Cooking For Engineers

[Jim Cooley]

The turkey story:

Due to mixup with Safeway's delivery service I ended up with 2 turkeys amounting to about ~35 lbs.
Since they screwed up not once, but twice, I ended up owing them nothing.

Wanted to give the big one, 24 lbs,. to a food bank, but they wanted ME to deliver it. To h3ll with that...

SO I've been roasting and carving and dissecting, dismembering and slicing and dicing. Only thing left are julienne fries!

Quite a bit has gone into the pressure cooker and canned, or 'put up' as they say.
Question: what happens to a roux based gravy after it's been canned?

Second, and more important question:
I'd forgotten how well I carved, and ended up with some beautiful slices of breast. So many, in fact, I want to freeze them after vacuum-sealing them.
Will that affect the texture once they are defrosted?

Second to second query:
Where can I get some polyethylene sheets to separate thing I vacuum seal?

[Dilbert]

jeesh. you have to deliver, may as well eat it for them while you're at it . . .

a roux can "break" when frozen/reheated - it depends on the flour/fat ratio - a lot of fat is more likely to break. regrets I don't know what that "number" is...

pretty much all meat 'suffers' from freezing - the cells rupture and it gets a bit mooshy. some 'quality' loss will be there but there are few options. one trick is to freeze it quickly as possible - single layer slices on wax paper on a sheet pan / shallow (whatever) in the freezer. collect up the frozen 'chips' after 24 hrs, seal and store....

for poly separators - why not just cut up some plastic bags? you could use them as for the freezer pan liner pre long term storage - a two'fer

[Jim Cooley]

>>a roux can "break" when frozen/reheated - it depends on the flour/fat ratio - a lot of fat is more likely to break<<

I've seen that before. We'll just have to find out what happens. From memory, it seems to me that heating slowly, with a LOT of stirring, seems to help; as is adding flour/arrowroot (I cheat, I know!) seems to help.

I did use wax paper, but I'm afraid the slices will still suffer.
They do when I slice I top-round in the same manner and freeze it -- on a cookie sheet, like you mentioned.

Jim

[Jim Cooley]

I did use cut plastic bags for a portioned turkey casserole and they worked out great. Two to a bag, take one out, re-vacuum, and when you use the second one the vacuum bag can get reused.

LOL, I was too stupid to realize that's what that huge role of Freezer paper I have would have been good for.

[DrBiggles]

That sure was a lot of turkey, a year ago. I probably would have invited friends and family over for another meal, forced them to take doggy bags home. Man, that sure was a lot of turkey.

Biggles

[Dilbert]

look who popped up!
pull up a fork a sit a spell.
- is meathenge dead? Mad Hunky still hanging around?