I most of the books listed so far, and would start with Ruhlman. If you like Italian food, Hazan would be an excellent choice as well.

I have Modernist Cuisine at Home, and it is great, and indeed On Food and Cooking is a masterpiece, but those are books that if I was starting out, I would read later. Better to start with something that has recipes that teach you things right away. I would also recommend Alton Brown's "I'm Just Here for the Food 2.0", which is like Ruhlman's book in that it teaches cooking methods and techniques through recipes. Great book.

Really? A $500 book for a beginner?

What exactly do you mean by "general cooking principles?"

If you're referring to scientific principles, then McGee's book is far and away the best book to start with AINEC, but it's not really a cookbook.

If you want to learn a good foundation of general culinary techniques and don't care as much about the scientific principles behind them, I would suggest The Professional Chef. The title can be misleading, it's not a book written for pro chefs, it's a book written for culinary students. It's the textbook used at the Culinary Institute Of America, the best culinary school in the country. It's a book designed to teach noobs all the fundamentals of culinary technique. There are lots of recipes, but they're mostly in quantities too large for home cooking, so you'll just have to reduce them. It's a great book to have as a knowledge reference and a cookbook.

If you really want a book intended for home cooking, I would suggest Jacques Pepin's New Complete Techniques. Pepin is a little old fashioned, but that's a solid book of basics.

House,

I think How to Cook Everything is pretty good.

http://www.amazon.com/Everything-Com.../dp/0764578650

If one were inclined, it can be found much cheaper.

+1

This is a go-to in my house. Seems to do everything you can think of, and offers suggestions of how to vary some of the recipes as well.

How to Cook Everything is great, Pepin's book is great. I was lucky to find a CIA book (Cooking at Home, not The Professional Chef) in the bargain bin at my megamart, also very good. I have drooled over The Professional Chef for years, but have not bought it.

I have too many books.

Oh, of all things, The Joy of Cooking is pretty good too! My default Tiramisu and Oatmeal Raisin Cookies come from that.

durango home-shucking, impressive.

Looking for a lasagna recipe and filed this as sounding excellent when i first read it. (Also got a kitchenaid with meat grinder attachment for the holidays and so the ground veal is really piquing my interest)

Anyone have improvements to this recipe or has the El D effect set this in stone?

use real mozzarella.

Lasagna is basically impossible to f up unless you try to do something stupid like make it healthy.

I've been making one with no cheese (yeah that's right) but use about 2 cups of full cream bechamel sauce instead. It's amazing.

brrrr,

I've made it a few more times and haven't bothered posting because of what Jack said - there's not that much to it. It's very easy to play around with different meat sauces and cheese mixtures.

One note - I disagree with donjonnie. I think using fresh mozzarella ends up making the lasagna a little too watery and not as rich and cheesy as I like.

Yeah, I thought I've read in many places that using fresh mozzarella for lasagna was a pretty bad decision due to wateriness issues. In my experience it seems accurate, as well.

I have made lasagnas with a bechamel (excellent) and ricotta/mascapone mixes (also excellent). Highly recommended.

Seems like you could take a similar approach as chicago deep dish pizza (which doesnt use fresh mozz for this reason) and go with reduced moisture mozz?

Here I will foist another uncooked hunk of meat upon this "cooking" thread.

I have been drying this coppa for about three months and finally cut it open today. You can see it's a little case-hardened. But it tastes great.

Looking great as always. Im plotting the heist of your magical meat fridge. Fair warning.

I started making my own sushi. Should have been doing this. Im kinda dope. Salmon skin rolls, spicy tuna and inside out california rolls. Sushi showed me how dull my knife became. I was thinking about posting this in the cheap luxuries thread. Americas Test Kitchen ranked this as one of their favorites I believe.

http://www.amazon.com/AccuSharp-1-00...nife+sharpener

Looks a helluva lot better than any coppa I've ever done.

Why so long on your drying time?

Whats your cure recipe?

Nice work as always

Long dry time because of the case hardening I think; it took a long time to get to where I wanted it to be by feel. That was because I let my humidifier run dry so the chamber was running ~50% humidity for a couple weeks.

Over 40% weight loss on this one. The recipe is roughy based on a curedmeats.blogspot.com coppa but I didn't take any notes this time. Tsk tsk.

I've had that happen a few times myself. I added a ceramic heat bulb to the freezer we use which causes the temp to fluctuate more often and kick in the freezers frost free fan. I have to make sure I keep the humidifier full because the cycling of temp and humidity uses a lot more water.

Got an ANOVA for Christmas so I could step my sous vide game up beyond the crockpot + PID temp controller. So far I've been nothing but impressed. Chuck roast, chicken breasts, and duck breasts were all very easy to execute. Cliffs:

- It heats water very quickly compared to my prior setup. Probably a degree every 20 seconds or so.
- Water circulation is pretty substantial, but the machine is overall very quiet.
- Device feels heavy and well constructed. Too soon to judge longevity, but I feel good about it.

My only complaint is that the clamp is positioned in a way so that it doesn't quite work with my medium stockpot. So I kind of feel silly using 4 gallons of water to do 2 duck breasts for an hour, but that's a minor complaint overall.

Using mine right now to make some 72 hour short ribs (about 8 hours left at this point).

Some boneless, some bone-in


Shortly after placing the bags in (so temp is coming back up to 60C)


Early on:


Starting to brown:


Screenshot of phone app (from earlier this morning):


First use was to poach some eggs, turned out fairly ideally (at least for me).



Also got this recently, haven't used it yet, not sure if I'm going to get a searzall attachment or not, will probably play around with a little first.

What are those of you with Anovas using to seal the food? Is there a similarly cheap/awesome vacuum sealer to buy simul? do you just do gravity + water + ziplock? Think I'm finally going to make the investment, don't want to screw up.

For now I'm just using a foodsaver.

Just be careful not to use this canister for the searzall if you do pick one up, MAPP Pro burns too hot for the materials and will burn straight through the screens in just a few uses. You need the green Propane tanks, and preferably the stout ones instead of the tall ones.

Yeah, I only got mapp since it was included in the package with the torch. Saw pics of people making that mistake.

Have you found the searzall pretty useful thus far?

FYI-If you buy the Searzall, you'll have to buy this gas container per the faqs:

I use a Vacmaster VP215 and they're on sale at Websturant.com now:



Its worth every penny for its myriad of uses and I save a lot of money buying large cuts of meats, portioning, sealing and then freezing plus I seal all my cheeses and they'll last for months. Example: I have cream cheese that is 4 months old and unspoiled in a sealed bag that normally goes bad in a few weeks.

Webstaurant has the best prices on bags as well. It is an upfront investment but I think its well worth it. I probably use mine 6+ times per day

For smaller sous vides I use this container: