jzerocsk's Profile
Looking of Jamaican Jerk Pork
I often do my gift and holiday shopping at some of the shops there like 43 S Main and Creative Genius. Over the years I've seen so many of the stores close and at this point that leaves Braddock's as the only restaurant left on Main Street. I had lunch at Scotch Bonnets just in December as a matter of fact, and really enjoyed it.
It's starting to become a ghost town!
What Kitchen Scale Do Chefs Use At Home?
Even 2kg capacities are hard to come by at that resolution. I eventually decided that for recipes where less than 1g of something is required, measuring by volume is probably accurate enough.
Is Kildare's coming to Ambler?
So basically DMG bought it but hasn't announced whether it's going to be the next Kildare's or the next Doc Magrogan's?
What Kitchen Scale Do Chefs Use At Home?
I also use a MyWeigh KD series for ~5 years now and it's great. Big 7kg capacity, big easy to read display, an easy to clean stainless steel platter and a cover that flips down to protect the controls.
About the only drawback, a big bowl can block the display a bit.
One thing I found when I researched is that it's really hard to find a scale that measure in smaller than 1-gram increments with high enough capacity to serve as your everyday baking scale. You pretty much need two scales if you want to do that.
Descaling solution for espresso machines (and coffee makers)
Since the CLR is an acid, maybe try something alkaline like baking soda dissolved in water?
LC cast iron baking dish
I've got a CI gratin and a big rectangular baker. They are both really useful since they can go on the stove top and under the broiler without issue. I roast chickens/turkeys in the baker, and have roasted all kinds of stuff in both.
The biggest drawback is the weight. I think the baker is 10 lbs...add a 15-20 lb bird to that...HEAVY!
Which Mexican in South Philly
I don't have a recommendation but you may find some good leads in this Inky article from last fall: http://articles.philly.com/2011-09-15/news/30160479_1_al-pastor-taquerias-tacos
Smoker. Is it worth it?
I bought an "El Cheapo Brinkmann" for like $60 just to sort of test the waters. I actually bought the electric one. I know "purists" blanch at the thought, but I figured I'll be more apt to use it if I never have "I'm out of charcoal" as an excuse.
I'm so busy I only get to use it 3-4x a year but I sure love having it when I use it. I've had it 4 years now and I definitely feel that i got my money's worth.
At this point I'm biding my time until I can afford a Big Green Egg or similar and then I will just use that for all of my grilling and smoking.
Even the Weber is not prohibitively expensive, and if it turns out he doesn't like using it it can probably be resold to recoup most of the cost.
corned beef without nitrites?
I grabbed one from TJs (not sure which) and it was one of the best I've ever had.
How to cook in cast iron - especially enamled cast iron
I have a glass/flat top electric stove...
For most situations, I pre-heat it on 5-6 (dial goes up to 10) for 5 minutes. If I'm searing a steak or a burger, I usually leave it at 6, but most of the time for browning chicken, sauteeing veggies, I turn it down to 4 or even 3 once I start cooking.
How to cook in cast iron - especially enamled cast iron
My guess is also too cool. I have to pre-heat mine on med/med-high heat and then turn it down from there (although for browning meat it's still in the middle of the dial).
I have also found that while it's not like bare cast iron, it does develop a season of sorts over time and my LC skillet has over the years grown to be one of my workhorses.
Why don't more Americans use induction?
I'm just not in the market for a stove, but next time I am induction is at the top of the list.
Why don't more Americans use induction?
Do induction dials have discrete settings and you can't select something in between?
For whatever it's worth, every time I have ever used an unfamiliar electric stove I had to use it a few times to learn what temp. settings to use and it usually somewhere between 4 - 6 is the sweet spot for most tasks. Anything above is pretty much "boiling things" territory.
What's wrong (if anything) with this picture?
I might not go so far as to say you're "doing it all wrong," especially without knowing what you are actually doing, but you should definitely do some reading/watching of videos and at least give this pinch-grip technique a whirl. The large knife for a small object seems counter intuitive but with the pinch-grip and good use of the "bear claw" for your non-knife hand the larger knife ends up being easier to manage.
What's wrong (if anything) with this picture?
I can't do a small dice or mince with a paring knife because there is not usually enough offset between the handle and the blade...my knuckles prevents me from getting the blade all the way through to the board.
Fear of green market foods - homemade sold at the market
Not-delicious food, that's what tipped me off...I bought a whoopie pie and a shoofly pie from them. The shoofly pie was dry-bottom and neither was all that good...and then I became suspicious!
Fear of green market foods - homemade sold at the market
How do you know? Serious question, I really do avoid the Amish booth because it seems like such a perfect gimmick.
Fear of green market foods - homemade sold at the market
http://nchfp.uga.edu/publications/uga/pumpkin_butter.html
Interesting!
Fear of green market foods - homemade sold at the market
I'm always suspicious that the people dressed in Amish-looking attire might just be "English" people doing it as a marketing gag!
Do I want a toaster oven?
You can just put the bread in and turn it on without preheating - when you put it on the "toast" setting it turns the top and bottom elements on full-blast.
My wife actually just picked one up after our regular toaster stopped working. There are a couple of things about it that I forgot I really liked when we had one growing up (my family seemed to alternate between toasters and toaster ovens).
Mainly, it's really nice to be able to heat small items without the longer pre-heat and additional energy use of the real oven. It's really handy for heating hash brown patties, leftover pizza, frozen prepared stuff (chicken tenders, egg rolls, etc), I even did bacon in it.
