Perfectly Thin, Duck Fat-Fried Potato Crisps

Oh, dear readers. So much to write about but so little time. This summer has been flying by. It's been a hot one, too, which doesn't seem to jibe. Doesn't heat usually seem to make things drag? Well, not here. Between doing lots of work (I published my second book! Go grab a copy of Reading Toward Success on Amazon!), doing a good bit of travel, and having lots of guests, I feel like I've barely been able to keep up—in a good way. Chef Reiton and I love to entertain, which goes hand-in-hand with having lots of guests. Whether it's for one friend, two friends or 30 friends, we've been cooking up a storm this summer.

One of the things that I've gotten really into making is potato chips. I found a recipe in one of my Alton Brown cookbooks, I believe, and I made them on a whim one night. After our friend Mario's "Dear God!" exclamation after his first bite, I haven't been able to stop making them.

The first time I made them, I cut them with a standard vegetable peeler, per Alton's instructions. These chips were delightfully thin, but they were a pain-in-the-butt to cut. Careful, even pressure needs to be applied to get a whole slice of potato and not a wonky sliver, and for those who know me and my hand-eye coordination, that didn't work so well.

The next time I made them, I hand-sliced them. Using a beautifully sharp chef's knife, this worked out just fine. Except the anal side of me was upset at the lack of perfect uniformity in slice-thickness.

I finally came to a decision: it was time to visit Amazon.

For a long time, I have been wanting to replace my mandoline. No, I do not play a stringed instrument. I'm speaking of a kitchen tool that makes insanely thin slices of just about anything you want. The Norpro version that I have just hasn't held up. The blade has become dull, which means the mandoline has become dangerous to operate, and, frankly, I don't want to be losing any parts of my fingers or hand, no matter how tiny a slice. Bon Appetit magazine has highly recommended the Benriner Old Version Vegetable Slicer, and so that was the one I bought.

Baby, is that thing awesome! When I took my first swipe, the slicing was so smoothly done I had to check to make sure that it had actually sliced (unlike my Norpro that gave my veggie a tug every time I swiped downward. Yikes!). And for about the same price as a Norpro—AND the ability to change blades—I'm never going back.

Another thing I'm not going back on? Duck fat.

Yes, my friends—duck fat. After having a couple jars for a stupidly long time and "being afraid to use them" (MAJOR eye-roll here...), we let our friend, Chef Wilkinson, use them when he came over and made us a French meal the other night that included pomme frites: French fries fried in duck fat.

Potatoes fried in duck fat, once tasted, will change yet another aspect of your kitchen life. Trust me. The taste is full and deep, unlike vegetable fats. It's not a cheap fat, but it is an insanely delicious and healthy one that can be reused over and over again. Just strain it after it cools down and store it in the fridge.

So. Now for another test: I sliced my exquisitely even potato chips using my beautiful Benriner mandoline, gave the slices a good 20-minute soak in some hot water, rinsed them, and patted them dry. Meanwhile I heated about 3 cups of duck fat in a medium saucepan to 355°F. Once the fat was hot, I slipped four or five slices of potato into the fat one at a time, held them under the surface with a spider strainer and flipped them occasionally. When they were a lovely golden brown, I pulled them out, immediately sprinkled them with kosher salt, and drained them in a paper-towel lined bowl.

How did those duck-fat potato chips turn out?

Perfect.

Hand-Ground Meat: A Lesson in Economy—and Deliciousness

Years ago my mother gave me a meat grinder that she found at an auction. I'm not talking a mixer attachment-kind of meat grinder. I'm talking an OLD-school meat grinder. The kind that clamps onto a table and you crank chunks of meat through it with a big, long handle.

Here...this is it:

So, for years that grinder has sat in my cabinet. Like, in the back of the cabinet. I completely forgot it existed.

And then the other night,  as I stared at Bon Appetit's latest photo of larb in their April 2018 issue, the words suddenly came to my head:

MEAT GRINDER. 

Seriously. They did. Just like that:

MEAT GRINDER.

Maybe it was the texture of the ground pork in the photo that jarred my brain. I mean, it looked so...meaty. It definitely did not have a smashed-meat-paste-dumped-from-a-styrofoam-tray look to it.

