Syzygies

Try sous vide before chilling or freezing the steak? Cook in a water bath at target serving temperature (desired doneness) for longer than anyone says. Like four to six hours for a cheaper cut, full of flavor but of need of tenderness. Then with a really cold start, one cooks the outside to desired doneness. As long as the interior can be plausibly served, it will be both cooked just right and very tender. We mathematicians call this replacing an equality with an inequality. Rather than hitting a mark, you're just trying not to overshoot on the interior.

Even Dennis isn't trying to spend your money, he just wants you to be happy. Yes, you don't need a Kamado stainless drip pan to fashion a heat deflector. For many years I lined a plain terra cotta plant saucer (they come in large sizes) with heavy duty aluminum foil. The terra cotta cracked every few years, and i'd be out $20 for another one. Once I bought the Kamado double bottom drip pan, I use it whenever I can. It makes an excellent heat deflector. If one's cook isn't overly salty, it protects the drippings from scorching. One doesn't necessarily plan to use the drippings, but cooking is improvisation, and anything remotely related to gravy needs brownings as a base. We all have different ways to measure expense. If cleanup is a bigger deal than purchase price, then one might worry about cleaning the drip pans. A terra cotta saucer lined with foil is surely a breeze at cleanup time, and one could use the drippings. One I bought an electric pressure washer to prepare our deck for annual oiling, I look for any excuse to use it. Like Arnold's flame thrower in Commando, it might be overkill but it gets the job done. I'm already using it to clean the grates, at which point giving the drip pan a wipe then also pressure washing it is easy.

Yes, 24 hours for a 5 lb butt does seem a long time. The pink (uncoated) butcher paper favored by Aaron Franklin for some cooks is something I'd consider here. One often wraps a butt in foil to rest in a cooler after cooking; the pink butcher paper somewhat breathes, so one can use it for the latter part of a cook with less detrimental effect than foil. This isn't a popular choice for butt, but 5 lbs is small. Legends of Texas Barbecue Cookbook helped me to reject orthodox thinking, like taking 225 F as gospel. Pit masters do what they need to do. Aaron Franklin cooks everything at 275 F, that's the house temperature for cookers sharing various meats. Especially with a smaller butt, I'd try this. One tells when a butt is done by touch, not temperature. When it yields, the bone threatens to wiggle out, the butt is done. I'll just say it, conventional wisdom is an oxymoron. The standard advice for when a butt is done is misguided. The butt I've had at commercial restaurants in North Carolina was very weak. It wasn't Charlie Chaplin shoe leather, but it might as well have been stewed unraveled cotton rope. There's a point cooking any butt where it transitions from needing to be sliced, to "pulling". There's a later point where the meat strands become ropey. One wants to catch butt after the first transition, but before the second transition.

It may not look like much but smoked it has an amazing effect on my guests' appetites.

I used to buy both Lazzari lump and Lazzari briquettes, again with a natural binder. I've moved on from both, but I don't have a prejudice against briquettes. Taste, convenience... They're certainly a quick way to get a pizza fire going.

I too have the JVR Vac100 and I love it. A generational advance over the chamber machine I had (and still have, other location). Call them? At a minimum, understand why they don't offer a 230v model now, and their future plans. Which parts would need to be replaced? The innards look easily repaired, like a 1950's car.

The official cold smoker (which I own) and my smoke pot have the same goal in mind. One best meditates on the difference between careful smoke and "chunks of wood on the fire" by getting stoned out of one's gourd on cannabis. Actually, twice. Once rolling a joint, and once using a modern vaporizer. Notice a difference? Same story.

Yes. Takes more stock than a vacuum pouch, but the stock gets better... It recently dawned on me that the Vermicular Musui Kamado ("indoor K") is ideal for making Japanese dashi stock. One wants to bring kombu seaweed to a near simmer without boiling it, remove, then give the bonito flakes a controlled simmer in the same liquid. The Musui makes this easy.

