pounce

I cook it Sous Vide at 130f for 24 hours. Slice it thick and eat it cold with horseradish.

Yes, up thread we discussed the vacuum frying of things like potato chips and fruit chips etc. By frying in vacuum you still get a crispy chip, but you don't get the supposed harmful byproducts of the frying. Vacuum frying is used in production chip/crisp making process'.

An easy and readily available way to simulate gas flush at home with a FoodSaver vacuum sealer is: Seal item as normal. Carefully clip corner off the bag allowing a hole smaller than a pencil Insert nozzle of Wine preserver like Private Reserve, WineLife, Cork Pops, etc (Nitrogen, Argon, Carbon Dioxide etc in an easy to use $10 can) and fill the bag with gas. Insert open corner of bag in Food Saver and vac out the Wine Preserver gas and seal.

Sure, works pretty good. If you can pulse the vacuum and use your free hand you can position the FS bag around the item... that sounds oddly....

I think not having any sort of vacuum machine to experiment with puts you at a disadvantage when talking about the real world effects of some of the science involved. It appears to me that they might be using the term "Atmosphere" in an inconsistent way in their book and this is causing confusion. In general with SV when you change the atmosphere you are reducing the oxygen and not creating a vacuum state. SV is often associated with MAP (Modified Atmosphere Packaging). You see MAP all the time in grocery stores. In all cases the package is sealed (and may even be lose fitting) but has a cavity of some form of gas (normally Nitrogen 70% and Carbon Dioxide 30 %). Lots of fresh pasta and more and more meat trays are packed this way. MAP extends storage life by removing oxygen. Often the contents of the packaging is fragile and would crush if you removed the oxygen by removing all gases (berries, chips, baked goods etc). Instead of removing the gas void in the packaging like vacuum sealing the manufacturer just replaces (or in some cases never introduces) oxygen in the packaging. In the food packaging industry "atmosphere change" means to make a change in the normal composition of air (78.08% nitrogen 20.96% oxygen 0.03% carbon dioxide). It does not mean pressurize of sustain under vacuum. A vacuum sealer does change the atmosphere of the packaged good by removing or changing the composition of air before sealing and returning the packaged goods to normal pressure. At 20hg vacuum water boils (vapor pressure) at 157 degrees Fahrenheit. If you were cooking something in a rigid vacuum chamber you could boil water at room temps. The problem with the statement from the book is that you don't have a vacuum in the bag outside of the vacuum sealing chamber so you have not lowered the vapor pressure point of water. Say you are using a chamber style vacuum sealer. For this example let's say that the vacuum sealer can pull a vacuum low enough to boil water at room temperature. You put a vacuum bag in the sealer and add some water. You close the sealer and pull vacuum until the water in the (currently unsealed) bag starts to boil. You can see this through the clear top of the vacuum sealer. You now seal the bag in the chamber and release the vacuum. You take the bag out of the vacuum sealer and put it on the counter. Is the water still boiling? Why not? Imagine that your vacuum bag material is very thin. Take a small air filled balloon and measure it's circumference. Put this balloon into the bag and vacuum seal it. Take the vacuum sealed bag out of the sealer and measure the circumference of the balloon inside the bag. Is there a difference? Why not? Put the vacuum sealed balloon into a vacuum chamber and draw a vacuum. Does the circumference of the balloon change? Why? Even if you do lower the vapor pressure of water in a rigid sealed container you still need heat to "cook". What if you are boiling water at room temperature in a vacuum and put a raw egg in the water. How long do you think you will have to boil the egg until it's hard cooked? That said using a vacuum to reduce a liquid can have a really nice effect, but in this case the vapor needs to be evacuated out of the vacuum chamber. This sort of reduction can be done very easily at home with a $10 aspirator and a rigid container. Yes. If the bag material is elastic and designed to shrink using heat it is possible that this could add more pressure to the contents of the bag than what is normally present at normal pressure outside of the bag. Very few Sous Vide bags do this however. This will mostly be things like Cryovac brand material. To be sure there is no vacuum inside the package when the package material is essentially squeezing the contents. In reality its also really not that much pressure.

Do you mean to say you don't have a vacuum sealer and that you are cooking cryovac'd foods in the plastic you purchased them in?

Does this mean you are giving up and admitting the material in your books is incorrect and in some cases confusing to the point that it may as well be incorrect? I just want to know before I spend the time pointing out the flaws. If you are giving up I will as well.

Since it seems like you are getting your info from the books you own could you cite the page references?

I thought we already beat this one to death up thread... http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showto...dpost&p=1524333

I'd just look at the shop nearest your house. The entry level pumps for under gravel filtering in aquariums are generally all external. If you are looking at something that is more than 10 you are looking at the wrong thing Just ask for an inexpesive air pump and don't bother with the air stone etc. just get enough clear plastic tubing to go from the pump to the bottom of your pot with the little more for trial and error etc.

