paulraphael
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Posts posted by paulraphael
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14 hours ago, gfweb said:
I wonder if the type of aluminum matters.
I have a newer All Clad that has a very black "seasoned" bottom that won't scrub off. Older AC Master Chef bottoms won't take a stain.
Interesting. I've gotten that bulletproof black layer on all kinds of metals, including stainless. I suspect it's almost all carbon, because of how hot things get on that side of the pan. I don't think it's identical to the standard seasoning on the inside.
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I haven't noticed with starches. But I've never compared, or even paid that close attention.
There's a huge difference with gums. Not just different brands and product lines, but sometimes different batches.
The supply chain shitshows of the last few years have shaken things up. The big companies (like ingredeon) seem to respond to price hikes in a particular gum by finding a cheaper and possibly lower-quality source. And not telling anyone. I had a couple of ice cream consulting clients say they started having problems with familiar brands. Some of them had to start experimenting by importing alternatives from different countries and doing their own experiments.
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6 hours ago, haresfur said:
Decided to make another attempt at learning to sharpen with stones. I have a Spyderco Sharpmaker which is ok for some things. I realised I needed to start over when the 1000 grit stone I had been using to learn was incredibly dished but the knives weren't exactly sharp. I had shelved that for a while.
Anyone running a sharpening service where I live seems to be in the tool destroying business. Except maybe for the people sharpening sheep-shears, but that's a whole other ball game.
So I bought a 500 grit Shapton glass and a 1000 grit Shapton Rockstar and realised, in for a penny, in for a pound, I needed an Atoma diamond flattening plate. Then spent a few days watching videos, which of course don't agree with each other so you have to figure out who seems to make the most sense.
Haven't tackled the good knives yet but some of the cheap ones turned out much better than they were, although not what I would consider really good. One of the things I learned is that starting with a relatively coarse stone is a good idea. Much easier to figure out if you are screwing up the angle or haven't apexed yet. Feeling a burr is much more obvious to me. Once that is right, it doesn't take too much with the 1000 to get an ok edge. I feel like I'm a long way from wanting to attempt my carbon steel petty, though.
I can see how people get into sharpening as a hobby but frankly, I just want to be able to do a decent job slicing a tomato.
You can get good at it without it becoming a hobby or obsession. I don't especially like sharpening. What I found is that it took a couple of months of practice to get decent. Meaning, there was a lot to learn still, but already my knives would work better than when they were new, or when sharpened by some jackhat.
One tip: if you don't want to buy that diamond plate, you can get a cheap stone flattener. That too will dish ... you can flatten it by rubbing on a concrete sidewalk.
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I experimented with seasoning bare aluminum once. It kind of sort of worked. The piece is a heavy 2-burner griddle. It took a seasoning layer, and it resists sticking, but the finish is very fragile. Maybe not worth it. Still, don't listen to anyone who says it's impossible.
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On 3/7/2024 at 3:15 PM, weinoo said:
I don't think it's that hard...I walked away.
I have never had it retinned, but it has been replaced by a similarly sized one from Falk.
Are any of the people who re-tin copper still alive? If so, you might want to catch them while they're around!
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That's too bad. I think I used their products a couple of times and thought they were decent.
It looks like their commercial products are still available.
I didn't realize they were made by Ajinomoto.
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On 3/3/2024 at 12:54 AM, FlashJack said:
At risk of digressing somewhat, I have and like most of Darto's pans. Once seasoned, they are kind-of-non-stick.
My favourite is the big paella, which I use for fried rice. No matter how well seasoned, I find fried rice rips off that built up seasoning.
I'm now thinking is might be lecithin in the egg yolk. Yet I'm sure many of you use Dartos and other well seasoned heavy steel pans precisely because they are great for fried egg. Is there some weird chemistry in the combination of rice and egg yolk?
Carbon steel is less porous than cast iron, so the seasoning just doesn't stick to it as tenaciously. But I notice that in places where it's used, like restaurants, no one seems to care. They just let the seasoning form and flake off as it will. I don't know why your rice is such a good scouring pad. Other than starch being a naturally good glue.
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13 hours ago, rotuts said:
Conventional wisdom says don't use it on teflon, but that might not be based on anything. I don't know why lye would attack teflon. It could make a mess out of any aluminum it contacts. So I guess you could make this work but you'd want to be careful.
