Thermal Cook
ingredients
- 1 cup of wild rice
- 2 cups of water
- 2 tbs rapeseed oil
- 200g smoked lardons
- 1 onion, sliced
- 500g venison, cubed
- 1 green pepper, roughly chopped
- 300g potatoes, cubed
- 1 tsp chilli powder
- 1 tsp curry powder
- 400g tin tomatoes, chopped
- 200ml water
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tsp freshly ground pepper
method
- Place the rice in a pan and add the water.
- Bring to the boil and boil for 3 minutes.
- Take off the heat, put on a lid and leave for later.
- Heat the oil in the inner pot over a medium-high heat, add the lardons and cook for a couple of minutes.
- Add the onion and cook until it soften.
- Add the venison and cook until it colours.
- Stir in the green pepper, potatoes, chilli powder and curry powder.
- Add the tin of tomatoes, water, salt and pepper.
- Bring to the boil stirring occasionally.
- Turn down the heat and simmer for 5 minutes.
- Drain the rice and stir it into the venison.
- Bring back to the boil.
- Turn off the heat and place the inner pot into the insulated outer container.
- Shut the lid and leave to thermal cook without power for a minimum of three hours.
- Serve with some nicely steamed vegetables.
Continue reading about Venison and Wild Rice – Cooked in Mr D’s® Thermal Cooker
My good friend Paul Peacock from City Cottage has been using his Mr D’s Thermal Cooker for making Stilton cheese.
Paul says: “This is a halfway house between making a soft cheese and a hard cheese because it is more involved than making a crumbly cheese like Cheshire.
The most important thing about this cheese is the temperature control. Many hard cheeses call for a temperature increase to something like 38C (100F) and some Stilton recipes call for this too. In order to keep it simple, we have chosen to ripen the milk at 35C (95F), and hold the renneting stage at this temperature too. There are a number of ways of doing this. You can play around on the top of the cooker, turning the heat on and off every fifteen minutes or so. You can wrap the cheese making vessel in hot towels, all kinds of things. We have chosen to use the Mr D’s Thermal Cooker, which in a way is an enormous Thermos which simply holds its temperature.
You can make just short of a gallon of milk into cheese, which is enough for my needs, and it can be used to cook curries, stews, bake bread – all kinds of dishes!”
METHOD:
Ripening:
Add a bacterial starter – here we are choosing a starter. The best way to use the starter is to freeze it in milk, so you get milky ice cubes with starter bacteria in it.
This gives the cheese its texture and creamy flavour. Just add an ice cube to the milk. Leave for 2 hours so the bacteria get on with their jog: Firstly to add acid to the milk which makes it easier for the rennet to do its work. Later in the process the bacteria will be adding flavour and changing the texture of the cheese. At the same time add your blue mould. This is Penicillium roqueforti, and you just need the tip of a knife. Stir in.
Rennet:
After two hours add the rennet, one drop per litre, five per gallon. Stir in well and leave until the curds are formed which should take couple of hours.
To test the curds check to see if they have a clean break by putting a clean knife into the cheese and twist – the curds should break.
Then cut up the curds into cubes and leave at 35C (95F) for another hour or two.
Draining:
Ladle the curds into the cheesecloth – which is in a colander, inside a bowl – just to catch the whey. I salt the cheesecloth as an extra precaution against infection, but you can spray with vinegar. Leave to drain overnight – I hang mine from a hook.
Press your cheese to remove extra whey and then mill the cheese.
Milling:
Milling is where you break up the cheese and rub the curds lightly between your fingers. break up all the cheese and then salt.
- Cheese salt is salt without iodine, and this is used to keep the flavour and also to allow the starters to grow unhindered. A teaspoon and a half is enough for cheese made from a gallon of milk.
- Knife in the salt and then pack into a mould with a follower. This is a number 5 mould.
- Press for a few hours more to give the cheese a shape and remove any whey that the salt brings out. The cheese will be quite wet, so be careful when handling.
- Remove the cheese and rub the outside to keep its shape and remove cracks.
- Then sterilise a skewer or a knitting needle and pierce the cheese – about 15 on the top and the bottom.
- Thence add your cheese to a sterile box on a cheese mat.
- Turn the cheese every day, it should mature in a week, and then continue for a month, but you can eat it after 10 days.
Continue reading about Cheese making at home in a Mr D’s Thermal Cooker
I have just received this email from Sally who with her family are crossing the Atlantic in their boat Jacaranda.
Dave,
Thank you for your swift response to my queries. I thought you may be interested to hear that the Thermal Cooker is being a huge success on our passage across the Atlantic. I make bread daily, casseroles, rice and cakes on the days I am not using the cooker for our main meal. I
Sally
Continue reading about Family cross the Atlantic with a Mr D’s Thermal Cooker
Brian Turner has been trying out a Mr D’s Thermal Cooker and has very kindly written a wonderful lamb stew recipe for it. I will be making a video of the recipe in my Mr D’s thermal cooker sometime over the next few weeks.
Continue reading about Brian Turner writes a recipe for Mr D’s Thermal Cooker
