Dry curing humidity control: I don't know why I complicate things this much

Over the past few days I've purchased about 3 humidifiers (all used, about $11 total) and experienced a bit of frustration. I thought this was the best time of the year to cure sausage because my basement humidity increases during the midwest's rainy season and continues into the upcoming months (ca. 60°F and 60% RH). Now, I realize I was an idiot. After reading Ruhlman's post on sopressata (it's a fermented sausage, but the dry cure part should be the same for saucisson sec), he uses a simple dorm fridge with a salt bath for curing. The salt in the water (sat'd) only serves to bring down the humidity if it gets over 75% (a museum curator's trick).

With my previous set up, I was shooting for more airflow and humidity. Then I learned that evaporative wick-type humidifiers have a tough time breaking 55%. They work well when the humidity is winter-low, but not so well after that. They operate with a type of theoretical humidistat based on the method of water evaporation. I also tried a centrifugal humidifier where the water is sprayed and atomized in front of a fan. This was another cheapie and worked well, but pegged at 62%. After reading Ruhlman's post, I gave up on airflow and went with the near perfect plastic cylinder you see here (it is not a trash can). A dry run, no sausage suspended - just a humidity meter and I'm getting 70+% RH.

In hindsight, I learned a lot, only blew $11, and have an 8 gal humidifier that can probably humidify the entire house next winter (only $7.13, operates for about a dime a day and, it's very quiet). I guess I've had more expensive lessons.

I now have my curing environment worked out, my 2" dia. casings, and only need to order some mold (Andrew, need anything from Butcher-Packer.com?) and I'm ready.

It's saucisson sec (curing) season

Please see end of post for updates

Inside the enclosure is my remote humidity sensor.

 It's saucisson sec season, but the humidity is still a tad low, around 55% in my basement.  I want to get started on curing since I have my larger casings and all (beef middles, about 62 mm), so I decided to put together this enclosure to maintain a higher humidity; a kind of microenvironment within my basement.  So far, it seems to be working.  I don't know how often I'll have to refill the humidifier, but it seems to be giving a high enough humidity.  After monitoring a few days, I'll be getting a batch together.

24 hours later, after all equilibrated:
Outside the enclosure - 58% RH, Inside - 65% RH, not as good as I'd hoped.

Replaced humidifier with stockpot of 2 gal water at approximately 100°F. I'll wait another 24 hours for equilibration and see how the readings go. I also put a Kill A Watt meter on it to see how much it would cost per day to run a hotplate, they pull a lot of juice.

Popovers. Little help please?

Before the collapse

The other night, I was able to get home a bit early and make some beer-braised short ribs and noodles for dinner. Totally psyched, but I made a mistake and didn't make enough noodles and wanted to add a bit more starch to the meal. Popovers. Perfect. Could any bread be more straightforward?

milk, salt, egg, flour, mix, rest, drop into buttered, preheated muffin tin, poof, voilà. After baking 450°F for 5 min and 400°F for 20 min they looked wonderful. I took them out of the oven, a quick photo, turned my head, flop. Within a few seconds they were limp blobs of dough, not the huge, crisp popovers they were a minute before. This is the second time it has happened to me.

Update
Rachel commented that maybe I should've cooked 'em longer. The recipe I followed was from Ruhlman's Ratio. In Ratio, the cooking temp/time sequence is 450F/10 minutes, followed by 375F/20-30 min. In Ruhlman's blogpost, the baking instructions are "450 till done."

Mrs. Dave's Beer, an accomplished but oft-bullied-out-of-the-kitchen baker herself recommended the Better Homes and Gardens recipe. "It has never failed" she declared (she's right, she makes killer popovers). The recipe from BH&G is nearly identical with the exception that the muffin pan is lubed with shortening and there's a tablespoon of oil per 200 g of dough and the baking instructions are significantly different. BH&G prescribes 450F/20 minutes followed by 350F for 15 to 20 min or till very firm." The BH&G recipe continues to say (I'm sorry for violating all kinds of legal stuff, but this is important)

"If popovers brown too quickly, turn off oven and finish baking in the cooling oven till very firm. A few minutes before removing from oven, prick each popover with a fork to let steam escape."

With that much commentary after the baking temperature and time, I gather the recipe has produced a sunken popover or two prior to publication.

My take on this? The initial high temperature is needed for the oven spring and then the rest of the baking is for stengthening the exterior, yet not burning the outside. So, I'm with the more careful version of baking provided by BH&G. Don't know if the pricking with a fork is necessary, but I'll do it. Let you know how it goes.

Deep frying (with the Virgin)

Few are as mindful of the food we eat. Food Network must be supported by the cardiovascular drug industry.  Eating healthy need not require one to eliminate all fatty foods. To us, it's making those little forays into the dark side high quality.

