Added to the above, I suppose what I'm wondering is if the al dente texture you are likely going for is dependent on the soak time (or volume or whatever) or the cook time, or both, or neither.

On pizza!

Is there anything in the selection of the foie gras someone who never cooks with it should know? It looks like you can find already cut slices that are about 2 oz each (sometimes frozen) which look like they would work. I would assume grade doesn't matter in this case since you didn't mention it.

For a novice cook, is there any issues may come up with buying a full lobe for the torchon you posted and then just cutting off a bit of it for this?

I have tried making mashed potatoes three times using methods like the one from your article, and those of Modernist Cuisine/Heston Blumenthal. I go for the super creamy kind. The problem I have is that they always end up a little grainy, almost like grits to some extent. I'm not sure if this is normal or not, or if it's caused by over cooking/under cooking/starch/etc. The last time was a bit better after cooking the potatoes SV like Heston recommends then boiling them for longer than I normally would but they were still a bit grainy.

Modernist Cuisine at Home has a korean fried chicken recipe in which they use a 50/50 combination of Wondra and potato starch, the recipe mentions that Wondra is "pre-hydrated." Does that or the potato starch have any impact on gluten development?

Awesome article.

Is there any reason not to do the broth in a pressure cooker? I've been doing my stocks like this (Heston & others first turned me on to it) and love the end result. I know times would have to be adjusted but can you think of any other concerns?

I just recently discovered how good salmon skin can be. But sometimes I still eat it without since my salmon always has scales and the process of removing them at home is messy and takes a bit of time. Any tips there?

Also, when I cook salmon with the skin in a pan I almost always have the problem where the outside edges are cooked but there is a 'bubble' in the middle that doesn't get cooked. I always thought this might be because I use much larger pieces than they usually do in restaurants. Can you really just press it with a spatula and fix this? (After years of awesome burgers pressing on anything with a spatula like that seems so counter intuitive)

"*Though now that it has, I'm tempted to do the initial slow cook in duck fat inside the Sous-Vide Supreme"

Are you familiar with Nathan Mhyrvold's findings of using duck fat for confit from Modernist Cuisine? He basically found that cooking in fat has no impact on the final product (except for coating the outside for a little bit of extra flavor, but that can be done later).

So basically cooking the wings in oil or duck fat or no fat would all have the same basic final product. This was great news for me because it meant I could SV duck/chicken legs all the time for confit without having to invest in/find a lot of duck fat.

Are you covering duck confit in a future article or your book?

Another vote here for ribeye.

I'd be curious to see your take on Alton Brown's searing method of putting the steaks under a chimney starter partially filled with coals. Supposedly that gets near the heat levels that commercial broilers do.

Ribeye

Duck confit. As a bonus using the left overs in an omlette with gruyere cheese.