Fifth Avenue Forum

Love the you betcha videos. The lawn ones are also fantastic.

Turkey stock and Turkey salad under way.

Turkey sandwich on leftover sourdough will be lunch here.

Turkey sandwich on leftover sourdough will be lunch here.

That's us tonight. Everything turned out well for us and I think like a lot of people discovered as they were cooking their first Thanksgiving at home by themselves, it was a lot of **** work!

Yeah, I hope I don’t have to do it again for a very long time. I’ve always made one or two sides for Thanksgiving so that my mom or aunt didn’t have to go it all, and now I’ll try and do a little more.

Reserved part of the white meat after cooking, and I plan on finally using the Smoking Gun I was given last year and shredding that up into a nice smoked turkey salad.

Anyone have a recommendation of a good thin cookie sheet for the oven?

Why thin? We have Wilton cookie sheets, and love them. They cook nice and evenly, and don't warp - which I generally see on shitty cookie sheets and thin ones.

If by thin you mean a single layer, this is the one I use the most:

I have another that has an air gap between the bottom, but don't like it nearly as much.

Not sure why thin, I thought I saw that was way to go, but I know nothing. Thanks

Oh I remember now, I thought I read to use something flat for convection baking?

Ah, dunno about convection baking. My mom uses T-Fal airbake sheets, which she loves. They're the ones that are flat, with a lip along one edge for handling.

You do want a flat sheet for convection baking. With that said, I'd go with stoneware. I use it all the time when making cookies. No sides at all

I like the Emile Henry line of stoneware. They're at Sur La Table, but may be available elsewhere.

That said, I also think like 50% of your kitchen cookware can be subbed with cheapy wares from a restaurant supply store.

I recommend USA Pan baking products. They're based in the Pittsburgh area and their products are made in the USA. Most of the baking sheets and pans sold by King Arthur Flour are rebadged USA Pan products.

https://www.usapan.com/

Have any of you chumps been to Whole Foods lately and if so have they had eggplant

Got my steel today to replace my pizza stone. Tonight is pizza night and I'll need to use the stone one more time, but next week: pizza steel. Will report back on results.

Don't get ride of the stone - place it on the very bottom of your oven under the lowest rack and use it as a heat sink.

Or you could reverse that and use the steel as the sink and continue cooking on the stone. (That's how the Pizza Kettle works; the 20-lb steel forms the top of the cooking chamber, and the actual cooking surface is a ceramic stone.)

Nah. Too much stuff. The stone is pretty beat up anyways. It was a good 8+ year run with a ton of use.

Those with sous vide machines:

How do you do your sears for bigger items? Roommate and I have cooked a pork shoulder and made pulled pork using our oven and cooking it for 7 hours. If we were to try this with sous vide (plan is to get a sous vide kit for Christmas), I would assume we'd need a sear, but obviously a pan sear wouldn't work.

Do you use a torch? Broiler in oven?

Those with sous vide machines:

How do you do your sears for bigger items? Roommate and I have cooked a pork shoulder and made pulled pork using our oven and cooking it for 7 hours. If we were to try this with sous vide (plan is to get a sous vide kit for Christmas), I would assume we'd need a sear, but obviously a pan sear wouldn't work.

Do you use a torch? Broiler in oven?

I’ve never seared anything larger than a 3 bone prime rib, so keep that in mind. You can sear larger cuts on your grill (cranked all the way up). I know I’ve seen recipes where they use the broiler on your oven, but I think the grill is a better vessel for this.

When the air fryer dings at exactly 1pm on an NFL Sunday and the chicken nuggets and waffle fries are done >>>

Those with sous vide machines:

How do you do your sears for bigger items? Roommate and I have cooked a pork shoulder and made pulled pork using our oven and cooking it for 7 hours. If we were to try this with sous vide (plan is to get a sous vide kit for Christmas), I would assume we'd need a sear, but obviously a pan sear wouldn't work.

Do you use a torch? Broiler in oven?

I’ve never seared anything larger than a 3 bone prime rib, so keep that in mind. You can sear larger cuts on your grill (cranked all the way up). I know I’ve seen recipes where they use the broiler on your oven, but I think the grill is a better vessel for this.

What if the grill isn't an option in January?

Those with sous vide machines:

How do you do your sears for bigger items? Roommate and I have cooked a pork shoulder and made pulled pork using our oven and cooking it for 7 hours. If we were to try this with sous vide (plan is to get a sous vide kit for Christmas), I would assume we'd need a sear, but obviously a pan sear wouldn't work.

Do you use a torch? Broiler in oven?

I’ve never seared anything larger than a 3 bone prime rib, so keep that in mind. You can sear larger cuts on your grill (cranked all the way up). I know I’ve seen recipes where they use the broiler on your oven, but I think the grill is a better vessel for this.

What if the grill isn't an option in January?

The grill is always an option unless there’s crazy wind, IMO, but using the broiler in your oven may also work.

So you're saying because it's January, it is inappropriate to light a 600° fire outside? Interesting take.



There are a number of options for searing, depends on how you want to approach it. You can fabricate the roast down into smaller, more manageable 'chops' pre-cooking. You could certainly still pan-sear a full roast, but it would be a bit unwieldy and I'd hope your ventilation game would be on-point. The afterburner method is always fun (charcoal in a chimney lighter, grate laid over the top of the chimney). If you want to maintain the full roast, I'd say the best method would be to actually pre-sear ahead of cooking sous-vide using either a torch (perhaps a Searzall... I have a one, but I never use it fwiw, but nearly everyone I know that has one swears by it) or your broiler, then a quick post-sear to refresh the crust.

The grill is always an option unless there’s crazy wind, IMO

I'm charcoal-only and I live in a wildfire zone. So wind is my only limiting factor, and this year we've had wicked crazy Santa Ana winds a lot this fall.

We're going to get a gas grill to cover the days when it's windy, but I'm not sure if I want to get a new smaller gas grill and add it to the patio, or replace the charcoal grill with a gas/coal combo unit.