My Dacor is all gas with infra-red broiler. Stainless top with continues grates makes for easy cleaning. Once a year cleaning with commercial stainless cleaning pads makes it like new. I have issues with Dacor but not the concept. We use the Dacor with the commercial ventilation hood for heavy cooking & the electric wall oven (no exhaust hood) for light baking and warming. Very convenient to heat up food guests bring.

My brother had a smooth top & then Married an Italian girl who loved to cook. Smooth top met the landfill shortly after their honeymoon and they have sported a gas top ever since.

Absolutely, I might only add that a a few hits from a Jaccard blading tool would help tenderize & infuse the flavor of marinade.

Please, before beating me into the ground, this tool is only for traditionally tough cuts of meat, not high end cuts like 109 ribs or 180 strips.

Not familiar with Carl's but McDonald's fries are iconic. I have had better but they are consistently GREAT!!!!!

"Inability to instantaneously control heat".......I think this is "one" of the factors that led to duel fuel ranges, flame on top, electric in oven.

Every time I had B.K. onion rings I got horrible gas. Have not had them in 25 years. if I recall they were filled with minced onion and god knows what else.

Greek friend owns a Diner. Starts with 1 1/4 inch wide slices of onion from monster #1 grade onions. Then they soak in butter milk solution to take the sharp bite out of them. Then cracker meal, egg bath and then bread crumbs. Then golden brown in the deep fryer. To die for.

Never had Popeyes onion rings but have eaten the sh*t out of their fried chicken. Always delicious.

Nice!

I won't waste the calories on them, couple extra beers instead.

Funny you mentioned fried batter. I love onion rings and a friend picks off and eats the fried batter and leaves the onion on the plate. People do funny things with food.

I have thought for a long time that FF's had reached the point of perfection. The raw product production has been perfected, the cooking method is so simple and consistent and the profit ratio is among the highest on the menu. I just didn't see any room for improvement and can't understand the need to keep trying to re-invent the wheel.

If a restaurant owner/chef has extra time on their hands, I would prefer they spend it making sure my main course is cooked to order, not playing with my FF.

Yeah I agree, I would ask for chips with a sandwich before fresh cut fries. I also don't like "premium" fries with that batter like coating. Flavor reminds me of a 1970's potato puff which I never took a liking to.

1/3 total weight works out to about 2/3 cup of oil for a 1 lb bag of chips. Never really thought about it but I am really not shocked either way.

We rarely have them in out house, my wife and I can't handle them. There is just no such thing as a small bowl of them, that is until the bag is just about empty :-)

Agree, cluttered areas tend to go many cooking cycles before cleaning and stuff gets hardened on and nasty. After a while its almost impossible to get things completely clean when that happens.

I designed our kitchen to be a working kitchen that allowed for semiprofessional cooking, durability & ease of cleaning.

I put in a light commercial 2 motor hood with an 8 inch vent pipe straight up through the roof. Best investment I ever made. After 12 or so years of heavy cooking, the ceiling in the kitchen is as white as the day it was painted. Food also tastes better when the house does not smell like it when you sit down to eat. .

Put in granite counter tops and travertine back splashes which I soaked with sealer every day for a week. Sponge with just warm water and a little cinch removes everything with just a wipe.

Floors are heavy duty porcelain ceramic tiles from a tile supplier, not big box store builder grade. Grout is sealed. No cracks or stains. Steam clean with a Bissell steam vac every few months.

Cabinets were selected with specific storage needs keeping the counters free of clutter, especially around the stove where there is only 1 round stainless container on the counter with cooking utensils in it. With clear counters, grease spatter is a 30 sec wipe up job.

Have to disagree on the fries Clams. I don't ever recall seeing a McDonald's FF container with fries still in it being thrown out. Even the ones that fall out into the bag get scarfed. Of all the fast food products that have hit the market over the years, survey after survey have ranked McDonald's fries as the best. Their track record is unparalleled in the industry.

I have never eaten greasy cardboard but better than 50% of the fresh cuts fries I have tried were a soggy, greasy disgusting mess that ended up getting tossed after a few bites. Lot more to it than just dropping a basket with fresh cut.

Your welcome. My pet peeve is that many meals do not require professional skill or extremely high end appliances to prep & steak is one of then. If one enjoys cooking at home, spending the extra 25% for top quality ingredients produces a night and day difference in the final product. I love going out to eat and do it often, but I also love showing guests that basic cooking skills combined with top quality ingredients produce 5 star dining at 1/5 the cost. They can also spend the night if they spend time at my bar :-)

Being a little of everything makes us an easy target.

