paulraphael
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Posts posted by paulraphael
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19 hours ago, lindag said:
While was shopping for knives I was somewhat surprised to see that both ATK and Food and Wine had top-rated the Global brand. I have own a couple but was not impressed, plus, I really dislike the handles.
They're also among the most difficult knives to sharpen or to thin. And not because the steel is so hard, which is what their marketers will tell you; it's a bug, not a feature. The steel has a gummy consistency on sharpening stones; it makes a huge burr that's especially hard to get rid of.
Dave Martell at Japanese Knife Sharpening had a notice on his site that all Globals would be sharpened on a belt sander, not stones, because he didn't have the patience otherwise.
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37 minutes ago, btbyrd said:
Town Cutler scalpel, Messermeister NSF Vic-like paring knife, Paraplui A Le’Epreuve Perfect Parer carbon, Kom Kom Thai fruit carving knives, 2 Gesshin pointy bois, 95mm Saji R2 Ironwood, Misono UX10 120mm petty, Yamashin 105mm tall petty in White no 1. I don’t know where my Wusthof has gotten off to, but I think I’ll be okay for now.
How do you like the Gesshins? I'm interested in those. The shop is mysterious about the steel used for the stainless versions, but I'm inclined to trust them.
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5 hours ago, dcarch said:
When it comes to knifes, I always consider the following:
1. Do you ever sharpen a vegetable peeler? The peeler remains sharp because the blade never touch anything else except food.
2. Sushi chefs have razer sharp knives because they use good knife skills. If you watch carefully, the main part of the bade never touch the cutting board when they cut.
3. Steel is one of the cheapest metals. Stainless steel is also cheap.
4. Tool steel is so hard and so cheap, it is used to make tools to cut other metals. Some knife makers just use cheap files to make very good knifes.
5. Any metal can be make razer sharp. It's meaningless to judge a knife when you have a new razer Sharpe knife .
6. A $1,000 knife can be permanently destroyed in a few seconds if not sharpened carefully by knife sharpeners.
So I make my own knives.
dcarch
1. Do you ever sharpen a vegetable peeler? The peeler remains sharp because the blade never touch anything else except food.
They get dull. I don't sharpen them because I don't know how. And the best ones I've ever used (Kuhn Rikon Y-peelers) are so cheap I just get a new 3-pack once a year or so.
2. Sushi chefs have razer sharp knives because they use good knife skills. If you watch carefully, the main part of the bade never touch the cutting board when they cut.
That's why they can have such sharp knives. They're sharp in the first place because they're single-bevel blades with a very acute bevel angle; they're made with fine-grained steel (almost always low-alloy, high-purity carbon steel that has superior edge stability at high hardness), and the chefs themselves are excellent sharpeners who sharpen the knives after every shift.
3. Steel is one of the cheapest metals. Stainless steel is also cheap.
There are many kinds of carbon steels and stainless steels, and some of the best knife steels are very expensive. A blank made of some steels costs more than what many people are willing to pay for a finished knife.
5. Any metal can be make razer sharp. It's meaningless to judge a knife when you have a new razer Sharpe knife .
Most metals cannot be made razor-sharp. Most knife steels can't be made razor sharp. If you're speaking literally, a razor needs an a tip radius that's close to the minimum possible for a very fine-grained steel. Otherwise it will give a rough and uncomfortable shave.
If you're using "razor-sharp" colloquially, to just mean "pretty damn sharp," then sure, you can get most steels pretty damn sharp. But if you look at both edge geometry and edge fineness in appraising sharpness (which you should; they're both important) then steels are very unequal in their ability to form a usable sharp edge, and to sustain it through use without chipping or rolling. They're also very unequal in how easy they are to sharpen.
6. A $1,000 knife can be permanently destroyed in a few seconds if not sharpened carefully by knife sharpeners.
Maybe. If you do something dumb while cutting or sharpening, you're more likely to just create a big tedious repair job for yourself. Or for someone expensive.
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On 8/21/2025 at 6:41 PM, Shel_B said:
I have this same knife, this cheapie Victorinox paring knife (eG-friendly Amazon.com link). I bought it for Sweetie some years ago and eventually inherited it, and have been using it for a few years. The handle recently got damaged and I'm looking for an upgrade.
I prefer a knife with more heft and better balance than the Victorinox, and am comfortable spending about $35.00 or so. I feel that the Victorinox is a good value. Sweetie loved it.
Any suggestions?
The chef who taught me knife skills didn't blink at spending $500 on a gyuto or a Japanese single-bevel knife. But he made fun of me for spending $50 on a pairing knife. He believed the best pairing knife was the cheap Victorinox you're using. It has a very thin blade that slips through everything. He never found a high-end knife with such thin geometry.
Victorinox steel is pretty good and is relatively easy to sharpen. But my friend didn't bother sharpening the pairing knives. When they got dull they'd go into a junk drawer and he'd get a new one. Hard to beat for $8.
