Smoke Gets In Your Eyes

I can't cook. I use a smoke alarm as a timer - Carol Siskind

I have been aware of the limitations of the home ventilation hood since long before I became intimately acquainted with those in a professional kitchen. The latter, unconcerned with aesthetic or quiet operation, does a fine job of removing smoke and vapors. The inside surfaces, especially the filter screens become encrusted with grease and other airborne particulates. Cleaning becomes a dreaded, if necessary evil.

It does its job.


The same cannot be said of the standard home unit. It is underpowered and not particularly well designed. The filter may contain something like activated charcoal, but in most cases is overlapping layers of metal mesh. It does collect grease and needs to be cleaned regularly, but the grime that builds up on nearby surfaces highlights its limitations. 

The problem is two-fold: in addition to being underpowered the unit is mounted too low and because of this the skirt of the hood does not reach out far enough to cover the cooking surface. Otherwise you’d whack your head, and there are enough ways for me to do that.
The length of the skirt is especially an impediment if, like ours, your 14,000 BTU power burner is in the front. It's usually my first choice for cooking.

Enter the smoke alarm. Enough smoke makes it through the filter to set it off on a regular basis. You can reduce these problems if you are lucky enough to have a hood vented to the outside, but they still persist. I had one for the last 11 years, and still had to pull the battery out when I cooked.

Frankly, a passive chimney - centuries-old technology – would seem more effective.

Perhaps the worst system I have ever encountered was the Jenn Air, installed by my parents in our first new family home. Typical 70's build with a kitchen island, it was hoodless. The system was vented to the outside, but it drew downward - fighting both gravity and thermodynamics. Doh!
Until we moved, that is. The new home has the "convenience" of a microwave mounted over the range. The apron is shorter and the skirt is even lower than a standard hood. So low that my pressure canner blocks access to the microwave. Forget about using the back of the stove or a larger stockpot.

The filtration system is nonexistent. Using the fan makes it certain that the alarm will sound. Making things worse, the hood fan has a heat activated sensor. When that kicks on you can’t shut it off manually. You have to wait until it shuts itself off.

So, this has my vote for the worst home system ever. Did I mention that the exhaust for the unit is right in front of your face?

Smoke does get in your eyes.

A Cut Above

There was never a good Knife made of bad Steel - Poor Richard's Almanac

I have fallen in love with a knife.


I never planned it this way - I never knew I wanted it this badly. It's not like the gleaming Shun chef knife on display at my store.  I have lusted for that for years.  Now that I know I will be bringing it home, I visit that knife every day.  Just to talk to it.  Get it used to the sound of my voice. I have even introduced it to a couple of knives I already own, so it won't feel like a stranger when it arrives.

Here is a selfie I took with it.

My Mommys Brisket - Redux

No matter how much you revisit the past...there’s nothing new to see. -Robert Tew

One of the most important lessons that any cook, particularly a self-taught cook, has to learn is that a recipe is just somebody’s opinion. As James Beard put it, “it’s always a good idea to follow the directions exactly the first time you try a recipe. But from then on, you’re on your own.” Inspiration, improvisation and even whimsy are the hallmarks of a good cook, and what makes cooking something fun to do.

Even my mommy’s brisket recipe, a hallmark of our family holiday celebrations, has gone through some changes at my hand. But, this year’s brisket was cooked in a really cool way.

I cooked it sous vide.

Advice is like castor oil, easy enough to give but dreadful uneasy to take. - Josh Billings

Thoughts whilst oiling a cutting board:

I vividly remember the my first cutting board. I made it my 7th grade shop class at Brookside Middle School in suburban Rochester (shortly before I was suspended for my first and only time for saying f**k you to the shop teacher). It was made of hardwood 1x2, alternated oak and maple as I recall, glued together with Elmer's® Carpenter's Wood Glue, trimmed to 12x8, and sanded silky-smooth with care. It needed to be - it was a gift for my Mother. She died a couple of months later, a major contributing factor to my explosion with the shop teacher, an event that followed a few weeks later.

