paulraphael

I have a German knife that I love for heavy duty stuff, but the bolster was making me crazy. I couldn't sharpen all the way to the back by any method. So I had Dave Martell at japaneseknifesharpening.com grind it down for me. The bolster's still there, but it's out of the way enough to let stones get to the edge. Not sure if you'd be able to use a cc machine though.

You can have a lot of fun improvising with lemon and garlic, since both ingredients work well in so many ways. Lemon juice is an acidulator and a great solvent for aromatics; garlic is both delicious and an emulsifier. I'd briefly infuse herbs or other seasonings into the lemon juice, then mix in garlic pulp. You can then whisk in an oil of your choice, like olive oil, or something that's already an emulsion, like cream or whole butter. You could add other liquids to the lemon first, like stock or reduced wine. If you need to hold the sauce for a while you can incorporate a bit of xanthan gum into the liquid before stirring in the oil ingredients, to stabilize the emulsion. Some of these variations are similar to aioli. If you used emulsified egg yolks and butter you'd be moving into hollandaise family sauces.

Plenty of knife nuts have posted this kind of image. I wouldn't necessarily trust one from a manufacturer. Microscopy can teach you what kind of edge your likely to get from different grit sizes on different knife metals. Some people get a cheap USB microscope to examine their own handywork. You can see how good a polish you're getting, how even a bevel, and you can diagnose problems like wire edges, or missing the edge entirely.

I don't know if it would destroy any good Japanese knife, but I wouldn't use my knives as a guinee pig. The heat would worry me a bit. But I don't know enough about metalurgy to say for sure that these knives would heat up more than other knives, or that their heat treatment is more fragile. I'd really be worried about chipping, especially on knives with thinner profiles and more brittle steels. But mostly I'd be dissatisfied with the performance. The finest grit applied by that machine isn't fine, and edge angles are too obtuse. It will improve a lot of European knives, but would impair a higher end Japanese knife.

This decision has to based on how much work you're willing to do and how sharp you want your knives to be. Realistically, if you use a professional sharpening service, it's likely to be a once-in-a-while kind of maintenance. And unless you go to one of the high-end, expensive artisans (Dave Martell, Korin, Bob Cramer, etc.) you're probably going to get a knife that's quickly ground on a wheel or a belt sander. You'll get an ok edge similar to the factory edge, and probably see a lot of metal taken off. So you get ok performance, and an edge that can be more or less maintained on a steel. If you want really sharp knives you need knives that support a thin edge and a high polish, and you need to touch them up on stones often. A pro will hit the stones every night. A home cook every few nights to every couple of weeks, depending on use. The chef's choice machine is a kind of middle ground. It will do a better job than cheap commercial sharpening services, and is quick and easy. The results will be a bit better than the factory edge on a typical European knife, but not close to what's possible with waterstones on a good Japanese knife. If you have one of these machines, it's a good idea to skip the coarse and medium grit slots unless the knife really needs them. They grind off a lot of metal. A lot of people fear the learning curve with stones. The good news is that even with a little bit of practice, you'll get better edges than you've ever used before. If you really don't want to practice, you can get an edge pro. It takes almost all the manual skill out of it. It just takes more time to use, and costs more. There are good stones available for it now from 3rd parties ... these add to the expense, but make the system competitive with hand sharpening.

A lot of this is strange. Items in red are "critical": Sanitary Violations 1) Hot food item not held at or above 140º F. 2) Cold food item held above 41º F (smoked fish and reduced oxygen packaged foods above 38 ºF) except during necessary preparation. 3) Hand washing facility not provided in or near food preparation area and toilet room. Hot and cold running water at adequate pressure to enable cleanliness of employees not provided at facility. Soap and an acceptable hand-drying device not provided. 4) Tobacco use, eating, or drinking from open container in food preparation, food storage or dishwashing area observed. 5) Wiping cloths soiled or not stored in sanitizing solution. 6) Plumbing not properly installed or maintained; anti-siphonage or backflow prevention device not provided where required; equipment or floor not properly drained; sewage disposal system in disrepair or not functioning properly. 7) Non-food contact surface improperly constructed. Unacceptable material used. Non-food contact surface or equipment improperly maintained and/or not properly sealed, raised, spaced or movable to allow accessibility for cleaning on all sides, above and underneath the unit. Items 3, 6, and 7 seem especially strange, since these are about the design or construction of the kitchen. The restaurant's been inspected a lot over the years. Did they remodel? And do so stupidly? Seems dubious. Items 1 and 2 are hard to judge without knowing the details. The FDA and Board of Health rules (the "danger zone") are simply based on incorrect science, and good chefs know this. They break the letter of the law every day in order to deliver good food, and do so without endangering anyone. For example, you can pasteurize food at 132°F. It's simply a question of understanding the time/temperature relationships for different foods. Keller understands. I do not know how these restaurants navigate the inspection process, which is of course based on the letter of the law. The answer in this case seems to be: poorly. Unless, of course, there was an actual serious violation. Items 4 and 5 look like the kinds of things Keller would crucify someone for. I'm curious to see the final grade. A high-end restaurant could have trouble surviving anything below an A.

I was surprised pastry wasn't included in the original set. I know they had to draw the line somewhere ... but the distinction between sweet and savory or hot kitchen and pastry kitchen sems decidedly pre-modern. At any rate, I look forward to 50lbs of pastry volumes.

Is this the Carlisle you mean? It's 8-1/4" deep. That's deep enough for the Anova?

I've never liked the flavor. Always seemed sharp and one-dimensional (althought this could be a self-fulfilling belief ... my white pepper doesn't get used, so it's always old ...) I mostly see it called for in light-colored recipes, which makes me think people like primarily for esthetics. I just live with the black specks.

