Pizza Fest: Playing with My New Baking Steel

After all the buzz on the interwebs, I couldn't resist spending some Christmas-present money on a new toy: the baking steel... It turns out all the hype is correct.  

(As you can see, I got the 1/2-inch version.) I tried three different crusts on my new steel, and every one of them blew me away with how amazing it turned out... 

Yum...

Another Sous Vide Trick: Über-Caramelized Onons

I love caramelized onions, and I love them super-duper caramelized.  When I did this for Thomas Keller's French Onion Soup, it took about 8 hours of caramelizing (stirring every 30-45 minutes) to get the onions as dark as I wanted.  That's not really an option these days.  I've heard a rumor (which I believe) that you can't caramelize onions from raw using sous vide because the gases released by the onions will make the bag explode... (I didn't want to test this...)  Instead I did a bit of a hybrid technique.  While I was putzing around in the kitchen, I threw the sliced onions in a pot with a bit of salt over medium-high heat, covered.  

(This is how I always start my onions, since it forces them to release their liquid early and thus allows faster caramelization later...)  After a good amount of liquid is rendered, you can uncover and let it cook off, stirring every now and then.  Because there is so much liquid at this stage, there's minimal risk of burning so you can totally ignore the onions for the most part...

Once the onions had given off their liquid and that liquid had mostly cooked off, I tossed them into a vacuum bag, closed the top with a bag clip, and plunged them into an ice bath to chill (since hot things do not vacuum-seal well...).  After sealing, the onions can go into a 180-degree water bath until they achieve the desired caramelization...  A couple hours for moderate...

or overnight for super-duper-crazy-caramelized... 

Pretty awesome, yeah?  Again, this is just (regular, not sweet) onions with a bit of salt... and this is totally how my onions are getting caramelized for my next batch of onion soup...

Everyday Yumminess: Sriracha Salt

I bought my food dehydrator back in the day because I wanted to use it as a yogurt-making incubator.  While that remains its primary purpose in my kitchen, I like finding other random uses for it (e.g., prosciutto-powder).  The most recent application was to streamline a recipe for Sriracha Salt.

Everyday Yumminess: Homemade Tonic Water

This is something I'd been wanting to try for a while so, once I got a soda siphon for Christmas, it shot to the top of my queue.  Homemade tonic water (or, more accurately, tonic concentrate that is mixed with soda water to make tonic water) isn't necessarily going to save you any money over generic-brand store-bought versions.  This is a case where the DIY version is superior because it lets you tweak the flavors to your palate.  (I, for example, hate how sweet store-bought tonic water often is... so when I made my own I cut back on the agave the recipe called for and it was perfect...)