Folks are reporting Costco's choice beef, including expensive cuts like strips & ribs are needled. When you get the Walmart choice, try bending / twisting it and see if it has little 1/8 inch wide knife slits running through it.

If you want to do a little experiment, stop at a local butcher and buy a real nicely marbled top choice steak of the same cut & thickness. Season & cook them identically and try them and see if the extra 25% cost for the good stuff is worth it.

I agree that E/W's are generally not worth the money as most "defects" show up during the factory warranty period.

Having been burned by poor reliability in the past during the pre-internet days, I spend a lot of time researching brands and models within the brand for reliability issues on the net "before" the purchase.

Don't just count stars, read the comments looking for consistent positive remarks and most importantly consistent negative remarks. A theme will usually develop pretty quickly whether the ratings are good or poor.

More money spent is also no guarantee. I have an older high end Dacor range that has been a pita since new. The only reason I still have it is because the granite was cut to a template to fit the range with very tight tolerances and their may be more work involved than meets the eye replacing it. Wish I had done more research before I bought it. I also have a newer relatively inexpensive G/E Profile electric oven that has been flawless. The G/E had far superior ratings than the competition.

One of the most important hard learned lessons with sharp knives is not carelessly tossing them on the counter. Bumping into the business end can be a major problem, especially with the back of the hand where veins are bulging just under a thin layer of skin. If a knife is put down on a counter & the edge and tip are not pointed away I will say something to a guest. If they keep it up I will hand then a dull clunker.

Funny thing is though the Walleye is not a member of the Pickeral family and is much better eating than Pickeral.

Kind of like shooting sports, never a good idea to hand a novice shooter a competition pistol with a worked trigger.

As a group, we rotate who's house the get together is at and everybody brings something which usually needs a little finishing.This often leads to using the host's knives, the condition of which is a pretty good indication of their knife skills.

While not cheap, all of my knives can easily be replaced and I have an Edge Pro to clean them up. My major concern is handing a friend who is NOT used to razor sharp knives a tool that with one slip will take a finger tip off.

My sister in law has dull knives, including old dull serrated steak knives. She gave herself a nice cut cleaning one of my sharp straight edge steak knives. I would hate to think how bad it would have been if it were one of my chefs knives.

You summed it up nicely with the time line. Many from the pre-baby boom generation only had a paring knife and a slicing knife. Then in the 70's many of them got knife sets free from promotions at supermarkets, banks, Green Stamps etc and if they contained a chefs knife they were seldom used. Cheap steak knives were also usually a promotional giveaway.

During that time period, some folks picked up quality pieces from Co's like Chicago Cutlery but the 1980's is when the high quality European knives took off.

Thats a great deal.....our Shoprite add shows 40% off Tyson boneless / skinless chicken 2.75 lb package - 3.5 lb package, final cost $2.93 Lb. At $1.98 lb, it sounds like Pathmark is behind the price spike. I would buy several if you like it, re-wrap it and freeze it.

On a brighter note, 5oz to 8oz large Snow Crab legs are $5.99 lb. Several lbs of that and a few ice cold brews make for a real nice evening :-)

Where are YOU? I will bring you all the baloney you and the whole neighborhood can eat for a case of good cold water 6oz tails. :-)

I wish I could get it for $1.00 lb. I just spent about $3.00 lb last weekend. In all fairness though, we are still a little early for local grown. Hopefully the $ will come down soon.

I was being facetious John. What I meant is that male calves born to "dairy" cows do not on average produce high quality meat. Many are used to produce veal and recently with the combination of the drought and the high cost of grain many are destroyed immediately after birth. One of the side effects of the drought was that many marginal quality animals were brought to slaughter prematurely last year which has led to a shortage this year & has driven the cost of hamburger to historic highs this year.

I would grab it while you can.... 40 lb "untrimmed" case price is $90.00 ($2.25 lb) from major purveyors Sysco Foods & also Roma Foods. Most expect $100.00 by next week.

Ground beef is through the roof and 109 Rib & 180 Strip up $3.00 lb in the last 4 to 6 weeks.

Male dairy cows can't get pregnant so they can't give milk and they don't produce high quality beef later on down the road so many end up as veal.

Food and energy were removed from the inflation equation years ago. If they were still included, the inflation factor would be much, much higher than reported.