The downsides are -
the toast doesn't come out very even. And that's saying something because it seems like the average toaster doesn't do a very good job of that to begin with.
you can't really "put it away" so if counter space is at a premium or you just plain don't like stuff on the counter, it's always there taking up space.
the quality of construction doesn't seem any better than a toaster (at least as far as a $40 one goes). I can see ours kicking the bucket in another 5-7 years just like the toaster.
Poll -- do you have an electric, ceramic, gas or induction cooktop?
I've got a ceramic.
My house had the crappiest most entry-level electric coil stove I have ever seen...3x6" burners and only one 8" burner. You may not realize what a tremendous handicap it is to only have 1 big burner! Weirdest thing is, the previous owner did some really awesome renovations to the kitchen because he loved to cook, yet he completely cheaped out on the most important piece of cooking - the stove!
Some friends were getting a new stove so I picked up their old one...I like it very much. It's easy to keep clean, the oven is accurate (and self-cleaning!) and it's got 2 x 8" burners (although it has the same issue that another poster mentioned - one 8" is at the back so a big pot blocks the controls or in some cases can't actually be centered on the burner). About the only complaint I have with it is that is slower to heat than my old coil stove, but the heating is much more even so I quickly learned to preheat pans and the oven a bit longer.
I do not have gas service in my house...I could get it installed but to be honest I have used electric my whole life and I can't really say that I dislike it enough to go through the trouble and expense of hooking up to the gas main and having the lines run to the kitchen! I would definitely consider induction, though.
how often do you use your gratin dish?
Mine gets a lot of airplay in the summer for ratatouille, in fact my wife got it for me as a gift specifically because she thought it would be perfect for it (and it is).
That said, my ratatouille always turned out just fine in a ceramic baker. Other than looking prettier, the gratin doesn't bring any additional benefit and I could do just fine without it.
Can't remember the last time I cried chopping onion
Putting them in the fridge definitely keeps the tears down. You can also develop an immunity. Yellow onions don't get me anymore, but red onions? Fire up the waterworks!
In praise of the kitchen scale. Do you find it so useful?
If you bake it is absolutely a must-have. The first thing I do when I get a recipe is convert it to weight.
Have you ever been in the situation where you need 6 cups of flour, get part-way through scooping them out and then lose count?
That doesn't happen when you're dealing with one single total measurement. So even if my conversion is based on my inaccurate measuring cups and flour dispensing techniques, it still makes it way faster and easier to assemble the recipe.
If you just cook and don't bake much (or never bake from scratch) it's not as critical. It can be very useful if you like to freeze things. I also found it immensely helpful for making baby formula by the quart. But for other cooks they'll never touch it...if that's you, don't worry, you are not missing out on anything.
Where can I buy a bay tree in the Philly area?
I scored one at Waterloo Gardens in the spring. So far it has flourished in a pot on my back patio. If I can keep just keep it alive through the winter, I'm golden.
How hot can a home oven in a range get? - Would like pizza oven temps
You can "hack" most self-cleaning ovens to get over 500/550 by overriding the latch.
But I have to point out an exchange from Steven Alexander's book "52 Loaves" after Alexander told his accountant he damaged a second oven by running it at 550 for a long time even though the dial goes up to 550...
"The speedometer on my wife's Saab goes to 150...that doesn't mean she should drive that fast!"
Boning Knife- essential or not?
In my house, the boning knife is the booby trap. The one my wife uses to chop vegetables, ostensibly because "the smaller blade is easier to control" but really because she is secretly trying to get me to die of a heart attack so she can claim the life insurance money! Fortunately she never did lose a finger but a pretty bad cut finally convinced her that maybe I was onto something with my constant warnings that it was the wrong tool for the job.
I don't do a lot of bone removal, but it is handy for breaking down mangoes...my paring knife is just a little bit too short to go all the way through most mangoes, and the boning knife is much easier to maneuver along the pit than my chef knife.
Do We Really Need A WiFi Refrigerator?
"But how much automation will people like us accept?"
After watching the Carousel Of Progress at DisneyWorld many times I have determined that as long as we don't talk about numbers in the presence of our voice-activated ovens pretty much anything is possible.
Do We Really Need A WiFi Refrigerator?
That's the thing...I don't know if it's a problem, but having access to that data could be tremendously useful in maximizing efficiency/economy and doing maintenance. For all I know my fridge is a week away from crapping out and I have no way of knowing. If I notice that the compressor is cycling way more frequently than it did 2 weeks ago, I can do something about that before it fails outright. If the relative humidity in the fridge is suddenly dropping maybe that's a sign the door gasket needs to be checked out. It could send me an e-mail if the compressor dies when I'm on vacation so I can have someone empty it out rather than coming home to a house full of rotting food. If it was in a vacation home and you forgot to unplug it before you closed up for the off-season you could log in and shut it down.
It's not so much that any of this is a problem for me, it's just that if they're going to hang excessive tech on an appliance, I want something useful I can do with it! Why would I want to tweet or surf the web or stream music or even look up a recipe from the refrigerator? I can do all that on my phone, my laptop, my tablet, all devices that I can put on the counter right where I'm working. There are so many cool possibilities, but the market seems to drive junk...which would be fine if it were not to the exclusion of the really neat things. If you're going to give me a "networkable fridge" give me a networkable fridge, not a fridge with an iPad glued to the door.
But I am in the minority in feeling this way, most tech consumers just want flash and social networking and no actual utility.
