1821 replies to this topic

[Chris Amirault]

For the modernist fried chicken, the two birds:



The recipe calls for the leg and thigh meat, with the upper bone removed, as well as extra chicken skin to wrap up the exposed meat:



Made some SV breasts, stock and paté with the rest.

Brining for 5h:



About to pull them out and give 'em the meat glue treatment. And I will confess that "meat glue" gives me shivers. Wish me luck.

[Chris Amirault]

I haven't been that nervous around white powder since college. Pix to follow.

[Chris Amirault]

So the idea here is to wrap the meat entirely in skin and then to SV and fry it. To make the skin and meat stick, you need transglutaminase, the aforementioned meat glue. In preparation to apply the Activa, I put down some wax paper and got out the gloves -- the latter just to make sure the right meat got glued. Forgive the mediocre photos:



Weighed out the Activa and got a small strainer so that it was more evenly applied:



It was kind of tricky figuring out exactly how much skin to cut, but, I figured, there's no such thing as too much fried chicken skin, so I just halved the whole pieces. Laid out everything flesh up:



Activa applied:



The thighs & legs wrapped with the extra skin:



Bundled them tight with plastic wrap for their overnight in the fridge:

[Chris Amirault]

Oh, and the cheese:



Lots of cheese there: cheddar and two kinds of aged gouda. And it melts into the beer and water and sodium chloride and iota carrageenan like buddah. (As long as there's no rind.) Once melted and smooth, into a pan:



Once it had cooled to room temp, I wrapped it up and put it in the fridge for grating tomorrow:

[roygon]

Can't wait to see this! Thanks for the pics and details, something to keep all the 1 month shipping delay people happy!

rg

[Wholemeal Crank]

Don't have the book yet so this lazy cook has to ask: why firm up and then grate the cheese, instead of using it directly as the yummy smooth melty stuff without firming up afterwards?

[Chris Amirault]

Thanks!

Note: There was, indeed, sodium chloride -- salt, that is -- in the cheese mix, but I meant to type "sodium citrate" above. Still gettin' these names straight....

[Chris Amirault]

Don't have the book yet so this lazy cook has to ask: why firm up and then grate the cheese, instead of using it directly as the yummy smooth melty stuff without firming up afterwards?

I was wondering the same thing. (I mean, there is the fun of making your own block of processed cheese, I grant you that. ) The texture in the pan was a bit more grainy than I had expected, so perhaps something happens when it firms up in the fridge.

[Chris Hennes]

So that others may learn from my many mistakes, here they all in all their glory. I hope to look back on this post one day from a position of great spherification knowledge and shake my head at my past foolishness.

As I mentioned above, with the first attempt I used a blender to do the final mixing, including the xantham gum. The calcium takes a while to dissolve, so I wound up blending for quite some time, and because of the viscosity added by the xantham the bubbles were held in suspension. The end result was that the liquid floated in the bath:


For batch two I used a hand whisk to combine the ingredients, and I didn't add the xantham until the calcium was dissolved: this worked much better at making sure there were no air bubbles. But this being my first spherification attempt, and having not read the book closely enough, the first attempt with the new batch was better, but still not right. I was sort of pouring the liquid into the bath from a short height...


So it sort of floats on the surface, with the surface tension being enough to keep it afloat (barely):


Here's a side view of that effect:


Looking more closely at the book shows the flaw in this technique, so attempt two (which actually works) was to actually try to release the liquid under the surface of the bath by sort of dunking the spoon in and rotating it. Here is that sequence...




And the sphere beginning to take form


I don't have a good spoon for this so I had to use a strainer and a regular spoon. The spheres are removed from the alginate bath:


And then rinsed in water twice to stop the gelling:


They are stored in an additional amount of the filling ingredients (minus the xantham gum and calcium)


The carbonation is achieved with a ISI Thermowhip and three charges of nitrogen (one to purge the container and two to charge it). Five hours in the fridge, and you have carbonated mojito spheres, like so:


That's served in a glass of tonic, because I wasn't sure what else to do. All told this was a fun experiment, but there are a few things I would change if I were to make it again. First, I think I'd make them smaller: I was using 10-15 mL of fluid per ball, which is about the size of a small egg yolk. I think that was too big, and that 5-7mL would be easier to eat. Second, I'd like to make the skin thinner: these seemed more resilient than necessary (though maybe the carbonation is hard on them and the thicker shell is needed for that). Finally, I need to come up with a better way of serving them: they don't pack enough flavor punch to be dropped into tonic like this. I think maybe serve them alone, on a small spoon, as a sort of amuse bouche.

