We've seen a lot of great recipe results on the forums and on social media and thought it would be fun to get everyone involved in a recipe club. We'll start off with a new recipe each week so everyone has time to pick up the ingredients (we'll include a list) and choose an evening to cancel dinner plans for a night in with Anova. Once you've completed the recipe, please share photos of the results with everyone! Tell us about any changes you made to the recipe along the way or any difficulties you encountered.
Each week's post will include a poll of recipes for everyone to vote on for the following week's recipe, so when you're posting your results, don't forget to vote on which one you want to do next - suggestions are always welcome! Join in for recipes some weeks and skip others, you can participate as often as you'd like. So, let's get to our first recipe, woohoo!
Last week's blog series "5 Surprising Things You Can Sous Vide" got me craving fried chicken and I thought it might be a tasty one to kick off our recipe club. Get creative with this and feel free to alter the recipe however you want!
If you're sticking to the recipe exactly, here's a rough outline for your fried chicken grocery list:
Bone-in, skin-on chicken breasts and drumsticks
Dried thyme
Olive oil
Buttermilk
Flour
Celery salt
Garlic powder
Onion powder
Black pepper
Peanut oil or some other oil for frying
Sage leaves if you want to make it pretty
Salt
If you've tried or would like to try any of the recipes from our site for the recipe club, let me know and I'll add it to the polls in the coming weeks. I look forward to seeing everyone's results and sharing my own! Be forewarned though, food presentation is not my strong suit...
@Helen & @john.jcb Ah, I see, so it’s taking votes but it it’s not displaying a selection by populating the bubble with the orange indicator. I’ll make a note for that to be fixed. For now, when you vote - select the circle for the option you want to vote on and press submit, even though it will still look like you haven’t made a selection. I tested it on Safari and Chrome - both are working that way just not showing the bubble filled in with orange once selected. Which browsers are you using?
For those of you have have never deep-fried at home before, check out Kenji’s posts about cooking oil smoke points along with a tutorial on how to deep-fry at home. Very helpful:
@john.jcb #-o Added to my bug list - thank you! Are you giving the fried chicken a go this week?
@jordan Not this weekend; I stopped by my butcher and got a hanger steak. I am going to make that with oven roasted Brussels sprouts. I still have a few short ribs to finish up as well.
Sadly I shall have to pass, I have chicken breasts in the fridge that I need to cook before they go smungey, but a bit more notice and I would love to take part in the . . . well, I guess it’s kind of like a book club, except you use a c instead of a b.
I have finally emerged from my deep-fried pit of shame and am finally ready to share my fried chicken folly…
Basically, the phenomenal results I’ve gotten from my PC have inflated my culinary ego and a wannabe master chef has emerged from within. The food is so good that I have subconsciously convinced myself that those culinary skills thus extend into any and all kitchen activities. My master chef alter ego decided that because I can cook the perfect sous vide steak, deep-frying will also come just as naturally and with no precautionary measures or tutorials. Long story short, there was a lot of smoke. A LOT. And chicken that was perfectly battered and cooked sous vide but never made it into a piping hot lava of golden oil. I was so busy fanning the alarm that I didn’t take a photo at the time but I did get an after shot of the pot and the smell still lingers in the kitchen. There’s now an oil smoking point reference table hanging on my fridge that I snagged from Kenji here.
Anywho…probably wasn’t the greatest recipe to kick off with as evidenced by the sweet sound of smoke alarms that I serenaded my neighbors with over the weekend. So let’s move onto this week’s recipe!
@jordan I am glad warmer weather is finally coming to the Midwest. I have an induction hot plate that I use outdoors that goes to 450°F and I plan on using it for searing to avoid smoke issues. Do you have a good kitchen thermometer? It makes things like frying a lot less stressful. I also have used mine to calibrate my oven so I know the exact temperature it produces for common settings. This is very important if you branch out into baking.
@jordan oh your poor pot Was there much oil spatter to clean up? I’ve been looking at deep fryers to avoid this issue but the last thing I need is yet another kitchen gadget.
Can we get recipes that use cheaper cuts of meat? Pork tenderloin is nice but it’s also expensive and easy to cook with more conventional methods, whereas something like shoulder is ideal for SV. What do you think?
I think you could make the dish with pork shoulder or pork loin or butt even. Pork is the best deal on meat these days in Canada it seems. I actually bought pork tenderloin, which was excellent for 3.99 lb. and whole boneless loin roast for 1.77 a lb. The tenderloin is superb as well (I cut it into 2 roasts, some chops and a long strip of pork belly).
If I do this I will be using a different cut probably and I am sure it will be delish.
@Helen Pork is fairly inexpensive here as well in the US. I bought tenderloins at Costco recently and paid just over $12 for four. @Simon_C you might try hanger steak. I got it for about $6/lb and it was less than 2lbs. Very tender and great flavor. I am thinking I might do beef ribs this weekend. It will be interesting if I like them medium rare and tender or cooked for 6 hours in the smoker. I am guessing the texture will be two totally different experiences. Growing up we raised our own beef and I still shy away from round steak as we had so much of it but I just may try it as well. On sale it is very reasonably priced.
@john.jcb I don't but I've been thinking about it for quite some time...I think this is the final straw, it's time for me to order one. I'm thinking the thermapen. They have a pink one so they've easily got me swayed haha.
@Simon_C I've been thinking that maybe for the recipes, we can instead do it by category to make it more flexible. So we'd do "choose one of the beef recipes this week" type deal to make it easier and more flexible for everyone to choose their own. Or, alternatively, providing two or three recipes as options.
What does everyone think of the above? Whatever is easiest and more fun for all of you!
After all I posted my attempts.
Was there much oil spatter to clean up? I’ve been looking at deep fryers to avoid this issue but the last thing I need is yet another kitchen gadget.