dougal

Can I be awkward? I don't really like the idea of putting mains electricity connectors (like that plug-through hygrostat) INSIDE the fridge - where there may be dripping water, etc. If that little dehumidifier is really the same as the UK product offering that it seems to be, then one of its advantages is that it works on 12v DC - and the mains transformer can be outside the fridge. So, if you had a hygrostat inside the fridge that was just switching that 12v DC, that would be safer, wouldn't it? And if you could find something like the Siemens QFA1001, it ought to be cheaper as well! That model is an example of a simple mechanical hygrostat switch. Its not going to be super accurate, but it'll be plenty good enough. It also has a changeover type switch - so it could control a humidifier OR a dehumidifier (you just connect it to different terminals). An even simpler alternative is to control the dehumidifier by time rather than humidity. If you can get simple (and cheap) timer switches *'expensive' UK example ($7)* then you can easily set it to run 15 minutes every hour, or two hours, or three hours ... whatever duty cycle you feel appropriate to your situation, based on the humidity measurement you are seeing. FWIW, I wouldn't worry too much about the humidity being as low as a steady 60% with the dehumidifier running. There's a lot of sweating going on, and that's fine. The little machine is gathering it up at the same rate its sweating) if its a steady 60-ish. But when the humidity falls further, and quickly, then you need to do much less dehumidifying - and likely more controlling!

Its a matter of scale, I believe. At about 75% humidity, silica gel will take up about 30% of its weight of water. http://www.sorbentsystems.com/desiccants_charts.html#figure2 You want to lose something like 30% of the sausage weight as water. Put those two things together, and it looks like its roughly pound for pound. You'd need a pound of silica gel to take up the water from a pound of sausages. One whole pound of dry silica gel is rather a lot. But a pound of wet salami isn't. A matter of scale. Of course, you could use half a pound twice (oven-drying it between campaigns), or a tenth of a pound ten times ... but that's a lot silica gel, a lot of your time and a lot of energy used by the oven, all to remove the moisture from just one pound of sausage ... Venting the chamber to allow a small amount of exchange of air with a dryer exterior sounds easier. Collecting and removing the condensation provoked by localised cooling is the simple practical method. And if you are spending real money on a wine fridge, the cost of a low-voltage mini (Peltier effect chilling) dehumidifier (as mentioned upthread) is probably not going to be too much of a concern.

I do appreciate the poetry. Its a really neat idea. But the pedant lurking within is offended by the thread title saying "On" rather than "Under" ...

This looks like a great little tool not only for those with a disability but for those of us who like to take our tools on the road. The "compact" bit concerns me. As a general thing, folks with reduced physical capabilities NEED things that are LESS miniaturised - so they can be handled more easily. Thus for a mandoline, I'd expect a high value would be placed on stability. When working with the non-dominant hand, movement is less well-controlled, less accurate - and thus there's a greater tendency to move or tip the tool than there would be when working with the dominant hand. Compactness is not necessarily a virtue in this field - until it comes to making sure that things can be lifted easily enough. A principal virtue is efficacy - does it do the job (or rather does it enable the job to be done)? And following on from that, the emphasis tends to be on tools that do one thing really well, and really easily - rather than having a range of capabilities, each requiring significant reconfiguration. Its a different game; the usual rules don't exactly apply.

If the humidity is still that high, I wouldn't expect it to be good mould. I'd suggest washing it off, with an acidified (vinegar) wash, rather than just waiting and watching. And dry the sausages afterwards (paper kitchen towel?) And try hard to get some moisture out of that chamber. (Even to the extent of drying the outside of the sausages after washing/wiping down.) Have you got any frozen gel packs for cool boxes? Anything like that, in your chamber, is going to quickly get covered in condensation. If you put it in a metal dish (roasting tin? pie dish?) it should be even more effective... Once its gathered one load of condensation, towel it dry (and the dish), and return the cold pack to the chamber for another load. Repeat until bored or the gel pack isn't garnering much condensation (either because its warmed up a bit, or less likely so soon, the humidity has come right down.) Then return the cold pack to the freezer so that its chilled ready for another campaign tomorrow - because the humidity will bounce right back up with those 'wet' sausages in there... You are looking to eventually remove about a quarter of the sausage weight as moisture. And you've got to get it completely out of your chamber. Quite a lot of it needs to be out quite quickly ...

