Favorite Restaurants: Hopdoddy Burger Bar (Austin and Dallas, TX)

This place is pretty fantastic. Above is my favorite, the Ahi Tuna Burger (Sushi-Grade Tuna, Sprouts, Teriyaki, Honey Wasabi, Nori Chips, Pickled Ginger, Mayo). I usually hate seafood burgers but this is tasty.

The buns are all made in house and you can see them grind the meat in the back. They make a point of customers being able to see that everything is made in house. They also serve main root sodas as well as craft beers from small batch brewers. The burgers are juicy, properly cooked and have great flavor. The fries are nice and crisp and bacon thick and hearty. One of my favorite burger places in Dallas.

Favorite Dishes: Jamaican Jerk BBQ San'ich at Spiral Diner (Dallas and Fort Worth, TX)

Spiral Diner is vegan, I am not, but who cares if the food is good. This place has some of the best nachos which is escpecially impressive since the cheese is made of cashew. The Jamaican Jerk BBQ San'ich with a side of potato salad (pictured above) is a pretty good choice. The bread is hearty and tastes homemade, the pineapple adds a great tart sweetness, the sauce is rich and has great tomato flavor and the patty is substantial and with a great nutty flavor. Pair that with a great mustardy potato salad and some apple ginger juice and you have a pretty good combo.

http://www.spiraldiner.com

Favorite Dishes: Doro Wot at Desta (Dallas, TX)

I am a fan of bold flavors and combinations. Generous portions of tasty flavorful veggies, chicken and injera (bread) makes Desta a pretty solid choice.  Everything tastes pretty fresh and flavorful, the service is quick and friendly and the selection is impressive. Of all the Ethiopian restaurants sampled in Dallas, this is my top choice.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Desta-Ethiopian-Restaurant/190851140949613

Favorite Stuff: Ikea DRÄLLA Bendable Chopping Boards

A good chopping board is pretty useful. I got a great deal on a three inch thick butcher's block and was pretty excited using it at first. After a few months of lugging a fifteen pound block of wood around the kitchen I started buying flexible cutting boards and these have been the only ones that are worthwhile. It has gotten to the point that these are the first ones I reach for. The DRÄLLA boards are a pretty thick (compared to the other paper thin flexible boards I have used) plastic with a nice grippy rubbery feel. Most flexible cutting boards will bend quite a bit with hot food on top; these bend somewhat but nowhere near as bad as every other flexible cutting board. They are convenient when you want to transfer your chopped goods back and forth and are more durable than you would expect from a flexible board and at $1.99 for a pair, they are more than worth a try.

http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/50153123/

Cream Whipper Testing Continued: Eggs Benedict

I made the Chefsteps hollandaise sauce to test the cream whipper a little more. Seems to work well so far but sputters a bit since I didn't filter out the bigger chunks of the sauce (the sauce looked curdled coming out of the water bath but that's the way it should look according to the comments). I didn't have champagne vinegar so I attempted to substitute with half as much apple cider vinegar which was still too strong for the sauce.

The whipper seems to do a pretty good job smoothing out a sauce that was pretty lumpy. The egg was cooked in a water bath at 75°C for thirteen minutes. The sausage under the egg is an chicken sausage from Audiel's.
http://www.chefsteps.com/activities/hollandaise

Cream Whipper: Pancakes

Many internet impressions describe using a cream whipper as the easiest way of getting the lightest and softest pancakes. My goal is to get pancakes as light and fluffy as the pancakes at Moonshine Grill (Austin, TX) but I don't want to do a ton of work like whipping egg whites and folding in batter. I am lazy but I want amazing pancakes; I just want to throw the ingredients in the whipper, give it a few shakes and dispense onto the griddle.The recipes I tried didn't result and pancakes that were better or worse than a traditional recipe. One recipe didn't use any leavening and was specifically for cream whippers and seemed promising. The batter was very light and fluffy but the pancake quickly flattened as it cooked. I ended with pancakes that were pretty light but more chip like. I also tried the fluffy pancake recipe from all recipes, added it to the whipper and ended with pancakes that were a little tough (the pictures from below). I will be giving it quite a few more tries to find the perfect recipe and post that up as soon as I can.

I always measure by weight, I don't have the patience to sift flower and recipes need consistency.