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You even have to be careful with regular oil. Especially the kind of refined oils people are most likely to use (canola, safflower, etc.). These are high in polyunsaturated fats and so are the most efficient at oxidizing, polymerizing, and turning into a bulletproof coating. Just like what you want on iron.
I notice this as a brownish coating that first shows up around the sides of frying pans. It's not coming off.
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Peterson's Fish & Shellfish is a good one. I also like Ripert's old Le Bernardin cookbook, which has recipes for some of their iconic sauces.
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I would not do this. If you did actually create a "seasoning" layer as you would on steel or cast iron, it would probably make the teflon stickier.
That seasoning is made from polymerized and carbonized oils. If you get actually get the oil hot enough to carbonize, you'll start breaking down the teflon, ruining its qualities and creating toxic particulates. And if you don't, you'll make the pan sticky. Either way, that polymer layer will be tough enough that there's not much you could do to remove it that wouldn't wreck the teflon coating.
If you don't heat it enough to even polymerize it ... then you just have an oily pan. You should probably wash it, otherwise it WILL polymerize next time you preheat it.
Makes no damn sense.
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On 12/20/2023 at 9:41 AM, chromedome said:
In the UK, The Guardian has named The Bear the best show on television in 2023.
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2023/dec/20/the-50-best-tv-shows-of-2023-no-1-the-bear
One of the many things I like about the show: a more true observation of the creative process than I think I've ever seen in shows or movies. There are a bunch of scenes where Carmen and Syd are working on dishes for the new restaurant. There's an intense collaboration: trying things, rejecting things, talking them out, trying to put impressions into words, circling, homing in on something, failing, trying again, agreeing, fighting, egging each other on ...
I just don't recall seeing anything as convincing as this before. Writers usually fall back on lazy clichés like the "Aha!" moment, and other kinds of dramatic revelation. They don't show what the real work is like. This is as true for shows about chefs as for ones about artists, musicians, writers, scientists, inventors ...
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I don't understand why hot cocktails aren't more popular. Why doesn't every bar serve them all winter long?
Irish coffee especially is perfect. It's every food group in a single glass: booze, dessert, caffeine, and hot.
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My grinder (for brewed coffee) is a static factory. I've used a little atomizer for this technique for a couple of years now. It works. I mostly have to do in the winter when the air's dry.
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On 2/2/2024 at 5:32 PM, weinoo said:
It's on sale!
We're joking, but really, I don't see why something couldn't be made with that basic design for regular person prices.
Scale the power back (or make it so you can't have all the burners running full-tilt at once) so it can run on regular split-phase power. And don't build it out of 500 lbs of unobtanium.
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Here's the way to do it: Garland GME36-120C range, with genuine knobs and huge 5KW induction surfaces.
Of course you'll need $25K for the range, and probably another $25K to run 3-phase power to your house, and it's commercial, so you'll probably void your homeowner's insurance. But who cares—you get knobs!
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The regular electric flat-top range (not induction) that came with our house does the pulse thing. I indulge sadistic fantasies about the company's entire engineering team every time I use it. What an utterly negligent and insulting way to design a stove.
There isn't anything fundamentally wrong with regulating heat with pulses. Pulse-width modulation (PWM) is common for things that need precise control, like immersion circulators, and even audio amplifiers. But the pulses have to be very short! My stupid stove has pulses and pauses that are maybe 20 seconds long.
Wish me luck with the hollandaise sauce.
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On 1/30/2024 at 10:33 AM, btbyrd said:
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Induction has so much potential but it also kind of sucks.
I don't have btbyrd's experience with induction, but everything he says reinforces my suspicions. I've been researching these things and it seems obvious that the coils are too small and the interfaces are unacceptable.
I do look forward to good ones. I don't know if I trust appliance manufacturers to ever make them.
Meanwhile, gas ranges have become something of a scapegoat and a distraction in environmental policy debates. To lower your carbon footprint, there are dozens of things with a vastly bigger impact. Including replacing gas furnaces, boilers, and residential hot water heaters.
If you're worried about indoor air quality, get a good hood. Change residential codes to require them. If you don't have one (and probably no one here does, because hardly anyone even makes good ones for homes) you're breathing bad stuff no matter your heat source. At least if you cook hot. Which you do if you enjoy good food.
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Most mobile knife sharpeners (and most stationary ones) are super aggressive, and grind way too much metal off your knives. You'll probably get a dozen sharpenings before they look like skewers and have to be replaced.