Jenni - as correctly stated above, things don't need to be VERY acid to control Botulism risk. The pH of 4.6 is about 100x less acid than the market-leading Cola drink ... You can measure pH (acidity) with simple cheap paper pH test strips. These are kinda like Litmus paper, but the particular colour gives you a measurement. There's a discussion of them (and the difficulties of using them on dryish stuff) in a thread on here about salami-making -- another place where Botulism risk needs to be considered. If this is of sufficient concern to you, invest (probably £10 or less) in some pH papers (covering a small range either side of 4.5) and test your produce. Anything 4.0 or less and you don't have to worry at all about Botulism. Fermenting is a common way that traditional processes achieve safely acid conditions. Likely the Mrs Jaffrey recipe was trying to take it far enough, and then (near enough) stop the fermentation by chilling. The point here is that you'd be wanting to test a sample of each pickle batch AFTER fermentation ... The thing about oil is that it smothers (excludes air from) whatever is submerged in it. And excluding air is just what C. Bot really likes. The thing about garlic is that its a root - from under the soil. And soil (earth) is where you can easily find C Bot. Get a speck of earth under your oil, and you have plenty scope for growing C Bot. Kept under refrigeration, 'clean' peeled garlic in oil should be fine for at least a fortnight. And if you reduce the C Bot further (as with blanching in hot vinegar), the risk will be reduced for longer.

I don't believe that the salt penetrates equally quickly through the skin as into exposed flesh. But it doesn't have to. Penetrating the flesh is a matter of time for thickness. Not really much to do with the quantity of salt (unless minimal quantities of salt). And it probably varies somewhat between Atlantic Salmon and each of the different Pacific "Salmon". I note that Karl hasn't actually told us how much salt he is using, what manner of fish or the duration of his curing, pellicle-formation, smoking or post-cure resting. This makes it hard to comment on what he is actually doing! However, its important to note that the time for the cure to penetrate and equalise is the sum total of the time before consumption. I don't see any virtue in dry-salt-curing followed by a thorough soak for an hour or so. That I'd expect to lead to more water in the fish. Personally, for smoking farmed Atlantic Salmon, I tend towards brine-curing (only an hour or so), and thorough air-drying (at least 4 hours), thin smoke for a "long time" (I now have a brilliantly simple Pro-Q which will smoulder overnight - I'd like to go with even less dense smoke for longer, but, hey...) and then I leave it (well wrapped - not least for the sake of the rest of the contents)) in the fridge for at least a couple of days. I've never thought I was suffering from uneven curing. Of course the skin is needed to maintain the structural integrity of the fillet through curing, drying, smoking and slicing. It might be worth Karl looking at the discussion of Ruhlman's "Charcuterie" Salmon methods.

I'm unfamiliar with your exact fridge, but hopefully this guidance will be helpful. The smaller the chamber in proportion to the amount of meat, the more extreme will be the humidity problems. Drying the sausage means removing moisture from the chamber somehow. If you have put in three or four pounds of sausages, you have about a pound of water to get rid of. Generally, wine coolers aren't designed to remove much moisture. Ordinary fridges typically have a gutter that collects condensation dripping from the cooling plate, and a tube that takes the condensate outside to evaporate into the room. That's rare in *wine* fridges. Opening the fridge door will 'change the air' and drop the humidity somewhat for a little while. So opening the door every few hours (particularly at the beginning) has to be good if its the only way of getting moisture out of the box. Mop up and remove any condensation. Its the quickest way of getting water out of the chamber! In an ordinary fridge, adding a little heat makes the fridge work harder, so the cooling plates collect more condensation (being colder more of the time). If you can remove that condensation from the chamber, you are dehumidifying. However one needs to be prudent as to exactly HOW one heats the fridge ... you know, electricity and water, together, not good... One fairly safe possibility is to use the fridge's own light, by 'modifying' its switch so it thinks the door is open, when its actually closed. The light being on produces about 15 watts of heat (the light shouldn't damage the meat), and the heat makes the chiller work harder... But you want to be able to turn off your dehumidifier, so any "modification" needs to be reversible! Salt. "A pan of water with some salt" is the wrong approach to DEhumidifying. (But, later, its a good way of getting the humidity UP towards the seventies.) To use salt to DEhumidify, you need a dish of salt with some water - the other way round! Wet salt will DEhumidify (slightly), but its not fast, not least because because not much air contacts the salt. A large surface area of salt (a big but shallow dish) and air moving over the salt (ex-computer fan?) will help, but you are asking it to collect quite a lot of water, and as it takes in water, you'll have to add more salt to keep it as "wet salt" rather than "brine". You are trying to make brine from the moisture in the air. Like a pound of new brine (from air moisture) out of three or four pounds of sausage .... that's why removing any condensation is so helpful - its an easier, quicker way out of the chamber. The specific problem associated with excess humidity is indeed mould - "bad moulds". But these things don't like an acid environment. Hence, the common treatment of washing the sausage surface with vinegar or a vinegar/mater mix, either to remove early traces of bad moulds or pre-emptively to discourage their arrival. A plastic hand sprayer (like a gardener's tomato mister) is a good tool for this job. (You may be able to reuse a spray bottle from your recycling bin, just make sure there's nothing perfumed, inedible or nasty lurking within!)

