Happy Valentine's Day! I've got beef stew on the stove simmering and it smells great. Not nearly as fancy as your steaks @Nettdata and @Crown Royal but it'll do.
Yep. This was them right out of the sous vide. Then dried them off, course salt and pepper pressed in, drizzled with olive oil, then put into a 525 degree oven for ten mins or so on a cast iron grill pan.
It's a tenderloin, obviously thick cut (to me a steak should be thick like a roast in order to cook properly), that was in there for 4 hours from frozen. Done to 132°F, and cut thick enough so that even if you put it in the oven for 10 minutes, there's no way the guts will cook much past that.
thanks for that. I’ve been wanting to start doing this stuff with my sous vide, but I finally got it up and going right before covid took me out. Made the best scallops I’ve ever had, restaurant or otherwise, with it then went down for a few weeks. Of course now that I can go to the grocery store again and get food to experiment with it, it’s below zero (first time in sub zero temps is in Texas, fuck me!!!) and the entire state is shut down because you Canadians keep sharing your goddamn weather with us!!!
Everyone laughs that I'm the guy with a thousand flashlights, fridges of food and water, and backup batteries for days. Until the entire goddamn state shuts down because this shit happens.
I've started experimenting with also adding a dash of pure MSG to my steaks after the sous vide, but before the sear. It doesn't take much, but holy balls, does it make it just that much better. Get yourself a cheap bottle from Amazon. Going to keep messing around and see what else I can put this stuff on. Also, if anyone has a good chimichurri recipe, let me know. I've been experimenting with mine, and while it's okay, I'm not quite where I want to be with it yet.
Use msg a lot in sausage making. Locally stores carry Accent powder in the spice isle it’s pure msg. I made mapu dofu this week. Though no msg. Haven’t had it since I was in Shanghai but man it’s great warm your bones soup for winter.
Ok, this "wintery mix" (freezing rain) has already knocked out power for an hour this morning. It's back on for now but flickers every now and then (knocking my modem offline) so I'm not planning on it staying on as the temps continue to drop. I already had PTO scheduled for today, so even though I did log in for work, I'm calling it a day to day-drink. This is small potatoes compared to what most everyone else gets on the regular, but it has absolutely shut down Baton Rouge. Going to be interesting over the next 24 hours.
Everyone was talking shit to me when I was getting extra batteries, everything all charged up, placing heaters around the house, wrapping pipes and trimming trees. Guess which is the only house with power and running water right now? We're sitting pretty. Not so much for the rest of my family, bundled up in houses where the air is around 45-50 degrees inside. People will absolutely die in this.
The power went back out literally minutes after my last post. Our house normally stays pretty warm, and I have a fuck ton of flashlights and batteries. One thing I don't have extra batteries for is my 40 year old flashlight radio which I'm listening to right now. I just put fresh batteries in it and i have plenty of ways to recharge my phone and Bluetooth speaker so I can at least get some news and music (I prefer a little music over the dead silence) The trees around us are small and should be no threat to hit our house or power and cable lines. We also have a gas water heater, gas stove, and my grill outage is connected to natural gas. Pretty much just need to find a book and pour myself a glass of bourbon and ride it out.
Be safe! Do you have a fireplace you could use? Snow is thick and everywhere here. It is very pretty. All of my pictures of it are from inside the house. About to have to get bundled up to let the ducks out though. I've been keeping a bucket of water and food in their coop so they probably don't even give a rip if I open the door. They run out in a flurry and then immediately start plopping down to insulate their feet. I do need to collect eggs before they freeze, though. I've had quite a few frozen ones lately. The dogs are happy about that.
Unfortunately, when we bought the house the fireplace was going to need some major work to get it back in working condition so we never did get it fixed. On top of that, the smoke REALLY messes with the wife's asthma, so we never had an interest in fixing it. And really, this is a once in a decade event, so we are obligated to just ride this out. We really should be fine, this house is pretty well insulated and stays pretty warm. Not sure what 25° weather is going to feel like in the morning. The biggest pain is this damn cat that is positive he wants to be outside. I put him in the "catio" for a few when I stepped out to take some pics and he shut up REAL quick... but he's watching the birds at my bird feeder issue the window and is getting restless.
Been out of power since like 3 am. My house is currently about 50 degrees. And they don’t know when it will come back on.
I suspect our fireplace had some expensive issues in the past. They sidestepped that by adding a gas fireplace insert. It's not nearly as warm as wood burning but it's convenient to use, provides nice ambience, and makes that part of the house cozier.
I hope you Texans are keeping safe. Just seen some nasty videos of the 120 car pileup. That shit is insane.
I hope you’re staying safe and finding a way to keep warm. I know a bunch of folks in Texas who are in a similar situation, but don’t even have a winter jacket or heat in their homes due to loss of power. This is no joke if you’re not prepared for it.
The cold sucks. No work today; the town was out of power. My house still has it, though. No internet, though...