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Chili Oil Notes

uptointerpretation.com

81–90 of 164 posts

Re: Chili Oil Notes

#81
post #58

I love nerding out on food as mich as the next person. On food and cooking is one of my favorite kitchen tools. Sichuan chili oil is a staple condiment in our house. That said, i find the following to be an oft-repeated bs phrase parroted across the internet. You can find it tracing back to reddit threads over ten years ago. > You can end up with what are called fines and boulders, fines being tiny, dust-like pieces…

Seriously? The grinder is the most important part, in my experience. When I first got into aeropress and pourovers, I was frustrated for years with bland and inconsistent brews. It was only after I upgraded to a decent burr grinder that everything fell into place. It’s just impossible to tweak anything else without first starting with a good grinder. I make adjustments of a few micron at a time with my grinder, and the difference is significant for both espresso and pour over. It’s much rarer that I make adjustments in water salts, brew temp, and brew method.

Re: Chili Oil Notes

#82
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally agree. It’s sad and they’ve lost the pulse of life and art

Some people derive joy from doing it this way. You or I may not agree with it, but that doesn’t mean it’s a wrong way to enjoy something.

I’m saying it is wrong

Re: Chili Oil Notes

#83
Sichuan chili oil and cuisine blow me away. Discovered it in my early 50s and within about 1 day my wife decided I’m a reincarnated Sichuan farmer lol

Re: Chili Oil Notes

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's quite rare to die of food poisoning. I’d go so far as to say it’s virtually unheard of for healthy adults to die of food poisoning from cooked food going bad*. It’s mostly children, the elderly, and the immunocompromised that are at risk. The fast majority of microbes that cause food born illness are really common in our environments and we’ve built up plenty of immunity. * fecal contamination and other toxins…

There’s always this case from 2008: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3232990/

Bacillus cereus (the culprit in that case) the microbe associated with 'fried rice syndrome'? It seems to be pretty

Re: Chili Oil Notes

#85

The discussion here reminds me of the lady tasting tea experiment. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_tasting_tea

I read all that and didn’t get the thing I want to know. Could the lady tell the difference?!

It's on the page, pretty high up:

> One could then ask what the probability was for her getting the specific number of cups she identified correct (in fact all eight), but just by chance.

Re: Chili Oil Notes

#86
post #58

I love nerding out on food as mich as the next person. On food and cooking is one of my favorite kitchen tools. Sichuan chili oil is a staple condiment in our house. That said, i find the following to be an oft-repeated bs phrase parroted across the internet. You can find it tracing back to reddit threads over ten years ago. > You can end up with what are called fines and boulders, fines being tiny, dust-like pieces…

That's nonsense unless your the kind of person who says a cup of instant is indistinguishable from a freshly ground brew (and post covid there probably are many more people who can't).

The size and consistency of the ground coffee makes a huge difference in extraction of coffee and therefor the taste, so a grinder that can make a consistent, repeatable grind will be noticeable (perhaps not as noticable as purchased ground vs freshly ground), but for some the difference between instant, and fresh ground with a $50, $500, or $3000 isn't worth the price.

$50 vs $500 Vs $500,000 Coffee Grinder: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkYqHWThIpA

Re: Chili Oil Notes

#87
post #40

If anyone is looking for a chilli oil you can buy that's both delicous and available check this out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lao_Gan_Ma It goes great with, eggs, rice and any yogurt dishes.

The little soybeans are the best part of Lao Gan Ma. I would kill for a version that was half soybean.

Re: Chili Oil Notes

#88
post #81
post #58

I love nerding out on food as mich as the next person. On food and cooking is one of my favorite kitchen tools. Sichuan chili oil is a staple condiment in our house. That said, i find the following to be an oft-repeated bs phrase parroted across the internet. You can find it tracing back to reddit threads over ten years ago. > You can end up with what are called fines and boulders, fines being tiny, dust-like pieces…

Seriously? The grinder is the most important part, in my experience. When I first got into aeropress and pourovers, I was frustrated for years with bland and inconsistent brews. It was only after I upgraded to a decent burr grinder that everything fell into place. It’s just impossible to tweak anything else without first starting with a good grinder. I make adjustments of a few micron at a time with my grinder, and t…

Quality of beans and water in some order, followed by temperature and time, then grinder.

Grab some 6 month old beans and brew them with metallic water at 85c, no grinder in the world will make that palatable.

> adjustments of a few micron at a time

Lol, no you don’t. Microns are much smaller than you think.

Re: Chili Oil Notes

#89
post #46

I make a "Mediterranean" version of this with olive oil and I cut up some chilies and just let them soak. Completely different use case than an Asian chili oil IMO... but a little bit easier to do as you don't need to heat the oil (and you probably wouldn't want to heat olive oil that much anyway).

You use it pretty much instantly then? Or do you take any other steps to prevent the botumism bacteria from thriving?

Re: Chili Oil Notes

#90
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is an important insight. Some people don’t have much experience in making repeatable coffee, and whether you make the coffee well is more important than how good the grinder is.

But once you have repeatable steps and that are good (water, quantities, temperature etc.) the grinder becomes the most important piece even in espresso.

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