New Packaging

My new packaging will be made of corn and will decompose within a few weeks within land fields. Less waste is always good. Here's a glimpse of the finished product

My New Lab

Yup, my new cooking laboratory with all of the bells and whistles. I usually spend most of my nights and mornings here making food for you

Convection versus Conventional

If I were to say that the past few days have been busy, that would be an understatement. And since I've been busy I managed to squeeze in my weekly testing in the kitchen.

So, I decided to bake my turkey in a Convection oven instead of a conventional oven. For those of you who are not familiar with a convection oven. Here's a brief description.
Convection ovens circulate heated air using a fan. The fan motor is in a separate enclosure, to protect it from overheating and melting any plastic components including wire insulation. Food warms faster in a convection oven, because the moving air strips away the thin layer of air which otherwise would surround and insulate the food.

I heard all of these great things about the convection oven so I put it to the test. First of all (from my experience) if your roasting a turkey using a convection oven you need to loosely cover your turkey with aluminum foil or a top with a vent. Although I heard multiple comments suggesting that you do not need to cover a turkey cooking in a convection oven because you need the heated air to circulate evenly over the bird I decided to go against it. What about basting? Well it is “suggested” that you don't need to baste a turkey using a convection oven because the skin acts as a shield and traps the turkeys natural juices inside. Which is true. Another thing that is true is that your turkey skin will be turned into a leathery chewy mess. Your dog or kitty cat will love this, but I'm not so sure if your guest will find it appealing. So do what I do, give it to your in-laws (kidding). I decided to lightly wrap my turkey with aluminum foil in order to let the air circulate evenly around the turkey, but of course I ran into a problem. After lightly covering the turkey I opened up the oven door and noticed that my aluminum foil was being blown around everywhere. Didn't realize how powerful the convection oven fan was. So I secured the aluminum foil around the turkey.

My turkey did cook much faster, but since I didn't baste and cover it, the aroma from the spices, just wasn't there and the skin was tough. The inside was a bit juicy though. Overall I'm going to continue to use a conventional oven to bake turkeys. I strongly believe its still all about the bird that you use. In my opinion free range and hormone free just tends to be more juicier and flavorful. Its an ethical thing as well.

Horray!!

I got all of my licenses and passed inspections. All 50 of 'em (just kidding). In order for me to sell food to other stores I had to get an inspection from the Illinois Department of Health as well as the the Chicago Department of Health. Both went smoothly. But I decided to take a picture of all of the licenses and certificates needed (just in case you don't believe me ;-) Whats really incredible is that all my documents (inspection docs) aren't included in this photograph. I guess I need a wider lens for that ;-)