What have you done to your Kitchen lately?

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coxhaus

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I will start. My wife organized our refrigerator yesterday and I put together a stand for our new coffee and tea bar. I bought the Baratz encore coffee grinder and I have been wanting to get all our coffee stuff together.

The plastic bins in the refrigerator allows you to pull out the bin to get to the stuff in the back.

Out tap water is not good for making coffee or tea so we buy water.

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Nothing significant here but for the past year or so I've really been on a kick to streamline and enhance my space. An under-cabinet light here, a little shelf there, move this, toss that, and so on. One thing I did a few months ago that I wish I would've done years ago was getting my spices, sauces, and vinegars out of the cupboard and onto the counter where I work. To do that, I had to streamline other things so it all builds on itself.

Today, this...
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Became this...
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A really simple thing but it's so nice. The labels on the lids are sweet and being able to easily see the contents in the jars is so nice. When I first started digging our spices out of the cupboard they had been in, I found so many duplicate jars. It was because it was so crowded and disorganized that one of us would buy a new jar thinking we were out and before you know it, we've got three jars of cinnamon, two jars of ground mustard, etc.

This should solve most of that.
 
You just have to throw away those old spices and buy new. The new spices make your cooking so much better.
 
The single most revolutionary thing I’ve done to my kitchen since discovering Japanese knives.

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Why?

Amongst many other things …

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A $10 roast cooked to medium rare perfection …

Is that a Saji rainbow damascus? How do you like it?

I’d like to get some kind of copper or rainbow damascus eventually and Saji seems like the only one that actually has some availability.
 
It is and I’m in the process of getting to know it. It will probably appear on New Knives in a couple of days. Saji is a well known knife maker associated with the Takefu village. The f&f on the knife is extremely good and the knife is definitely on the “laserish” side IMO. I bought it because I wanted a copper rainbow Damascus knife. It hasn’t disappointed.
 
The result won't be as even because the oven will be much hotter than the final desired temperature of your product. The Anova's sous vide mode is accurate to within a degree, so you can set your oven to 55C (or whatever) and cook your protein to that exact temperature; once it's done, you can oven-sear it with convection. You can also hold tougher cuts for extended periods at low temperatures to tenderize them without overcooking them, which is something you can't do in a conventional oven.
 
It’s a Combi oven … cooks with steam and/or dry heat. Allows non immersion, no bag sous vide cooking, Allows steam cooking of veges rather than boiling them to death in a pot. Excels at re-heating without overcooking and drying out the food. All of this I know from experience. Don know about baking ... Haven’t done it.

Not to be a smartass but why do you need an oven and thermometer? People have cooked for thousands of years with nothing but an open fire fueled with camel dung.
 
As to my own biggest changes in recent history... getting a dishwasher. Took some effort since the plumbing in this rental place wasn't set up for, but with some help we could make it work. It's a major quality of life improvement, even when half my stuff doesn't go into it. I'm also noticing that I'm adapting my usage of certain stuff; no matter how much I like my wooden plates they only get used when they are really needed nowadays, just like I've rediscovered my stainless pans over my deBuyers. No matter how much I like them, inability to get dishwashed isn't exactly working in their favor.

Other recent purchase was my cutting board upgrade to a 60x40 one (from a 45x35). Mostly got it because it was on a really nice sale, but it's making more of a difference than I expected. Simply having more space means I spend more time simply cutting instead of 'moving stuff' around on/off the board due to running out of space.

Other than that I do periodical small changes where I reorganize stuff or put stuff in other places to try and optimize efficiency. Still trying to find that sweetspot within the constraints I have (rental place, no budget, limited energy to fix things myself). But the problem is always that I'm far better at creating a mess than cleaning it up, so as a result no matter how much work surfaces I have they always tend to get filled with something, whether it's just the mail, administration, groceries, or other stuff I'm working on.
 
