DaveP

Thank you everybody who is helping us out, all you're responses have been great and valuable. Hopefully we'll here from some more of you guys in the coming days. SuzySushi, we've seen that stirrer before, I think were going to order one to check it out eventually. Have you used it or do you know someone who has? I would be very interested in talking to someone who's used it to tell me what they hate/like about it. Also, don't hesitate to chime in and tell us that any kind of automatic stirrer is useless if that's how you really feel. Our groups job for our project is to report to our sponsor company what the market (you guys) really think, doesn't matter if its positive or negative. So far from our other research, one promising market we've found is stirring LARGE pots of pizza sauce at pizzerias. They have issues with burning and it's something that requires alot of stirring with minimal other attention. Can anyone comment on this? Work at a pizza place, own a pizza place, make pizza sauce in large quantities at home... ? Thanks again to everyone for their help and those who will be helping soon!

Wow, egullet... Please help me out here. You guys are definitively the best source in the WORLD for insightful, valuable opinions on kitchen related gadgetry and cooking in general. Please let me hear some of it! My post before was a little bit vague, that was my fault, here are some ideas. Post some aggravations about what you burn on the stove most often. What were you cooking? How long do you cook it for? How often do you need to sir it before it starts to burn? What do you do if it burns? Throw it out? Add an onion? Would you make tedious things more often, like big pots of sauce, thick soup, or risotto if they were less time consuming because of some kind of stirring aid? Are you an expert chef who never burns anything ever and thinks any kind of automatic stirrer is a complete waste of time? I'm really just trying to understand what you guys are doing out there and if there is a problem worthy of a solution. Disregard the obvious technical feasibility problems with this idea for now, that is something we will have to design around once we understand more about what our product actually needs to do. P.S. The survey is 10 questions long and takes apx 6 seconds to take. 6 Desperate engineering students would LOVE all of you if you can help. http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=982733289335

Egullet society, I am requesting your opinions/thoughts/ideas on stirring food in the kitchen. I am a student at Lehigh university and as a part of a product development class I am required to find out everything there is to know about stirring food in the home and commercial kitchen. This is all in preparation for designing a product that brings the idea of a laboratory magnetic stirrer from the lab into the kitchen. If you wish to help my group and I out, please start by taking our survey found here: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=982733289335 And continue by posting additional comments you have related to any of the questions on the survey, or anything related to stirring in general. IE what you like and especially don't like about what you use currently or have used in the past. This my seem like pretty boring stuff right now but eventually I will be asking for your opinions, feedback and ideas, as forward thinkers of food technology, of the concepts for the embodiment of the magnetic stirrer in the kitchen. Thanks, Dave Petrillo

Whenever I make guacamole I run into the distinct problem of there not ever being enough. When there is enough, however, I eat too much cause its so good. Solution: Guacamole chicken salad 2 Large cooked chicken breasts, 1/4" dice 1 Avocado 1 Lime Salt everything else..tomatoes, scallions, red onions, Tabasco, cilantro.. You want really tender moist chicken here, I use sous vide (1 hour @63C), but normal chicken is fine, just take care to keep it very moist. Puree the avocados in a blender or food processor with a generous amount of fresh lime juice until very smooth, salt to taste. Mix thoroughly with chicken. Chop up your normal guacamole fare stir in. The small moist chicken dices resemble a hearty chunky guacamole, the kind you want to eat alot of... on chips, in a chicken salad sandwich, by the spoonful out of the fridge

I use tap water in my bath, and I honestly can't say what its composition is, I just moved into a new house that is in the same town as where I had this problem before. I dont suspect the polycarbonate bath to be the problem but the actual bags. I try to change the water frequently, when it happened the water was changed shortly before I started the two day long cook(63C). I think im going to simmer a sample of each bag and some plain tap water in a stainless pot on the stove for a few hours each and see if if i can start ruling things out. I was just curious if anyone had ever noticed anything similar. The fact that it happened in two separate baths was just puzzling. Dave.

Has anyone ever had problems with getting a weird smell from their water bath when using foodsaver/black and decker bags? I built a waterbath for sous vide using a galvanized steel trashcan and after using it for a while I started getting a very strong smell, it was a very salty/chemical smell. At first I attributed it to the metal or some weird seasoning from a piece of corned beef that I cooked leaching through the bag. So I bought a brand new Neslab unit on ebay and a food grade lexan bath and after a few weeks of using that the smell came back, exact same smell. I first noticed it after something had been in the bath for apx 35-40 hours, not as strong this time but the same exact smell, completely different food, completely different bath. The bags I use are regular foodsaver bags and black and decker bags, both labeled for "boil in bag" use. I think it was a black and decker bag that was in the bath when I noticed it the second time, unsure about the first. Has anyone experienced anything similar to this? Dave