Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

Have you calculated the costs of 'home-made'?

@producestories:

I agree that homemade broth is infinitely better than canned broth - I haven't found a single one that has the body of a good homemade chicken or veal stock (what do they do, suck all the gelatin out of the stock after its made?), but it's nutritional value doesn't have anything to do with pasteurization. Presumably, when you make stock at home, you're at least bringing the water up to just below a simmer, if not hotter. Pasteurization temperatures take place far below this temperature (around 165 degrees), so pasteurization should have no effect heat-wise on a stock, whether homemade or not. That's not to say that your homemade stock isn't better and more nutritious for other reasons...

But yes, cooking at home is an order of magnitude cheaper than eating out, especially if you're good with leftovers or breaking dishes into components that can be kept and used over the course of several meals over a period of weeks or months (tons of great sauces and stuff that you can make in bulk and use as needed to create cheap, tasty meals very rapidly).

kenjialtci at 11:55AM on 11/19/08

In Videos: Megadeath Burger: World's Hottest Hamburger in Australia

I thought the most interesting part of the video was seeing how slow-paced Australian tv magazine shows are compared to those in the US. In the US, the images would have popped up twice as fast and the whole video would have been cut down to under a minute. You can actually hear every word this woman is saying!

kenjialtci at 9:31PM on 11/18/08

Michael Schlow Cooks the Schlow Burger on 'Nightline'

I think the video is misleading - what he meant was that he cooks it a total of 90 seconds on each side (45 seconds, rotate, another 45 seconds). When I was in there documenting it last month, he cooked it even slightly less than that on the grill - about 30 seconds per rotation (2 minutes total). The grill was hot enough that the burger got a really good char in that short amount of time. It then finishes in the oven slowly.

Guess I'm not saying that a grill makes dry burgers, just that it makes dry-er burgers than a griddle. Personally, I choose moistness and fattiness over charred flavor. Salty crusty brown bits are good enough for me.

kenjialtci at 12:20PM on 11/18/08

Michael Schlow Cooks the Schlow Burger on 'Nightline'

I think it's the best thing you can do - get a ripping hot grill to give it a nice char on the exterior, then finish it slowly in the oven. It leaves the interior perfectly medium-rare from edge to edge, but also gives you a nice crust without drying it out at all - best of both worlds.

When I went there to do the "Schlow Now Ground Cow" story, it was one of the few great grilled burger experiences I've had, and I attribute a lot of it to the fact that I always find 100% grilled burgers to be too dry and crusty for me (you see, I'm a "cook a burger in its own fat on the griddle" kind of guy).

kenjialtci at 7:08PM on 11/17/08

'Top Chef' Season 5, Episode 1

"You know, I really think Carla and Patrick's cooking school (CIA?) has got to be cringing. They were classmates and they were the first 2 to go."

I've worked with a lot of CIA grads, and all I can say is: give me someone who's learned how to cook in a real kitchen over a culinary school grad any day. Especially these days. The majority (with rare exception) are a bunch of self-entitled lazy f**ks who think that just because they've gone to the CIA, they've earned some kind of respect in the kitchen.

You earn respect by doing the job, not holding a degree!

kenjialtci at 1:49PM on 11/14/08

Ed Levine on West Branch's Burger

That photo just prompted me to add West Branch to my "definitely do not go" list. The burger in the photo, that is. It's a great photo of an awful looking burger.

kenjialtci at 2:27PM on 11/13/08

At Olives, the Burger Is Just an Afterthought

meh. Never been a fan of Todd English. Anyone who hawks his own line of pans while wearing black chef's whites with ninja stylings on QVC has no business making my burger, or any of my food, for that matter...

kenjialtci at 4:30PM on 11/04/08

Why don't professional chefs use a garlic press?

I was a professional chef for a long time, and my experience varied from restaurant to restaurant, but I never once saw a garlic press. In the lower-end places, we tended to chop garlic in a robocoupe to whatever consistency it was needed for the recipe. At high end restaurants, we either did a microbrunoise (super super tiny cubes) for dishes where we wanted the flavor of garlic, but not the pronounced sharpness (which is created when the cells rupture and a chemical called allicin is formed), and in dishes where we didn't mind the heat, we used a microplane - much much faster for large amounts of uniform garlic than a press is, which asides from only doing one task, also has to be annoyingly cleaned after every few cloves. And it's messy.

kenjialtci at 5:04PM on 10/31/08

From Photograzing

Pumpkin Chawanmushi (Japanese steamed egg custard with pumpkin)

Wow - looks great! I love chawanmushi. I just picked some ginkgo nuts off the street last week, which are definitely making it into chawanmushi mext week...

kenjialtci at 11:05AM on 10/31/08

Candy Corn: Pro Stance

"I love that it's low in calories, and that it's based—at least ideologically—on corn. "

Not just idealogically - Candy corn is almost all corn syrup!

(and it's gross)

kenjialtci at 4:42PM on 10/30/08

'The New York Times' Doesn't Know What the Flying Spaghetti Monster Is

Ahh - even more woeful in the article is this:

Rather than scenting mozzarella cheese with rose petals, they’re sticking metal forks into hot dogs and cooking them by electrocution.

