Vermicular Cast Iron Induction Cooker

[MacKenzie]

Wingman. look at it this way if you were Canadian you'd have to spend twice as much to get it. So, you are getting off cheap.  

[tony b]

If you haven't figured it out yet, Wingman, one of our favorite pastimes on this Forum is coaxing others into spending money on new toys! It's part of the rationalization process for us after we've bought it! 

[MacKenzie]

Wingman, it's the main way to earn badges.    

Edited May 31, 2020 by MacKenzie

[MacKenzie]

I thought I'd try a sourdough loaf in the Musui from the Vermicular. The edges are ground to make a super fit and I thought if the bread was baked in the Musui in the kitchen oven I might get a nice spring. Here it is-

[Syzygies]

58 minutes ago, MacKenzie said:

I thought I'd try a sourdough loaf in the Musui from the Vermicular. The edges are ground to make a super fit and I thought if the bread was baked in the Musui in the kitchen oven I might get a nice spring.

Did you preheat the Musui then lower in the loaf using the parchment paper? In my cast iron days flinging the loaf into a hot Dutch oven always felt like the wild card in the whole process.

I also use my "aluminum disk" steam generator in our indoor oven. Comparing crusts with a Dutch oven always seemed to me to be apples & oranges, as in one can make great bread either way. I never did controlled experiments to articulate exactly what the difference is. Can you?

[MacKenzie]

Yes, put the Musui in the oven when I turned it on to heat. Used the parchment to help control the drop into the casserole. The bottom of the bread was well cooked, good job there  was a layer of paper under the bread. I'm not expecting to make many boules, rather have the loaf shape. Just wanted to try the Musui I thought it might keep more steam inside than a regular casserole.

It is still cooling so I have not cut it yet.

[MacKenzie]

Sprinkled a chicken breast with lots of spices, chili, garlic, pepper, salt, fennel, cumin, dry mustard, paprika and basil. Coated with finely freshly ground corn and then wrapped in parchment paper. Hit it with the rolling pin, driving the corn and spices into the chicken as well as tenderizing and flattening the chicken. A little ghee and oilive oil in the Vermicular, heater to 475F added the chicken, left untouched for 4 mins., turned the heat down to 300F, flipped the chicken and let it cook covered for 4 more mins.

The chicken was very moist and tender. I will be doing this again.

The Swiss chard is fresh from the garden.

[franciscusj]

Looking good, as soon as the 220v version comes out of the vermicular I will buy one for sure.

I must say I am very happy with the" Control Freak" so far.

Edited June 30, 2020 by franciscusj

[Wingman505]

@MacKenzieHow not can the Vermicular get?  What is the temperature range?  I’ve been reading up on it and it’s a bit confusing.

[Syzygies]

Mine is back from warranty repair. I had an extreme bean boil-over incident.

All of my recent photographs are of skewers on my Solo Stove, or my new wok made-to-order in Japan, or garden tomatillo salsa in my newest molcajete made-to-order in Mexico, or nixtamal turning into masa in my Indian wet grinder. But this picture is of pork carnitas about to simmer for many hours. An ideal use of our "Indoor K". It was the new puppy before I gorped it. Now it's just another dog in a large family. But I love it.

@Wingman505 The instruction manual is buried on their site. It appears at all in response to my feedback:

Vermicular Instruction Manual

I would say that one should read the manual before purchase. This isn't fair, for various reasons. I didn't. The instructions are easier to follow if one can try them out while reading. And it comes with an elaborate coffee table book that does cut to the chase on heat setting recommendations for various applications.

In addition to various rice programs, the cooking settings are MED (445 F, 230 C), LOW (300 F, 150 C), EXT LOW (230 F, 110 C) and WARM (adjustable, 90-200 F, 30-95 C). One can set a timer for up to 6 hours for MED, LOW, EXT LOW and up to 12 hours for WARM; there are two user presets. Otherwise, heating stops after 90 minutes.

Not having continuous controls is an interesting choice. I've made my peace with this design constraint. One learns what each setting does, and then trusts it. Less opportunity for user error. My friends with Sous Vide equipment are always calling me to ask "what temperature?!" Here at least the choice is quantized. Each level is handy and well-chosen; one moderates the shape of the cook in the time dimension, rather than fine-tuning the temperature.

I had thought I'd be using WARM as a kind of sous vide where I could take the lid off and stir. EXT LOW has taken over that role for me, even though it bubbles away. When I was in Morocco I took various cooking lessons, and saw tagines bubbling away. Somehow they never stuck to their clay pots. This cooker similarly envelopes the Dutch oven, so each temperature is more uniform than one would experience cooking over a flame, or even an induction hot plate. The effect is more like cooking in the oven, a great way to braise without burning, with the added convenience of stovetop access and not heating up the house in summer. In particular, EXT LOW is ideal for replicating how I saw tagines cooked in Morocco.

