# Stuff I cook that's considered food



## franzb69 (Feb 17, 2013)

LOL. K-fed requested pictures of bacon so here they are.....

This will be my first sharing of food I like to make at home. I'm a professionally trained cook, a graduate of culinary school. Currently jobless at the moment, you know the economy and all that. Looking into some employment opportunities as we speak. Perhaps I'll find employment overseas.

I've always loved charcuterie and ever since a year ago I've been playing around with making sausages and cured meats. But then the problem with being in asia and in a 3rd world country is that one doesn't really get much access to ingredients that would be ideal, I mean there are but I would have to have a restaurant to have access to them as they are only sold to restaurants and even then they would keep that as a highly regarded resource that they would never divulge so easily.







This is my first try in making bacon with curing salts. I've always made them without and as a person who has always had (and many of us do) the conventional kind, the more modern kind, it had always been made with nitrites and nitrates or whatever. So I made a batch of dry cure based off of Michael Ruhlman's book Charcuterie and used that as my base. I've been making bacon without curing salts for a while now so I wanna see if I know I can make good bacon out of local pork with the cure and and a few other additions.

here's the pic of my bacon now being cured in a ziplock bag. about 1.6 kilos after trimming off the soft bone and the skin. I cut it in half as I don't have a deli slicer or a long enough knife to cut it down properly, and ziplocks only come in sandwich size and gallon size bags here. This was a perfect time for me play around with my new lefty hankotsu from korin. Which by the way, did wonderfully. I always ask the part nearer the rib cage as belly here is a lot fatter nowadays as it used to. so it had some bone in it that had to be taken out.






I like my food spicy and I wanted to try out a different kind of bacon, one with a dry rub so I added some herbs and spices that I thought would go well with it. Not a lot of bacon variety out here as you can gather. I also added some liquid smoke to give it a smokey flavor. I know the pictures aren't much to look at but hopefully in 7-10 days of curing and then another day in the fridge to dry out will do it. 

I don't have a smoker so pardon the lack of equipment. Maybe one day I'll have some cash to get myself a smoker.

I'll put in more pix of the bacon after the whole process has been finished. Sorry if I never got to take pictures of the hankotsu and the pork belly in action. I was just overly excited using it and too hungry to think. LOL. 

Be patient, the bacon will come! 


I'll add onto whatever else I cook that I deem to be worthy posting. =D


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## shaneg (Feb 17, 2013)

Nice, I've got 2 phillipinos working for/with me, and worked with a few in the past.
You've all got good work ethics from what I've experienced.


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## Kriegs (Feb 17, 2013)

word!


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## Stumblinman (Feb 17, 2013)

OH Damn ! now I have to say screw Tibet.... We all have to get together to send bacon to the Philippines !!!!! bumper stickers are being made now [email protected]  Looks good hope it tastes as good.


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## franzb69 (Feb 17, 2013)

> Nice, I've got 2 phillipinos working for/with me, and worked with a few in the past.
> You've all got good work ethics from what I've experienced.



thanks, as many of you may know, our number one import is our people. lol. and we excel in that area, work ethic.

=D



> OH Damn ! now I have to say screw Tibet.... We all have to get together to send bacon to the Philippines !!!!! bumper stickers are being made now [email protected] Looks good hope it tastes as good.



thanks stumblin, i haven't disappointed anyone yet, or at least i think so. lol.


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## SpikeC (Feb 17, 2013)

Ya know, you do not need to spend money on equipment to have a smoker. Some clay pots and a hot plate, for instance. Check Alton Brown's setup!


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## shaneg (Feb 17, 2013)

Can also use a wok, alu foil and a bamboo steamer.
Or wok, colander and a lid/upside down wok


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## franzb69 (Feb 17, 2013)

> Ya know, you do not need to spend money on equipment to have a smoker. Some clay pots and a hot plate, for instance. Check Alton Brown's setup!



i know spike, but i kinda like having my own toys. =D

but i will try that hot plate set up one time just to see if it's easy enough to do to keep doing that before i finally decide on getting a smoker or not. i've seen alton brown's set up from watching his show good eats (not that it gets shown on here, really educational stuff, seen every episode that came out two years ago).



