Be Excellent To Each Other

Oh, if it's badly cooked, sure. It's just greasy jelly. But if crackling is like that, it's just bad crackling.

Man, I might nip into town for a Hogroast(TM).

Also, we went into York last night for an Italian to celebrate my employment. It was lovely. There are a lot of Italian restaurants in York. This one is an Italian deli by day (with some very interesting stuff on sale that I'll be going back for) and a restaurant upstairs by night.

I had mozzarella/tomatoes/pesto/balsamic to start with, a chicken and mushroom risotto and some ice cream. The Mrs had a delicious chicken liver pâté with brandy (I should've got this, and stole some of hers), a seafood lasagne which was excellent and profiteroles. A good time was had by all. 8/10.

The risotto was the most disappointing part for me. It was a perfectly decent risotto, cooked well, but it was just boring. There were lots of interesting looking pasta dishes, and I wish I'd gone for one of them instead.

edit: Fancy that - it's ranked number 9 out of 408 restaurants in York.

http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Restaurant ... gland.html

Slow Cooking 101.

Do I have to cook the meat in some sort of sauce or fluid. What would happen if I just put a joint in with a dry rub for 8 hours?

Doesn't the liquid ensure more even heat distribution at such relatively low temperatures?

It's a number of factors. The liquid is much better at thermal conductivity than air, so it helps the heat reach all parts of the meat. It's also much more thermally stable - your slow cooker doesn't have to do much work to keep it at the required temperature. If you had just air in there, your slow cooker would be constantly kicking in and turning off, and would probably throw a shitfit and die. Also, the lid won't quite be airtight, so without liquid the meat will lose its own moisture and really dry out unless it's really fatty.

I often cook meat in the oven on a really low heat, just in a tray with some foil on it, and all I do is baste it from time to time (with it's natural juices, or possibly some spray oil at the start of it)

As long as you do that, I've found it's fine.

Malc

I've heard hearsay that some cheaper slow cookers also have rather uneven heat distribution. With no liquid to move heat around and cancel out hotspots, they can crack the crockpot, apparently.

The oven is very different to a slow cooker.

Yeah, I realised you were talking about that after I posted, ah well.

Malc

Why put this in a slow cooker at all, of course? As Malc has suggested, you could just do this in a normal oven.

Speaking of ovens, I finally cleaned mine on the weekend, after years of neglect. Oh boy. Now the racks slide in and out! And, more importantly, I can now get someone out to come replace the broken element in my bottom oven.

Cool, I wont try that then

Indeed, it was more a question about the physics of slow cookers, than a plan to actually do it, if that makes sense



I paid a dude £30 last time and let him clean it. Life is too short to be cleaning ovens!

I bought a tin of oven cleaning stuff when we moved in. Still haven't done it. It scares me. The tin is mainly covered with warnings about how dangerous the chemicals in it are.

Just call Mr Russell. Loves the jobs you hate.

It was so dirty, I couldn't, in good conscience, bring myself to do that

Trooper has no conscience.

When selecting which cleaner to buy, I adopted a simple metric of "the one with the most dire warnings". I think the one I used, if left in the oven for one minute longer than the recommended time, opened a portal to Hell.

Not true anymore, I haven't killed anyone in ages.

Haha!

Real men make it themselves.

Too much science, not enough mindlessly purchasing dangerous chemicals.

If it can't open a portal to Hell, I'm not buying it. Unless perhaps I need to wear a full bunny suit when using it.

I've replaced two elements in ovens in my life, which invovled four screws to remove the back plate, and three screws to take the element out. It's super-simple, and a new element is only around £20.

For my oven, you need to remove the interior fittings, then the cavity backplate, the fan blade (one nut, left hand thread, often requires careful handling as it's full of muck and will cross-thread if given half a chance), then take the entire oven out of the cupboard, remove the rear housing, unplug the element, remove the element, then refitting is the reverse of removal.

Thanks, Siemens.

The part alone is £20-25. I've had quotes from men in white vans to do the job for £55-65 all in (parts+labour). Feels like a no brainer to me.

Use that company that did your washing machine (I think) and see if you can make more money!

IJTFY

Is it Cillit Bang? http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... -bang.html

Haha fucking hell!

What an idiot.

Smashed potatoes.
Sautéed onions and mushrooms.
Gravy.
Jimmy's Farm rare breed sausages, in the following varieties:
Pork, cider & apple
Breakfast (pork & bacon)
Ipswich Super Blue (pork & stilton)
St George (pork, nutmeg, pepper)

Om nom nom awesome sausages.

Roast butternut squash stuffed with chorizo and wild mushrooms, with poached eggs.

Looks lovely!

Yeah, it was. I was most pleased.

Good work!

sliced aubergine, gammon slices topped with a concoction, baked under foil for half an hour while the chips cooked. Served with fried duck eggs.

Concoction was, approximately, olive oil, salt, pepper, balsamic, tomato puree, Dijon mustard, paprika, smoked paprika, ground coriandree, cayenne.

Lovely!

Tesco pizza when I get home, bitches!

It looks pretty nice, actually.

Yeah I've had that one, tasty!

Woke up at 5:30 and I've done nothing but cook since then. Craster & Mrs Cras are staying with us this weekend and I've got something hopefully special planned for tomorrow night.

Also some food, by the sounds of it.

Please say you're attempting a crockenbush.

Yes yes, but what about the food?

is it square? That's an expensive pizza

This is what I made yesterday: barbecued pulled pork.



I got up at 6:30 am, got the barbecue lit by 7 am, and the meat went on at 7:30. I then cooked it until about 6pm, when I ran out of time -- it still wasn't quite at the temperature I had been aiming for. Throughout that time I had to maintain my charcoal barbecue at a steady 107 deg C. It's easier than it sounds, but it's not trivial either.

The meteorite-like surface isn't burnt. It's called "bark" and it's a flavoursome mix of heavily seasoned spice rub, dehydrated jerky-like meat, and a huge amount of hickory smoke. You stir the bark through the pork to give contrasting textures and flavour the meat.

I also made lime and chilli butter (to serve with the corn on the cob I will be barbecuing later), coleslaw, and crema catalana for dessert. Busy day yesterday.

A bit of cream cheese in scrambled eggs is good. That is all.

So, that unassuming-looking pulled pork sandwich is the most elaborate thing I've ever cooked. Twelve-ish hours to do the pork. Homemade coleslaw, homemade East Carolina barbecue sauce (vinegar-based), homemade Kentucky bourbon barbecue sauce (tomato-based). And it turned out bloody great.

So, that unassuming-looking beans on toast is the least elaborate thing I've ever cooked. Three-ish minutes to do the beans. Shop-bought bread and beans, shop-bought Heinz classic barbecue sauce (rich and smokey), shop-bought Heinz Sticky barbecue sauce (smooth and sweet). And it turned out bloody great.

NO CHEESE? WTF BBQ GET OUT