[Syzygies]

After summers on the Aeolian Islands and Pantelleria, I've developed a lifelong love of capers. We're cooking for ourselves and our foodie neighbors (while they remodel their kitchen) and I used the last of our capers in the stellar swordfish recipe from My Calabria. Crisis. Worse, one of our two favorite sources (Les Moulins Mahjoub) had become impossible to find in 500g jars. I found exactly one US source, Four Star Seafood in San Francisco. They'll deliver out to us $100 minimum for $5 flat fee. So I added a box of frozen shrimp as part of my order.

CAPERS IN SALT #4/7 – 2.2 LBS - Buon Italia

Wild Mountain Capers - (100g.)/ (500g.) - Four Star Seafood

Gulf Shrimp U10 - Head On - 4 lb box - Four Star Seafood

I've been asking everywhere after shrimp heads for stock. They apparently just throw them overboard or something.

A four pound box, at half the price I'd pay for similar shrimp at Berkeley Bowl, is half shrimp, half heads. The heads fit nicely in the Vermicular with a liter of chicken stock, half a liter of water to cover. Cook 200 F for 45 minutes; any fish stock can over-extract. Then compost the heads; your worms will love you. This will either go into a Catalan Fideua or a gumbo.

[MacKenzie]

Lucky neighbours. 

[Wingman505]

On 6/29/2020 at 3:31 PM, MacKenzie said:

Sprinkled a chicken breast with lots of spices, chili, garlic, pepper, salt, fennel, cumin, dry mustard, paprika and basil. Coated with finely freshly ground corn and then wrapped in parchment paper. Hit it with the rolling pin, driving the corn and spices into the chicken as well as tenderizing and flattening the chicken. A little ghee and oilive oil in the Vermicular, heater to 475F added the chicken, left untouched for 4 mins., turned the heat down to 300F, flipped the chicken and let it cook covered for 4 more mins.

The chicken was very moist and tender. I will be doing this again.

The Swiss chard is fresh from the garden.

Good god man... 😄

[tekobo]

21 hours ago, Syzygies said:

Then compost the heads; your worms will love you.

Good looking stock Syzygies.  I remember you saying that rye bran(?) made your leaven go mad.  Been meaning to tell you that it works wonders for a hot compost heap too.  

16 hours ago, Wingman505 said:

Good god man... 😄

Wingman, you do know that Mac is not of the male persuasion?  We claim her as one of ours.  Thank you. 

[MacKenzie]

@Tekobo, thanks. 

[Wingman505]

Good god, ma’am.  😊
 

You can take the man out of the military, but not the military out of the man.

Edited July 23, 2020 by Wingman505

[MacKenzie]

Surprise, Wingman. 

[Syzygies]

On 7/22/2020 at 8:56 PM, Wingman505 said:

Good god man... 😄

 

On 7/23/2020 at 1:44 PM, tekobo said:

Wingman, you do know that Mac is not of the male persuasion?  We claim her as one of ours.  Thank you. 

From what little I can remember of sixties/seventies counterculture (if you can remember you weren't there), the vernacular stripped apparent gender from phrases like this. I'd hear women use "Hey man" with each other. It wasn't a political statement; the complete lack of concern about gender was the triumph here.

This must have stayed with me. I understood all the genders, and read "man" here with nary a ripple that anything was out of place. "Good god man..." is a precious exclamation. As we understood half a century ago, what we took, we took for all.

[tekobo]

25 minutes ago, Syzygies said:

From what little I can remember of sixties/seventies counterculture (if you can remember you weren't there), the vernacular stripped apparent gender from phrases like this.

My abiding memory of the early 70s is the chocolate cake that I had for my 4th birthday party.  I also remember handing my mother a snake that we were given to play with at nursery school and her screaming her head off in a very female, mummy way.  I like gender difference and I liked being called ma'am by the ex-army telecomms engineer who reported to me in my last job.  He used to do it to tease me and it is our standing joke that I pulled rank and refused to let him call me by my name when he got bored of the joke.  Vive la difference.

[MacKenzie]

Made Chuck-wagon Chili this evening. Thought of Sygyzies during this cook.

As I added more ingredients I thought of Sygyzies even more.

 

Fortunately it didn't boil over.

Now for the taste test.

 

 

 

Edited August 29, 2020 by MacKenzie