[Wholemeal Crank]

I think you need a bigger glass for tonic after all that work!

[Guy MovingOn]

Love the photos and thank you for documenting your attempts!

[Chris Amirault]

Chris, how did they taste?

[Chris Hennes]

Like a mojito . Which is to say, the modernist-y ingredients and techniques didn't affect the flavor. I generally like my mojitos with a more acidic punch, but I wanted to follow the recipe to the letter the first time I made it. I'm not sure what effect increasing the acidity will have on the gelling.

[Chris Amirault]

Quick update: the chicken is now bathing in brine #2 (vodka, water, baking soda) for 3h before 2h in the Sous Vide Supreme and the final high-temp fry. Pickles look good.

The cheese spent the night in the fridge and didn't quite firm up into something quite grate-able, so I stuck it in the freezer for a bit.

[Chris Amirault]

Oh, I had a story and a thought.

Story: I was emptying the dishwasher and found that there was a gummy residue on the cheese grater. "Egad!" I thought. "Am I risking poisoning my family with meat glue or some other chemical?" Nope: turns out it was my wife's fault: as she was making her creme anglaise, she didn't scrape the bottom of her slurry dish, so it was coated with deadly.... corn starch.

Thought: We have friends coming for dinner, the ones who usually benefit from the latest experiments (and who loved that steak up-topic). And I was just realizing that, to get ready for dinner, I have to (1) drain pickles; (2) cook elbow pasta in water and stir in cheese, and (3) pat dry and fry the chicken. I should get the whole meal to the table with, what, ten minutes of final cooking. Which is to say, many of these MC recipes are fantastic for dinner parties (or, yeah, restaurant service).

[Chris Amirault]

Getting ready for an afternoon of cooking -- and the vodka was an ingredient, not a personnel lubricant:



After a night tightly wrapped in the fridge, the Activa-ted skin adhered more tightly to the thigh than the original skin did:



Into their bags with the vodka, baking soda, and water combination. I assumed that they wanted an 80 proof vodka:





Yes, it's a bag-intensive recipe, this one. Those spent three hours in the fridge while I turned to getting ready for the mac & cheese. All in one pot, too:



The frozen cheese grated very nicely indeed -- for the first couple of minutes, after which I got the curd effect that Chris Hennes mentioned above. Didn't matter, in the end; I think curds would be fine:



For texture atop the mac & cheese, I pulled some challah bread crumbs when I made some little toasts for the paté we served as an appetizer:



There was a moment when the fry oil was hitting 425F with two pieces of meat in there and the macaroni was boiling away when things seemed a bit close to the edge:



I mean, surely, the idea of putting the macaroni, water, and salt into the pan, turning it on high --



-- then dumping in the cheese when the pasta was al dente --



-- surely this couldn't work. But, yeah, it sure did (ignore the slightly overbroiled breadcrumbs):



Meanwhile, the chicken? Here it is, fresh out of the fryer:



Dusted with freeze-dried buttermilk, some pepper, bay leaves, and thyme:



The modernist feast as the dinner bell rang:



Looks pretty 21st century, doesn't it?

Report and comments in a sec.

[Chris Amirault]

Comments on the three recipes from MC.

The pickles were very tasty, and I'll be using that brine and method again. I'm not sure what I gain from sealing the cukes and brine in a vacuum bag, however, so I may go back to the jar-with-glass-thing-that-keeps-the-pickles-under-brine. Maybe when I get a chamber vacuum I'll give it a go again.

The chicken was pretty amazing. While preparing the brine, I was surprised at the lack of any flavorings save booze and salt, but the method puts a piece of extremely juicy flesh with a portion of very crispy skin in each bite -- and no bone to avoid. The buttermilk powder is a real stroke, adding a tang to the coating that I can't imagine getting otherwise. In addition, cranking the oil up to 425F, though a bit scary for someone who's stuck around 375F most of the time, was absolutely the right thing to do: 4 minutes with one flip in the middle and that skin was perfect.