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On 7/31/2025 at 11:15 AM, ElsieD said:
I made both corn ice cream and roasted strawberry ice cream the other day. Both were good, but the roasted strawberry one knocked our socks off. I had read somewhere that adding a teaspoon of strawberry balsamic vinegar really enhances the strawberry flavour. This particular recipe doesn't need enhancement but it piqued my interest enough to ask here if anyone has tried it? Or maybe another flavoured balsamic vinegar paired with the same fruit?
I'd experiment with just plain balsamic vinegar (or possibly PX sherry vinegar). You'll be turning it into strawberry vinegar; no need to have someone else flavor it for you.
My inclination would also be to go very easy on the vinegar if you're recipe has lots of strawberries ... like over 30% by weight. Strawberries are already pretty acidic. Recipes that I see with other acids added (lemon juice, etc.) usually have a lower level of the fruit. The added acid is compensating.
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The best ways I've found to keep a board from warping: 1) put feet on it. All wood boards will warp if they spend any time in puddles or sitting on damp counters. 2) when you oil them for maintenance, use the same amount of oil on both sides.
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16 hours ago, Rajala said:
Thanks Paul, scrolled right past it to the comment section yesterday. That make sense. Would you alter the amount of water as well? I'm sure it'll come out good no matter what. As a classic recipe contains quite some more sugar - the whole reason you made all of this.
I don't see a need to change mess the water. I'd work to eliminate added water entirely, but it often helps the fruit blend to a nice puree.
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13 hours ago, Rajala said:
Stumbled upon this topic in the right time. I'm going to make a cherry sorbet on Friday. However, it has Brix : 18° +/-2°B. I'm going to measure it when I get home though to get the exact reading. But how do I recalculate the base recipe? I feel like I should understand it, but my brain doesn't right now. Maybe I'll figure it out later, but just throwing it out if it's just as simple calculation that someone know.
I wrote a brief, maybe usable passage on how to use brix at the bottom of this article.
That will probably be most helpful if you're using software to calculate your recipe.
If you aren't, a shortcut that should work:
1) calculate the amount of sugar in the fruit that the recipe was written for [eg; 100g fruit at 15°B = 15g.]
2) calculate the amount of sugar in the fruit you've measured [100g at 18°B = 18g].
3) calculate the difference, and us this adjust the sugars in the recipe.
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2nd thoughts about the seed hypothesis: I just made strawberry sorbet. 750g strawberries / kg, blended to a smooth puree while frozen. No heat in the process. There is no bitterness. I'm thinking the heat and the enzymes are the most likely offenders here.
The strawberry ice cream I made with the method described earlier was outrageously bitter. This was about 350g berries / kg.
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On 6/5/2025 at 3:39 PM, Shel_B said:
A few bottles of some of my favorite hot sauces were delivered a while ago. Just in time, I might add. The last dregs of the garlic pepper sauce were used this morning.
The green one's become my favorite. Followed by the standard red hot sauce. I haven't tried that garlic pepper one ... how is it?
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On 7/6/2025 at 5:30 PM, teonzo said:
Did you freeze the raspberries as whole, without pureeing them and strain out the seeds?
Bitterness and higher viscosity make me think about ground raspberry seeds. If you blitzed frozen whole raspberries then I suppose those seeds are the culprits.
Teo
Welcome back, Teo.
I think you might be right about the seeds. And I think an additional problem is that I pureed in the berries when the mix was still cooling from pasteurization—probably not hot enough to deactivate the phenyloxidase enzymes, but plenty warm enough to accelerate their action.
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Microplanes, all day. In the past I had a few of the flat ones (rectangular grater with a handle). Mostly marketed for home use. When I wore those out I got one of the long skinny ones, because everyone I know who cooks professionally uses them. I think you can go with either. The main advantage of the long ones seems that they fit easily in a knife roll. The flatter ones are easier to use one some things. Their protective cover design annoys me.
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Thanks for all the suggestions. I'm interested in the Penzy's that everyone likes, but will try that later. Very expensive right now. For the near term I grabbed some spice Lab tellicherry from Amazon for a good price. Probably not as good by I'm hoping it's decent.
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Around 10 years ago I bought some tellicherry peppercorns on Amazon that were amazing. Spicy, floral, pungent, 3-dimensional lingering flavor.
After that pound ran out, I looked again, couldn't find the same brand, and tried another that looked similar. It tasted like ... plain old boring pepper. I've tried a few others in the ensuing years; some were better than others, but nothing great.
What have I been missing? What's available that you love?
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18 minutes ago, weinoo said:
Oh, man, I didn't realize they replaced the Rivington location with that. Too bad. I'm in that neighborhood more often than the w. village.
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On 5/23/2025 at 7:56 AM, weinoo said:
I'm sure it's (V L) good (though I've never tried it), and I can walk around the corner to one of their shops, but if I were to walk to their shop on Ludlow Street, I'd just walk another 1/2 block and have Il Laboratorio's gelato.
My problem with Van L might be encompassed by this:
Both McConnell's and Il Lab are still basically small company held.
Although Jo likes ice cream that aims for 110% milk fat, so VL might be more her style.
I'm with you on Il Lab. But also Morgenstern's a few blocks away. Seriously good stuff.
