IMO water and oil pack are two completely different ingredients with different uses; water is for mixing, like tuna salad or casserole, and oil is when you want it to shine alone, like on a Nicoise salad or pan bagnat.

When it’s done properly, with a slightly stale crusty loaf, it’s not soggy by any means - it’s juicy but still toothsome, not crispy but you definitely need to still get a firm bite-and-pull to eat it.

I make it a point to religiously filter the oil and degrease the fryer every single time I use it, it makes frying something into a big enough production that I dont actually use it that often, mostly when I’m making a full meal. That and I can store the machine on the rack and keep the oil in a sealed container which…

Ham...bur...ger...buns?!?!!!! I accept that you’re not going to find pain de menage at the grocery store, but a BURGER BUN? Even a “best-quality” one is going to be one step up from Wonder Bread for this use; shopping by that metric you’re likely to end up with a brioche bun if anything which would be catastrophic.

What’s even better is having a dedicated countertop fryer instead of a Dutchie; if I want sticks I just turn a knob, let the oil warm up, and raid the freezer. It’s a glorious existence!

Scratch-made can be marginally better but unless I wanted to do something like dinosaur cheese sticks (which, now that I say that, I am totally making for my niece’s birthday), the hassle of breading is...store bought is fine. It's absolutely the frying that's key.

In 25+ years of commercial cooking, I’ve made mozzarella sticks from scratch precisely once. There’s a 99.96% chance the ones at the restaurant are frozen, and not even good ones; most likely either the US Foods or Sysco house brand that comes by the 25# case.

Seeing as how the product referred to is bread, which gets a nice, warm, long incubation specifically to let microbes flourish...I think that’s not at all an unlikely possibility.

Never done that but I have smoked chicken skins in a pan of heavy cream, for a fried-skin-only app...the same principles should apply here. Instead of doing it over the stove, just put the pan in the smoker and render it directly with the hot smoke; after you strain it off finish on the stovetop as per the original…

Hi, 25+ year kitchen guy here...paring knives are a consumable/disposable. There is literally nothing that I can countenance needing a $30/50/80/100+ blade for; they’re not meant to be a paragon of the bladesmith’s art, for making laser-perfect cuts. They’re the ultimate inexpensive workhorse, the sundry-drawer…

Hi, 25+ year kitchen guy here...paring knives are a consumable/disposable. There is literally nothing that I can…

Man, taking the MSF RiderCourse is so the way to go to get your endorsement. Hell, it’s even a great idea if you already have your license stamped; you get a hefty discount on the insurance.

Connecticut, 1996, Winsted DMV. I get in the car, turn right onto the state road. Go, the, oh, two miles? into town. Left on Main street. Take the first left, first left again - literally around the block. Turn right, go back to the DMV and back into a spot, not even parallel.

If you’re in NYC (dunno if the service is elsewhere) check out ChowNow. They’re a non-commission system that handles the online storefront but sends your payment to the restaurant immediately; they do charge the business a flat fee but they are providing a service after all, and it’s like $100-120 a month (or was when…

As a trained chef, with a pizza fetish, who lives in NYC and loves a good Chi-pi...I’m twitchy.

First, of course you should just buy them by the 20-pack at the store, duh. That being said, a few years back I learned the right way to make tots/hashbrowns. Indistinguishable from the commercial product. It’s a handy trick if you want a shape other than what you can buy - we were making 6" rounds to go under Cornish…

As a chef - an actual one, not a cook using the term to score tail, who manages (well, managed, thx covid) inventory and organizes walkins and all that jazz that you’re scratching the surface of here...you’re missing the biggest element of proper product rotation. To wit, consuming your painstakingly organized,…

It's just vegetable stock made with corncobs, why would that sound squicky? It's lovely.

Bcause it seems like it’s intended to actually compete, so the interior kinda needs to be up to current FIA spec - which Group B definitely is not.

Uhhh...seeing as how this whole delicious-sounding project was launched from a cheese&corn riso, why not use corn stock?

Driving back from Maine to NYC...on January 26th, 2011. 20+ inches of snow in the city. It started to come down at the CT border on I-84, by the time we were at Danbury, unbeknownst to us the roads were closed. The Saw Mill Parkway was otherworldly, the snow was piling up so fast it was at the bumper of my 2007…