dougal

Its the primary ingredient of many commercial descaler products. But simple Citric Acid (and a drop of detergent) works very well, at a fraction of the cost. And its even better than vinegar at removing any dull limescale film preventing your glassware from shining. However, Citric Acid is not absolutely easily available in the UK, because it has a use of some sort in unofficial pharmaceutical processing. In Sainsbury's supermarket, for example, its not on display and one must ask for it at the pharmacy counter, where they will only sell you a single 50 gram packet at a time. Its a useful way of adding acidity, whether to activate pectin in jam and jelly making, or in home winemaking. But adding it to make a sourdough loaf more sour? Isn't that cheating?

The bright blue cone at the centre of the flame is UNburnt gas. You don't want that on the food. The hottest part of the flame, however, is just above the point of that cone. That's where burning will happen fastest! Is anyone using a torch/blowlamp with (or with an adaptor to give) a flat (sometimes called 'fish-tail') flame, as would be the choice for paint-stripping? It would seem to be a more appropriate solution than a 'point' flame.

Chris, I fear the engineer in you just wants another meter! Have a look instead for something like these http://www.indigo.com/Test-Strips/gph-test-strips/ph-paper-4-7.html

Chris, my understanding of pH meters is that they require constant recalibration and their sensor lifetime can be harmed by, for example, 'muck' in the sample. If you want to use it on a food slurry (without filtering), I'd suggest checking with the manufacturers for their ideas as to suitability. Mostly, these things are intended for testing "water" rather than slurry. Sadly, the manufacturers don't seem to have posted the manual online for the product you linked, so I'm afraid you'd have to ask them. You might also care to check the availability and cost of spares. Colours on test strips - the colour of the light you are using to look at the strip can matter greatly when matching. Use daylight to be sure. pH range - the pH scale is fearfully sensitive in this sort of range (which leads to the calibration problem, etc). The important thing is that you are somewhere in the right range. I believe that means below about 5.5 for C bot protection - and pretty much as low (sour) as you care to go. For example http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a713631816 (note btw the reference to 'protective cultures' - acidifying bacteria!) For a commercial production (QC) test that a product was within the acceptable sourness range, specifying something like 4.7 ± 0.1 might be appropriate. At home, trying new recipes, your endpoint pHs will tend to be variable. I'm going to presume that what you are after is a sanity and safety check that it HAS acidified adequately - so anywhere less than wooo about 5.2 (perhaps) should be happily safe. I think that's about all the info you should really NEED for safety. Hence, I'm not sure that the range on the strips that you have is best suited for what you are wanting to do.

If the plane of the blade is angled to the carriage travel, the slices won't be 'straight' when looked at along the carriage travel axis ... is that what you are getting?

Chris - just to confirm, it seems (from the brandy) that you are referring to the saucisson a l'ail (garlic sausage) recipe, right? (There's four or five pages on dried large sausages.) If so, did you triple grind the meat?

duplicate post

If you are on the North coast, it hardly seems worth going to Ramsgate for fish & chips. If you were going to Ramsgate for other reasons, maybe you should try Age & Sons - Michelin recognised it, after all. If you were going to Dungeness, on the other hand, The Pilot is justifiably renowned for its fish&chips. Though if you were going there (Jarman's house, the RSPB reserve, the nuke, maybe even the RH&DR), your best bet would be to cross the county line and visit Rye - not merely Benson's (or rather Mapp & Lucia's) Tilling. The Mermaid has the starched linen, but I prefer The George with its Moro connections (either could put you up for the night as well). In mid-Kent, The Three Chimneys at Biddenden is well worth a visit if you were passing. And its quite close to the vineyard (though I happen to believe that their cider is more outstandingly, um, effective.) Don't know about The West House in Biddenden though. Michelin likes it. But back towards the North coast, you are within hiking distance of Canterbury. It'd be a shame not to become a pilgrim. In Canterbury, have a look at The Goods Shed. (You can always just browse around the market.) Like nostalgia, I'm afraid it was better a few years ago! Just beyond Canterbury, there's The Granville (absolutely literally The Sportsman's sister's restaurant) with a Michelin Bib Gourmande. (Just think of The Sportsman, but minus the tasting menu and a lot of the difficulty of booking.) And at Goodnestone, only a few miles off the A2, The Fitzwalter Arms has been much more interesting than the slightly foreboding architecture might suggest. I'd say it was more interesting than was The Yew Tree at Barfrestone, which was busier, but is now closed. Harters, you already know of The Marquis just outside Dover. (As do Michelin now.) However, for something totally different, actually in Dover there's The Allotment. And if you should be in Dover for the evening and up for the adventure, you might try The Carpathian Restaurant. (Lunch is remarkable, but maybe not what eGulleteers are looking for ...) Walletts Court (a few miles towards St Margret's) would be a much safer, more boring and more expensive recommendation! When its open, The Coastguard tearoom at St Margrets (at the Dover Patrol memorial) offers a deeply traditional tearoom, but perched on the top of the white cliffs and thus with views over much of the far East of Kent and (tide and weather permitting) of the Goodwin Sands ... Wherever you go, enjoy your trip! (And you could get the count well above three without trying too hard or paying too much.)

