Sous Vide Nashville Hot Chicken

Nashville Hot Chicken is starting to become more and more available outside Tennessee, basically a highly spiced piece of fried chicken that after cooking is coated with a paste of cooking grease and hot spices.  While I've never had the chance to try it at the source we now have several places in Chicago that serve the dish.  Not too long ago I can across this article at Kentucky.com and decided I'd try to do my take on this regional specialty.

I made a spice blend based on the one in the article with a few minor changes based on what I had in the cabinet.  The blend I came up with is:

3 TB cayenne pepper
2 ts dry mustard
1 1/2 ts table salt
1 ts sugar
1 ts chipotle powder (didn't have any hot or smoked paprika)
1 ts black pepper
3/4 ts garlic powder
1/2 ts celery salt (mainly because I have a crap-ton of celery salt)

Because I had them I decided to use boneless/skinless chicken breasts.  I generously dusted all sides of the chicken with the spice mix before putting them in a gallon size Ziploc bag and letting them sit in the refrigerator for 24 hours.  The next day I filled a 12 quart cambro up to the 10 liter mark, attached the WiFi Nomiku and set the target temp to 150°f.  Once the bath was heated I put in the bag containing the seasoned chicken breasts and let them soak for 90 minutes.  When done the bag was removed from the bath and put in the refrigerator to chill.

Now it was time to play with the Paragon Induction Cooktop.  I figured I'd make some fries first to go with the chicken, I cut a russet potato in to batons and let them soak in cold water for about 10 minutes before rinsing several times.  About 6 cups of grease (corn oil with a little bacon grease) was put in a 3 quart sauce pan and the wireless probe put in place.  The potatoes were drained, patted dry with paper towels and put in the cold oil.  Finally the Paragon temperature was set to 370°f, rapid precision mode selected and the unit turned on.  Once the oil temp got over 212°f I switched to gentle precision mode and made sure to shake the pan every two minutes or so to keep things from sticking together.  This method worked pretty well, however as you can see in the picture there were a few fries in contact with the bottom of the pot initially which caused to brown a little before the others.  I may look in to using a small, round cooling rack next time to keep them from coming into contact with the bottom next time.

Now on to the chicken.  A two stage breading station was setup with plain flour on one side and a mixture of buttermilk, the spice mix and some of the purge from the cooking bag in the other.  One of the cold chicken breasts was first dredged in the flour, then coated with the buttermilk mix and then back into the flour.  Once everything was nice and coated it was allowed to rest on a piece of parchment paper while the oil got back up to temperature (which doesn't take too long for that small quantity of oil in rapid precision mode).  The chicken was carefully lowered in to the oil and cooked until the crust turned a nice golden-brown color.  Since the meat was pre-cooked there was no reason to worry about the internal temperature reaching 165°f, it just needs to be heated through.  I turned the chicken breast once, which can be a little tricky in such a small saucepan so care is needed to prevent being splashed with boiling hot oil.  Once done a tablespoon of the hot oil was added to about the same measure of the spice mix and used to coat the chicken breast.

The chicken had great flavor and the sous vide fried chicken method ensures that the meat remains tender and juicy.  I could have done with a little more heat, next time I'm at the store I'll need to pick up some hot paprika to try and dial it up a bit.  All in all a successful first attempt, but still room to tweak the recipe.  I'll have to stop by Gus's Fried Chicken for some authentic inspiration!

Playing with the Paragon Induction Cooktop

Over the weekend I had finally some time to play around with my Paragon Induction Cooktop.  Before I could do that however, I needed to invest in some induction-ready cookware.  My T-fal professional skillet  is induction ready as well as my cast iron and carbon steel skillets, but none of my pots or saucepans would work with the new cooktop.  I went out looking for some suitable pots to use with the Paragon.

When I first became aware of the Paragon Indigogo campaign I thought it would be ideal to control the temperature during the mashing phase of homebrewing.  For this I needed an induction ready stockpot large enough to contain the mash, and because it would be exposed to acidic conditions it needed to have a stainless steel interior rather than aluminum.  The Tramontina 22 quart stockpot pictures to the left fits the bill nicely and at a low price to boot.  I also wanted a smaller saucepan to use for deep frying, soups and of course, sauces.  I ended up buying a 3 quart non-stick saucepan from Nuwave.  The Duralon non-stick coating is ceramic based and can withstand temperatures up to 475°f so it should have no problem with the temperatures needed for deep frying.  I plan on making some hush puppies later tonight so I'll get to see how it fares.

As a test I filled up the stockpot with around 14.5 liters of cold tap water to see how long it would to bring it up to 150°f.  Pairing the wireless probe to the cooktop is simple, just plug in the Paragon and push the button on the side to the probe battery case.  A Bluetooth symbol will flash three times and the probe will sync with the cooktop.  Once that is done you can select the rapid or gentle precise mode and set the desired temperature with the +/- buttons.  My understanding is that rapid mode will allow the maximum power level to go up to 10, while in gentle mode it is restricted to 5.  The starting temperature of the water was 50°f and in an uncovered pot is took 1 hour 10 minutes to reach 150°f (quick tip, the adhesive on the sticker started to loosen at around 110°f allowing it to be peeled off).  I did notice that the temperature consistently read 2°f higher using my Thermapen than what the wireless probe was showing, I'm not sure if there's a way to program in an offset but if not I'll just know to set the temperature 2°f lower than I want.  While I had the cooktop on I took the opportunity to sync it up to the FirstBuild app, I haven't had a chance to play around with it yet so I'm not sure what additional features it opens up but will try and do so this afternoon.

