Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

Why should one be more comfortable calling it "stuffing" only when it is baked in the bird and "dressing" when baked in a casserole pan? I recognize that the term "stuffing" implies "to stuff," as in to stuff the bird with it. But why is "dressing" more appropriate for it when baked in a casserole pan? The term "dressing" could be equally read to imply "to dress," as in it dresses something. In the case of baking it in a casserole pans, is the something that is "dressed" the casserole pan? Of course, not! What is "dressed" is THE BIRD or the plate on which it is presented. Just as the bird is stuffed with it, the bird is dressed (up) with it. I take the position that the terms "stuffing" and "dressing" are equally inapt when referring to what is baked in a casserole pan.

For the past several years I have been bringing Ommegang's Three Philosophers to the Thanksgiving celebration. Festive, fruity but not cloyingly sweet, and a high enough alcohol content to warm the soul.

The previous comment is the best: that in the animal world, many predators begin eating their prey while it is still alive. Especially fish. Of course, they don't let it sit on the table thrashing about, half-dead from having been tossed in hot oil, before eating it.

People can be beyond cruel to their food. There have been reports (not well documented it seems, though) of live monkeys having their skulls hacked open to people can eat the brains while the monkey is still alive. It's not clear from the news reports whether this is true or the stuff of Indiana Jones fiction, but it would not surprise me.

Beau Jo's is vile. For a city that's supposedly the healthiest in the country, Beau Jo's pizza is a gutbuster abomination.

Ditto to the comments about the photo. I was going to say that it is a fire hazard to use a turkey fryer on a wooden deck OR so apparently close to the house. This is not the photo to use to encourage people to fry turkeys. Rather, the photo shows how NOT to do it.

@youngbuck: I am skeptical that an electric turkey fryer that runs on a mere 110V (as in the US) can heat a sufficient volume of oil to a sufficiently high temperature to fry a turkey. But maybe. Have you tried this gadget yourself?

@accidentalepicurean: There are many types of Morning Glory. I am not familiar with pad boom fai dang, but if it is made with what I know as Water Morning Glory, also known as Water Spinach (and, I think, Rau Muong in Vietnamese), I'd love the dish. I'm no botanist, but I suspect that Water Morning Glory, which I believe is a more or less aquatic plant, is not the same thing as the Morning Glories with the pretty flowers that we see frequently in N. America and which goats apparently will take pleasure in eating.

@unpocojmoney: I believe that it's not so much the smoke that preserves it as the salt and the fact that there's much less moisture in smoked salmon than in fresh salmon, so what you have left is a fairly salty, fatty/oily protein rather than the kind of wet and non-salty environment in which bacteria love to set up shop. However, the smoke "probably" does contribute to the preservation. I've never seen a very definitive scientific statement about the preservative effect of smoking meat and fish. The books I have on the subject tend to glaze over this issue with a comment such as "Smoking meat was originally used as a method of preservation and probably does have some preservative effect, but ..." and then goes on to explain how salting, drying, fermenting and the use of cures plays a far clearer role in preserving foods.

Dunno about the electric model, but similar rotary butter spreaders are common in diners and foodservice operations. If you've eaten buttered bread at a large, busy diner, they likely used a butter spreader like this.

Some people are concerned whether boiling a live lobster is painful or cruel, but I suppose it's equally plausible that the end of an elderly lobster's life is slow and painful and lobsters don't simply die in their sleep the way we'd like to believe that the luckiest of elderly humans expire. So I could see an argument for lobster euthanasia.

I made one with bison the other night. Heavenly ... if you like bison, that is.

Here in the (US) South, they say the only part of the pig that isn't eaten is the oink. I've tried crispy ear bits, and they're fine--nothing I would seek out again. But Chichi, you have gained my respect with the "half a pig's head, skull and all." That's high adventure for anyone, anywhere.

Good comments here, though, relating to the trendiness of offal and other "nasty bits." People, there is a reason why pork and ham and beefsteak became the cuts of choice as people escaped poverty and became affluent enough to eat them: those cuts taste better. None of the food journalism that has come out of this offal / "whole animal" trend has yet convinced me that there is some little bit of meat or tendon or organ or whatever that is so much more delicious than, say, a steak, that it is worth all the trouble.

"The food is made of whatever's cheap, plentiful, and in season." Why can't we have this concept in the US? Aside from what the luckiest among us are able to buy from farmstands in the summer, NOTHING is cheap, plentiful and in season. Almost all of the food that is presented in our grocery stores comes from a far-flung distribution web in which most local, seasonal advantage is squashed, and prices are propped up and evened out across the land. You can live in an _______-producing state (fill in the blank with a fruit, for example), and grocery store _______s are still not cheap.

I tried but could not get the "perfect soft-cooked egg" by placing an egg taken straight from the fridge into 180F water, despite meticulously maintaining the water bath at eggsactly 180F for the six minutes the egg was immersed. The egg was considerably undercooked, with the whites fairly liquidy. I'm going to try egg-en.