Eating in a box

So a while back I kickstarted this project called Nomiku (about a year and half ago). It's promise was to bring an affordable immersion circulator to the home kitchen and spread the promise of sous vide cooking technique to all. I was pretty intrigued an immersion circulator runs around $1000, it's chemistry lab equipment for pete sake. The idea is simple, a device that can circulate water and add heat and hold it at a very precise temperature. I've had other sous vide devices such as the sous vide supreme and pid controller tied to a steam table but both of those solutions heat the water passively. There's the possibility that parts of the water bath are not evenly heated to the same temperature. Certainly it was close enough, but neither solution was really portable. Do I really need a third sous vide device? Sure more the merrier! (Nomiku unboxed) So in comes the nomiku, I waited with bated breath and waited and waited. This was my first kickstarter proje...

Ok, so I broke down and purchased a Sous Vide Supreme some time back and I've used it on a couple of bentos (one coming up this next week). And as with all of my gadgets I wouldn't be doing it justice if I didn't put up a post / review on the device. As a disclaimer: No I didn't get this thing for free, I purchased it with my own hard earned money (yes I had to save up for it). I'm writing this based of my opinion and personal usage no one paid or asked me to do so. No, I'm no professional chef, I just like to cook (a lot), play with toys, and be a general science nerd. I would hope that my idol (Alton Brown) would appreciate and approve of this exception I'm making for a single use tool in my kitchen. Down to business! Sous Vide what is it? This is actually a very lengthy topic and I could go on and on about it, but you could just go here and read the reliable details and do a lot of google searching. Here's the elevator pitch: If you want a medium rar...

Just a couple of more weeks of bento hiatus since everyone is still out for the holidays. It's been a nice little break for me, time with family and all that. None the less, I've queued up a few themes for the new year so I'm eager to get back to cooking, I do confess that having my Sundays to myself have been nice. A lot of people ask me what my most indispensable kitchen tool is and without a doubt it's my Chinese cleaver it's usually the only knife I ever use in the kitchen. It's cheap, but more to the point it's the ultimate multi-tasker, it does all the obvious cutting and chopping, but also delicate garnish work, has a huge face making it a good bench scraper, you can use it as a garlic masher, and it's lighter than a regular cleaver, but heavy enough that it does most of the work for you when doing a lot of chopping. And as with every knife it needs care and love to perform at it's peak, which is a nice lead-in to our post today. Today's...

I've talked a bit about my Orion Cooker or as I like to call it, "la torre del diablo" (the tower of the devil) and lots of people come and visit looking for info on the orion cooker and turkey. So today I'm going to chronicle the step by step of cooking a turkey and hey look, just in time for xmas. It all starts with the brine. As many of you know the best way to get a nice juicy turkey is to brine it before hand. It allows helps the meat retain moisture through the cooking process and you can impart some nice flavors. I used a slightly modified brine recipe (see below) by my favorite food geek/hero, Alton Brown. It's quite simple really, you need a high salt content I believe the rule of thumb is one cup each of salt and sugar for every gallon of brine. In this case, the vegetable stock has salt in it, and I trust that's why there's less salt in the recipe, and of course the word of Alton Brown is never wrong he is after all the culinary equivalent of C...

Another gadget post this week, it's been a good two week recharge, full of catching up with stuff and gathering new ideas for the coming year. I only have a few more bentos for the year with the holidays and all but I promise to bring you a food post next week. This week's gadget is the Blendtec blender that's right, from the folks that bring you " Will It Blend " (I can practically hear a studio audience chant the phrase as I type it). I decided on this purchase based off of my inability to blend my broccoli soup to the consistency I needed it to be, unacceptable. I spend so much time in the kitchen that I've made it a point to try to always buy commercial grade equipment, ultimately only two made the final list. I was trying to decide between a Vitamix or this Blendtec blender, it turns out what was available at my "local shop that allows me to use my handy-dandy coupons" only had the Blendtec so there we have it. I understand the Vitamix is also a...

No lunch this week or next so you'll have to suffer to through some of my "yammering" posts. As usual for my off posts you'll be seeing some of the tools that I use to produce lunch. So with my additional eaters I went ahead an invested in six more obentec boxes. I've been eyeballing the 2.0 system for some time now and am pleasantly surprised at some of the modifications they've made. The new gear seems more robust, "refined" and grown up than their first iteration. I'm glad they've incorporated some of the changes that seemed to answer for some of the minor gripes I had. Let's start with the containers. They beefed up the outer box and thinned the walls of the inner containers. This has quite a few major benefits. The outer box snaps shut a lot tighter than the original box and initial tests shows it doesn't suffer from the upper lid "warp" from dishwasher wear and tear. Also, the thin segments in side the outer box (to ke...

I know I've been promising for quite some time now to post about my Aerogarden I got for my birthday. I waited until I had a no bento week so I could use this as a filler post. I'm sure most of you reading are home gardeners that, as we speak, are turning your nose up at me since I'm not actually gardening and communing with the earth. Unfortunately, I have a tendency towards killing all things green. I also have a voracious mosquito population in my backyard just waiting to feast on me. So what better way to have my fresh herbs than to turn to technology to solve my woes. Ever since moving up north the single largest cost impact to my bentos was the "fresh" herbs I was forced to buy. I mean $3.50 for a small package of basil/oregeno/dill/chives? Really?! I was use to going to Central Market and picking up a beautiful bunch of basil for a dollar. Besides, a package of thyme was usually a waste, you only need two or three sprigs. So I was really excited at the ...