It's Here!: Paragon Precision Induction Cooktop Edition.

My latest gadget just arrived, the Paragon Induction Cooktop!  I haven't had a chance to play with it too much, probably won't be able to do so until the weekend, but wanted to post a few pics of the unboxing.

Here's the box as delivered.  A little damage on the corners and the box wasn't taped at all to prevent the box from being opened en route.

Here is the box opened to show all the gadgetry goodness!  The cooktop itself is a bit larger than I expected, the cooking surface is 12" across with an 18" diameter including the controls and feet.































Here is everything removed from the box.  The most interesting thing to me is the wireless probe shown in front.  When paired to the cooktop and attached to a pot of liquid it is supposed to allow you to control the temperature of the liquid in the pot to +/- 1°f up to 375°f.  My original thought when backing the campaign was that it would be very useful for home brewing beer, during the mash you need to bring the pot up to a precise temperature and hold it there while the enzymes in the malt convert starches to sugars.  This should make that job much easier.  Sous vide cooking it another cooking method that could be performed with this piece of equipment, but I'll probably stick with my Nomiku for that.  I can see myself using it for deep frying, I do have a dedicated fryer, but it requires 5 liters of oil and is a pain in the arse to clean up.  That's fine if I'm cooking for a crowd but not worth the trouble if it's just for two ot three.  The Paragon cooktop will allow me to use whatever size pot is most suitable for what I'm making.  This should also shine at low temperature poaching in whatever liquid I want to use be it court bouillon, olive oil or even butter!  I have the probe charging now and hope to put the Paragon Induction Cooktop through its paces soon!

Sunrise Biscuit Kitchen Biscuits

A few years ago I had the TV on in the background while I was working on the computer, as I often do.  The program on at the time was "Food Paradise", a show on the travel channel that does short clips about various restaurants based around a particular theme.  An episode titled "Drive Thru Paradise" was on which highlighted places around the country that have outstanding drive-thru offerings.  One of the featured restaurants was Sunrise Biscuit Kitchen in Chapel Hill, NC.  I've never had the opportunity to try their biscuits myself, but as a southern transplant to a northern state anything biscuit related piques my interest.  As I was working on the computer I heard them go over their biscuit recipe, but I was unprepared and by the time I could grab a pen and paper it was over.  I searched on-line but the only version of the clip I could find omitted the recipe part, there seem to be several versions of Food Paradise's Sunrise Biscuit Kitchen clips but I never could find the one that included the recipe description.  Fast forward a few years and again I'm working on the computer with the TV on in the background.  Travel Channel is playing back-to-back-to-back episodes of Food Paradise and when the episode I saw a fews years back comes on I stop what I'm doing and get ready, just in case it's the version with the recipe.  And it was!

The recipe they gave is for a commercial size batch, it's also very short on details with only the list of ingredients and oven temperature.  The ingredients they listed are:

10 pounds flour
24 ounces margarine
1/2 gallon buttermilk
16 ounces water

I had to make a few assumptions about the ingredients.  Since no leaveners were listed I assumed the flour they used was self-rising, and since they are in the south I assumed they were using a soft wheat flour like White Lily (which was convenient since I had some White Lily self rising flour in the pantry!).  They didn't specify the margarine brand so I basically chose the one that was on sale that week (Blue Bonnet).  It has a pretty soft consistency which matched what was shown on Food Paradise.

The next step was to reduce the amounts to something more manageable.  First I converted the recipe to baker's percentages which came out like this:

100% Self rising flour
15% Margarine
43% Buttermilk
10% Water

For the first batch I went with two cups of flour, which is 226 grams, and calculated the rest of the ingredients based on the flour weight.  This resulted in a recipe consisting of:

226 grams Self-rising flour
34 grams Margarine
104 grams Buttermilk
22 grams water

The oven was pre-heated to 450°f.  Flour and margarine were weighed into a bowl, I rubbed the fat into the flour with my hands (they used a mixer for this in the clip) until it looked like cornmeal but with a few larger pieces still remaining.  The buttermilk and water were weighed, added to the fat/flour mix and everything was quickly mixed together with a spoon.  Once all the loose flour had been incorporated into the dough it was turned out onto a lightly floured surface, flattened and folded.  This was done three more times before the dough was flattened to about 1" thickness and biscuits cut out.  The biscuits were put on a parchment lined tray so they were just touching, the tops were brushed with a little buttermilk and put in the oven for about 15-18 minutes until the tops were browned.

The end result was a pretty damn good biscuit.  The repeated flattening/folding procedure produced some flakiness but the biscuit was sturdy enough to use for breakfast sandwiches or to douse with gravy.  I would probably add a little salt next time and I didn't get as much lift as I would have liked, probably due to the self-rising flour being a little old (about 10 months).  The oven temp could probably go up a little as well, next time I'll try 475°-500°f.  I'll have to try it with the locally available self-rising flour to see how that affects the final product.

I haven't had the opportunity to make another chocolate pie, but I still want to post the recipe.  May have to do so sans any pictures.  I've also just received a shipping confirmation for my Paragon Induction Cooktop, haven't decided for sure what I'm going to do with it first but I recently found a recipe for Nashville Hot Chicken so I'm thinking I may sous vide a chicken breast with the spice blend, bread it in seasoned flour and fry using the Paragon cooker.