joesan

The pizzas look wonderful, very tasty, but honestly Chorizo? What's next Ham and Pineapple? Seems a shame to go to lengths to get an authentic product and ruin it with suspect toppings.

Re. The brisket, by coincidence I happened to cook some last night. It was my worst sv experience ever! The meat had been bought in error and I only had 3hours to cook it. Boy was it tough -even though I'd ran it through the jaccard. So I can say for sure that you need to cook it for a lot more than 3 hours!

Karen - good point - although my heater/stirrer unit had been used, I purchased a brand new stirrer bar itself. These are about 8cm long PTFE plastic (I think) covered metal bars and only cost a couple of pounds. Cleanup is a snap you just put the bar and the pan you used straight into the dishwasher.

They're pretty basic really. Just look for one with a reasonable power output (though most times I am not heating anything above 80C for Sous vide and sauces) and good rpms. If you can find a good cheap one with digital settings that is a definite plus as it makes setting the temp and revs much easier.

Sorry - what does "D&D" stand for? I am stumped...

Wired Online today features a nice article on our spiritual leader Mr M. Egullet gets a mention too...

Yes it definitely has possibilities especially for that Molecular Gastronomy vibe. Seriously though this lab stuff is super precision and is a pretty cheap way to get very accurate results. ChefCrash - glad you like it. I didn't melt the butter beforehand because I was going for absolute ease of use. I think next time however I might premelt the butter beforehand because there was a little resistance at the start before the butter was melted. Not sure how it would deal with say half a kilo of risotto rice... Dockhl - this is lab equipment but there is something called a Thermomix that does the same thing (and quite a bit more, but it is harder to clean) for about $1,000.

jsmeeker - glad you like it. It was really fun to do. The stirrer bar is great fun as it can go very fast up to about 1200 rpm. It is quite entertaining to watch it form the sauce. I am not sure that egullet supports video though. Maybe I need to do a You Tube! Dockhl - it is lab equipment but I am repurposing it for cooking.

Well I got my stirrer bar and tried it. The results were great. Don't want to hijack the thread so here is the new thread. Hollandaise - Laboratory Style I figure if you like to sous vide you'll want to try Laboratory Hollandaise. It's fun and it really works.

I bought a Ikamag Laboratory Heater Stirrer from ebay for about £15. I had to replace two switches that were burned out but they only cost about £3. I've been using the Hotplate in my sous vide experiments but I thought I try and see if I could replicate the working of a Thermomix food processor that can be very useful in making sauces automatically. I believe quite a few restaurants now use this type of food processor to reliably make "tricky" sauces like Hollandaise. Of course Hollandaise isn't tricky for the average eGulleter but I figure if you have one less thing to think about when you are making your eggs benedict or steak frites that has to be good right. Well I tried it tonight and here are the results of my first proof of concept. Here's the mis en place - unsalted butter, lemon juice, salt and pepper and four organic egg yolks. Here is a picture of the equipment. You can see the Heater/Stirrer on the left. To the right is my PID unit but the only function it is serving here is to digitally display the temperature of the hotplate. The hotplate is very stable but the temperature is set via an analog dial so it is helpful to see a digital readout of the hotplate. For Hollandaise I am shooting for 70C. This is a close up of the non-stick stirrer bar. The beauty of this setup is you can use any pan size or stirrer size. So I set the dial to 70C, dumped everything into the pan at once, set the stirrer to about 2000RPM and left it for 8 minutes. There was zero manual intervention from me. Et voila... Laboratory Hollandaise. Pretty good for my first go - absolutely delicious and importantly foolproof, repeatable and consistent every time. I think when I do this again I'd probably melt the butter a bit more first. The magnet that turns the stirrer isn't superstrong so melting the butter beforehand would probably help in the stirring. Obviously it would be good to try things like bearnaise and other sauce derivatives also things like risotto could have the stirring automated. Likewise it would probably be brilliant for things like syrup making, tempering chocolate or custard making that require precise temperatures. Anyone else want to give it a try?

Ha - that's great Douglas. You certainly are the man for the measurements. Which is exactly what is needed sometimes. Many thanks for the great info, now I need to put a steam table on my to buy list...

Nice work Douglas. I am considering getting a steam table/bain marie but am a little concerned that they might be energy hogs. They look like they are un-insulated with very large surface areas. Have you found that to be a problem?

Well here is my report - the steaks were very tender, think this might have been helped by the Jaccard, and pretty tasty but really too salty. I do think there is something to be said for presalting but I think I will try with substantially less salt next time...

