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What did I cook this weekend.....

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New toys came from amazon today

What’s most amazing is all 4 fit on my cook top together, something my old pans could never do.

What brand stove is that? I love the long burner in the middle! Is the oven electric/convection or gas?

I'm thinking I'll remodel my kitchen next year so am starting to look at stuff I like!
 
What brand stove is that? I love the long burner in the middle! Is the oven electric/convection or gas?

I'm thinking I'll remodel my kitchen next year so am starting to look at stuff I like!

It’s a piece of crap Kenmore. I got it for $499 so I figured it was better than cleaning what the previous homeowner left crusted in grease. It’s no frills but it’s gas and that makes me happy.

The center griddle burner is a cool concept but an *utter* failure in practice. If you use the griddle they sell its too small to even make 2 pancakes. If you use a real griddle in the center then you can’t use any of the 4 burners because it encroaches.

My recommendation is to get a 36” / 5 or 6 burner cook top and an *electric* oven. Then a real griddle. If you have a very large budget they make some cook tops with a large slab of carbon steel built in.
 
Oh I've seen some A-MA-ZING things if I could afford them, LOL!

I'm trying to decide if I'm going to keep the same configuration in the kitchen, which works well, or tear it all out and start over to get a bigger stove and a proper vent - there is one of those microwave/vent thingies now which functions sort-of as a proper fan/vent. The stove is also a Kenmore, gas cooktop/electric convection oven, and was put in about 2005, verified by the repair guy who came to see why the dishwasher wasn't working - it's the same vintage, Kenmore, somebody had apparently done a DIY on it and neglected to put the o-ring/screws back properly. The fridge is Kenmore side by side installed in 1994 when the house was built, LOL! So I can't say much bad about that vintage anyway. I had one in the house we moved from that was 40", gas cooktop, electric convection oven, and I despised the cooktop, which was some version of black glass and the burner grates just sat on top of that, you had to be VERY careful about scooting heavy pots on those grates because they'd tip over.

Glad to know that the center burner is fairly useless - thanks for your review! I'll stop lusting after that now unless I put in a larger stove and it has room enough - I'll know what to look for!
 
The only way to do it
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Glad to know that the center burner is fairly useless - thanks for your review! I'll stop lusting after that now unless I put in a larger stove and it has room enough - I'll know what to look for!

IME it is useless on a standard 30" cooktop. Just not enough room for it. It also steals max BTU from other burners.

I'm still toying with the idea of redoing my kitchen. I wouldn't even both doing it without upgrading to a 36" cooktop and separate electric oven. I'd love to get back to dual electric ovens again, but there's no way to do that in this house without a significant sacrifice in cabinet/pastry space, or knocking down a wall. Structural changes wouldn't be worth it. Buying a new house would be cheaper.
 
...get a bigger stove and a proper vent - there is one of those microwave/vent thingies now which functions sort-of as a proper fan/vent...

Those crappy combo microwave vent hoods can be installed two different ways. They can actually vent up through the ceiling and roof to the outside, or they can just circulate through the crappy little charcoal filter and blow back into the kitchen. Mine is installed in the later fashion, which is why I cook outside so much. If I don't the entire house and our clothes end up smelling like the dish of the day!!

So, when I through my crappy flat glass stove top away and replace it with a gas cook top, I will be dumping the current microwave vent hood and installing a proper vent!
 
Those crappy combo microwave vent hoods can be installed two different ways. They can actually vent up through the ceiling and roof to the outside, or they can just circulate through the crappy little charcoal filter and blow back into the kitchen. Mine is installed in the later fashion, which is why I cook outside so much. If I don't the entire house and our clothes end up smelling like the dish of the day!!

So, when I through my crappy flat glass stove top away and replace it with a gas cook top, I will be dumping the current microwave vent hood and installing a proper vent!

Real vents are nice but they are also an ecological disaster. To be effective they require a significant velocity of air, which is only achievable with a duct of several inches in diameter. Put the two together and you’re talking about sending hundreds of cubic feet of *conditioned* air right out of the house every minute.

That is why they aren’t used in modern kitchens. There are solutions that mitigate by using an additional fan to bring in makeup air from the outside, but $$$.
 
Travis, I'm with ya. Ours thankfully DOES exhaust outside but it's not very efficient at all. I think the reason most kitchens have such things now is that the majority of folks simply don't cook like we cook!

I can't wait to get a proper hood/exhaust. Summertime, when the air is "conditioned" we cook outside anyway.
 
I have two pounds of soaked blackeyed peas along with a package of smoked pork neck bones, BIG onion, and plenty of seasonings simmering away on the Slow Cooker cycle of my Instant Pot.

Once it's all done, we'll pressure can 6 pints of them and the rest we'll eat up. Gotta start off New Year's Day with Hoppin' John!

Picture to come later.
 
Made one of my favorites today with a slight modification. Instead of a straight up dashi stock i started with a pork bone stock and added the dashi "teabag" at the end. Home made kimchi of course. Fairly old too, sorta forgot i had it. Old kimchi makes the best kimchi jjiggae. Short grain rice with Japanese furikake seasoning.
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I have two pounds of soaked blackeyed peas along with a package of smoked pork neck bones, BIG onion, and plenty of seasonings simmering away on the Slow Cooker cycle of my Instant Pot.

Once it's all done, we'll pressure can 6 pints of them and the rest we'll eat up. Gotta start off New Year's Day with Hoppin' John!

Picture to come later.

I have 1 lb soaking that I will cook tomorrow, and will soak 2 more lbs to cook New Years morning. The first lb will get honey baked ham scraps and the 2 lb batch will get the honey baked ham bone with all the meat still hanging on it. We ran out with just 2 lbs last year, so doing an extra lb this year. We will have 15-17 people over, plus a couple that we will have to take peas and cabbage to afterwards. Pictures to come :)
 
NY Strip seared in a blazing cast iron pan and tossed in a 375 oven for 6 min with bleu cheese. Carefully transferred the steaks to a plate to rest and cooked onions in the steak drippings. Steamed broccoli on the plate too.
 
I had some really good wings once and I think he fryed them, then pulled them out and mixed them with a stick of butter and hot sauce. He might have double fryed them. Anyone familiar with this technique? I think an air fryer would be a good wing option.
 
I had some really good wings once and I think he fryed them, then pulled them out and mixed them with a stick of butter and hot sauce. He might have double fryed them. Anyone familiar with this technique? I think an air fryer would be a good wing option.
That sounds like standard hot wings. You fry the wings, then mix Frank's and butter half and half and toss the wings in it. I prefer to lightly bread the wings before I fry them, but that's not traditional. Lately I have been doing mine on the grill like was posted above, putting only a dry rub on them. Then right after I sear them and move them back to indirect, I slather them with the sauce while I have searing the others. That's pretty much my go to method now because it's great and it eliminates the frying mess!
 
Chicken noodle soup night at my casa, courtesy of my slow-cooker.

Wife and son have a bad cold bug that won't let go without a fight, so I'm calling in culinary reinforcements.

2 quarts of unsalted chicken stock, several chopped carrots, and an onion (chopped then blenderized, courtesy of my Ninja blender) have been simmering all day with a pinch of salt and a healthy dash of oregano. Kitchen smells real nice.

Some leftover chicken from last night's roasted bird got a rough chop, and then into the cooker, about an hour ago.

Some extra-broad egg noodles are next up to par-boil and add to the cooker to finish cooking in the soup itself, ~20 minutes before dinner.
 
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