Today's post prescribes leaving those limp little greasy potatoes under the lamp and use your allocation of fat wisely. Frankie, and a handful of other kids I know, seem to be passionate about chicken nuggets. When I told her I was making some for dinner - she dutifully ran away, got the ketchup, sat down and readied herself for a special treat.

Deep frying is about correct temperature, clean oil and good coating. My general formula for a delectable, tenacious coating is: dry the protein, coat with flour (knock off excess), dip in egg and coat with breadcrumbs seasoned thusly: 1 lb bread crumbs + 15 g salt + any other seasoning you please (feel free to prep and freeze at this point). I made chicken nuggets the other night with plain boneless breast pieces. I brined 'em a bit, cut them into nuggets, coated them and fried them. I fry with a Fry Daddy (common thrift item, ca. $3). Yum. Served with blanched asparagus and lightly spiced black beans. An odd combination, but good.

Food just plunged in and the moisture bubbling away from the oil

A real chicken nugget (to the left of the oil stain in the image of the Virgin Mary)

The blotting paper will go up for auction on Ebay tomorrow.

Firedome v 2.0, details soon

I'm usually holding my kettle like Kwai Chang Caine, but I had to take this shot.


5 minutes to dinner time

Today I fired up my 2nd version of my modified kettle/pizza oven - again. Instead of annealing the crust to the clay, the configuration worked swimmingly. The top half is the normal Firedome, but the bottom hemisphere has a 8" diameter hole in it to increase air flow. I used briquettes and it cooked top and bottom identically. My thermocouple malfunctioned and I didn't get any dome temps, but the cooking surface was about 630°F. It was a nice pizza and salad night.

I think the last failed run was a fluke. Next run is lump and, shy of using a leaf blower to increase combustion, I think I maxed on temperature. I'm thrilled with the results, but a tad disappointed I couldn't get to 1000+F.

Kwai Chang Caine
Grasshopper
Firedome, original post

Roasted large lima beans

lima bean chips, yum

A while back I made some roasted cannellini beans from cooked canned beans. Pretty cool snack. Not low cal, but low fat and good protein. A few days later I spoke with the owner of Mediterranean Food Imports about their roasted garbanzos. She said roasted beans are NOT cooked beans; simply soaked and slow roasted. I bought some of their roasted garbanzos to test them. Chalky, ich.

I contemplated the difference between roasting cooked vs soaked beans for days. What's the difference between a cooked vs. soaked bean? If a bean's soaked long enough, will it taste like a cooked bean? My thoughts on this are all over the place, but it's a blog and I'm not really responsible for coherent content. Here's what I did in pursuit of a nifty new food snack.

I took some large lima beans and soaked them for about 3 days. Each day that passed the beans became more and more mild and less chalky. I used large limas because they're ... large. I figured I'd still have a good size snack after the hydration/roasting cycle. A day into the soaking, I stripped off the skins and split the lima beans in half. My intention was to finally roast them having all similar size pieces (rather than a mixture of whole and half beans) to aid in final product consistency, and the skins were kept; roasting these nubbins yields little potato chip-like niblets.

After 3 days of changing the water twice a day, I removed the soak water and tossed them with peanut oil (2T), sprinkled them heavily with coarse salt and roasted them for an hour and 20 minutes at 300°F convection shaking the tray vigorously every 20 minutes until they turned golden brown. I pulled them from the oven and they were wonderful. Crisp, little crunch snacks with a lima bean taste and no chalkiness at all. I'm not sure what they'll be like after sitting out overnight. I'll update this observation (if there's any left) later...

alt.eats.columbus ... go.there.now

The coincidence was a bit eerie.

Last night, on our way to La Casita on Bethel (a great place we've visited a couple times) something piqued our curiosity. Mrs. DavesBeer spyed a Thai and Korean restaurant and at least one other embedded in a strip mall (across from KMart). Our curiosity was piqued, but we continued to our more familiar place (plus we were meeting friends). The proverbial "holes in the wall" too often don't often pop up on a Google local search, and, if they did, "reviews" would be unreliable (no offense to the suckiness of Yelp, but it sucks).

Dinner was great, then to Denise's for a quick dessert for the kiddies and Jim appears as if from a 4th dimension. Triggered by this presence, I have an immediate flashback to alt.eats.columbus (a clever usenet reference). He, Bethia and a few others (I intend to get to know) are covering the less frequented of the more interesting culinary finds throughout the city. This group will educate us with quality evaluations of what will be the best finds in the city and help small family businesses gain the reputation they deserve.

I think this one's a hit. Good luck to them.

Links (I find embedding them clunky):
alt.eats.columbus ~ La Casita (killer kidney beans) ~ Jim ~ Bethia

Hooray!

The Pizza Grand Prix at Wild Goose Creative was a blast. My thanks to WGC for hosting, Jim Ellison and Columbus Underground for the event's creation and the judges whom I did NOT pay off:
Ms. Woolf - Hungry Woolf .com
Mr. Aufdencamp – Mama Mimi’s Take ‘N Bake Pizza
Mr. Kopecky – Columbus Pierogi King
Mrs. Yerkes – from Bono Pizza

And thanks to my wife and kid for tolerating my lunacy during the Firedome development and my preparation for this most excellent event and all the cheese mishaps.