I do think that I would squeeze out the accumulated liquid in the skin-wrapped thigh more carefully before frying; some released over the oil creating a small explosion. Given the importance of the meat quality, I'd also use the best chicken I could find. (These were Whole Foods generic, not free-range, and you could tell.)

As for the mac & cheese: it was both the best and the easiest I've ever made. No gloppy sauce, remarkably intense cheese flavor (you get the "flavor release" concept when you eat it), and the pasta absorbs it thoroughly. There was a moment when the mac & cheese was boiling away while I got distracted, and I rushed over to it thinking, "It must have broken." Nope. It's hard to imagine ever making it any differently again, though I think I'd swap out some of the gouda and add more cheddar out of preference.

In short, three for three.

[jmolinari]

yah, i dont quite understand vac packing the cukes in the brine...

[Chris Hennes]

I think that if you have a chamber sealer and have something you want to keep submerged, sealing it up seems like a pretty good solution to me: I do it when curing bacon to keep the cure as close to the belly as possible, I'd think it works the same for pickles, no?

[nathanm]

yah, i dont quite understand vac packing the cukes in the brine...

The reason to do it is that most vegetables have at least some air pockets in them, and by putting it in a vacuum you force the air out and brine in. This speeds brine penetration.

In the case of an apple, which most people would think of as having fairly dense flesh, you can actually double the weight by vacuum packing.

I don't think we measured the density of cucumber, but they float, which means that their density is less than that of water. This means they must have air in them. In fact, that is you you must put a weight on them to brine them in a jar.

This site says the density of pickles (after brining) is still only 0.665 grams/cc.

So that is why we use vacuum packing. However, I will also admit that once you have a chamber style vacuum packer in your kitchen, you use it for everything - it is very convienient.

That said, I am sure that if you put them in a jar with a weight it will certainly work. You may find that you will need to increase the time, or slice the cumcumber a bit thinner if you do this.

Recall that the amount of time it takes brine to penetrate scales roughly as the square of thickness, so slices that are half as thick will brine in about 1/4 the time. That is because it is a diffusion process.

[jmolinari]

Makes sense nathan. Do you guys calculate brines to be "equilibrium brines"? Meaning that they item can't overbrine as the system (cukes and brine) equilibrate?

[JBailey]

Nathan

For those on the verge of deciding about a vacuum purchase, I fully affirm your statement that "once you have a chamber style vacuum packer in your kitchen, you use it for everything - it is very convienient." As I related in other threads, I purchased my MVS-31 from Polyscience many months before I purchased my circulator. I find myself using it every day for a myriad of applications-tonight I prepared a steak from Costco sous vide and vacuum packed the other two steaks in the package for later use. Your observations about pockets of air in fruit was most intersting. While I have done some experimenting, I certainly intend to do more. Keller's watermelon was one of the first things I tried and it was a delightful success.

[emannths]

Chris--can you explain the goal of using the techniques described for the chicken and the pickles? It looks like the chicken is aiming to mimic roast chicken, trying to have both the skin and meat done perfectly without having to sacrifice one for the other, as opposed to mimicking traditional fried chicken. Is this right? And the pickles--they're just pickles, right? Salt, water, vinegar (or lactic acid?), and flavorings? Besides the use of the vacuum bag, anything that's not the same as making quick pickles?

The reason they may use a vacuum for making pickles is maybe to try to get the brine to replace the air in the intercellular areas more quickly. You know how when you blanch green vegetables they get brilliantly green? I think this is because the intercellular air spaces either collapse or are filled with water, reducing the scatting of light and making the color look more saturated (similar to the difference between a clear glass and a frosted glass). Maybe the vacuum bag is designed to do the same thing--collapse those air-filled spaces to allow the pickle to finish faster/more thoroughly.

ETA: I should probably make sure I read all the posts before I write back. At least I was on the right track though!

Edited by emannths, 28 February 2011 - 09:12 AM.

[Chris Amirault]

It looks like the chicken is aiming to mimic roast chicken, trying to have both the skin and meat done perfectly without having to sacrifice one for the other, as opposed to mimicking traditional fried chicken. Is this right?

I wouldn't use the phrase "mimic roast chicken," exactly; I think that it's trying to balance the succulence of slowly fried chicken with the benefits of a fast deep fry on skin.

And the pickles--they're just pickles, right? Salt, water, vinegar (or lactic acid?), and flavorings? Besides the use of the vacuum bag, anything that's not the same as making quick pickles?