I made the mistake of taking my knives to a commercial joint once, at the recommendation of a local butcher in Providence. They came back with about 1/8" taken off the blades, and a deeply concave edge profile from the grinding wheel. Luckily these were just Chicago Cutlery knives, I leaned to never do that again.
“The goal is to get the knife sharp while taking off the least amount of material," says the Green Point Knife Truck man. This means he's not the typical knife truck man.
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On 1/11/2024 at 8:20 AM, weinoo said:
What makes it so hard to give an accurate estimate of time as to how long a hunk of meat will take to cook to a certain doneness has a number of answers.
Every oven is different. Every hunk of meat is different. Every cook is different.
It's why a thermometer is your best friend. Both an oven thermometer and a probe thermometer, actually.
The classic cooking school Q & A:
Q: How long will this take to cook?
A: Until it's done.
This.
But also be aware that it won't necessarily take longer than a roast with fewer ribs. The weight and the length are not especially relevant*. The cook time depends mostly on cross-section (distance from surface to center). Assuming you control for all the other variables.
*Except! Counterintuitively, having more length, and therefore more surface area, could speed the cooking. Because it will contribute more humidity to the oven, and therefore reduce evaporative cooling. This is why 2 chickens roast faster than 1.
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“The goal is to get the knife sharp while taking off the least amount of material"
This is great to see, but not the practice of most of the sharpener trucks I've seen. Choose wisely.
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On 1/17/2024 at 11:53 AM, Laurentius said:
As if a rounded edge is a bad thing! Some of the sharpest edges I've ever seen are convex. The reason you don't see many is that few pro and almost no at-home sharpeners have the skillset and feel to do them right.
I'd suggest that all edges are rounded, unless they were made with an Edge Pro or other guide system. No one's hands are steady enough to make a flat bevel on a kitchen knife. A stop will automatically make a slightly rounded microbevel. You can see it with your electron microscope.
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On 1/23/2024 at 9:51 PM, btbyrd said:
To repair a chip, you pretty much grind the rest of the knife down to the deepest part of the chip so that the edge becomes unified once more.
This is true, and it's why I suggest you don't do it all the way. At least if it's a big chip. If you you fully repaired every ding, your gyuto would become a barbecue skewer in just a few years.
A good sharpener / repair person can advise on this. I sent a knife to Dave Martell when I borked it trying to sever a turkey neck. He fixed it about 90% (you could still see evidence of the chip with a loupe) and was able to do it while taking off just a fraction of a mm of metal. Dave seems to have gotten out of the biz; I'd trust btbyrd's recommendation.
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1 hour ago, Laurentius said:
Yes, you would--you pull the edge off the leather (or the strop off the edge).
It's pretty funny to see strops in junk and antique shops, because they usually show the cuts imparted when someone got it backwards.
It's very easy to cut a strop, even if you know how to use it. It can happen when you start to go fast, and are just a little sloppy when you set the edge down at the beginning of a new stroke. Leather is very soft for a knife. My old strop is kind of embarrassing looking.
I used to strop as a final polishing step. I'd go from a 10K Naniwa finishing stone to a horsehide strop loaded with just a pit of 1-micron (I think) diamond abrasive. It's a polishing step, not a deburring step. You don't risk rounding the edge like you would if you acted like an old-timey barber. Technically, you're going to round the edge a tiny bit because the edge will sink a bit into the leather. But also technically, you round the edge a bit whenever you sharpen by hand, because you're not a robot and can't hold perfect angles. This doesn't seem to stop anyone from getting killer edges.
I stopped stropping recently. Jon at Japanese Knife Imports encouraged me to try finishing at lower grit, and skipping the strop. I'm not getting the insanely refined edge I used to get ... the kind of thing that would drop through a tomato under its own weight. But I get a longer lasting, functional edge. A super polished edge seems to depend on being perfect; as soon as it wears a bit, all the magic is gone. I now stop after a 6000 grit stone. No strop. In exchange for that last little bit of refinement, I get an edge that continues to cut well for hours.
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Honey
in Kitchen Consumer
Posted
We discovered aster honey a few years ago in Vermont and are hooked. It has a piney / hoppy flavor and aroma. Not so easy to find in NYC, so we just buy a giant jar from the same VT farmer every few years.