ATK is great. Their “The New Best Recipe” cookbook is my go-to atlas-esque cookbook. Not quite as far-reaching as “Joy of Cooking”, but better in pretty much every other way.
I can’t count how many times ATK has saved me from myself — I love how they explain different ideas they had and tried, and why the “other” ideas didn’t work as well as the one they ultimately went with ---- sooooo many times one of those “other” ideas is something I would have done had it not been for their explanation as to why I shouldn’t.
I have approx. 1 C of reserved tomato water from yesterday’s dinner. I saved it with no plan for how to use it; it just felt wrong to throw it away — at a bare minimum, I figure I could poach a white fish in it. That said, any ideas on how I can otherwise use it? I just checked the container now – it does appear to have a fair amount of solids in it (in case it matters: tomatoes were medium diced, salted, and then strained in a chinois, yielding said tomato water). Sounds like your tomato powder is just tomato water, left to evaporate — is that right? Any other tomato water ideas? (happy to hear from anyone, btw)
Think of it as a wine or vinegar substitute in cooking. Use it to dress raw tomatoes along with oil and salt and whatever else, you could peel small tomatoes and marinate them in the water, you could deglaze a pan with it like I did last night. My favorite way to use it is as the liquid in a fresh tomato sauce - sauté tomatoes with aromatics in butter, cover with tomato water and reduce. Blend, strain, mount with butter. Making that exact thing tonight with some sungolds and shallots.
I make lacto fermented tomato water, so I weigh out 2% salt of the weight of the tomatoes and vacuum seal them. Then let it sit for about a week. When it’s ready it looks like this
Then I strain twice. First time is through a regular mesh strainer and I push on the solids to try and get as much liquid out as possible. Those solids go into my toaster oven on the dehydrate setting, and that is what becomes the powder.
Lastly I put it through a coffee filter and that liquid goes from red to nearly clear (has a yellow tint to it). This is not really necessary but I like to do because I am a psycho. Then I keep the jar in the fridge and it’ll last for months without spoiling, but it never lasts that long anyway!
Ahhhh, I’m too far gone to do the lacto-fermentation at this point, as all I have right now is the tomato water.
That said, Question for the future: can I do this without a vacuum sealer? Thinking I could just use a ziploc and get most of the air out. Would that be good enough? Or does it really need to be fully devoid of air?
You do not need a vacuum sealer, but a ziplock bag will not work. Use a glass jar instead. When the tomatoes are fermenting, CO2 is being explelled and so if you used a ziplock bag it would just pop open or potentially explode. For the jar method, use the same amount of salt, but squeeze the tomatoes with your hands to get some liquid out, dump all of it into your jar and then use something to weigh the solids down so they are fully submerged. Mold most often occurs when the solids are exposed to oxygen (this is one reason doing it under vacuum is preferable) so it’s important to avoid that. Last thing, if your jar is a screw top you’ll have to “burp” it, meaning just open it quickly to release the co2 and then close again. If you have a gasket top or a Weck style jar, you can close the lid without the rubber seal and you won’t have to burp it as often or maybe even at all.
Thanks for that. I think I actually may have a random gasket top jar. If not, I don’t mind buying one.
This lacto-fermenting sounds quite interesting (I read a couple articles quickly) — I’ve never done any fermentation, aside from red wine vinegar and pizza dough. Closest I’ve come is doing a quick, or relatively quick, pickle.
As punishment for not leaving the key in the hiding place for the maids I made chicken piccata and sent my daughter a photo. Some pasta with parm and vegetables
Really easy to make! And fun to play around with ingredients. Extra points if you grow the chiles yourself–there’s an enormous selection of seed available if you want to try growing your own–try Refining Fire or Tradewinds as reliable sources. Refining Fire is particularly good for native American landraces.
However … I’m also wondering if they’re “worth” all the effort. There are plenty of truly awesome hot sauces available commercially for $10/bottle, and less. I can just envision myself going through all this work, doing my own, thinking, “Hey! That’s pretty good! … but was it worth all the effort? Ehhhhhhh …”
I have to believe everyone here who makes their own feels, “Yes. It’s worth it.” Anyone feel the opposite?
For me personally, hot sauce and also dill pickles are just not worth it, not because of the effort, but because I can’t easily get to a product that is superior. Sauerkraut, on the other hand, is a product that is readily available and cheap but I like making my own because the results are superior imo. I think for many people, the process itself is the fun part so whether the end result is better or worse than a commercial product isn’t relevant. For me it has to be both.
I’m generally the same. (or at least this is the attitude I have, even if I don’t strictly hold myself to it (see below))
That said – to be clear – I’m not going to sit here and claim what I churn out on a nightly basis is equivalent to, or better than, a well-selected restaurant where the bill is $200+ per head (although sometimes it is). Do I think that I, and probably everyone who posts in this thread, can cook circles around many restaurants? Absolutely. But we’re not going out to eat at those establishments, anyways, so does that really even matter?
There are definitely folks in this thread – I consider you to be one of them – who clearly can, and do, cook on a level worthy of Michelin star(s). I’m not there, but for the very occasional home run of a dish. Am I going to stop making tacos at home because I can get tastier ones down the street for $5 a pop? No. Am I going to stop doing stir-frys, spring rolls, pork chops, lasagna, or fish at home, even though I can often get “better” ones at restaurants? No. First of all, I can’t afford to be eating out all the time; second, I don’t have time to eat out all the time; finally, I bet my cooking at home is, on average, a lot healthier than it is at many of these restaurants. … all of this is a bunch of mumbo jumbo to simply say, I need to have reasonable expectations about what is, and what is not, “worth it” for me to do at home. I generally try to avoid making things at home for which I find the process boring, but there are exceptions (aforementioned tacos, for example), so having a fun/interesting process is important to me, as well, but it’s not the end all be all. Same with churning out superior product — I don’t insist on it, but if I’m going to make something at home, I need to at least be able to make a version that I deem “pretty good” — let’s call it a “B” — with obvious A or A+ aspirations. … sorry for the long-windedness.