Agree that for heat conduction, metal is going to be better than glass. However, if you really want a 'glass' item, see if you can find a glass ceramic ("vitroceramic") item. Made of similar stuff to 'glass' cooktops. Not cheap. Very tough. Very safe. Apart from Corning, not sure who else might offer this material.

In bread baking, generally, the detail is important. It does make a difference. Peter Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads (a book) goes into some very unusual, long-time, processes to extract maximum flavour without the dough collapsing. You probably wouldn't want to start there, but the point is that while long slow cool fermentation is great for tasty white bread, its not so easy to do the same stuff with wholemeal. • You want a fairly quick rise time. Quicker than for white bread. And you need a strong rise (the bran, once wet, takes more lifting than white dough!) I'd also add here that you should be cautious about adding extra weight (nuts, seeds, veg, etc) until you know what to expect from your dough. • So you need, at minimum, good yeast in good condition. The easiest assurance of that is to use the quarter-ounce ( 7 gram) packets of instant-mix yeast (NOT 'active dry'). I'd try and find one that didn't claim to have magic added ingredients to help in bread machines (but that is optimisation). Ignore the descriptive names (rapid or whatever), you want the tiny packets of yeast that gets mixed with the dry flour. That is your most reliable way of getting and using yeast in prime condition. • No need lots of yeast. But a touch of sugar (to feed the yeast, NOT to sweeten the bread) can be helpful. • And yeast does best in gentle warmth. About 100F, blood heat, is (conveniently) ideal. A finger (or elbow - think baby baths) dipped in, should feel nothing - not cold, not warm, nothing! So getting everything (flour, water, bowls) to that temperature, and keeping it there during rising (fermentation), makes it easiest for the yeast to do its job as well as it can. Definitely DON'T expose yeast to higher temperatures -- 120F will kill, yes permanently kill, it. • You want the flour to be in good condition too. Don't waste your time with stuff that smells past its best. Its cheap, buy some fresh stuff. But do store it sensibly - see my previous post. • A little vitamin C does indeed help to keep the gluten strong, (its a glutathione antagonist), so that the gas (from the yeast, sugar, etc) can be contained and lift the loaf. But strong (bread) flour (from 'hard' wheats) is the first step to strong gluten! • Excessive kneading can actually be counter-productive. The bran cuts the gluten that is needed to provide the structural framework of your loaf. Don't damage the framework! (Take it easy!) • An excellent starting-point recipe for inexperienced bakers using 100% wholegrain/wholemeal was produced years ago by Doris Grant. The "Grant Loaf" is justifiably famous - Google it! There's an excellent Grant Loaf recipe given by Delia Smith at http://www.deliaonline.com/recipes/type-of-dish/bread/quick-and-easy-wholemeal-loaf.html Compare the stages with my explanations above, and you'll understand "why" things are done those ways. And yes, she does give measurements by weight. Honestly, its the easy way to communicate precisely for baking. The understanding of a bread recipe begins with an accurate comparison of the relative weights of water and flour. Therefore ... • If you don't already have one, get a cheap digital scale. And work in grams. Don't worry what they are, they are just 'clicks'. And you can use the same clicks for flour and water. And the numbers are easy, no messy fractions. A scale that weighs up to 7 lb (3000 grams) in steps of at most 2 grams (say 1/16 oz) would be ideal. Nowadays in the UK such a thing costs less than $15. Learn how to use the add-and-weigh ("tare") function. It makes the scale super easy to use. • And if you are weighing the water, you should be so accurate that you don't have to add a bit more or less "depending on the weather" (or more likely the inaccuracy of using your measuring jug). That said, different wholemeal/wholegrain flours do take up water slightly differently. But if you KNOW that you used exactly 400 grams of water last time, and it seemed to be a slightly dry dough, you can controllably give it a bit more, maybe 410, next time. When you get it right for your brand of flour, you should be able to reproduce it consistently by weighing. • Implicit in the idea of making adjustments to suit your flour is the idea that you'll have a go at the same recipe several times, making controlled adjustments, before moving on to something else. Start simple and master that before moving on. Or even trying a different brand of flour or yeast. Your flour, your oven, your altitude, even your water might require recipes to be adjusted. Recognise that and control the adjustments and you will be well on your way to being a baker. Be prepared to experiment, but you won't learn from the experiment unless you know what it was that you did - so measure accurately and take notes. OK, so now you can get started!

