Food, among other items...
Dec. 12th, 2012 07:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexpgpOn the culinary front, I used my sous vide controller yesterday to cook a 1.8-lb piece of a cut called "beef tip" (bought because it was about the right size and about the cheapest cut in the store) at about 140°F for about 6 hours. It came out as described, uniformly pink all the way through the tissue, and incredibly juicy.
As a data point, the meat released about 1/3 of a pound of liquid while it cooked, which represents a loss of about 20% of the overall weight (so you can either think of the liquid as costing $1.30 on its own, or the meat costing $4.90 a pound with the liquid as a worthless byproduct). This release of liquid is due to a combination of natural release of juices from meat and (perhaps) liquid that was injected into the meat before it was packaged; the way to verify this one way or another would be to find a comparably sized piece of "natural" beef and cook it the same way.
Be that as it may, the prepared beef tip is absolutely delicious.
In other culinary news, I recently bought something called The Perfect Pickler, which was mentioned in Tim Ferriss's latest book, and the kit basically consists of a plastic cap (that screws onto a wide-mouth quart canning jar) and rigid plastic tubing that allows air to escape through a hole in the cap, via a water trap, thus creating an anaerobic environment for the fermenting goodies.
My first batch was sauerkraut, and I was surprised at how much room there was left in the jar after I put the better part of about a pound-and-a-third in it. The kraut was crispy when it was finished, which I found a little unusual, perhaps in the same way folks who try natural pineapple juice find the taste a little "off" because the juice hadn't had a chance to react with the tin can in which such juice is normally packaged.
My second batch—bubbling away as I type—was undertaken a bit more systematically. I cut up about 1.2 kilos of fresh, heavy cabbage and determined that the capacity of a quart canning jar is about 1 kilo. The proof of the process will be tasted this weekend.
Galina and I ate lunch out at Red Lobster today; we split one of their combos. It was good. Afterward, we drove around a while, stopping in at the World Market just down the strip mall from the Barnes & Noble. Lots of interesting stuff there, but the place sure is proud of its pricing, that's for sure.
When we got home, there was a package waiting for me, from Natalie. I'd have opened it by now, except for a flurry of highly irregular late afternoon gotta-expedite-this work. (I should probably also take pictures of the unboxing, so I'll do that tomorrow... :^)
As a data point, the meat released about 1/3 of a pound of liquid while it cooked, which represents a loss of about 20% of the overall weight (so you can either think of the liquid as costing $1.30 on its own, or the meat costing $4.90 a pound with the liquid as a worthless byproduct). This release of liquid is due to a combination of natural release of juices from meat and (perhaps) liquid that was injected into the meat before it was packaged; the way to verify this one way or another would be to find a comparably sized piece of "natural" beef and cook it the same way.
Be that as it may, the prepared beef tip is absolutely delicious.
In other culinary news, I recently bought something called The Perfect Pickler, which was mentioned in Tim Ferriss's latest book, and the kit basically consists of a plastic cap (that screws onto a wide-mouth quart canning jar) and rigid plastic tubing that allows air to escape through a hole in the cap, via a water trap, thus creating an anaerobic environment for the fermenting goodies.
My first batch was sauerkraut, and I was surprised at how much room there was left in the jar after I put the better part of about a pound-and-a-third in it. The kraut was crispy when it was finished, which I found a little unusual, perhaps in the same way folks who try natural pineapple juice find the taste a little "off" because the juice hadn't had a chance to react with the tin can in which such juice is normally packaged.
My second batch—bubbling away as I type—was undertaken a bit more systematically. I cut up about 1.2 kilos of fresh, heavy cabbage and determined that the capacity of a quart canning jar is about 1 kilo. The proof of the process will be tasted this weekend.
Galina and I ate lunch out at Red Lobster today; we split one of their combos. It was good. Afterward, we drove around a while, stopping in at the World Market just down the strip mall from the Barnes & Noble. Lots of interesting stuff there, but the place sure is proud of its pricing, that's for sure.
When we got home, there was a package waiting for me, from Natalie. I'd have opened it by now, except for a flurry of highly irregular late afternoon gotta-expedite-this work. (I should probably also take pictures of the unboxing, so I'll do that tomorrow... :^)