I can get really good artisanal chickens at The Local Butcher Shop in Berkeley. Our favorite preparation is the signature Zuni Cafe Chicken, which would be amendable to this modified technique. Harder in to find great birds in New York City. I've been twice to Yakitori Kono, and that's the best chicken I've ever had. He spent six months searching before contracting with a Pennsylvania farmer; here's a video of his operation: How Chef Atsushi Kono Makes Chicken Skewers From Wings to Testicles — Smoke Point Westermann clearly has a few gallons of stock simmering when he needs it. I sometimes do, but this is an ideal application of sous vide: Thaw one freezer packet of stock, and vacuum pack it with the bird, then cook in a water bath as indicated. The stock gets better, same effect on the bird as a bath in a huge stock pot.

Yes! I own one in each kitchen. It's pretty simple: We cook anything in it that makes sense to cook in an enameled cast iron Dutch Oven, and where feedback (constant temperature rather than constant energy flow) makes sense. Once one gets the point of an autopilot in the kitchen, it's hard to romanticize fiddling by hand inside. I'd much rather fiddle by hand outside. It's called fire.

Sweet!

Cooking with EVOO reduces stress.

There are multiple brands of this style: Klein Tools 12 in. Hack Saw with Aluminum Handle The point is that one can adjust the tension, and achieve higher tension than with more basic models. There are similarly many brands of "good" blades. I'd go as fine-toothed as I dared, keeping in mind the theory that coarser blades clear more easily. I'm just not convinced that's enough of a factor. Freezing works, but makes for much more work. If you can figure a way to squish the meat against a vertical plane, you might make quick work of raw meat? What we both really want is a Berkel (bone the meat first!) Berkel 300M-STD 12" Prosciutto Meat Slicer We just don't have that kind of stupid money. Some restaurants buy these partly because they do work really well, partly because they can set the ambience for the entire restaurant.

I own a Vermicular Musui-kamado in both kitchens. We have beans soaking now, ready to start soon. I always make nixtamal in the VK. Many stews, such as lion's head meatballs... A good analogy is adaptive cruise control for cars. Some people can't imagine why one would want such a thing, even some people who own cars so equipped. We're so used to, um, what do you call it? driving, that we become inured to the annoyance workload of manually guiding a car. We probably think of commercial pilots as flying the plane, when they're primarily system managers who can step in to fly as needed. Fiddling with the heat while cooking is the same idea. Some of us use barbecue controllers and can leave for errands after starting a cook. Others watch their KK get up to cruising altitude, marveling over how easily one can manually control a KK. And there goes an hour. My point is that as a good cook one isn't really conscious of the time sink that fiddling with temperatures represents. The energy needs of a dish evolve as the dish cooks. Providing a set flow of energy is fundamentally different from maintaining a set temperature; the latter adapts as the dish cooks. I choose the VK whenever I want autopilot. As a rule, I don't feel comfortable with any technology till I stop thinking of it as special. Cookbooks are for dinner parties? Um no, we like to eat well on Tuesday nights. A sous vide water bath and chamber vacuum is for Michelin skyscraper food? Um no, it's a more reliable way to tenderize and cook steak, or lamb shanks, or... Of course when I want excitement I finish over fire.

It has taken me most of my life to truly appreciate this, but there isn't a saw tool category sold without a "better" version ignored by people who think all saws are the same, and there isn't a saw tool sold that doesn't benefit from a very careful choice of aftermarket blade. While my wife insists for environmental reasons that we ride out the OEM tires on new cars, a careful aftermarket choice is always an upgrade, whether one wants performance, a quiet ride, or simply making it less likely to die in the rain. One should similarly think of the blade that comes with any saw as like the "starter" toner cartridge in a new printer. Conventional advice is tuned for average needs, for people working in haste on a budget. I generally replace track saw blades and such with a blade that makes the smoothest cut I can tolerate teasing out, working slower than a production shop. My favorite example is a jigsaw. I owned a cheap hand-me-down that convinced me the category was crap, jigsaws are just small reciprocating saws with a reference plane, good only for demolition. Then I bought a decent Dewalt jigsaw, and started playing with blades. Often one does want a stiff, wide blade, but for scrolling, this blade can do finished curved work that would make Michelangelo happy: BU2DCS-2 Dual Cut - Wood Cutting Jig Saw Blade As for cutting frozen meat with a hacksaw, the best mainstream hacksaws have excellent tension control, and can be strung with the force of a piano string. I keep one of the best blades I could find just for cooking. The quality range I've experiences with hacksaws is every bit as wide as the quality range I've experienced with jigsaws. Anyone, be sure you're experiencing top-of-the-market quality for your chosen tool, before investing time, space, and money on a more complex tool you might not need.