Have you downloaded this amazing (and amazingly free) resource? "Playing with Texture" (Hydrocolloids)

Interestingly, *this* appeared in the UK press (The Guardian) last week. (The author used to post on eGullet.) From the article, I note that there is a "SoCal Mobile Food Vendors Association". Any such local group would surely be well worth approaching ... and potentially joining.

There's no such problem with my Magimix 5100 (new bowl and lid, old machine). But cleaning a food processor, any food processor, and its discs with one hand is going to be difficult. And for slicing, you usually need to pre-cut so that the stuff will go down the feed tube. Good slicing wants a steady slight pusher-pressure. Not easy if your good hand is on the switch! I wonder if a stable (and static) mandolin might be a better tool for single-handed slicing. Stand mixers are generally easier (less dangerous) to clean! A better choice for mixing, beating, kneading, etc single-handed. A drum slicer might be a useful attachment if you are keen on mechanical slicing. Gentler and more forgiving than a food processor! Something I'd expect to be very useful would be any sort of clamping system. And as a lower end solution, high friction mats or coasters could still be terribly useful to reduce things' general tendency to slide, twist or move when you try to work with them. However, be inspired by the knowledge that even the total loss of your main hand doesn't necessarily mean that you can't win a second and third Michelin star ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Caines

Well, its graphic. And, I believe helpfully for a cover, WYSIWYG. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Geometry-Pasta-Jacob-Kenedy/dp/0752227378/ The Geometry of Pasta is an intriguing subject. But somehow, I haven't been moved to buy. It surprises me, but I might now need colour, at least on the cover/dustjacket.

There's a LOT of (English) spelling variation. I thought Ful Mesdames was the common one ... anyway, its another useful search term.

OK, if you've eliminated that, then its out already. Blackening of starch is a very sensitive test for dissolved iodine. If that were somehow being liberated (even to a truly tiny extent), there would be the possibility of trying to eliminate it by using non-iodised salt. But you are already! Do you have a sample of this batch of potatoes to test (for comparison) by conventional cooking? That way you might see whether the unconventional cooking method had contributed to this artifact, or whether it was due to something in the potatoes, like their (pre-purchase) storage and handling conditions.

Maybe Iodised salt ??

Looks like one can now get just the roller (KPSA) or the roller plus 2 cutters (KPRA) for about double the cost.

Basically, its a mixer. It mixes! Just be careful you don't over-estimate its strength -- take particular note of its limitations (check the manual) when kneading stiff dough. You can get other attachments (at extra cost) to do other tasks. Or even for special-purpose mixing (like churning ice cream in a special bowl that chills in your freezer.) However, reputedly excellent ice cream can be made in the standard KA bowl -- with the aid of a good pour of liquid Nitrogen. I wouldn't be too certain that the warranty covers such unusual operations. But definitively "cool" though. In particular, for the cake-making you mention, silicone 'flexible' (bowl-scraping) beaters are wonderful. There's a dedicated thread here somewhere. One product name I recall is Beaterblade. I use Kenwood's own in my old Kenwood. The KA meat grinder these days is plastic and a bit wimpy. The German specialist manufacturer Jupiter offers a more serious bit of kit, in a version to fit the KA. Grinder sausage-stuffing nozzles aren't the best way of making sausages (get a piston stuffer), but they can be a means of simply extruding large quantities of dog biscuits ... (is that unconventional?) Regarding pasta attachments, percival seems a little confused. Yes, the KA extruder is again a bit wimpy - and if you wanted bronze-die-extruded pasta, you should have bought a Kenwood, not a KA. But if you want rolled pasta, buy the KA pasta roller attachment, not the extruder -- someone on here thought that the pasta roller was the single best attachment ever made (though I'm certain that others might disagree!) The KA doesn't take a blender attachment. My Kenwood does. It has been used for sawdust. Why? To make finer and more even sawdust, of course! (My excellent little Pro-Q cold smoke generator wants rather fine saw dust, if it is going to smoulder unattended all through the night.) Is that unconventional?

