3168
Make spaghetti with marinara sauce. Have leftovers. Waffle it the next day.
Gendal
3170
6 days of brining for 14lbs of brisket then 24 hours of Sous Vide followed by 3-4 hours in the oven to form the bark.
So good. I just made myself sick eating so much of it and there is still a mountain left over of course. I rarely order brisket because it’s always, with rare exceptions, dry and tasteless but this is what I always dreamed it could be.
I didn’t use the smoked salts because they are crazy expensive but I still got a good amount of smoke flavor. Which is fine with me, I am not big on getting smacked in the face it anyways.
I made it pretty straight out of Slow Cooker Revolution, so snag a copy of that and you’re set. (Except I used 3 packets of ramen instead of 2 because hey, 3 for a dollar, why not.)
I look forward to trying the Japanese-influenced version that uses pork, but that calls for white miso and mirin, neither of which are stocked in any of my groceries, so I’ll have to buy off Amazon. And that means it’s backburnered for now.
By any chance, malkav11, have you tried a vegetarian version?
Also, I see a couple Slow Cooker Revolution books. What’s on the cover of this one?
Thank you!
-xtien
Of ramen? No, I haven’t run across a recipe for anything like that in any of the cookbooks I’m using. Also I tend to find meat easier to work with and am not very comfortable with many veggies yet.
There are three Slow Cooker Revolution books. Most of the stuff I’ve made, including the ramen pictured above, are from the first one, which has what I believe is lasagna on the cover and came out in 2011. The second is the “Easy Prep Edition” which includes more shortcuts but also incorporates a few new tricks (like microwaving pasta with oil to reduce bloating), and the third is the Healthy version. I’ve had great success with a handful of recipes from the second book but it’s definitely less essential, and the third I’ve skimmed but not made anything from since it seems to be a mix of tweaked recipes that I had already but with less fat etc, and a lot more stuff using veggies I’m not comfortable with and grains I’m not sure I can actually find in stores. I’m sure I’ll get around to it but it doesn’t set my heart a-quiver.
Oh, and I have the Kindle version of all three. For some reason the table of contents functionality got progressively worse until the third doesn’t have any TOC links at all, which is a huge pain. And for some reason the publisher of ATK cookbooks recently decided to jack up the ebook price of all of them to what I think is probably the list price of the print version but since Amazon is discounting the print version, suddenly the ebook is much more expensive than print.
Malkav, if you don’t mind my asking, whereabouts do you live? I definitely get stymied by local groceries sometimes (does no one around here sell duckfat for less than $10? Jeeeeze), but sounds like you’re working with something a lot more limited!
Okay good. That’s the one I just looked up on Amazon.
Thanks malkav11.
-xtien
It’s less where I live and more that I don’t drive. So I have a coop, a Trader Joe’s, and the smallest store of a three store family owned grocery chain in easy reach, and they all have certain things and not others, and it’s super inconvenient for me to need to hit more than one. The family owned grocery is usually my best bet for the largest range of stuff and more reasonable prices on things like meat than the coop, but they just kind of randomly either don’t stock things you’d think would be common (polenta! kale!) or don’t have it that specific trip (they have had lamb, multiple kinds of chorizo and boneless chicken thighs but not this last trip!). They also don’t have a butcher’s counter. And so on. The TJ’s has the best prices (usually), quality and packaging on stuff they do have, plus some convenience options, and they cater to certain trends in cooking lately so they have like, multiple kinds of kale and grass-fed ground beef and such, but the thing is, they’re also a store brand store so any given product only comes in their store brand and that’s it 90% of the time, no options, and they specialize in convenience food so although they have some staple ingredients they may not always have them in the forms I need (they don’t stock dried beans at all, for example, though they have several kinds of canned) and plenty of stuff they don’t have at all. And the coop has a good selection of fresh veggies, some quirky specialties and organic/etc type brands, various bulk products including spices, and a meat selection (including butcher’s counter) that is reasonably wide but insanely expensive because it’s all locally-sourced humane blah de blah. We’re talking like, $10 sausage and such. Also they straight up don’t stock boneless chicken thighs, which is pretty much the only thing I regularly need and can’t reliably get from the regular grocery. I tend not to go there very often even though it’s the closest because their selection is very limited in some important areas and except for the veggies and bulk goods it’s also priced based on stuff like being organic that I do not care about but definitely raises the price tag.
None of them have much in the way of specialty items you’d use for other cuisines, particularly Asian (I have some access to Latin staples because there’s a local Hispanic population), and I can’t easily order cuts that aren’t just stocked already. I pretty much guarantee that everything I’m having trouble finding is sold at one of the big grocery chains or an Asian supermarket, etc, but I don’t have any of those in easy range and making a special trip for these things is probably not worth it. Especially since if it isn’t perishable I can just get it on Amazon and if it is, I’m not going on a quest every time I want to make whatever it is.
Edit: I am actually probably in a better spot than if I just lived near one of the big stores, though.
nKoan
3177
I sort of surprised that TJs doesn’t have mirin or miso paste, but I do know that TJs is fairly variable by store.
As for miso paste, might want to also look up a bunch of miso recipes, because you’ll have a lot left over.
For example, some misoyaki salmon.
Miso lasts forever in the fridge, though.
malkav: thanks for the insight. That’s an interesting setup; I can see how it’s simultaneously sort of great (lots of access to high quality food) and annoying (weird product-gaps). Best of luck with it going forward!
Yesterday was board games and brunch. Made waffles (choco-chip, plain, and white chocolate-cranberry-pecan), scrambled eggs w/ peppers, onions, and cheese (let’s just call it messy omelets), baked a ton of bacon, and fried up some tater tots (frozen, alas, heh). Other d00ds brought in a massive thing of incredible banana pudding and an equally ridiculous amount of fruit salad.
And then we proceeded to lose tragically to the host in Fury of Dracula. Down to the last combat, last four HP for each guy, and Van Hellsing Dodged when he shoulda punched, punched when he shoulda dodged, and that was all she wrote.
nKoan
3180
For all the cookbook collectors here (and since the Slow Cooker Revolution was mentioned within the last week): America’s Test Kitchen is having a warehouse cleaning sale. 44%-70% select books.
https://americastestkitchen.buysub.com/microsite/index/load/id/583/