The batter is pretty easy to dose using a whipper.

I will be posting a review on cream whippers once I get a Liss whipper to compare.

The pancakes aren't bad but there are a few things have to be considered when trying to get perfect pillowy cream whipper pancakes:

Since the batter has to be shaken once charged with N2O, gluten can develop over time (the last pancakes were a little tougher than the first).

Replace granulated sugar with powdered sugar (or plan on buying new cream whippers often)

Use the minimal amount of chargers - too many chargers mean the bubbles are large and will escape quickly leaving flat pancakes

If the batter is too thick, the whipper can't dispense, too thin and the pancakes will not hold on to the bubbles and flatten as it cooks.

All batters have to be strained for lumps since it will clog the whipper.

I will be developing the recipe over time and post my ideal recipe when it's done.

Favorite Dishes: Fried Chicken (with biscuit and fries) at Fat Lyle's (Marfa, TX)

Fat Lyle's: Has to be the top choice for fried chicken and biscuits and extra points for the Hank Hill propane and propane accessories. Out of the many hyped up fried chicken places in Texas but this place, despite being in a VERY remote city in Texas and residing in a somewhat unassuming trailer, wins out by a pretty fat margin.

The biscuit is made by the mother of the married couple who run Fat Lyle's and it is unbelievable. The crust is crispy and crunchy with a center that is incredibly moist and crumbly. That coupled with a pretty amazing buttery salty flavor makes this one of Texas's best biscuits (it is a pretty bold claim but that is one great biscuit).

That brings us to the best part: the fried chicken. The coating crackles like a potato chip as you bite yet clings to the meat. The crust has a great combination of spices and chicken is firm and shockingly juicy. This absolutely has to be the best fried chicken in Texas and makes me consider making the 8 hour drive (and yes you have to drive, no airports near Marfa) just to get another taste.

https://www.facebook.com/FatLyles

Favorite Dishes: Grilled Cheese ("The Motherf*cker") at Museum of Electronic Wonders & Latenight Grilled Cheese Parlour (Marfa, TX)

On a nondescript street, you walk in and are immediately overwhelmed by a hundred or so brightly lit televisions plucked straight from the Jetsons, each displaying a moving eyeball or mouth. It's a lot to take in as you mull their cheese sandwich selection and attempt to pick the perfect end meal to your day (if the electronic wonders are too much, one can make their way to the cozy converted school bus just outside the restaurant). The Museum of Electronic Wonders & Latenight Grilled Cheese Parlour is as much about the experience as it is about great grilled cheese sandwiches. There are usually three or four grilled cheese choices that change from day to day, the one constant being "The M*therf*cker," a combination of all the day's cheese sandwich offerings, and of course that is the one I always get. It is the sandwich you wish you could have made when you were eight and getting ready for Saturday morning cartoons (I may have just showed my age). It is piled with cheese, brisket, jalapeños, three different cheeses and others I can't remember since I blacked out half way through the sandwich. A nice bonus is when you pay cash:

you get two dollar bills and dollar coins.

http://www.foodsharkmarfa.com

It may seem as though I have been quiet for some time but over the past few weeks I have been testing pre-searing the meat, post-searing, marinating, freezing and adding liquid smoke to steaks and ribs to get the most flavor and juiciest meat. I will be adding my favorite method soon, but here are a few things I have found.

Many recipes call for searing the meat after cooking sous vide, every time I have tried it, the meat has been dry (compared to pre-searing).

My favorite pre-seared steaks looked fairly burnt before cooking in the water bath. I used a cast iron pan heated under the broiler (on high) and seared each side quickly, sometimes with a little butter.

Post sear with a torch is not as flavorful as searing in a pan and creates bits of charcoal flavor. You can eliminate some of the off torch flavor by turning the torch flame down until the hissing stops to avoid depositing the fuel onto the food.

Liquid smoke is not bad at all... unless you are cooking fish in which case it is HORRIBLE. For a time I thought that it would be disgusting compared to traditional smoking (a lot of opinionated grillers in Texas) but it was surprisingly good.

Garlic powder often tastes better than whole garlic. Something about cooking sous vide with garlic brings out strong metallic flavors from the garlic but not so much with garlic powder.

I will give a run down of each of the above in detail later on as well as a few other tips I have found to be extremely helpful.