Anyway, regardless of how it all happened, the next thing I knew I was telling Chef Reiton that we should just grind our own pork when we make the larb recipe, and he agreed wholeheartedly. I mean, why not? We had that lonely, ill-used (as in not used) grinder just sitting there, waiting...

So, we did. We took our boneless pork chops, cut them up into chunks and put them through our old-fashioned, crank-that-handle grinder.

How's that for an action shot, huh? And look at that texture! Perfectly sized meaty bits of pork that will still have a tender bite when browned to perfection. 

As I was grinding away, I was reflecting on the simple beauty of being able to see the chunks of meat going into the feed chute and knowing exactly what kind of pork I would be eating in my larb. I don't know about you, but whenever I buy ground meat at the store, I have fleeting thoughts that I don't  really having any idea what pig parts went into this ground pork package in my hand... The company isn't required to say. As long as it comes from a pig, it's labeled "pork," so—I'll leave you with that thought. 

And here's the BONUS big deal that I realized as I was grinding that beautiful meat: when you go to buy ground pork the next time you are at the grocery, take a look at the price of boneless pork chops or country-style ribs vs. the ground pork package. Pound per pound, the boneless pork is typically cheaper. And if you are grinding it yourself, you don't need to buy the pretty pork. You want to buy the cheaper, fattier, ugly, boneless cuts. They will make your ground meat more flavorful. Win-win for you and that ugly pork. I can tell you firsthand: the flavor of the larb with our hand-ground pork was PHENOMENAL.

So now I'm thinking of all the other meats I can grind. Cheap-o, skin-on chicken thighs for my little Middle Eastern chicken patties? WAY cheaper than ground chicken mush. And all that deliciously fatty skin that will actually add FLAVOR to the dish? Oh, heck, yeah! 

And how about ground beef for my burgers? Hand me those cheap, nobody-loves-me cuts of beef, baby, and I'll grind them down to a luscious mound of beefy goodness. 

All because of the new love-of-my-kitchen-life: my meat grinder.

Sigh.

[Cue sappy music and fade out]

A Foodie's Obsession: Webstaurantstore.com

I have a confession to make. My kitchen and I have a new addiction in our life, and it is called...

Webstaurantstore.com.

The name is cheesy, I know, but this site has become my go-to for all things kitchen-y. It's a restaurant supply store, and it has EVERYTHING for amazing prices.

Check out the mongo, commercial-grade, I'll-grind-anything-you-feed-me blender I just got for $199!

Look at the size of the motor:

For a third of the cost of a Vitamix, I got more horsepower, all-metal gears, a larger motor AND an extra polycarbonate canister.

Note the super simple, no-frills control panel. No more wondering what exactly it means to "frappe" and if I should have done that instead of "grind..."

And as for how well she works? She blitzed my marinade made of whole (fat!) garlic cloves, ginger root, soaked dried chiles and yogurt into a gorgeous mess in seconds.

If you decide to go buy this exact blender,  you will also get FREE SHIPPING. Am I serious? Yes, sir, I am. Normally you have to pay a fairly hefty shipping charge as a residential customer (which is why I usually make a list and order a bunch of stuff I need at once or split an order with a friend), but with certain items like this, the shipping is free. Wooot!

A few notes that may be of interest or concern regarding the Avamix:

• This is a commercial blender. There are no safety latches/mechanisms/features. The canister drops onto the base, you flip the switch, and it goes. So if you have curious little kids running around your kitchen, you might want to be especially careful or save this purchase for another decade. If you want to reenact the scene from Goonies and scare little kids with a running blender, you will be able to do so with this blender.
• The measurements on the canister are metric. There are no standard measurements.
• This thing is BIG. You will not be able to leave it on your kitchen counter. If you can because your kitchen is that big, I hate you.
• This baby is heavy. If your arm strength is somewhat lacking, either don't buy this baby or DO and use it to do some bench-presses in the kitchen. I won't ask questions, I promise.

Another side note that may be of interest and get you to shop at my fantasy store: if you write a review or submit a photo or a video of a product after you receive it, Webstaurantstore.com will give you WEBbucks to use on a future purchase. And I'm talking $2 for a written review, $4 for a photo and $10 for a video! Serious! It's a really generous perk, and I've gotten quite a bit of free stuff because of it.