> Can also use a wok, alu foil and a bamboo steamer.
> Or wok, colander and a lid/upside down wok



thanks shaneg, i kinda get the idea. =D


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## Mike9 (Feb 19, 2013)

The best way to smoke for longevity is cold smoking. A couple of five or ten gallon cans and some pipe, sheet metal screws a drill and some bolts and you can have a simple workable smoker. You want to separate the heat from the meat so the smoke is cool when it gets to the target. We used to use old refrigerators back when they were all metal. Had a box stove for the heat, about 8 feet of stove pipe and the ice box. Made perfect smoked fish, meats and cheese.

Of course what fuel you use to make the smoke has a direct impact on the flavor. Here we have fruit woods, oaks, cherry and other nut woods.


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## franzb69 (Feb 19, 2013)

yup know all about it. only thing i'm worried about cold smoking is being in a tropical country. thanks for the tip.


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## Mike9 (Feb 19, 2013)

I was thinking once it's salt cured it should be OK to smoke. What is the traditional method for protein longevity?


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## sw2geeks (Feb 19, 2013)

I posted some pics awhile back of making some bacon using pretty much the same method. I have a tube smoker that cost around $30 that puts out a ton of cold smoke great for smoking bacon.

http://www.kitchenknifeforums.com/showthread.php/9119-Making-homemade-bacon


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## franzb69 (Feb 19, 2013)

thanks for sharing sw2geeks. i don't have a grill either so that's still not an option, at least not yet.

i'm thinking of getting an aftermarket sous vide temp controller that can serve as a temp regulator for a smoker (two birds in one stone, sous vide temp controller and a smoker temp controller in one!), and since it's only $50, that i'm gonna think up using a hot plate and a cast iron pan. for the sous vide set up, i'd probably get a food grade immersion pump to circulate the water... but that's for another project. hehe. still trying to complete my kitchen toys first before i get on up to the really serious kitchen stuff.


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## K-Fed (Feb 19, 2013)

sweet =). Made my own pastrami last summer but forgot to take picks of the process.


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## franzb69 (Feb 19, 2013)

well this i promise that when it all gets cured i'll take pictures hehe.




> I was thinking once it's salt cured it should be OK to smoke. What is the traditional method for protein longevity?



i'll see what i can think up with, with what's locally available here then i'll see what my options are with cold smoking or otherwise. =D

protein longevity? you got me, curing it. it should be okay....was just overthinking things.... 3rd world butchering isn't exactly all that sanitary, haccp here is an afterthought, but then again our guts are bit more resilient. lol.


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## DeepCSweede (Feb 19, 2013)

Mike9 said:


> The best way to smoke for longevity is cold smoking. A couple of five or ten gallon cans and some pipe, sheet metal screws a drill and some bolts and you can have a simple workable smoker. You want to separate the heat from the meat so the smoke is cool when it gets to the target. We used to use old refrigerators back when they were all metal. Had a box stove for the heat, about 8 feet of stove pipe and the ice box. Made perfect smoked fish, meats and cheese.
> 
> Of course what fuel you use to make the smoke has a direct impact on the flavor. Here we have fruit woods, oaks, cherry and other nut woods.


Or you could move to a subartic climate like I live in and wait for a day that is -10 and do it then.


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## jayhay (Feb 19, 2013)

franzb69 said:


> yup know all about it. only thing i'm worried about cold smoking is being in a tropical country. thanks for the tip.



Nice work on the bacon man! Looks great! Just make sure you're using nitrites and not nitrates in your cure, big diff 

And Cold smoking really just means smoking around/under 100f. It could even be pushed up a few more degrees. So as long as you do it on a cooler day, or cooler eve, you should have no problems. And it is really quite easy to setup a simple smoker, and well worth it. All the ones suggested here are great ideas. I don't follow you on the sous vide/smoker setup, maybe I'm a bit slow today lol.

And IMHO, hot smoking requires more equipment and is quite a bit tougher than cold smoking. Try it!!


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## franzb69 (Feb 19, 2013)

thanks everyone. i'll see what i can come up with with the smoker thing.....