Yep, just very good pickles. Unlike the fried chicken and mac & cheese, it's just about tweaking, not transforming, your basic approach.

[Paul Kierstead]

I wonder if the bruising introduced by the vac-packing makes a significant difference? Ideas in Food explores using this some.

[Shelby]

This is so interesting. Thank you for allowing us to have a peek into this "Jetson-like" cooking.

It's so very scientific. Definitely not for a person like me who throws "a pinch of this" and "a dash of that" into a pot. Or, is there a point when you get so used to cooking this way that you can just "eyeball" certain ingredients? Or is that a really dumb question?

[Chris Amirault]

Well, but you don't "eyeball" baking powder, do you, Shelby? I think that's the way to understand it. Yes, I eyeballed the spices and herbs for the buttermilk chicken dust, but I didn't eyeball the sodium citrate and iota carrageenan for the cheese. Sorta like how you probably measure certain of your baking ingredients and toss in pinches and dashes for flavor. You know?

[Shelby]

Well, but you don't "eyeball" baking powder, do you, Shelby? I think that's the way to understand it. Yes, I eyeballed the spices and herbs for the buttermilk chicken dust, but I didn't eyeball the sodium citrate and iota carrageenan for the cheese. Sorta like how you probably measure certain of your baking ingredients and toss in pinches and dashes for flavor. You know?

I do eyeball baking powder when I know it takes, for example 1/4 t., I use what ever spoon I have out and pop it in... But, I see what you mean. Obviously for baking you do measure where as if you're making a stew, you dump.


A side question:
Will these books be available in libraries?

[Chris Hennes]

Actually Chris, I think you probably could just eyeball the carrageenan, the way you might eyeball xantham gum and the like: add a bit, stir, check the texture, add a bit more, check the texture, etc. I don't know that it's being used in any sort of precision chemical reactions, it's being used as a thickener (please correct me if I'm wrong...).

[FoodMan]

So that others may learn from my many mistakes, here they all in all their glory. I hope to look back on this post one day from a position of great spherification knowledge and shake my head at my past foolishness.

As I mentioned above, with the first attempt I used a blender to do the final mixing, including the xantham gum. The calcium takes a while to dissolve, so I wound up blending for quite some time, and because of the viscosity added by the xantham the bubbles were held in suspension. The end result was that the liquid floated in the bath:


For batch two I used a hand whisk to combine the ingredients, and I didn't add the xantham until the calcium was dissolved: this worked much better at making sure there were no air bubbles. But this being my first spherification attempt, and having not read the book closely enough, the first attempt with the new batch was better, but still not right. I was sort of pouring the liquid into the bath from a short height...


So it sort of floats on the surface, with the surface tension being enough to keep it afloat (barely):


Here's a side view of that effect:


Looking more closely at the book shows the flaw in this technique, so attempt two (which actually works) was to actually try to release the liquid under the surface of the bath by sort of dunking the spoon in and rotating it. Here is that sequence...




And the sphere beginning to take form


I don't have a good spoon for this so I had to use a strainer and a regular spoon. The spheres are removed from the alginate bath:


And then rinsed in water twice to stop the gelling:


They are stored in an additional amount of the filling ingredients (minus the xantham gum and calcium)


The carbonation is achieved with a ISI Thermowhip and three charges of nitrogen (one to purge the container and two to charge it). Five hours in the fridge, and you have carbonated mojito spheres, like so:


That's served in a glass of tonic, because I wasn't sure what else to do. All told this was a fun experiment, but there are a few things I would change if I were to make it again. First, I think I'd make them smaller: I was using 10-15 mL of fluid per ball, which is about the size of a small egg yolk. I think that was too big, and that 5-7mL would be easier to eat. Second, I'd like to make the skin thinner: these seemed more resilient than necessary (though maybe the carbonation is hard on them and the thicker shell is needed for that). Finally, I need to come up with a better way of serving them: they don't pack enough flavor punch to be dropped into tonic like this. I think maybe serve them alone, on a small spoon, as a sort of amuse bouche.

hmm...the bath is Sodium Alginate. Right? When I do that I usually follow the Alinea version and freeze the "spheres" in ice cube trays. you should have no problem getting them to sink in the warm Alginate bath when they are frozen and they sphere-ify gently as they thaw. It works great and streamlines the process a bit if you need to do a bunch of them right before serving.