Thanks for all the advice guys. I've already pre-salted them and will be cooking them up in one hour so it is a little late to try your advice Alwang. I will try it the way you suggest next time though. I've covered them in coarse sea salt, some sliced garlic and some rosemary. I am sceptical that the rosemary or garlic will do much but thought I'd give it a go. After an hour the plan is to rinse everything off, thoroughly try them and then jaccard then it is on to the grill. I must say I've been thinking about the prejudice against table salt and am not convinced that it would be much different in this use than sea salt etc. For dishes where the texture of the salt matters e.g. after plating a foie gras or duck or something similar I would use a Maldon salt or Fleur de Sel but surely in this case anyone would be hard pressed to tell the difference?

There are a couple of older threads on pre-salting but they mainly concentrate on poultry or are inconclusive on steak. In general it seems to me that salting a la Zuni or Thomas Keller on poultry works great. What are your views on pre-salting steak at the moment? Can you only use kosher or sea salt or is ordinary table salt okay too? I would particularly like to hear from people who have tried it rather than the speculators! I am thinking to heavily pre-salt my steaks for one hour before service, rinse well, dry thoroughly and then sear away. I am also debating whether to use my new Jaccard or not in tandem with the pre-salting.

I must say I am not convinced that there would be many benefits of cooking risotto SV either. I am reminded of the old saying that "when you only have a hammer every problem begins to look like a nail"! ...but am always open to a bit of experimentation and look forward to seeing if it does work well.

I also strongly disagree with MikeTMDs assertions - they are unfounded and demonstrably wrong. I have used both a low end setup (simple heating coil and cheap eBay PID) and a high end laboratory immersion circulator. There was NO difference in the quality of what was produced. There may be some greater ease in punching in 51.3C into the digital high end stuff but I can guarantee there are no end user perceptible differences if you are careful. As many of us here are hobbyist cooks it is important that people realise that great results are achievable with some budget equipment and plenty of care and attention, and are not put off by equipment snobbery. Anyway the two solutions use extremely close technologies i.e. PID electronics and methodology with some only lacking the circulation effect of the immersion circulator. As many of us know even the circulation can be achieved cheaply with an aquarium bubbler or other pump. If you break open a laboratory circulator what do you see - PID controller circuit, heating element and pump. If you put together a budget system what do you have - PID controller circuit, heating element and pump. They are the same thing! It is not voodoo here it's mathematics, electronics and physics. Cooking SV does not require 0.01C accuracy and it is foolish to believe that it does when so many other variables are uncontrolled in our cooking. So I would urge anyone wanting to try this - don't be discouraged by some - get yourself a cheap PID controller and nice heat source (electric coil, rice warmer, steam table, crock pot whatever) and you can really experience quantum improvements in the quality of your cooking especially of proteins like meat and fish.

Origamicrane - I bought a similar unit to the one you asked about off of eBay. It works well but the problem is that the control of the unit is analog so it is a little difficult to set the temperature correctly however once set they are pretty good. I ended up Pidding mine as it is a lot easier just to punch in the correct temperature digitally. One thing that I was thinking about trying with my unmodified unit is that it could effectively be used like a low cost Thermomix. Set the nice low temperature and activate the stirrer and you could make a nice hollandaise or risotto with little manual intervention. I haven't bought one of the special stir bars yet but plan on getting one from eBay.

Sounds like we have similar things in mind. I really want to try mine for Sous vide use as well.

Thanks Origamecrane. Actually I did end buying the ebay one. Adey73 pinged me to let me know about it. I imagine a 45 blade one is miles more effecient than the 16 blade ones we can get here. Do you think the Jaccards work well? PS I don't know if the admins are aware of this - but when someone changed the title of the thread (to make it clearer I guess) it breaks the tracking of the topic. That's how I was late replying to Origamicrane.

Anybody know where you can buy a Jaccard Meat Tenderizer in the UK? Scotts of Stow has generic one but that only has 16 blades I'd prefer a 48 blade model.

Mike - Welcome to Club Sous Vide! I think you'll find it gets easier and better once you've done it a few times. Nice sounding menu...

Little bit of cross posting here - sorry Jackal10. Mike - I pretty much go with what has been said above. I'd just add cook about 51-52C, 125f or maybe just slightly higher. For extra flavour season the steak before it goes into the bag with plenty of salt, if you have it add a little goose fat (but don't worry if you don't). Also I recommend really really searing the steak to get a flavoursome crust afterwards. eMonsters method looks good. But you really must do this for the flavour to be all it can be. You'll love 'em!

Mike, Try a really big thick steak. Would only take a couple of hours and then you take it out and sear it nicely. Very tender and a really nice effect to see a couple of inches thick steak perfectly evenly cooked all the way through with a nice crispy outside.

Hi, I'd recommend New Tayyabs in Fieldgate Street in trendy east London. The food here is Pakistani and amazingly good and fresh. It is also ridiculously cheap but not in the most salubrious part of town. However you can do what we do - bring a really nice bottle of wine, have an amazing high quality meal for a cheap price and then go for a nice much more upmarket cocktail at nearby LoungeLover bar. One thing is for sure you will not be dissappointed with the quality of the meal. Here is a recent review of the place.