Chicken Jalfrezi last week:
Cauliflower Jalfrezi this week:
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I’ve actually never had jalfrezi. I usually always end up ordering something else that looks better.
In some Cooking Not Good Food news, MrsWookie wanted to do a sous-vide-then-smoked chuck roast to use up a chunk that had been sitting in our freezer. I seasoned it heavily with just salt and pepper, bagged it, and set the water bath to 155 F last night. It ran overnight, and in the morning, it was making sounds like the water level was too low. It didn’t seem too low, but adding some water seemed to fix things. But then the noise started up again. MrsWookie added some water with the same result, but then it was still making noise with the water bath basically full. So, the noise was from bubbles coming out of the circulator from…nowhere? It’s not like the water level was anywhere close to the intake. But, MrsWookie measured the water temp with another thermometer. So, despite the circulator being set for 155 and reading 155, it was over 200 F. The bubbles were from the circulator boiling the water as it passed through. RIP circulator, and RIP that piece of chuck. We still ate some of it because we had nothing else to eat for dinner, but it was about the worst thing I’ve put on my plate in some time.
Maybe it’s the lighting, but the scallops look overcooked. How were they?
Overcooked.Maybe? I think what appears to be charring is actually chopped shallots from the sauce.
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With results like that, it’s a good thing you aren’t trying to enter the cutthroat world of sous-vide centric restaurants
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Heh. I have no intentions of doing so, but if I were to, it wouldn’t be with my newly failed circulator. Up to today, it had done just fine.
We do this and use parchment paper for easy cleanup.
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I cook mine on a wire rack, which makes for less easy cleanup but I find produces a slightly nicer result. But yeah, right on parchment paper works for sure.
Yea I started using wire rack in last year and it’s great
I’m still Team Pan (unless it’s a big crowd), mainly because I’m ~always going to be cooking eggs or something after the bacon, and cleaning one thing is better than cleaning 2, even if the second thing isn’t all that hard.
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Hard to beat the convenience of frying bacon on the pan, also makes it easier to collect the grease.
One benefit of cooking in the oven is that if you can use sheets and racks that can go in the dishwasher, the cleanup effort is very minimal.
Team bacon in the oven for sure, I prefer a wire rack. I’ll also do it on a baking sheet on the grill if I don’t want to heat up the house during the summer. You defintely get a different end result in the oven but i like it like that. The only time I’ll use a stovetop is with my homemade super thick bacon or if I’m only making a few pieces.
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Yeah, everyone does this and has been doing it for a while. I guess pan is fine for small amounts.
Bacon in oven, definitely. I just use aluminum foil for easy cleanup. Leftover grease just goes into a cup that I just use whenever I want to cook with it.
I think that it used to be much more common for people to see the rendered bacon fat as valuable. Many people would save bacon fat and use it as a cooking fat in other meals. When my mom was growing up poor in the 1950s, at breakfast they would cook a small amount of bacon and her dad got to eat the bacon and her and her siblings would get bread dipped in the fat in the pan. Basically we’re all just spoiled brats that debate the best way to get culinary results out of bacon, and prior generations were more concerned with the economics of a luxury item like bacon.
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I don’t know about everyone else, but I think I saw an article on serious eats or something like that and I was sold.