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## franzb69 (Mar 1, 2013)

finally the bacon is ready! lol. washed off the cure, left it in the chiller for 24 hours to get that "skin" that everyone looks for in cured meats.











fried up a few 
















i love making breakfast meals at all hours of the day. but this time i had it as a warm salad and bacon vinaigrette dressing with an egg over easy. too bad i forgot to take pix of the salad. lol. 

oh and i had this for lunch:






sea mantis! darn things look more like bugs than anything. they taste like a cross between lobster and shrimp. in my language the name for this gets to be sea centipede, which is kinda wrong. coz it looks more like a mantis coz of the front appendages. didn't get to cook it coz i woke up and my mom (yes i live with my mother, financial problems and all that) she just steamed it up with some salt and that was that. just wanted to post it coz i haven't had this in probably 15 or more years.


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## franzb69 (Mar 1, 2013)

as for the taste and texture.....

wish i had a smoker, coz this thing still feels like it needs to get smoked to dry it out some more and add flavor. as for the flavor from the test batch, it tasted more like the filipino favorite tocino. (toh-see-no) so it's like a cross between bacon and tocino. which is fine. guess i'll need to tweak the rub that i added a bit more. i got subtle hints of all that i added so that was pretty good.

tocino is made similarly like bacon. pink salt, sugar and salt, minus the smoking and most likely the proper ratio of curing agent. it's probably the closest thing we can relate to as bacon here. it's a lot sweeter than bacon and usually made with leaner cuts of pork. notice on this sample picture that even the fat on the tocino is pink / red. i don't even eat the stuff knowing what's in it. it's good though. lol.


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## franzb69 (Mar 10, 2013)

just had sunday lunch so.....

we had some roast chicken






since none of us really like eating breast, we just bought a bunch of leg and thigh's.

cooked in butter, kaffir lime leaves and tarragon (both from my garden). =D


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## chinacats (Mar 10, 2013)

That looks great!


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## franzb69 (Mar 10, 2013)

thanks! =D


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## franzb69 (Mar 12, 2013)

some old pix of stuff i've cooked....


steamed lapu lapu, chinese style. taste and texture similar to sea bass.






miso soup from scratch






dehydrating habaneros for chili powder











home made sausages






kimchi!











hainanese chicken






fried tawilis with seasalt, pepper, capers, balsamic vinegar, distant fresh water cousin to the sardine only found in my province, a landlocked species.






kimchi fried rice with spam, taught by my canadian friend that hung out with lots of koreans






all made and cooked by yours truly.


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## franzb69 (Mar 12, 2013)

some bread.....






=D


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## Jmadams13 (Mar 12, 2013)

Bread looks good. Is that bacon?


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## franzb69 (Mar 12, 2013)

thanks. yes it is! tested out my new food processor so i had to make some bread. lol.

everything is better with bacon.


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## boomchakabowwow (Mar 12, 2013)

just so you know.

Hainanese chicken is my all time favorite meal..it is my request meal, should i ever find myself on death row. and about to get killed.

i had my first plate from some hawker cart in malaysia. changed my idea on chicken and rice..NICE job, buddy!!


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## boomchakabowwow (Mar 12, 2013)

that kimchee fried rice needs a fried egg on top!! i might make that for dinner tonight!!


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## franzb69 (Mar 12, 2013)

> just so you know.
> 
> Hainanese chicken is my all time favorite meal..it is my request meal, should i ever find myself on death row. and about to get killed.
> 
> i had my first plate from some hawker cart in malaysia. changed my idea on chicken and rice..NICE job, buddy!!



thanks. first i had it was when i was a young kid taking a vacation in hongkong, ate it at an underground canteen under a hotel. back when it was still there, all the locals ate there. it was an everyday type of thing for them. when my family had it, we had it literally every single day for the rest of the vacation. lol. we didn't know what it was but it was awesome. who knew cold chicken and hot rice went so well together? lol. there are a lot of knock offs of said chicken here now so i can now have it all the time if i wanted to. but it doesn't taste quite the same though. it's gotta be the special breed of chicken that they said they use.



> that kimchee fried rice needs a fried egg on top!! i might make that for dinner tonight!!



only did the kimchi fried rice how the koreans did it. but yeah, does feel like it needs something on top.