Me, cooking pizza in the alley behind Wild Goose

The loot.

Frankie and I went through the goodies this morning, awesome.

Comments anyone?

-- Jim Lahey and Rick Flaste: My Bread, The Revolutionary No-Work, No-Knead Method.
I think Lahey was the first to be videotaped with Bittman on this no knead stuff. I'm in B&N now and wondering if this is worthwhile. The books got back-cover endorsements from Bourdain, Bittman, Batali and Steingarten - is it possible he paid them ALL off to get their praise? Chime in and let me know if you've used this.

ps In the interest of full disclosure, this is an affiliate link. If you click and buy, I make big bucks kiddies. About 4% of the price. I use these all over the webercam and come end of the quarter, I'm rolling in nickels, about $3 and change each and every 3 months. Heh, heh, heh.

One pie, coming up.

Been a little preoccupied this week with the upcoming Pizza Grand Prix. As you can see, my trunk kept receiving bags of lump and briquettes as I contemplated - and tested for - the perfect fuel. I'm not sure if I'm running lump or briquettes in the Firedome yet. Maybe it'll be a secret mixture.

My hardware choice is locked down; my version 2 flopped wicked bad, but a slightly modified 1st model is certainly adequate. I'm now hunting down ingredients. Today I scored my tomatoes. Do you know how hard it is to find a label like that? They're nice and will make up a key part of my topping. The other ingredients are on my scavenger hunt for the next couple days. It's not going to be anything groundbreaking. A simple pie celebrating the beauty of a handful of ingredients. The contest part will be fun, but the truth is I make pizzas for anyone who likes them, myself included. My big challenge Sunday will be a bit more orderliness to my mise while prepping and serving a handful of pizzas (not doing quite so many this time). My last run was sloppy.

Stop by, my girls will be cheering me on (even if my pizza isn't quite as good as the one at Chuck E. Cheese).

18 Minute (or less) Matzo

Over the past few days, I've been thinking of this cracker. I made something like this before, but these are better. Kind of like traditional matzo, except they're grained up and there's no Rabbi in the recipe:

Steel cut oats, 50 g, ground fine in a burr grinder
Flax seed, 1T
water, 100 g
unbleached white flour, 100 g
salt, 3 g
vegetable oil, 1T
sugar, 1t

Mix ingredients, divide in 60 g lumps, roll out into 8" discs, place discs on super thin sheet (I use a grilling vegetable topper), score surface with pizza cutter before placing in oven, bake at 450°F until some burned bits appear (ca. 10 minutes), cool, crack and eat.

epic. failure.

Last night I used a modification of my firedome project.  I swapped the kettle's lower hemisphere for one that had an 8" hole cut out of the bottom.  The idea was to increase air flow, hence combustion, and get the temps inside the dome to about 1,000°F.  That gaping hole, compared to the normal venting, apparently screwed things up.  I did get a dome temp of about 950 for an hour or so, but when I tossed on a pizza, the bottom charred in about 2 minutes while the top was undercooked.  Oh, and Dave the Brilliant changed another variable while he was at it.  I used lump charcoal.  2 Variables changed and char formation.  What to do?  The Pizza Grand Prix is nearing (March 14th at WildGooseCreative(.com, come by and I'll autograph your kettle) and I'm busy as hell with the 9-to-5.  I'm backing off to the normal lower hemisphere, using lump and will probably have time for one more test run.  

I'm not terribly worried.  I think the massive cutout in the kettle, in hindsight, was just too radical a change.  Pizza in the grill is all about uniformity:  getting the top and bottom to cook at similar rates and who knows what that hole in bottom is doing compared to the relatively closed and vented system of the normal kettle.  The lump will be a fun and relatively conservative tweak that I believe will be constructive.

Dinner that night was interesting.  Half the night's intended menu had undergone near complete combustion leaving only residual ash and char.  I took the other blob of dough and heated the regular oven fast, using convection, and tossed on a legume side and some fresh raw veggies.  We had a meal in about 20 minutes and I had lots to think about.  After the initial shock of disappointment, failures can be pretty instructive.  Wish I hadn't waited so long to give it a test drive.

Smelts, frozen like Walt Disney

I recently realized frozen smelts can only be found in the grocery store during cooler months. I prepped a bunch last night and took what I didn't cook and tossed 'em in the freezer. I'm hoping the breading stays on once I removed them from the freezer. Depicted are my stages of preparation of these little delicate morsels of the sea.

Smelts, thawed and dried.

Floured, egged and encrusted in breadcrumbs, some fried, some frozen.

Vacuum packed and sentenced to the freezer until the next fish fry.

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