Cooking Food With Brewing Equipment And Knowledge

[Bandito]

Making a pumpkin soup at the moment with 6 butternut pumpkins. It is too large a volume for my normal 12-15L pots, so am boiling it in the 35L brew pot. I also wanted to add come chilli and basil and even mushroom, but didnt want to have bits of them in the soup. So I put them in a hop bag. This scale and sort of cooking wouldnt be possible if I wasnt brewing.

I have also been meaning to get into the habbit of no-chilling my meat and vege soups - in the past, I would usually let the soup cool down before filling food storage containers. Most go in the freezer, and some go in the fridge. I now realise that to take the use by date of the ones in the fridge past a week, I should put it into the containers while very hot, and perhaps even sanitise the containers first - never thought about this before brewing.

Anyone else cook with their brewing equipment or use their brewing knowledge in their cooking?

 

[katzke]

Not only a fully automated brewery but a fully automated soup cooker also. Just chuck the pumpkins in the grain hopper and they will get milled and dumped in the soup tun. Add some spices to the hop dispenser and you will have hot soup waiting when you get home.

Not bad for a couple grand invested.

 

[Bandito]

I'll pay that one. Well, perhaps, as an aside, I am on the lookout for ideas that I can incorporate into the automated brewing system for food purposes. But for this thread, I am just interested in what others use their brewing equipment for in terms of food making. Ended up making a pumpkin beer from the stock tonight, boil is about to start (guess it also has basil, chilli and mushroom in it!). Will start a vege beer thread when I can figure out where to put it.

Pumpkin soup turned out great! very spicy from the pepper. Not bland at all (the basil, chilli and one field mushroom in the hop bag did the trick. Best one yet. Drained, then added 2L milk and lots of cream. This is the biggest volume I have done, the last one was overflowing in the 15L pot. No such ocurrence this time round in the brew pot. Best part is there are no chewey basil leaves in the soup!

 

[Thirsty Boy]

You need to be a little careful putting hot things in the fridge - not so bad for the thing that you are cooling down, but it heats up the stuff its sitting next to in the fridge... so whatever it is goes cold-hot-cold ... and that can be bad from a food safety perspective.

I just used my pilot brew pot (15L) to make tomato sauce and I've also used my brewing PID temp controller to run an electric element for sous vide cooking (and my aeration aquarium pump to circulate the water in the sous vide bath) - the same electric element and PID provide heat and temp control for my Carboard Box hot smoker - and any/all of the pots, especially my 40L urn HLT work as a substitute for a Fowlers Vacola when canning things that dont need pressure cooking.

I use my BIAB bag for just about everything.....

Brewing is just cooking.. as long as there is not going to be any flavor carry over you'd be mad not to get double duty out of the expensive gear.

 

[Bribie G]

I always crack myself up when I visit a hall or club or wherever and see an urn and my brain immediately asks how come they are home brewing at that particular venue?

 

[Bandito]

I think I may have overdone it this weekend! 30L of my patented soup -: I think it is too much to fit in the freezer and fridge! No-chilled most of it.

Oh, and this was the biggest soup cookup ever!

 

[komodo]

TB what element do you use?

 

[Thirsty Boy]

a particularly shitty solid plate "hotplate" I bought of e-bay. Waaay to much thermal mass in it and it pushes the PID to be able to control it. I will replace it one of these days.

I will think about using my over the side 2400W immersion element the next time I do sous vide.

I am currently maintaining a flora danica starter culture at 32C with a combo of one of the Aquarium Heaters I use for fermentation temp control and the aquarium pump I use for oxygenation. Heater provides heat, pump provides circulation in the water bath... 500ml erlenmyer (for yeast starters) holds the hopefully nicely souring milk.

And tomorrow they become a nice acid curd chevre and my first crack at camembert.

 

[rude]

What a crack up yes I use my HLT to cook my crabs in the blue manner type.

I'll have to get a photo of it for yuz hopefully as its starting to get a bit cold for diving for them at the moment.

Wasnt too happy with my last ale either, crab ale anyone.

 

[Bandito]

I've also used my brewing PID temp controller to run an electric element for sous vide cooking (and my aeration aquarium pump to circulate the water in the sous vide bath)

After watching Heston Bloomingfeld last week, I now know what this means. When you seal a cut of meat in a temperature tollerant plastic bag (a kryvac vaccuum sealed bag) and cook very slowly it in a temperature controlled water bath. Nice, will have to give that a go!