I don't mention that for the purpose of pathos, but rather to point out that the shop teacher was a rectum. One his many pearls of wisdom was to use salad oil (at that time it would have been Wesson Vegetable Oil) to treat and protect the wood of the cutting board. It took years, the purchase of a cutting board of my own, and the commencement of a commitment to the study of cookery, to realize how really bad his advice was - vegetable oil goes rancid.

The answer is mineral oil, found by the pint or quart in, of all places, the laxative aisle of your local pharmacy. So here is the reason I bring this issue up - over the years we have acquired two bottles of products that claim to be specifically designed to protect and preserve wood surfaces. No, we didn't pay for them. I probably should have just used them up, but I always thought there might be a lesson to be learned from them.

On the left is a 4 oz. bottle of "Wood Preserver" from Fox Run Craftsman. I don't know what it was purchased for, but today it would be $3.49. The ingredients list a mineral oil base, but nothing else. It has no taste or aroma, so my guess it's just mineral oil.

The middle option is Tree Spirit Mineral Oil. My bottle was 8 oz. for $2.99, but the best price I can find now is 12 oz. for $4.99. It is just mineral oil, but it also carries the claim that it is food safe. I cannot think of anything that would be more food safe that a product sold in a pharmacy for the purpose of being ingested by a human being.

That's the point - it's a scam. It may not be deceptive or misleading in a legal sense, but it's a scam. I don't care that it is targeted at people with more money than brains because each time the trust of people is abused by the food and cookery industry, it makes it harder for those who care to make a case.

Bottom line? Fox Run $.87/oz. Tree Spirit $.41/oz. Mineral oil from the local megamart $.11/oz!

Caveat Emptor!

The Mother of Invention

No not Zappa (though Apostrophe(') is in the CD player in my car).

No, this is about something you find in the sinks in many commercial kitchens - an overflow tube (lift the lid on your toilet tank and you find a similar thing). The idea is that with this device you can allow water to flow into a sink and when it reaches a certain level the water goes down the tube, so you can have a continuous flow of fresh cold water. It's good for thawing large objects, or cooling soups and stocks. Ice bath's may be best, but I don't have room in the freezer to stockpile ice, so I end up buying it when the stockpot cannot be put in a snowbank.



The commercial versions won't work in a home sink - the drain is too big - so I fabicated my own. The base is a basic home sink drain plug.






I cut off the "knob" portion, and used a glue/sealer from Locktite to attach a measured piece of 1 1/4 inch PVC pipe to it. I think, after trying it, that I may trim another 1/4 off the pipe.






The result is placed in the drain and voilà!

Of course a home sink has the drain in the center, but I just had a 16 pound turkey in there, and stock in a Cambro bucket fits just fine. Not perfect, but it works!

Staying Alive and Changes

Saturday Night Fever is the only movie I have ever walked out of, so It is easy for me to choose Bowie over the Bee Gees. But, this is not a music blog.

Staying Alive refers to the fact that the dried sausage turned out OK, and nobody had any ill effects from eating it. When we took it off the hook, some ten days earlier than it was supposed to be ready there was no sign of mold or external discoloration. The texture felt like any dry sausage I'd buy at local stores. I cut into the link, and, as you can see, the color was uniform throughout. So I tasted it. It was good. Trish tasted it. It was good. Ellie tasted it. It was good, and she asked for more. Next time, when I try something more complex, I will take Bob delGrosso's suggestion to use a humidifier in the curing room.

Changes refers to the new meat grinder attachment that my wife gave me as an anniversary present, to replace the one that broke last month. For the most part the grinder looked the same, but there were three noticeable changes. The large cutting plate was larger than the old one, giving me effectively a small, medium and large plate now (you didn't think I got rid of the parts from the old one, did you?) The old wooden pusher is gone, it is now part of that plastic wrench thing that I have never used. Bad choice. It is not solid, more of an x-shape of plastic, and ingredients end up in the open stem. What really surprised me is the knife. It is no longer of the same composition as the plates - it appears to be stamped stainless steel. It has gone from 15 grams to 8 grams in weight. I was a bit worried, but it worked well.

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