Aaah I didn't realize it was a steam oven. Does it make much of a difference for meat tho? Always thought a dry environment was better for meat. Personally I always kinda want the outside the dry out, especially if there's a frying step at the end.
The oven & thermometer are required for me because they allow me to be lazy and incompetent. ;) As long as it goes low enough I never had major issues getting great meat out of one even if it wasn't particularly precise.

We had those fancy Rational ovens in the hospital kitchen where I worked for a while. Really cool stuff. Sadly we mostly just used them to reheat stuff made elsewhere. Wanted one at home until I saw the pricetag... :D If the Anova is anything like it then it's actually a steal for only 600 bucks.
Should make for really awesome breads if you can control the moisture level!
 
Apparently they have a 240V “European” version available. There is quite a bit of information in the Anova Precision Oven thread. Do a search if you’re interested. How about this for a thought. The roast in the pic was cooked to 124F at 127F for about 4 1/2 hrs, 100% steam sous vide, then finished in the oven at 390F for10 minutes, using convection back and top burners, no steam. The re-heat was done with deli-thin slices to 145F at 165F, 100% steam for 12 minutes. All of which monitored and controlled with my iPhone.

Best part … not a trace of camel dung taste or smell.
 
It’s a Combi oven … cooks with steam and/or dry heat. Allows non immersion, no bag sous vide cooking, Allows steam cooking of veges rather than boiling them to death in a pot. Excels at re-heating without overcooking and drying out the food. All of this I know from experience. Don know about baking ... Haven’t done it.

Not to be a smartass but why do you need an oven and thermometer? People have cooked for thousands of years with nothing but an open fire fueled with camel dung.

Very cool. How does the cook time compare to immersion?

Looking forward to hearing your review on the Saji as I've always heard they're quite thick and that's what's been holding me back. If he's changed his grind to be more laserish it would get me off the fence.
 
I never adopted immersion sous vide So I can’t really compare. I liked the idea but my new kitchen is quite small and I didn’t want the paraphernalia on the counter. I’ve had the Anova since January and use it at least three times a week. I’m still learning it’s nuances. One thing you can’t do with immersion is partial steam. Supposedly a conventional cook with partial steam will cook to temperature faster than straight dry heat. I can’t objectively quantify that though. I don’t tend to use the oven that way to this point. My favourite technique is to cook to temperature in Sous Vide mode with a cooking temperature at or slightly higher than the target temperature. I then cook to tenderness by extending the cook time at the target temperature. Browning is done at the end in a conventional cook for 10-15 minutes at around 400F. Reheats are done to 145F at 165-185F to speed things up as necessary. Like I said it’s been the biggest advancement to my cooking since discovering Japanese knives.
 
Times/temps are the same as cooking in water baths. Circulators are much smaller and cheaper than the APO, but they're not ovens, so aren't totally comparable. I really want an APO but can't say that I have much need for one. And I'd need to get an APO *and* a toaster to replace our existing toaster oven, taking up even more space. It'd be a really sexy setup though.
 
Times/temps are the same as cooking in water baths. Circulators are much smaller and cheaper than the APO, but they're not ovens, so aren't totally comparable. I really want an APO but can't say that I have much need for one. And I'd need to get an APO *and* a toaster to replace our existing toaster oven, taking up even more space. It'd be a really sexy setup though.
Any comment on the difference in texture between Anova sous vide vs the oven? I do notice that the sous vide results in a certain texture change (for example a sous vide then seared steak vs just pan searing it for longer), likely due to how the meat fibers break down over a long time vs fast cooking.
 
I do notice that the sous vide results in a certain texture change (for example a sous vide then seared steak vs just pan searing it for longer), likely due to how the meat fibers break down over a long time vs fast cooking.
If you notice a texture change in a steak, it's been in the sous vide for too long. If I sous vide a steak for an hour or up to two hours, there is no texture change that I've noticed. After that, collagen might break down enough for the texture to become softer.
 
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