Not a new idea at all! Does she not remember the Mr. Wizard's World episode in which Don "Mr. Wizard" Herbert cooks a hot dog by plugging it into a lamp? That's Volume 2, episode 5 in case you want to see it for yourself.

kenjialtci at 4:09PM on 10/29/08

Pizza Crust?

My weirdo fiancé eats the crust before she eats the rest of the slice, making the whole thing rather sloppy and difficult. It's her theory that the center of everything is the best part - the liquid center of Freshenup gum, the cheesy bit of the Combo, the non-edge part of a hamburger - so she saves the tip for the end. That's if she can stop me from eating it before she gets there.

kenjialtci at 9:11PM on 10/28/08

Qué tal Las Hamburguesas? Fast Food Burger Match, Colombia vs. USA

@KingBoo
It's definitely my favorite of the big three (McDonald's, BK, and Wendy's), but that's about all we have in the Boston area, so I can't really compare it to any of the big chains that people get in other cities. Of course, none of them compare to real handmade non-mass-produced burgers...

kenjialtci at 1:00PM on 10/28/08

Sick of Dead Duck? Make your own Organic Tofu.

How to Make Organic Tofu

@wickedlady:

follow this link:

kenjialtci at 6:22PM on 10/27/08

Qué tal Las Hamburguesas? Fast Food Burger Match, Colombia vs. USA

@snowmoonelk

To be fair, this was a very unusual McDonald's burger - one of the best looking I've ever seen. Most of the time, they're squashed and greasy. Although, as for the bun and the pickle, I'm pretty sure that it's exactly the same everywhere in the world, so if you don't like that sweet bun or strange pickles, you're just out of luck with McD's...

kenjialtci at 5:12PM on 10/26/08

Qué tal Las Hamburguesas? Fast Food Burger Match, Colombia vs. USA

@Susquehanna

Who doesn't like hamburgers?

Baranquilla is a nice city, though I didn't get to spend much time in it. Cartagena is awesome. If you go to a coastal city, I'd definitely go there, and make sure that you get out to the islands. It's rare that you can find a Caribbean island with almost no tourists on it. We had our own stretch of sand with no other people in sight for hours (except the kids walking around trying to sell you oysters - I didn't trust them. The oysters, not the kids).

kenjialtci at 12:15PM on 10/25/08

Qué tal Las Hamburguesas? Fast Food Burger Match, Colombia vs. USA

@surgebgk

Yes - I should have mentioned that. McDonald's and BK have only been in Colombia for a few years, and from what I've heard, Burger King has gone out of business, and McDonald's is still struggling to catch on.

Though I think it's not simply a matter of food quality - it's a matter of American style fast-food service being relatively foreign there. McDonald's is only really popular here because it's extraordinarily quick, and has things like drive-throughs. If speed and convenience are not your only considerations, as they are not in Colombia, then you've no incentive to choose McDonald's over a higher quality, "real" restaurant. When people go out for lunch, they plan to take the time away from their desk to go out, sit down, enjoy their meal, then come back - McDonald's just doesn't fit into this lifestyle.

kenjialtci at 3:55PM on 10/24/08

In Videos: How the Shake Shack Makes Its Burgers

Paint scraper! Genius!

Also a big fan of burger smashing (but of course, as ESNY1077 says, only at the very beginning, lest you lose juices).

kenjialtci at 3:17PM on 10/23/08

Most embarassing food moment?

@fastfoodcritic

And Chinese people certainly don't REALLY use chopsticks to eat Japanese sushi!

Sushi's finger food anyway - not using chopsticks is 100% acceptable.

kenjialtci at 3:06PM on 10/23/08

Most embarassing food moment?

My second restaurant job. I was on pasta and the pasta machine clogged. I thought I was being all quick-acting and on top of the situation when I ran to the bathroom to grab the plunger to unclog it... the same plunger that gets used in the toilet. Only after I unclogged the machine and saw the other cooks staring at me did I realize what I had done. Whoops.

Needless to say, the machine had to be emptied and sterilized, and nobody was too happy with me about not having a working, human waste-free pasta machine for service.

kenjialtci at 3:02PM on 10/23/08

Pizza With a Knife & Fork?

No fork and knife! If you need a fork and knife to eat a pizza, it means the pizza was made wrong. The whole point of a pizza is that it's designed to be eaten in your hands while walking around - street food.

kenjialtci at 12:07PM on 10/23/08

Katie Lee Joel Defends Her Burger Bash Victory

I'm with the critics on this one. The burger patty doesn't make it a burger. If a Salisbury steak's not a hamburger, then a patty melts not a hamburger either. Though it does look delicious.

My question is, in her recipe, she tells you to put six slices of bread buttered side down in a skillet - who the hell has a skillet that can fit six slices of bread?!?

kenjialtci at 10:15AM on 10/23/08

Flap-Meat Burger at Irving Mill in New York City

Whoah - gotta try it. Flap meat is what I ended up with in the Drive-In Burger story from Cook's Illustrated, though the addition of beef cheek is something I never tried - sounds good!

kenjialtci at 4:49PM on 10/15/08