Sat. May 9th, 2026

Mike Nolan

Forum Replies Created

Viewing 15 posts - 6,211 through 6,225 (of 7,943 total)
  • Author
    Posts
  • in reply to: Great American Baking Contest! #14298
    Mike Nolan
    Keymaster

      We've made trifle for Christmas many times, it's a great 'presentation piece'.

      in reply to: What are you cooking the week of December 2, 2018? #14295
      Mike Nolan
      Keymaster

        We went out to dinner at Dish last night, to celebrate my wife's sister and her husband getting the 2018 Lincoln Luminaries award, complete with a presentation by the mayor and the lighting of the Tower Square for the holidays. Dish is probably Lincoln's finest restaurant, and the meal lived up to their reputation.

        in reply to: Great American Baking Contest! #14294
        Mike Nolan
        Keymaster

          I haven't watched GBBS in a few seasons, but the ovens they used to use had small windows. Those were the ones where the doors could be slid out of the way under the oven, a feature I've never seen in ovens in the USA.

          I really dislike the timed aspect of most cooking shows, because rushing just to meet an arbitrary time budget is unnecessary. It also impacts taste and appearance. That's why I've pretty much stopped watching cooking competition shows. I occasionally watch Chopped, but mostly because they tend to use interesting ingredients that nobody knows. Chopped is responsible for a dramatic increase in interest in geoduck, which used to be essentially unknown outside of the pacific northwest, and their price has nearly doubled over the last 10 years.

          in reply to: What are you baking the week of December 2, 2018? #14277
          Mike Nolan
          Keymaster

            Glad to hear your project is finally getting going. We had a contractor in to do some drywall repairs, that was 2 weeks ago and we're still finding drywall dust everywhere.

            in reply to: What are you cooking the week of December 2, 2018? #14257
            Mike Nolan
            Keymaster

              We had a stir fry tonight.

              in reply to: Vegetable Oil Pie Crust #14254
              Mike Nolan
              Keymaster

                I've often made individual sized pot pies with laminated dough for the top (and no bottom crust), but when I make larger ones I lean towards using a hot water crust, which comes out remarkably flaky.

                in reply to: Re-conditioning a Cast Iron Skillet #14246
                Mike Nolan
                Keymaster

                  Lye is commonly used as a drain cleaner, so dumping it down the drain is one option.

                  in reply to: What are you cooking the week of November 25, 2018? #14229
                  Mike Nolan
                  Keymaster

                    I'm making a pot roast tonight, and it smells wonderful.

                    in reply to: Re-conditioning a Cast Iron Skillet #14226
                    Mike Nolan
                    Keymaster

                      I was watching a video on reconditioning cast iron pans with the sound off during last night's Pas 12 championship game, it looked like she was recommending using steel wool or even a wire brush for a drill in extreme cases. I think she started by baking the pan in a hot oven for several hours. I'm not sure that helps if the pan has a lot of caked on grease and food, though.

                      There are dozens of videos out there on how to do it, with what appears to be a wide range of methods. I suspect they all work fairly well.

                      If it was me, I'd probably start by using something like Carbon-Off to take off the grease and crud, so I knew exactly how much rust I had to deal with, then use my stainless steel scrubber to take off the rust and smooth the surface as needed. (I prefer those to steel wool, because they don't rust, last a lot longer, and don't leave shards of steel in my fingers. I've never tried the chain mail scrubbers, I'm not sure I've ever seen one in the stores.)

                      in reply to: Re-conditioning a Cast Iron Skillet #14212
                      Mike Nolan
                      Keymaster

                        Be sure to test to make sure the oven cleaner doesn't do nasty things to the garbage bag first, like dissolve it.

                        As to the gooey stuff on your pan, I virtually guarantee Carbon-off would get rid of it.

                        in reply to: Vegetable Oil Pie Crust #14209
                        Mike Nolan
                        Keymaster

                          I always pre-cook my apple pie filling, though that doesn't seem to cut much time off how long the pie has to bake. Blind baking the crust probably would, though.

                          in reply to: Re-conditioning a Cast Iron Skillet #14206
                          Mike Nolan
                          Keymaster

                            I agree with Len, start with the less invasive techniques and work up as needed. Carbon-off is what restaurants use to clean pans that have had food baked on, here's a video showing what it can do:Carbon-Off video

                            I don't know that it would do much about the rust.

                            As to the oven temperature for re-seasoning the pan, it should be below the smoke point for the oil you use, unless you enjoy having the smoke detector go off.

                            in reply to: Re-conditioning a Cast Iron Skillet #14203
                            Mike Nolan
                            Keymaster

                              It really depends on how much rust there is. Rubbing it with salt will usually take off both rust and caked on grease, though it might take a lot of rubbing, but if there's so much rust that the surface of the pan is pitted, then IMHO you need to use something like steel wool to smooth the surface out a bit.

                              There are commercial cleaners like carbon-off, which you can probably get at a restaurant supply store or on Amazon, that will remove caked-on food and grease, but these are very caustic, so use them properly. I've used this to clean the stainless steel backsplash on my range, it worked when NOTHING else would!

                              Either way, you probably want to reseason it by putting on a light coat of oil and baking it in the oven for several hours.

                              in reply to: What are you cooking the week of November 25, 2018? #14200
                              Mike Nolan
                              Keymaster

                                We had steak with mushrooms and a baked potato.

                                in reply to: What are you cooking the week of November 25, 2018? #14198
                                Mike Nolan
                                Keymaster

                                  Nothing fancy at this point, just pouring tempered chocolate into silicone molds. Last night's batch also bloomed, I'm not sure why, but I'm re-melting the pieces and will try again this afternoon.

                                  I need to get the tempering process down before I go further. We made 10-15 pound batches in a half sized hotel pan in school, at home I make smaller batches, more like 2-3 pounds at a time.

                                  I've got several molds to make filled chocolates with, and that's mostly what we did at Chocolate School, but that's a 3 step process: Make the shells by filling the molds then dumping out the excess chocolate, filling the shells with some kind of filling (ganache, opera cream, etc) after they set, and then putting a little more chocolate in to form the bottom.

                                Viewing 15 posts - 6,211 through 6,225 (of 7,943 total)