SO. If you haven't discovered it already for yourself, go visit Webstaurantstore.com. Now go make your list of kitchen things you need (bulk spices? cast iron skillet? pizza peel? silverware? mongo blender? bamboo cocktail picks? kitchen towels?) and get ready to save some serious money on your kitchen needs!

P.S. If you want the recipe for the marinade in the picture, you will find it in Bon Appetit's June 2017 edition under chile-and-yogurt marinated chicken. 

The Ulu Factory's Ulu Knife: The Tiny-Chopping Love of My Life!

It's Christmas season, folks! A lot of you readers have been getting pounded with snow. So far, not out here in Boston. Just a dusting here or there. Still, it's been enough to get one in the Christmas-y mood, and so Chef Reiton and I dug out the old, "secret," family Christmas cookie recipes this weekend and baked up a storm.

The house smelled like browned butter and chocolate as we cranked out batch after batch of fudge ripples, pinwheels, palmiers, peppermint kisses. Chef Reiton's favorite? Pecan dainties.

(Insert a moaning sigh HERE)...pecan dainties. I had never even heard of them until Chef Reiton sent me a Christmas cookie tin eight Christmases ago, a token act that definitely caught my attention—and a piece of my heart (okay, and my stomach. My two friends and I ate almost the entire tinful in one sitting...). Nestled among an insane variety of cookie types were these tiny shortbread rounds, perfectly smeared with brown butter icing and sprinkled with a dusting of tinily chopped pecans. They literally melted in my mouth.

Now, eight Christmases later, I was standing in our kitchen (happy sigh), preparing the pecans to be sprinkled so daintily atop the brown butter icing Chef Reiton was preparing at the stove.

I have to admit, chopping nuts is NOT something I have ever enjoyed doing. The results are always just so--unsatisfactory. Yes, I have a "chopper" (the hand-powered Pampered Chef contraption), but it is hard to get even chopping sometimes with it. A food processor either blasts nuts to powdery bits or leaves unusable, large chunks. And as for chopping nuts on a cutting board with a chef's knife? You might as well just grab a handful of nuts and throw them across the kitchen. Not much else happens in such an exercise.

As I stood staring at the bag of pecans, determining which undesirable chopping method I preferred, I suddenly thought, "The ulu knife!!!" (Two seconds later I heard Chef Reiton say, "You know, the blade might be good for chopping the pecans..." We tend to do that a LOT.)

So, what the hell are we talking about?

A number of years ago, my mother-in-law traveled to Alaska and returned with a gift that, since, I don't know how I ever lived without in my kitchen. It's called an ulu knife. It is an ancient Alaskan tool, essentially a curved blade with a handle. The Alaskans once used it for everything, from scraping seal hides to cutting meat.

While I have never used mine to scrape hides, I have used it to chop a LOT, especially herbs. Mom Reiton also gave us a bowl that is specially designed to be used with an ulu. It holds your ingredient in place while you rock the blade back and forth over the food, meaning you don't have to touch the herbs or garlic or whatever as you are chopping them (avoiding getting "little green things" all over your hands, as Chef Reiton once said in regards to chopping cilantro).

Now I could use it to avoid shooting nuts across my kitchen! Hallelujah!

I wish you could have seen it; it was a nut-chopping experience that was mind-blowing, truly. Not only did the nuts happily stay in place, but the rocking motion of the blade in the bowl created the ideal ratio of minced nuts to micro-minced nuts, giving the pecan dainties the perfect balance of pecan flavor and toothsome crunch.

Glory be, now my nut-chopping days are forever changed, thanks to The Ulu Factory! If you want to order the set that Mom Reiton got us, click the image below. We have the 7 1/4" bowl with the 6" blade, but they have other sets, too.

Can you believe it? Your unhappy nut-shooting days are over! It will be the best $32 purchase you have ever made. Promise! And don't forget Christmas is right around the corner...the ulu set could make a kitchen-changing gift for your favorite person.

Many happy Christmas cookie-baking days to you all!

XOXO,

Rachael