Although you haven't gone fishing since your teenage years you suddenly become excited about it again when you realize that, while trout, bass, and other "good" fish have catch limits, you can catch all the squawfish and other invasive "bad" species you want, not only cleaning up your local streams and lakes, but also adding valuable micronutrients to your opus magnus....Oh yeah, and maybe you'll catch a trout or two for the dinner table, but that's secondary.

I definitely have a Sous Vide Supreme on my want list but since I recently dropped about $700 on a VitaMix set at Costoc it will probably be a while. :D One dish that really fascinates me when prepared Sous Vide is Fried Chicken. Have you tried this before? I love experimenting with new techniques to improve fried chicken and this one is very promising. (My other favorite method is pressure cooker fried chicken but that's pretty dangerous if you don't have the right equipment!) To make Sous Vide Fried Chicken soak your chicken in a strong brine for 30-40 minutes, rinse and soak in seasoned buttermilk for 8-12 hours. Season the meat with your preferred spices, maybe a little hot sauce or fresh buttermilk. Put the chicken in vacuum bags and cook at 160F for an hour. At that point you can dry the meat, coat in seasoned flour and fry it. Alternatively you can chill the meat down in ice water and hold in the fridge for quick frying later. The benefit to that method is that you can do all of the prep work for fried chicken in advance. Also, there are no worries about undercooked centers or dried meat. The chicken stays incredibly moist and the flavors really penetrate the meat. It's great if you want to cook a large amount of fried chicken for a crowd in a short amount of time. It's also good if you want to fry chicken to order. One warning though, you might want to cook the chicken to 165 though since the USDA has recently revised their meat cooking guidelines. Here is a link that might be useful: Hacking Your Slow Cooker: D.I.Y. Sous Vide Setup

I did my test today. Couldn't find my fancy pounder so used a mallet. It could have been flatter, but I didn't want to make it into mush. The pieces looked so pretty on the platter, but I forgot to take the picture. I was careful to try it less than perfectly hot since that inevitably happens along the line. It was great! But I'm going to rethink the plum sauce. I don't think it did anything for the meat, and it couldn't compete with the stuffing for flavor. The stuffing is unsulphured apricots, a few medjool dates, pistachios, a crisp white wine and Spanish varietal EVOO. And matzah. Just run through the FP easy peasy. The roulades might have been prettier tied with string but I used silicone bands because they're so hugely much easier. This was 145° F for about 3.5 hrs. The meat is slightly pink, but not "IT'S RAW!" pink, and the texture is cooked. It sliced really easily with a granton edged slicer (except when I got distracted).

First try at leftovers from the freezer the other day, a pork loin roast, worked perfectly. Nice to have hot leftovers without overcooking. Less success, again, with steaks. Figured I’d try it on my kids without them knowing anything. 1.25” strips, a bit of salt, bit of avocado oil. 132° for about an hour, pan seared. As opposed to my typical pan sear, rest, oven. My daughter immediately picked up on something being different. “The juice doesn’t taste right.” I asked my son if his was ok. “Not as good as normal but it’s fine.” That was as much descriptive as I got from them. Add them to the list, as my wife never likes it either, complains about the texture. Can’t say SV steak is idiot-proof because this idiot has yet to nail it.