Pedro - this looks VERY similar to the Lidl "jam maker" that I reported a few months ago in the general sv equipment thread - Sadly the Lidl product link no longer works, but the Leyland Homebrew one does. For those unaware, Lidl sell hardware on a 'weekly special' basis - "when its gone, its gone." The Lidl price (in the UK) was about 2/3 of the price on your UK link. (And 1/4 of the Leyland price!) Although Lidl are not big in Switzerland, they do have many branches only a few kilometres outside the borders! I also reported its energy consumption - I'm really unsure as to whether or not it will be offered again by Lidl in the UK. I might have been the only person to buy one from my local branch, but I have read elsewhere that home beer brewers did snap up the stocks. Home canning is a rarity in the UK nowadays, and calling it a 'jam-maker' was a misleading bit of mistranslation. They would have done much better selling them here as tea urns! As the instructions warned, on first use some smoke comes from the (below-the-pot) element, which is an unusual product characteristic! Thereafter, it has been quite simply well behaved. The tap makes draining (for movement) easy. The lid overlaps inside the top rim by about half an inch, returning condensation to the pot very effectively (without 'leaks'), while allowing the probe lead to enter without needing any lid-cutting. I have not yet tried insulating it, but, uninsulated the natural convection seems to stir the pot sufficiently well that I have not been using my bubbler. With the (supplied) plastic coated rack installed (to provide almost an inch clearance above the heated floor) there is an available working water bath depth of more than 9 inches. Which is very nice indeed.

I've heard of Brownies altering the perception of the passage of time. But that would be eating them, rather than baking them. Sure those were nuts?

Sea Buckthorn grows wild in some places here on the South coast of England. Its happy by the sea, even with sand dunes. The local Parks Dept have just planted some as a thorny hedge in a "wild" (but not very wild really) park area behind a local beach. Remarkably, it carries its fruit through the winter, and, in very ancient times was apparently an important (phenomenally rich) winter source of Vitamin C in the diet of those days. I've foraged some, and tasted the juice -- which is what is/was used in (Olde) England. It needs an absolutely colossal amount of sweetening to be palatable! This might be one reason that the birds don't seem to touch the fruit ... the thorns would be another. I've not previously heard of it being powdered, or anyone using the seeds for anything. But if anyone were trying to sub for the flavour of the juice, then I'd suggest a bit of Citric Acid with a touch of Ascorbic Acid (Vitamin C). Really - it is that subtle a taste!

Is the alcohol in the best place? Might it not be better to leave it out of the sv bag and perhaps flambée the meat (or maybe simply (rustically?) fortify the sauce) before service? One of the appealing (to me anyway) concepts of sv is the possibility of accurate 'prototyping' or 'test driving' - making a single portion of a recipe to test the idea (or perhaps a few single portions with variations, for example to compare different durations) - before making a large quantity for any sort of 'event'. This approach is surely particularly apt with materials like cubed pork ... isn't it? It mainly requires enough time (just simmering time, rather than man-hours) before the event, rather than any other resources.

The FoodSaver will not protect against the growth of ice crystals by freeze/thaw cycles, and the textural change this brings about. We are probably all familiar with stews tenderising more after being frozen, and fruit going mushy. Bagging doesn't stop this, even though its very effective against drying out ("freezer burn"). Frost-free should be fine for very short term storage. Beyond that, its a matter of how long in store versus how fussy you are. Your mileage may vary! A small frost-free as a 'serving'/active/on-hand kitchen-freezer combined with a larger traditional chest freezer (located somewhere cooler than the kitchen) for long-term storage does sound like a workable solution. But if you are planning to put the chest freezer somewhere that actually gets cold - check for suitability carefully before buying! Most modern refrigerants (the stuff that the compressor compresses) will not work unless the machine is in a comfortably warm place! Use in a cold environment (below about 50F/10C) can seemingly break some modern compressors. Get the appliance's requirements in writing!

Spend some of that saving on an EdgePro, and make it easy to precisely control your sharpening angle(s). It upgrades your knives.

This is excellent advice. My suggestion would be to get some Forschners (they are Victorinox-branded in Europe) - wood handled if you really insist - AND an EdgePro Apex sharpener kit. I'm not the only enthusiast for the EdgePro on this site. And then you should have sharp knives always. And do read Chad's tutorial.Yes its quite long, but do read all of it. (After which you may not need to buy the book!)

A spurtle for your porridge?