Glad to see all this hot sauce fermenting! To be clear, I never claimed that Kahm yeast is dangerous. No one should be afraid of Kahm yeast, nor should they discard a batch where it appears. I claimed that I can taste the difference, and I prefer ferments where there is no visible Kahm yeast. This could be a coincidence: No Kahm yeast could be a side effect of the technique that lead to my best ferments, not a determining cause. Still, I've tossed too many ferments of cabbage and such, recognizing I can do better buying at the farmers market, to shake this association.

I've been making fermented Louisiana-style hot sauce regularly since 2005. I have some controversial views: Botulism is unlikely but possible. Most cases are people who don't know what they're doing, but think they do. For example, there are many cases in Alaska after fermenting in seal skins was replaced by fermenting in plastic Home Depot pails. C. botulinum cannot grow below a pH of 4.6, which can be achieved with mere tablespoons of vinegar in a large batch. This inhibits anxiety but not the fermentation process. I own a pH meter and typically bring my pH down to 4.2. Needless to say, this is heresy on fermentation forums. I have nearly always managed to avoid mold through scrupulous technique, and I don't like the taste as well when there is mold. I'd bet half my retirement savings that when there's visible mold on top, a sample from the bottom will be completely infested when viewed under a microscope. Scrupulous technique here means a sterile carboy with the chiles just submerged in brine, and a beer-making airlock as a one-way valve to ensure the gas in the carboy ends up mostly CO2. I have an argon tank for preserving wine, and I've considered using it to flush my carboy at the start, for the initial stretch before CO2 from fermentation flushes the carboy. I've been meaning to try a new technique I read somewhere, also guaranteed to remove unwanted oxygen and well-suited to arbitrarily small batch sizes: Vacuum pack the chiles with salt and a bit of fermentation starter, such as live kimchi liquid. Use a very large bag, as it will fill with CO2 from the fermentation. These suggestions go hand-in-hand: The hacks who chased me away from fermentation forums are going to be fine, as long as they know and use exactly the techniques their ancestors used in eastern Europe. Any idea that achieves an unheard-of modern efficiency at ridding the oxygen implicated in mold is an idea that C. botulinum may thank us profusely for having. So test the pH.

FOGO Super Premium Lump Charcoal (35lbs) Two birds with one stone here, breaking advice from both Dennis and Fogo. Dennis describes the issue. A primary use of our KK these days is high temperature baking (bread, pizza, Focaccia di Recco). Dennis let me buy a gas burner; he figures I know what I'm doing. The solution is to use a very large charcoal such as the above Fogo. Yes, all surfaces light, but the surface-area-to-volume ratio makes for a nice window to bake at pizza temperatures before the fuel exhausts itself. With more typical charcoal the fire burns too hot and fast, as Dennis explains. He's right; ask me how I know!

So my eight year old VacMaster VP115 can still be coaxed to do an excellent job. The "gas shocks" no longer hold up the lid without help, and the ribbon switch gets confused after the jolt of releasing the vacuum, and starts a new cycle. Anyone who can remove and keep track of twenty screws can repair this thing by swapping parts, assuming one can get the parts. That is no longer the case. I'll probably take it apart again and bend the ribbon switch so it's further from critical, but the "gas shocks" are apparently custom. I could live with this, or give it to a friend until I retire and give him its replacement. From the above discussion, I'm most tempted by the JVR: JVR Vac100 – Chamber Vacuum Sealer I figure my amortized cost of the VP115 was $86 per year, which I more than saved because 4 mil chamber vacuum sealer bags cost less than FoodSaver bags or substitutes. There are two credible reasons to prefer an external clamp machine: They take less space, and using a continuous roll one can seal lengthy foods such as fish that don't fit in a chamber. In grad school a friend explained how the second time he ingested psilocybin he had to fight a profound gag reaction. My dog struggled similarly when we took her to the vet. In transition to a chamber machine, I felt a revulsion beyond my conscious control to finding textured FoodSaver bags in the chest freezer. Discard or repack. The difference with a chamber machine isn't intellectual, it's visceral.