Scott123, I think your experience is far from typical. And if you start from a false premise, your reasoning is inevitably going to go astray. Does your locale not use 'sell by' and 'best before' dates? Simply don't buy stuff that is too short-dated (or in too large a quantity) for your needs. If the product is in-date and rancid, complain, return it, and potentially shop elsewhere. Kept cool rather than warm, and out of direct sunlight, it ought to be fine at least up to the packet's date. But its not a bargain to buy 6-months-usage at one time. It is a perishable commodity. But less perishable than fruit, or bread. A bit like ground coffee. If you decant your flour packet into a particular tupperware or other storage container, DON'T do it until the container is empty and clean! Don't mix old and new! At all. Ever. Any old material, if left, will go rancid relatively quickly, polluting the new, fresh stuff. And, naturally, making a note of the use-by date (marker pen on the tub?) saves you trying to remember it. Yes, wholegrain/wholemeal flour does go rancid faster than white flour. But not SO rapidly that its a problem requiring anything beyond simple good housekeeping. And my experience is that, (at least here in the UK) its very easy to buy fresh (and nutritious) wholemeal/wholegrain flour, and virtually impossible to buy rancid product.

Its entirely normal for UK merchants to offer "sale or return" for such events. You get a 100% credit for whatever you bring back unopened. (And you'd be looking for significant quantity discounts. Maybe even free glass hire too.) Not the situation with you, wherever you are?

Can I remark that these are somewhat extreme conditions. The lack of response indicates that this is not a usual situation. 72 hours is a "very long time" even for sv. It is possible to overcook with sv! 132F is 55.5C, which is rather close to the edge of safety. And that in turn raises the question of whether this meat has really had 132F, or whether that is merely what an uncalibrated controller is reporting, from a different part of the waterbath, with an incompletely evacuated pouch floating horizontally ... you get the picture? If bits of the meat have had less than 132F, and/or there was a significant amount of air in the pouch (I'll leave it for others to define 'significant amount'), then there is definite potential for some undesirable microbiology. Now put the two things together and the longer time you give it, the more that microbiology will proceed. It might be merely spoilage, but it could well be much worse. So, I'd simply suggest "Don't go there" -- especially as you mention approximately 132F ("~132F"). There is an edge. The closer to that edge that you want to go, the better equipped you need to be -- see the calibration discussion above. Thinking about that "~" approximately -- it makes sense not to go nearer the edge than a pessimistic (ie safe) estimation of the errors in your temperature control system. But, anyway, I don't think you should need to go 72 hours ... If there is ONE THING that non-tech readers of this thread should take away from the foregoing calibration discussion, it is that just because the digital readout says 132F, you cannot assume that your food is getting 132.000°F. Its like oven thermostats (or anything else really) - there's a margin of error. And its important to understand what it might be -- ideally what it actually is -- for your own equipment. Its a (common but fundamental) mistake to confuse display precision with accuracy. A reading of 132 on your display does not (by itself) guarantee that the temperature at the probe (let alone the whole bath) is truly between 131.5 and 132.5. Regarding calibration standards, I note that the current Thermapen offering is supplied with a traceable-calibration certificate for that specific instrument complete with its probe. Resolution is 0.1F while the accuracy is specified as better than ±0.7F over its entire range. Given that it can be field-recalibrated at one temperature (if required), I think it sounds like a reasonable, and highly convenient, secondary (working) standard for the very serious/pro, and a decent primary standard (and all round kitchen workhorse) for 'the rest of us'. http://www.thermoworks.com/products/thermapen/splashproof_thermapen.html Another reason I'm going to HAVE to get one, dammit. (The current model can now do C or F, is even faster and splashproof too. Dammit.)