If you want to try an aquarium approach you don't want a power head or a water pump. You want an air pump. http://www.aquatics-online.co.uk/catalogue...-and-spares.asp It's just going to bubble air through a plastic hose in your SV. This works find for long times. Short times benefit from faster moving water. You aren't just keeping the water in the bath the same temp by mixing it you are effecting how fast the item in the bath heats the item by keeping the fluid that is in contact with the item at the right temp. Think about it. If you put a frozen steak in a still, but hot, pot the water will be hot most everywhere, but the water right next to the frozen steak will be cooled. If I was smarter I would quote all sorts of thermal and fluid dynamics stuff. I just know that the faster the water flows (within reason) and the more consistent you can keep the overall fluid temp the faster the item will arrive at temp.

Douglas has some references on the great SV page he has been building. http://amath.colorado.edu/~baldwind/sous-vide.html

I do this already and use this approach for food and other things like plastics and paints. The FS and a canister can actually pull a decent vacuum. 29hg is a lot. You can build a vacuum chamber for this taks very easily with a pvc cylinder and some lexan. They are frequently made for removing the air in mold making crafts (google for references) If you have a compressor you can get a cheap venturi vacuum "pump" that will pull more vacuum than an FS. You don't need a vacuum seeling machine for this task. Just a purpose built cannister where you put your mix to remove the bubbles. I still recommend that you avoid putting air in your mix to start and avoid the air removal task all together.

Using a foodsaver cannister is going to be about the same thing. A FS can pull 29hg. How much is expensive? I think I would try not using a blender or introducing the bubbles in the first place. Try mixing the alginate in a little alcohol and then add your liquid. This will help to prevent clumping and possibly the need to spin it in the blender.

Very nice. Love the Hobart and the picture of you hugging your bacon on your website! http://chrishennes.com/Welcome.html Nice pictures too. What sort of camera and lighting are you using?

Before I worked out a good technique for getting a raw pizza onto an oven pizza stone I used to make the pie on a piece of parchment paper and throw this on the stone. I wonder if using the same technique for the Cauliflower crust would yield a crispier or less soggy result?

http://www1.umn.edu/umnnews/Feature_Storie..._every_day.html Basically:

For those molecular types... you can try Alginate.

Rob, Since I am familiar with a hunting ranch in NM that raises Bison for meat, hunts and preservation I have had the ethical/emotional conversation about actually "hunting" a Bison, processing and eating it. What's your take on the hunting part of the puzzle? I'm on the fence about what is more humane or "real" about facing the death of the animal and the experience of directly causing that death. I know of a few celebrities that have gone on Bison shoots and the whole thing always makes me think. How hard can it really be to shoot a Bison? For me it feels like shooting a cow. They aren't exactly expecting predators you know. Would it be more respectful to take the Bison to a slaughter house where any other herd animals may not be witness to the downing of the Bison? Is it beneficial for herd animals to have the experience of having other herd members killed? I apologize if I am taking this off topic with the hunting factor. I like to eat meat and I like Bison. I still seem to have open questions that maybe a lot of the other readers have. Can I kill an animal and eat it? If I can't should I continue to eat them? Does it really matter if I am involved (if only maybe once) in the animal based food process if I'm an end consumer? PS: Thanks for sharing your experiences.

Looks like a winner. Suyi at Auber deserves everyones money Of course, the "value added" resellers of Auber equipment should also get your dollars. I like the new case. Sexy. The way the wire feet lift the unit off the surface is a nice touch when it's going to live around water.

I think you will want to use bags intended for chamber vacuum machines for the pasta. If you use FS bags you are going to get some odd patterns in the pasta due to the texture of the bags used to promote the airflow during vacuum. I've used parchment paper in the bag on the side of the texture in FS bags to help reduce the "imprint" with some things. Might be worth a try.

For those living near Cherry Hill, NJ I have discovered that H-Mart supermarket on 70 and 295 have a puff rice machine in the store. They do plain and green tea dinner plate size puffed rice disks. I can't eat enough of these things. There is something very satisfying about eating something the size of a dinner plate...and then having 10 more Besides the puffed rice this place is an amazing Asian grocer. I haven't been to the other H-Mart locations to know if they also have the puff rice machines. Looks like they have a few other locations around the US. http://www.hmart.com/ Next time I'm there I'll see if I can snap some video.

Ok, I tried this after reading the thread and really didn't care for the result. On the bright side I haven't tried to make wontons before so now I am well equipped

I've been using a Jaccard or having the butcher hit the cut with the one he's has in the back. Nathan mentions it up thread so maybe he has some empirical data to share. In a nutshell.. by severing the muscle fibers with a series of knife like spikes you reduce the amount of squeeze/contraction happening during the cooking that forces the juices out of the meat. To me it would seem that a brisket would suffer a lot from muscle contraction. The Jaccard thingies are pretty cheap and can be found at most kitchen stores. I think I paid something around $10.

I cheat with eggs. I crack them into small jars and put them in the bath with lids. Got the idea from the antique egg coddlers I got from my grandmother. After trying the in-shell approach a few times I got lazy.