=D


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## boomchakabowwow (Mar 12, 2013)

i saw Anthony Bordain eat Hainanese chicken at the same food court i ate at in malaysia. 

you got some great skills over there in the phillipines. i am pretty sure your chickens over there taste better than our blown up, mutant birds over here  thanks for the photos.


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## franzb69 (Mar 12, 2013)

> i am pretty sure your chickens over there taste better than our blown up, mutant birds over here



there has been a rise in caged chickens here, but there is also a growing interest in free range and organic chickens as well.

but as always, the cheaper more "conventional" farming is still the winner. chickens here are tiny, they don't taste the same and they get smaller and smaller all the time, coz of the need for lower prices. i hate factory farming. big business. blah. =D

i studied culinary arts and i've always loved food. i come from a foodie family, and a great cook for a grandmother.


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## apicius9 (Mar 13, 2013)

boomchakabowwow said:


> that kimchee fried rice needs a fried egg on top!! i might make that for dinner tonight!!



One of my favorite breakfast things, if I take the time for an extended breakfast. Surprisingly, I never had it with Spam, that needs to be changed soon.

Thanks for the food pics, they look good. We have a growing Filipino population out here, I have to get some to invite me to dinner, interesting food. 

Stefan


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## franzb69 (Mar 13, 2013)

> We have a growing Filipino population out here, I have to get some to invite me to dinner, interesting food.



our food might not look like much but they have big flavor and a very home-y welcoming appeal that most folks enjoy.



> Surprisingly, I never had it with Spam, that needs to be changed soon.



spam and hawaii, two things that get a long. lol.

i wouldn't mind moving to hawaii if i had to, sounds like a great place to be. i don't really cook filipino food since it's what i have every single day of the week. i like cooking stuff i don't normally have since going out to eat is much more expensive. half the time when i go out, since i came out of culinary school, i keep thinking to myself that i know i can cook better than most of the places i go to nowadays, i'd rather buy the ingredients and cook it myself.


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## franzb69 (Mar 17, 2013)

corned beef i made from scratch. didn't use any preservatives which is why it's greyish brown....

was pretty tasty stuff for sure! 

just like the bacon, the flavor almost felt lacking as most people are used to that chemical taste you get from pink salt and such


wanted to post this coz k-fed posted that corned beef vid =D


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## franzb69 (Mar 18, 2013)

just did some dehydrating of chili peppers. found a good batch of chili peppers from nueva ecija that were especially spicy so i made chili powder out of it.
















needless to say after i was done destemming and slicing them across to help with dehydration, i had to take a piss, even when i was wearing plastic gloves.... hunan hand turned into hunan sausage. lol.


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## franzb69 (Mar 18, 2013)

moar pizza! lol





















was in the mood for pizza


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## chinacats (Mar 18, 2013)

Pizza looks great, hope you enjoyed some of those chiles with it.


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## franzb69 (Mar 18, 2013)

thanks!

my eye sure loved the sting of the chile. lol. it pretty much flew up the corner of my eye and stung just when i was slicing the ingredients. so i was cutting veg with one eye open. lol. and no i didn't cut myself.

will make more to enjoy more pizza and more chili power/flakes tomorrow.

if i wasn't so afraid of getting more chilis going up my eyes or nostrils i'd hit it with a mortar and pestle to control the size of the flakes. that batch i made had large and tiny bits so it's part flakes part powder. just being too anal on the size of flakes i want. lol.


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## Sambal (Mar 23, 2013)

Looks great Franz! 

Do you make your own kimchee? What do you use as starter? 

With Hainan chicken rice the best places for it in Malaysia aren't in the food courts. Should anyone want to look for this in Malaysia a quick google will tell you where the specialist restaurants are. There are places that have been cooking and serving nothing but Hainan chicken rice for generations. IMO the best ones are in a small town called Ipoh. The essentials are in the poaching of the chicken and the use of chicken fat in cooking the rice. Even in the chilli sauce should have some chicken fat in it along with kumquat juice and finely julienned peel. And of course you'd have to start with what Malaysians call "kampong chicken" which is basically organic free range. 

Oh and your dried chilli flakes look deadly Franz! I can feel the heat just looking at it!


