EatLocal365 » Equipment http://eatlocal365.com Rediscovering cooking from scratch Tue, 19 Aug 2014 00:24:01 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 A Busy Day Working with and Against Microbes http://eatlocal365.com/2013/03/10/a-busy-day-working-with-and-against-microbes/ http://eatlocal365.com/2013/03/10/a-busy-day-working-with-and-against-microbes/#comments Sun, 10 Mar 2013 18:48:35 +0000 Erik http://eatlocal365.com/?p=6448 Lindsay and I had a busy day. But we had a lot of help in the form of pressurized steam, yeast, and lactobacillus bacteria.

We’re leaving for Florida early this week and received a shocking amount of food from our CSA, considering it’s still the winter season and it was the second-to-last pickup. Four pounds of onions, four pounds of beets and radishes, five pounds of apples… you get the picture. We’ve certainly gotten our . . . → Read More: A Busy Day Working with and Against Microbes]]> Lindsay and I had a busy day. But we had a lot of help in the form of pressurized steam, yeast, and lactobacillus bacteria.

We’re leaving for Florida early this week and received a shocking amount of food from our CSA, considering it’s still the winter season and it was the second-to-last pickup. Four pounds of onions, four pounds of beets and radishes, five pounds of apples… you get the picture. We’ve certainly gotten our money’s worth this year! But with all this food on top of what we already had, we needed to prep some for storage.

To deal with the four pounds of fingerling potatoes (which we already had a bunch of), Lindsay used our pressure canner for the first time:

Pressure Canned Potatoes

Regular water-bath canning limits you to recipes that are acidic or briny enough to kill off botulism. 212-degree boiling water will kill off everything else, but botulism can survive (see our rules of canning, which we will need to update to include a guide to pressure canning). Pressure canning uses pressure to get the temperature high enough to kill absolutely everything, which means that you can do absolutely anything you wants.

And it’s a two-fee: it cooks at the same time it preserves. In six months, if we want to make potato salad, we can just reach for one of these jars. Lindsay will have to write-up the process of pressure canning. Even though it was perfectly easy and safe, the first time is still scary and intimidating, even for someone comfortable with canning. Just look at this steampunk contraption:

Pressure Canner

Second, to deal with the two heads of cabbage we weren’t going to eat, Lindsay made (actually, is still in the process of making) sauerkraut. Our CSA this year has given us a lot of cabbage (both red and green), and we’ve found that we waste a lot less of it by taking an hour to make one large batch of kraut which will supply 5-10 quick dinners down the line. We even decided to invest in a ceramic fermenting crock that has a water moat to allow it to “burp” while fermenting while still enduring that no nasty microbes can get in:

Fermenting Crock with Water Moat

Finally, speaking of fermenting, I made a batch of beer this weekend. I plan to take more photos down the line and do a real post once I get the hang of the process, but for now, here’s a preview:

Beer

It is an all-grain (from malted barley) recipe and we decided to save the “spent grain” that is left over. This grain has been crushed and steeped in hot water to convert and extract all the sugar from the starches, but what’s left over still has flavor. We used our dehydrator to dry it out so that we can store it. It goes great as an added crunch to granola (reminds me of grape nuts) and we also plan to crush it into flour and make some spent-grain baked goods:

Dehydrated Spent Grain

]]> http://eatlocal365.com/2013/03/10/a-busy-day-working-with-and-against-microbes/feed/ 0 How to Set Up a KitchenAid Food Mill Attachment http://eatlocal365.com/2012/03/12/how-to-set-up-a-kitchenaid-food-mill-attachment/ http://eatlocal365.com/2012/03/12/how-to-set-up-a-kitchenaid-food-mill-attachment/#comments Mon, 12 Mar 2012 13:31:17 +0000 Lindsay http://eatlocal365.com/?p=5102 When I started canning, I didn’t have a whole lot of fancy tools. You honestly don’t need that much, but there are a few extras that really make life easier. One of those is a food mill. This is basically a crank that forces food through a screen. In doing so, it removes seeds, stems, peels, and tough fibers and produces a smooth and uniform sauce. I use it for fruit butters, applesauce, and tomato . . . → Read More: How to Set Up a KitchenAid Food Mill Attachment]]> When I started canning, I didn’t have a whole lot of fancy tools. You honestly don’t need that much, but there are a few extras that really make life easier. One of those is a food mill. This is basically a crank that forces food through a screen. In doing so, it removes seeds, stems, peels, and tough fibers and produces a smooth and uniform sauce. I use it for fruit butters, applesauce, and tomato juice.

You can buy a manual version, but if you have a KitchenAid stand mixer, I’d recommend the attachment. It’s super quick and leaves your hands free to do other things. You have to buy two attachments, though, which kind of irks me. The food grinder just grinds, so you need to add the mill component to strain out the bits. Once you have the two boxes, putting them together is like playing with Legos.

]]> http://eatlocal365.com/2012/03/12/how-to-set-up-a-kitchenaid-food-mill-attachment/feed/ 20 How to Pit a Cherry with a Paper Clip (Video) http://eatlocal365.com/2011/07/21/how-to-pit-a-cherry-with-a-paper-clip-video/ http://eatlocal365.com/2011/07/21/how-to-pit-a-cherry-with-a-paper-clip-video/#comments Thu, 21 Jul 2011 21:24:34 +0000 Lindsay http://eatlocal365.com/?p=4136 Get ready for some MacGyver moves. If you ever find yourself without a cherry pitter and have 9 pounds of cherries to prepare for canning, just grab a paper clip and open it up to make a “hook” on each end. The first few cherries will be a little awkward, but after that you’ll get the motion down and fly through the pile. I was really surprised at how well it worked! It was also . . . → Read More: How to Pit a Cherry with a Paper Clip (Video)]]> Get ready for some MacGyver moves. If you ever find yourself without a cherry pitter and have 9 pounds of cherries to prepare for canning, just grab a paper clip and open it up to make a “hook” on each end. The first few cherries will be a little awkward, but after that you’ll get the motion down and fly through the pile. I was really surprised at how well it worked! It was also pretty satisfying to keep one more uni-tasking kitchen tool out of our apartment, although I suppose you could use a cherry pitter for olives too.

If you’re a little nutty about presentation like I am, you’ll also like that using a paper clip to pit cherries only makes one hole in the fruit, leaving it prettier for pies and cocktails. I even slipped the pit through the hole created by the stem without even tearing the cherry a couple of times. One cautionary note, though, also for people worried about appearances. My hands turned, as you can see, a really sexy shade of blue pretty quickly. They stayed that way for a few hours, but were almost clean the next morning after a fairly standard amount of hand washing. I think a regular pitter would be cleaner, but not nearly as fun.

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