I don't think that is so smart. Anybody care to check the temperature difference above/below a large horizontal pouch in the SV Supreme? Holding the pouches vertically would enhance natural convection's efforts to even out temperature differences. But a horizontal pouch is going to block that circulation. And the bigger in horizontal area the pouch is, the more its going to block the heat transport to the middle of the top side of the pouch. Its going to be even worse with plural flat-ish pouches horizontal. There's nothing to drive the heat into the spaces between the pouches. No pump and no help from natural convection currents. Convection is essentially vertical heat transport - it doesn't work sideways! What reasons are given to 'assist your choice' of which orientation should be used for particular tasks?

TimS - welcome! But I must just pick you up on one thing ... Actually ... farmed cod has been around for a few years ... http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2003/apr/07/fish.food

Temperature overshoot indicates that the PID tuning could likely be improved. Minimising overshoot (and ringing) is what the PID is really about. The PID's control problem becomes more difficult, the greater the time lag between a heat input change and its effect being detected by the probe. Anything you can do to to shorten that delay will make the task easier for your PID (with suitable tuning) to do better. Improved water circulation from heater to probe (and retuning in that configuration), should help your PID to reduce the overshoot and ringing.

Try oiling it. Flavourless cooking oil. Better lubricant than water. For slicing at about 80 degrees from vertical (nearly flat -- where the cut slice inevitably sits on the blade), the idea is to get as little steel in contact with the fish as is possible. That is why the least tall blade is the best. And (in proportion to the blade) a lot of dimpling reduces the area of steel potentially sticking to the fish flesh. And just to spell it out, the MORE the knife sticks to the already-cut flesh, the more the slice will be subject to tearing. Some flex in the blade (perpendicular to the cutting direction) allows you to keep your hand slightly above the fish and yet cut to (but not through) the skin. A knife for this type of fish slicing - where the bones have been scrupulously removed - should be encountering absolutely nothing that is hard and 'difficult'. Even at the bottom of the stroke, the knife should be horizontal, skidding along the skin, not cutting downwards onto the chopping block. This delicate-work-only ethos allows you to sharpen at a stupidly flat angle. This is exactly the task for a scalpel-like blade - no matter that the edge is very delicate, its going to be used with utmost delicacy for cutting through soft stuff ! I think that this is an important distinction of a knife to be used for this type of salmon slicing ONLY. Things are very different if you are making vertical cuts. A chisel blade does the minimum to disturb the block of fish remaining to be sliced, and promotes the cut slice falling cleanly away from the uncut material. And if there are dimples, they will act to prevent the slice being stuck to the blade by air pressure. But if the material is itself sticky, you want the least area of steel in contact with the food, rather than just vacuum-seal-breaking occasional dimples. As previously mentioned, the longer the blade, the better, because then the fewer strokes - ideally just one - per slice. But short (as in not tall) is also important. And the sharper the better!

Such questions and answers are among the reasons that the main sv thread has grown to such a length! There are three things to tackle (apart from the bagging) 1- Supplying heat in a controllable manner 2- Controlling it rather more precisely than usual 3- Ensuring that the whole pot/tank/vessel is kept, as close as possible, at the same temperature A suitable rice cooker can do #1 A magnetic stirrer plus hotplate tackles #1 and #3 (best use a non-metallic, but stovetop-safe, pot - and do play with a couple of fridge magnets, one inside, one outside, to see how the magnetism passes through). A home aquarium bubbler is another means of stirring constantly, to achieve #3. Interestingly, the Sous Vide Supreme has no active assistance to circulate heat evenly throughout the bath. Instead, by carefully keeping the food pouches vertical (in a sort of toast rack), the natural convection currents are enhanced by the pouches, instead of being obstructed. The 'cold' water contacting the pouch is able to fall freely to the bottom heater, and the water heated at the base can rise fairly freely through the slots. And its possible that the metal framework itself also significantly helps to distribute heat throughout the bath. I believe that the rack is a VERY clever (and important) part of the design, which is (passively) boosting the circulation of heat within the tank. Homebrew sv constructors should take note! Requirement #2, precision temperature control, is the main departure from standard kitchen/domestic equipment. If you use an external controller, like for example the PIDs from Auber or Freshmealsolutions, it will work by turning the power to your heater on and off (probably quite rapidly, potentially even several times each second). And THAT causes problems if your stirrer is also being switched at the same time (because it gets its power down the same cable), or if your heater has its own control system. You want the dumbest heater you can find! A mechanical thermostat can be easily over-ruled (bypassed, taken out of the game) by being set to maximum, so that the real control is being done by your special, external, controller. However, electronic controls in your heater (for example in some sophisticated rice cookers) don't appreciate their power being constantly turned off and on. At best, they will reset and just switch off. Not helpful. You need a really dumb, basic, heater if its going to accept external control. Its also worth noting that the better the flow over the heater and the sensor (think of a circulator), the easier the control problem becomes ... Nutshell upsum: if you want to keep the budget down, you CAN indeed 'roll your own' system - to a greater or lesser extent -- however, if you want it neatly packaged and the price point suits, it seems like the SV Supreme (subject of this thread, remember) does provide a functional option and is cheaper than most people are likely to find used circulators.