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## franzb69 (Mar 23, 2013)

> Do you make your own kimchee? What do you use as starter?



yes i do, i don't have a starter. i naturally ferment it. i haven't made anyone sick yet so i guess i'm doing something right. lol.

i just salt it, squeeze it out, mix the powderized rice in and the pepper mix and it ferments. tastes like kimchi, smells like kimchi. then it must be kimchi. lol. i make it like how it is i saw online in recipes. I don't like using oysters or shrimp as part of the starter coz i'm highly dubious of what what would do with all that hardwork i put into making it. lol.




> With Hainan chicken rice the best places for it in Malaysia aren't in the food courts. Should anyone want to look for this in Malaysia a quick google will tell you where the specialist restaurants are. There are places that have been cooking and serving nothing but Hainan chicken rice for generations. IMO the best ones are in a small town called Ipoh. The essentials are in the poaching of the chicken and the use of chicken fat in cooking the rice. Even in the chilli sauce should have some chicken fat in it along with kumquat juice and finely julienned peel. And of course you'd have to start with what Malaysians call "kampong chicken" which is basically organic free range.



thanks for the tips!

with what's going on in Sabah and the Philippines, I doubt i'd ever be going to Malaysia anytime soon. =(


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## franzb69 (Mar 27, 2013)

paella today.






not using the expensive rice or the right rice for it which is usually arborio or bomba (can't find bomba here), so i'm just using jasmine rice.

it's for these people:











the age old tradition in my country (since before spanish occupation) and in my family of the "pabasa"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pabasa_(ritual)

cooked enough for one serving each. there's enough other food to go around so i did just a serving each (tall pot), as paella can get rather expensive.


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## Mucho Bocho (Mar 27, 2013)

This is what i did with my Belly. 3 day cure with pink salt, three day Sous Vide at 140 degrees, browned in a pan and baked until internam temp was 155. I left the skin on these and liked it better:


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## stereo.pete (Mar 27, 2013)

wow @ the belly!


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## Mucho Bocho (Mar 27, 2013)

Thanks Pete. You kno eye's love me a crispy juicy porkly belly


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## Duckfat (Mar 27, 2013)

Mucho Bocho said:


>



Looks freakin awesome!


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## Mike9 (Mar 27, 2013)

Franz that Paella looks amazing I buy head on shrimp every chance I get. Besides - I find when you take it to pot luck parties - you get to eat most of it. :lol2:

I want to try all this, but I just happen to have a really nice piece of lean Pork Belly in the freezer. Was there a specific reason you SV'd it for that long?


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## franzb69 (Mar 28, 2013)

Thanks mike9, shrimp is expensive everywhere. But the only good thing about where I'm from is that we can get fresh shrimp all the time. head on shrimp is the norm here. =D


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## Mucho Bocho (Mar 28, 2013)

Mike9, So after the three day cure in brine, I seperated the belly into four one pound portions. Each portion was divided into three cubes. Wraped in film and sealed and SV at 140 for two days. Then pressed, chilled, pan fried and baked to 160. I found that the fat was not rendered enought. It sliced like bacon but was too forward. I wanted the fat to render more an be in then background more as a suporting flavor. So I popped the three unwrapped packages of pork back into the SV bath for another 24hrs at 140. Then cooked and these are the pic's from above. I also think the three day SV broke down the skin better giving an eitble crackling.

The good news is that I still have two more portions in the refrigerator.

I will say that I've been using sodium erythorbate lately and I highly recommend it for any long curing of meats. It kept the fat just as white as it was fresh after the brine. No darkening and I think the cure went deeper as well.


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## Zwiefel (Mar 28, 2013)

That pork looks amazing...so hungry now.


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## Duckfat (Mar 28, 2013)

Looks great Franz. It's always interesting seeing food and traditions from the other side of the world. If you ever buy another Paella pan in the future I'd suggest a thin Spanish pan made of tin. There's a few good on line sources like LaTienda etc. They are inexpensive and it's a lot easier to get a great soccorat with a thin pan. Paella on the BGE has become a staple here in the summer. I just wish I could buy head on shrimp like that more often ! 





franzb69 said:


>


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## franzb69 (Mar 28, 2013)

i use a smaller carbon steel paella pan/paellera (30cm) for family sized servings. only used this large pot for larger cooks like this. =D

can't really make paella good for 50 in a small pan like that. lol.


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