I have indeed made vinegar for decades. I've found red wine vinegar to be easy, and white wine or dessert wine to be inexplicably challenging. I've nevertheless found interesting uses for dessert wine vinegar, such as making batches of tamarind paste for Indian cooking. One can't easily place what I did, but it makes a difference. All facts about vinegar-making are in dispute, so read critically and experiment. One wants a good mother, or it's enough to drop in an ember from the KK. One needs to neutralize sulfites in wine by adding 1/2 tsp hydrogen peroxide per bottle (that H2O2 bottle in the cupboard is probably flat), or it doesn't matter. I used to use a beer-making glass carboy, with the opening covered with cheeesecloth. I have since fallen in love with French cooperage barrels targeting vinegar; I have four 3L barrels, two on each coast. One can draw vinegar as needed, rather than making a production of pouring off bottles for use. It is mandatory to get stainless steel spigots; the charm of the wooden spigots is quickly lost when they fail, leaking everywhere. Does enough oxygen get in? Probably, but people who say so may be actively adding leftover wine all the time. It can't hurt to lift the lid whenever you think of it. Allary oak vinegar barrels Vinegar Shed (UK source)

@braindoc brass is also nice. While you're allowing yourself temptations... Matfer Duck and Lobster Press

Here's my pan getting tinned there in 2018: IMG_3397.mov

Ok, here's some serious trivia for the really old timers here: I gave away my copper cookware to "Kim" of "David and Kim", whom I met at a 2003 Kamado cookoff in Sacramento. My french cooking teacher had many copper pots. I mainly winced at the hours spent polishing, but hey, he was in the trade and cooking is part theater. He died a year ago but his web site lives on; yes that's Anthony Edwards the actor in the classes photo. He sold all his copper to help fund his retirement; I visited him regularly in rural PA for good food and conversations: La Cuisine Sans Peur In my experience copper does conduct better but the properties of the cooking surface dominate. My favorite pans are actually carbon steel with the heft of cast iron: Spring USA Blackline pans though this is a burgeoning category since I bought three, and other brands have a more practical shape now. After falling in love with Dominique Crenn through her memoir, I noticed that her restaurant is brimming with Mauviel stainless steel pans. A practical choice, easier to care for than copper but functionally rather similar in use. I now have a few Mauviel pans which I love. My favorite is a 6.3" curved splayed saute pan with lid (for making sauces or any equivalent activity such as the tempering step in Indian cooking) that doesn't show anymore on the US web site: M'COOK Curved Splayed Sautepan 7.9 In

Oh, but you could. Miso, Tempeh, Natto & Other Tasty Ferments: A Step-by-Step Guide to Fermenting Grains and Beans by Kirsten K. Shockey I bought this for natto; I have the correct soybeans and a Musui Kamado I will use as a fermentation chamber. And the miso section looks interesting. I travel too much for many of the Japanese ferments. They require regular attention.

Breeo is definitely a credible option. My favorite, never-look-back grilling option is a Solo Stove Ranger, on a Harbor Freight cart modified to hold a Breeo adjustable grill. I think I prefer Solo Stove to Breeo for the pit itself, but I'm not sure why. Solo Stove Ranger Breeo Outpost Grill Harbor Freight Service Cart There's a long thread on the Solo Stove; various of us have one (or more): Solo Stove (KK forum). This is the bastard child of a Weber and an air fryer. Once you get used to the geometry, there's no going back; it just makes sense if you can get past habit. Chicken thighs on double skewers, burgers on a perforated plate, ... My most frequent use is actually grilling vegetables for salsa for tacos. I can light it in a couple of minutes while juggling various other kitchen tasks, and time pretty well when I can come back to grill. I'll put in a layer of wood chunks, then a layer of lump charcoal, then pour in a bit of isopropyl alcohol. Light one of those long matches, play with it to get several inches going as if you're just toying with the fire pit, it should know what's coming. Throw in the match, WHOMP, enjoy the neighborhood dogs barking. Go back in to prepare the rest of the meal. (Harbor Freight is a US chain, a bit of an inside joke as one either deliberately shops there, or deliberately doesn't, depending on the application. It's for a very specific quality level, when no other quality level will do!)