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17 hours ago, gfweb said:
I'm putting my money on an enzyme from one of them acting on the other to make bitterness.
It tasted OK initially, but after storage didn't.
You might argue that it was kept in the cold, but some enzymes work in surprisingly low and high temps, and bitter is one of t hose tastes where a little bit is very potent.
By one on the other, you mean the different types of berries? I hadn't thought of that.
It definitely spent enough time at warm temperatures for enzymes to go to work. Takes a while for 1kg of goop to drop from 70C.
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12 hours ago, Duvel said:
Not sure where Whole Foods sources their berries, but at least in Europe the sloe bug or hairy shieldbug (dolycoris baccarum) is known to impart a bitter, astringent flavor to the berries it infests. Unsually you can sort the spoiled berries out, but one “surviving” berry per batch is enough to render the product inedible. My mom makes raspberry marmalade very often and every once in a blue moon a batch of her marmalade tastes off …The thing is, the berries weren't bitter on their own. The ice cream mix wasn't bitter in the hour after the berries were added. The bitterness showed up the next day in the finished ice cream.
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8 hours ago, oli said:
I bet this would be great with Huckleberries.
Or to punish children.
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Here's a head scratcher. Hoping someone with fruit science background has an idea.
I made a batch of strawberry ice cream to test a recipe. Calculated for 300g strawberries / 1000g mix. I was about 45g short on strawberries, so made up the difference with raspberries. Both kinds of berries were medium-quality ... from Whole Foods, pretty ripe, pretty fresh, tasted fine but unremarkable.
Berries were added to the mix after pasteurization and homogenization. I washed, cored, thickly sliced, and froze them. Then blitzed them into the freshly homogenized mix with a vitamix for 30 seconds. Idea was to use the berries to start the mix cooling, and do so without cooking the flavor out of the berries.
I chilled the mix down to about 13°C in an ice bath. At this point, my girlfriend and I both tasted it and thought it tasted good. LIke strawberries. My only concern was textural; the viscosity was higher than normal.
I refrigerated it down to 0.5°C overnight, and spun it today. It hasn't hardened yet. We both tasted it right out of the machine and almost had to spit it out. It's like when you try to hide a crushed pill in the cat food, but all you do is make the whole meal too bitter for the cat, and he's pretty sure you're trying to kill him.
I've never experienced this before. Something introduced seriously bitter compounds into this brew while it chilled overnight.
ChatGPT thinks it could be polyphenol oxidase reactions, which I would have inadvertently allowed by keeping the berries out of the pasteurizing step. It also suggests that there can be polyphenol oxidase reactions that are affected by milk proteins. I'd never heard of this (or anything) turning berries into bad medicine overnight.
Thoughts?
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On 3/20/2025 at 12:44 PM, Tan Can Cook said:
I still have and use my i1 unit from Xrite. It is still working after all these years.
I had to retire mine, because it drifted too much, and Xrite's calibration fee was rather insane. Mine has the Greytag-Macbeth branding, so is probably quite a bit older than yours.
After some research I settled on a Calibrite Color Checker Display Pro. As a colorimeter it has some advantages over a spectrophotometer (more accurate in shadow areas, much cheaper) and a big disadvantage (can't calibrate printers). I don't like the industrial design as much as the i1's. But so far it works well in an art photography printing workflow.
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On 8/31/2020 at 7:47 AM, teonzo said:
I bring some milk to the boil, add the fresh mint leaves, wait for about 1 minute, blitz with an immersion blender, then strain it, weigh the remaining flavoured milk and proceed with the recipe.
Cooking the mint for 1 minute is long enough to avoid the oxidization problem and quick enough to avoid the "cooked" flavour. Blitzing the leaves with the immersion blender helps you to extract more flavour, then you strain it to discard the fibers (which lost most of their flavour).
This is my favourite way both about taste and consistency. Personally I can't stand peppermint oil, it tastes "fake".
Teo
Teo, 5 years later I've finally had a chance to experiment with this method. It's excellent—the best of the many methods I've tried. It succeeds at getting that fresh herbal flavor, without any of the grassy, woody, or vegetal overtones that come with the more common methods.
A friend dropped off bushels of herbs from her garden, so I've been experimenting. The spearmint flavor is perfect, with 18g leaves / 1000g base. I skipped the peppermint because it lacked flavor.
Anyway, thanks for the excellent tip. I haven't encountered this method elsewhere.
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Most of these kettles sold in the US are 1500 watts, so they'll mostly boil water in the same amount of time. We had one that a couple of hundred watts more powerful, and you noticed the difference. It broke for unrelated reasons. Manufacturers avoid doing this, because if you plug them into a 15 amp circuit, and use just about anything else on the same circuit, the breaker trips.
In other parts of the world the wiring standards give a higher ceiling for powerful gadgets.
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Paring Knives
in Kitchen Consumer
Posted
One quick thought ... if I'm spending any real money on a pairing knife, I want one that doesn't have a bolster, and that has its heel separated from the handle. Like those Geshins Btbyrd shows. Otherwise sharpening is too hard. You want to be able to reach the whole length of the blade with your stones.