paulraphael

The symptoms do suggest gunk at the food end, but I cleaned it and oiled it well, and it spins easily in my fingers. There could be a motor problem. But that wouldn't explain it heating up at the head. Maybe heating at the head is normal, and is unrelated to the speed issues? If that's the case it could also be the circuit board. I might have to give Bamix a call. In the mean time, it's usable. Just not its amazing old self.

Well, the only part that's under warranty still is the motor. I didn't take that apart

Our 3 year-old Bamix M150 is having some problems that I can't figure out. This is one of the smaller ones; we use it mostly for emulsions, blending small amounts of batter, light whipping etc. It seems to run more slowly than it used to, and the pitch of the motor goes up and down. It generates a lot of heat in the shaft right above the head. Running it dry, I measured it at around 120°F with an IR thermometer. The obvious guess was that gunk had gotten in there, so it needed to be cleaned and lubed. I took the whole thing apart. Aside from a little old food right at end of the shaft, it looked pristine inside. It also looked very well designed and built, with a serious motor. I cleaned the shaft, lubed it with silicone oil, put it together, and checked to see that everything spun free and silky-smooth. I plugged it in and ... no change at all. Motor speed still varies. End of shaft still gets hot. Any ideas?

No, but I use it at 4% or under in sorbets, so I wouldn't expect to notice this kind of thing.

"Pull-apart" tender happens with tough cuts of meat that are high in connective tissue (collagen) relative to contractile tissue. The tough collagen converts to gelatin, which has pretty much the opposite qualities of its sinewy precursor. This collagen breakdown typically happens at higher temperatures, like in the well-done range. Lower temperatures will tenderize the meat if you cook long enough, but will produce more of a tender steak texture than a pull-apart stew texture. These techniques won't work on tender cuts of meat. The higher temperature treatment will just dry them out. There isn't enough collagen to turn to gelatin. If you go long and low, you'll also dry them out, while at the same time making them mushy.

I've had good results using Now brand Inulin in sorbets and non-dairy ice creams. They don't tell you anything about the molecule size or even the source (I think a few years ago they at least mentioned the source). This kind of thing worries me, because it means they could change it any time they wanted. But it's easy to get, and my batch from a couple of years ago works great for your purposes.

I like the idea, and I'm glad that mainstream companies are taking scales seriously. I'm just hoping they did the smart thing and made the small platform significantly lower than the big one. Because you want to be able to weigh things in a big pan, or sometimes even a sheet pan. Not going to be easy if the .001g platform is at the same level.

I brought up the hiking filter after reading your earlier post where you said, "In general, the advice given is not to drink the local tap water anywhere in China. Few people, including me, ever do. When I first came here (1996), I didn't even brush my teeth with tap water, but was never concerned about washing vegetables with it (not logical, I know). I would use bottled water for teeth and for drinking. I soon gave up the teeth related usage. As someone mentioned on the thread yesterday, people do get acclimatised to the local water and less prone to negative reactions." I didn't mean to quote the passage about restaurants.

This is great news (even if old news). The Panasonic is also a 240v device, as it would have to be at that power rating. That may be why it's not officially sold in the US. Peculiar that the technology isn't everywhere, including multi-burner cooktops. I only see references to this Panasonic unit, and to a Vollrath one that's harder to find. From my (very brief) reading on this, the engineers don't even have to limit the power. It's naturally limited by the inductance of the pan material. A coil that delivers 3600W to iron will deliver less to aluminum or copper. It's not a matter of efficiency; it will pull less power from the wall as well. A coil that delivers 3600W to aluminum could be made, but it would be more expensive, and would either deliver much more than this to iron, or would have to have its power deliberately limited in low-frequency mode.

I imagine in that situation, you'll have a hard time avoiding a case of tourista.

Can you link to this? Last I looked for such thing they only existed as concepts. How well does it do on copper? Is there a noticeable difference when you switch metals? Do you have to change settings?

I've got a portable filter for hiking and climbing. This thing is amazing; I've been using it for years. It would be perfect for travel to somewhere with iffy water. The water coming out tastes great. It probably has enough capacity for a small group of people (maybe a small family) on a relatively short trip. For long-term use or for more people you'd probably need a heavier-duty solution.

Britas use a carbon filter, which in addition to chlorine removes a pretty broad range of organic chemicals. They must also have another stage of some kind of ion exchange material if they also remove calcium (they probably replace it with sodium, just like any other water softening filter). I don't know how well they do with chloramine, which is used by many water treatment plants these days. If your water doesn't taste like a pool when it comes out of the britta, then it's doing fine. I used to use britta but stopped because the filters need to be replaced often, and the price adds up. If you don't replace it on schedule, who knows how effective it will be. Also the ritual of waiting for the water to drip through gets old. We now have under-sink systems that I built from industry standard parts ... standard 10" filter housings, and a beverage faucet. This keeps you from being locked in to some company's proprietary filters. You can look at your local water report and figure out what kinds of filters to get, and buy them from anyone. A good carbon block and sediment filter costs under $10 and lasts at least 6 months. The combination filter we use in Philly costs about $30 and lasts a year. I forget how much the water softening filter costs; we just recharge that with salt once a month. These should last years.

From food science sources (incl. Modernist Cuisine): Standard method: 55°C / 131°F x 2 hours Fast method: : 57°C / 135° F x 75 minutes (appearance not as good but otherwise ok) (pasteurized whites may be more difficult to whip but eggs are otherwise unchanged)

That's a little strange. It would pretty much limit you to cast iron or spun steel. People use clad pans all day long on restaurant induction ranges that are many times more powerful than a control freak. I suspect they just don't want you to get mad if you wreck a badly made consumer pan. " I've googled a bit and gotten conflicting answers. It seems that some non-ferrous materials do heat under induction, and some sources say graphite is one of those materials." Possibly because induction can theoretically (depending on the oscillation frequency) heat anything that's conductive, including graphite. But no existing induction hob works at high enough frequencies to do this. They all only work on ferrous metals. I believe the problem with higher frequencies is that you'd have wildly different levels of efficiency (and heating ability) for different materials. Which would be confusing. And you might end up jamming all the radio waves for miles around.