I think Ruhlman's book is the best and safest tutorial. But some of the recipes are hardly authentic. However, I think its unquestionably the best starting point. Jane Grigson's book is great, but, wow, she was very heavy-handed (by modern standards) with the saltpetre (nitrate). Excellent for background reading, recipe inspiration and putting things in a historical (and geographic) context though. I really like Bertolli's book, but I regret to admit that as yet, I haven't used it much. "Preserved" covers lots of things (beyond meat), and consequently nothing gets covered in great detail. No really major horrors though. Could be all the non-geek needs to get started - and hooked. I was a bit disappointed with Kutas' Sausage Recipes - which is grossly unfair because it is actually just that, a book of recipes (or formulas) for sausages, written for an american audience. But that's about all it is. I was even more disappointed when I saw Peacock's "The Sausage Book" because of the frankly sloppy approach that it advocates, and the amount of padding that can be inserted to turn a few pages of real content into a book-product. No thanks! Admirable as many of Hugh Fearnley-Whittinstall's aims might be, his charcuterie stuff is very hit or miss. Many of his cures seem to be based on traditional cures for preservation, rendering things terribly salty. What makes it an issue is that this extreme saltiness isn't remarked upon in the text. One brine even listed a salt concentration that is actually beyond saturation! And then there is the DRIED RAW chorizo recipe which includes no nitrate/nitrite and no starter culture either. I remain convinced that this is a potentially dangerous mistake - which I think probably results from confusion with a recipe for a FRESH chorizo, which would be cooked before eating. Interestingly, the exact same 'confusion' with Chorizo (no starter or cure in a sausage for drying and eating raw) is repeated in Darina Allen's new "Forgotten Skills of Cooking" which unsurprisingly lists HFW's "Meat" in the Bibliography. Forgotten Skills has some nice recipes for using the various products, but needs other books for support on the basics. For example, the Foraging section discusses various attractive recipes for using Alexanders, but has precious little on distinguishing them from other, rather similar looking but poisonous plants! I'm still a bit ambivalent about Walker's "Practical Food Smoking". The 'trade-qualification-textbook' style is ghastly. I doubt it is up to date on regulations, but it certainly indicates how commercial smoking operations have to work. Again small, cheap and quite a lot of real content. A little book that I really do like is Erlandson's "Home Cooking & Curing" which is actually about smoking rather than US "BBQ" cooking. Its short (not padded with waffle), cheap and authoritative. What's not to like? I'm still a bit ambivalent about . The 'trade-qualification-textbook' style is ghastly. I doubt it is up to date on regulations, but it certainly indicates how commercial smoking operations have to work. Again small, cheap and quite a lot of real content. My preferred recipe for Merguez has its origin in one of the Moro books by Sam & Sam Clark (just checked - it was in Casa Moro). Highly recommended beyond the few bits of charcuterie. There are all sorts of odd snippets that one gleans online, but outstanding must be the USDA Meat Processing Inspectors Handbook - and its discussion of the calculations of allowable Nitrate and Nitrite levels in cured products. Quite apart from what a safe actual level in food might turn out to be, its eye-opening to look at some of the simplistic assumptions underlying the formal calculations of what the content is to be declared to be. PDF for free download: http://www.fsis.usda.gov/OPPDE/rdad/FSISDirectives/7620-3.pdf One example To appreciate the full wisdom of this, you have to recognise that nitrate doesn't actively cure the meat at all until it has itself been degraded to nitrite ... And that they are not talking about the residues after curing (which is what you eat), but instead they are referring to the amount permitted to be added to the meat at the start of the cure! Oh, and this is what I should have asked for for Christmas: "Manual of a Traditional Bacon Curer" I'll just have to get it for myself now ...

