This makes sense if you’re using your grill to do large meals regularly. But I’ve evolved in exactly the other direction. I’m a single guy, and it’s been several years since I hosted other people for a backyard BBQ event. When I bought my house 20+ years ago, I splurged on a nice grill, with multi-level grills, a side heater for pots or pans, and an option for a rotisserie. When it wore out, I downgraded a bit, since I realized I almost never used the fancier parts. I eventually made it down to what I have now, which is the cheapest portable gas BBQ they had at Canadian Tire about 2 years ago.
For a single guy, it heats up quickly, grills one or two things, toasts my buns, and then cools off fast. It’s small enough that cleaning the grill only takes seconds. I’ve actually ended up using it more than I used the bigger, fancier grills, because the fast turn-around just makes it more practical. I work at home, and if the weather is nice, I can grill a burger for lunch in maybe half an hour.
I haven’t tried a steak on it, though, because steaks have become stupidly expensive post-COVID, and there’s no sign of those prices every coming down. Maybe I’ll try it if there’s a sudden sale on steaks.
A skin-on chicken breast, cooked sous vide to an internal temp of 145 degrees, then crisped up in a touch of oil, is incredibly juicy and to die for (you can cook at an even lower temp, but the resulting texture is not my thing). A chicken breast cooked in a more typical method to 165 degrees or beyond tastes like chalky rubber. Dark meat is a different story, even though I typically do use the sous vide. Since dark meat happens to actually improve beyond 165 degrees, other methods also work great.
Sous vide carnitas are also far superior to any other method that I’ve tried.
Oh, and rice cookers are the bomb, even for those of us who are perfectly capable of cooking rice in a saucepan (and sometimes do as some rice blends don’t work well in the rice cooker).
As long as you are able to hold it at 155 for 50 seconds or so, it should be fine from a safety standpoint. Of course, holding it at 155 for that long without creeping up is not always straightforward. You’ll still lose juice as you can see in my first link, but it definitely is better than 165.
Well I pull at about 150-ish, foil tightly, and let sit for five minutes. I don’t do it with scientific precision. Just somewhere at 150 or just above, and then I don’t bother checking the final temp but assume it settles somewhere around 155 at some point.
I understand that, hence my “so not as low as sous vide could safely afford,” unless one of us is misunderstanding the other. I know how sous vide works and about temps and how long you need to hold at certain temps. I’m saying I can’t do that conventionally, so I go to 155 and still get juicy breasts without needing to sous vide. Will it be the same? Of course not. Is it good enough for me? Yes (and I have had both. I bought my brother a sous vide set-up for his birthday one year, and he loves his sous vide.)
Yeah, that’s not a good way to cook a hot dog. However, neither is the microwave. I prefer hot dogs in natural casing (Boars Head, Sabrett’s, etc.) because I love that snap. Put them in the microwave and they will blow up, destroying the natural casing and releasing all of the juices. They must be cooked slow and steady in a cast iron skillet. Perfection is when they are browned but the skin is still intact. That’s how God intended us to eat hot dogs. I serve them with a little brown mustard, sauerkraut and an onion sauce I make that is reminiscent of a NY dirty water hot dog cart. Delish!
Regarding rice cookers, I bought one a few months ago and I’ve yet to make a batch that’s any better than the stovetop method. It’s now gathering dust.
The one I have has a saute setting so when I’m making Rice-a-roni – heresy, I know – I can brown the vemicelli, add the appropriate amount of water, then forget about it while I go on with the rest of dinner.
I agree with you, but I was shocked to see that at Ted’s in Buffalo, probably my favorite hot dog in the world neck-and-neck with a Gene and June’s steamed dog here in Chicagoland (I actually find Vienna Beef natural casing dogs better steamed than grilled, although the latter can be good, too), they actually purposely slash and poke the skin during the cooking. I almost recoiled in horror to see such a travesty unleashed upon a defenseless hot dog but, damn if it didn’t taste great with the extra charred edges and everything.
The exception to this is a chocolate fondue with pieces of fruit. I use dark chocolate in the pot and chunks of cantaloupe, strawberries, mango and papaya. For extra decadent goodness I sometimes have a small bowl with Cointreau to dip the fruit in before dunking them in the chocolate.
We have a Ted’s outpost here in Tempe. I suspect it was used as an excuse for their winter vacation. In any event it’s our go-to dog place.
While the flavor of a Vienna Beef dog is fine, I find it lost in a fully-dressed Chicago dog. Gimme a bit of mustard and some onion only. Still no ketchup, though.
Wet Italian beef on the other hand… Excuse the drool.
Gene and Jude’s is one of a handful of dogs that are not fully dressed Chicago dogs. It’s closer to the style I grew up with. No tomato, no poppy seed bun, no celery salt, no pickle spear. My dog growing up was almost the same, but did come with a pickle spear, which I always ate separately.
Oh, and I’ve been to that Ted’s in Tempe a few times!
Totally agree about sous vide. Yes, it works. But it takes so much longer than traditional cooking. I’m thinking about a steak. Yes, you can get a steak to an exact temp and then sear it when you want. Great for a restaurant, but not necessary for at home. I can cook an awesome steak on a cast iron skillet on my gas grill in 12 minutes.
I’d definitely say deep frying. I’m not averse to nice bit of fried chicken or fish. But the idea that it’s the supreme way of cooking I just don’t get. To me most fried food would actually taste better roasted or grilled.
As I understand this, slow cookers are not what they used to be. The old ones cooked at a lower temperature and had the food come out much better, but todays models are made to get a temp high enough to kill any pathogens. Mine, if left long enough on even low will eventually boil what is in there.
Crockpot cooking is a good one. I tried it for the reasons SanVito mentioned many years ago, and never liked it. I actually started a thread here years ago asking “what is that ‘crock pot flavor’?”. I often noticed a certain distinctive, sort of unpleasant flavor crock pot cooking would give food. Near as could be figured in the thread, the best answer seemed to be that for any meal with onions in it (which I often cook with) the crock pot did not get hot enough to really cook out the flavor compounds of raw onions. So the ‘crock pot flavor’ I was picking up on was probably the sharp sulfury taste of raw-ish onions.
Right. I save the fancy methods for fancy raw materials. If I’m feeling exceptionally froggy and go buy a 1.5" thick USDA Prime steak, I’m going to sous vide or reverse sear it, along with searing it over a fully lit chimney starter full of charcoal (can’t think of anything hotter I can achieve at home)
But a regular old Choice steak? There’s no way I’m putting in all that overhead. It’s the 80/20 rule in action; you’re putting in 90% of the work for 5% improvement.
What I haven’t tried yet is one of those really long sous-vide cooks where you get something tough like a chuck roast and sous-vide it overnight or something, then sear it up on the outside for flavor. That seems like you go all the way from “takes way too long” to “forgot I was doing it” and back to “Hey- it’s done!”