Dunno about your mechanism (and where your fingers have to be), but it sounds like it might be a better idea to have the motor running before advancing the stone(s) to contact the spinning blade. I doubt that the motor should be expected to start up against the extra friction from the stones. The sharpening load on the running disc would be more similar to a slicing load. Especially if you only advance the stone gently ...

If they are available anywhere, I'd expect it to be at Billingsgate. Its open to the public, and the car park is free. But you'd probably need to be there soon after 5 am ... http://london.openguides.org/wiki/?Billingsgate_Market

Chris, I don't think crystalline salt is terribly hygroscopic - the solid doesn't grab much moisture from the air. (Its not like NaOH, for example). You don't need to keep table salt in tightly sealed containers for fear it will dissolve away ! However, the effect of a salt solution trying to dilute itself from very damp air, (or dry out in dry air) is quite powerful. The thing that limits its effectiveness is a lack of mixing in the solution - the top surface tends to get dilute (equilibrating with very moist air). So you need stirring, or a vertical liquid surface! (One reason you want a film of solution over your crystals, rather than a puddle.) The more surface area of 'solution', the more powerful the humidity control. Wet crystals give you a lot more surface area than the surface of your free liquid. And crystals cutting the surface of your puddle do help to keep the surface layer of the puddle close to saturated, and therefore working for you. So, just a little water, remove excess liquid (and add more solid salt) as often as you like/can, and mix the salt around so that the stuff above the puddle - and so in the airflow, working for you - is not bone dry. Chris Amirault - whatever weight loss you are expecting from your batch of dried sausage, that is the amount of water that you have to remove from your box. Its a significant quantity. And most of it comes out early! Wine bottles don't sweat! So moisture removal isn't part of the design of dedicated wine coolers in the same way that it is for refrigerators. The better sealed the box, the worse the problem. If you have a 'cold spot" where you get condensation, can you arrange a simple gutter (or wick) system to gather the condensate for disposal outside the box ? Increasing the airflow over the cold spot should increase the amount of condensate. The heavier the condensation, the better it will run off. And different surface coatings will give different run-off characteristics. (I'm wondering here about applicability of those automotive windscreen/windshield treatments that reduce the need for wipers ... for example http://www.rainx.co.uk/tips.php#work This process of condensing (and draining away to the outside) is the reason that ordinary refrigerators dehumidify the air inside. And when introducing fresh dryish air to your box at warm room temperature, don't forget that the mere act of cooling that new air INCREASES its "humidity" because what you are actually measuring the relative humidity - and the lower the temperature, the less moisture it takes to saturate the air -- cool it enough and you will reach the Dew Point and get condensation. (Dew Point gives an absolute measurement of the moisture content.)

Chris, what (apart from opening the door) are you currently doing to control/reduce/get-rid-of the humidity (water vapour) in the chamber? Does your cooler have a 'cold plate' that gets covered with condensation? How do you get that condensate (if any) out of the chamber? Have you tried the tray of wet salt (±fan blowing across it) ?

Well, at least I don't have to make any Rick Stein own-brand jokes! However, as a Brit, I know not of 'rock shrimp'. If you are seeking tiny and tasty shrimp, ask for "Brown Shrimp" -- which are COMPLETELY DIFFERENT to what are called "Brown Shrimp" in the US of A. British brown shrimp aren't too hard to find at decent fish shops. They are more widely sold, cooked and prepared in butter, as "potted shrimp".

No need for confusion. If you look at the other recipes in that section, you'll see that each recipe describes just one of the methods. Rather than give two parallel methods for each recipe, the authors are teaching (or expecting) interpretative skills. That's why they outline "master recipes" for both methods - quite distinct from the specific sausage recipes. Since you have both mixer and processor, you could start by simply following the Mortadella recipe as printed. Then, as an "exercise for the reader", you could try interpreting it in the light of those two master recipes, using the mixer. (It isn't hard, just compare the Mortadella recipe with the master processor recipe!) Thinking it through for yourself is a great way to learn. And then, once you've done it both ways, you can see which one you prefer making -- and eating! There isn't necessarily One True Way. Especially with Charcuterie! One great thing about the book is the rational way in which skills and techniques are built up, and then built upon. Its more of an educational course than a plain recipe book for dipping into.