What size containers are people finding most versatile? I've got an Anova on the shopping list and am considering either the 12qt or 18qt square camwear container. Also probably a cooler for long cooking.

The green habanero / prickly pear version is amazing. Maybe not as versatile, but it's the tastiest hot sauce I've ever had.

You could similarly say the loin cuts (lumbar muscles) are used 24/7 to support the spine, just like ours. This isn't the same kind of heavy work that's performed by the legs/shoulders. This is why the hanger is a steak cut that's tender enough to eat after brief, high-heat cooking, unlike the traditional braising cuts. But it's no less flavorful.

What size pressure cookers are people find most useful for making stocks? For conventional stocks I've started with a 22qt pot and gotten a yield of around 6 quarts. What cooker would make sense for a yield of 5 or 6 quarts?

I don't know if flavor = work holds up universally. Hanger steak has more flavor than most others but it's just diaphragm muscle. Rib steak / roast is both tender and flavorful. It's certainly accurate to say work = collagen = toughness with fast cooking = gelatin and tenderness with slow cooking.

One issue is that I really don't want to boil any of my soups or stocks for an additional 15 minutes. Most of my soups have ingredients that will overcook, and all stocks and broths lose aromatics with continuous boiling. Sometimes this is a tradeoff you have to make in order to to concentrate non-volatiles by reduction. But I'm not going to make that tradeoff because I'm too lazy to cool the stock properly.

The one significant difference between the Demeyere and the M'cook (or All-clad stainless) is that the demeyere has a much thicker bottom. This has benefits and costs. The benefits are that the heavy base will heat more evenly, and store more heat, which makes it easier to sear large pieces of food. These benefits only really matter if you're using a home range with low power output and small burners. On a higher powered, high-end range, they won't matter. The disadvantage of the heavier bottom (besides weight) is that it will be less responsive to changes in heat. The pan will take longer to heat up and to cool down. If you overshoot the right temperature it will take more time and effort to get it back where you want. It's more like driving a ship than a sports car. This matters less with the kinds of cooking generally done in a big sauté pan (vs. a saucepan, for example) but can be a nuissance. None of these pans will warp. They can all go in the dishwasher. I think Demeyere's dishwasher stuff is mostly marketing. All the manufacturers' stuff about 5 layers, 7 layers, etc., is marketing nonsense. What matters in these pans is that there's aluminum in the middle, with a stainless steel skin. The greater the proportion of aluminum, the better they'll perform. The number of layers of metal beyond 3 will make no difference to you. (Edited to add: I haven't used the all-clad d-5 series. As far as I can tell it's just a bit thicker than the standard 3-ply line, which would place its characteristics somewhere in the middle).

Maybe tell us what you're looking for, why the Demeyere interests you more than the Mauviel, etc.. Not sure what criteria you're using. Those are high quality pans with the same materials, but differences in construction and performance characteristics.

The pre/post seasoning issue has been well studied in laboratories and kitchens. We can say for sure that there is no issue with pre-salting drawing juices out of the meat and drying it out. The only issue is that if you salt too far in advance, the meat will start to cure, and change flavor and texture in ways you probably don't want. This is an issue with very long sous-vide cooking ... if you're going to be holding or cooking at low temperatures over 4 hours or so, it may be best to salt afterwards. Hervé This writes about this. Re: Caramelization, check out articles on Maillard reactions.

If your covered soup pot were as well sealed as a canning jar, there wouldn't be any issues. But it isn't. As the soup cools, the air above the soup will cool and contract, sucking outside air into the pot. This outside air isn't sterile (at least not in my kitchen) so you'll be introducing microbes. Once the soup cools below 130F or so, it becomes microbe food, and by the time it reaches room temperature, it's a microbe feast. It's best to leave the lid off, to hasten evaporative cooling. Between this and water bath, you can usually get a small batch of soup cool enough to put it in the fridge in a reasonably safe amount of time. This winter I've been making a lot of soup in 7qt dutch oven, and have relied on our various polar vortices for rapid cooling. When it's 15° out, you just put the covered pot out the patio / snow/ roof / fire escape, and it will be cool enough to put in the fridge within a couple of hours.

I think I see the disconnect here. Dcarch's numbers are correct, but they don't seem to be accounting for all of the circumstances. First, the ice is only one vehicle among several cooling the soup concurrently. The others include evaporative heat loss and conduction though the sides of the containers. The speed / efficiency of these cooling modes is proportional to the temperature difference between the soup and the environment, so it will proceed very quickly on its own in the beginning, especially if the soup is transfered to a number of smaller containers (which increase surface area for both evaporation and conduction). Placing the the buckets in a water bath in the sink will speed this process even more. Depending on time constraints, you may not even need the ice wands until the soup temperature drops below 140F (at which point you want to minimize the cooling time, and also at which point the temperature differential is going to be helping the process less). Another difference between the theoretical model and the actual soup: soup is not 100% water. Unless you're making ammonia soup, every non-water ingredient has a lower specific heat than the water. All those starch and protein and fat molecules store less energy per gram. While a viscous or chunky soup may impede convection more than a pot of water, it will in fact require less energy transfer—and therefore less ice. It would still seem you'd need a lot of ice. Just not the crazy amount suggested by the Pysics 101 scenario.

The one time I made steaks sous-vide there was no lack of flavor. Does "conventional" mean grilling? A couple of schools of thought in the steak world: "smoke and char flavors from the grill are essential to steak" and "smoke and char flavors from the grill detract from the steak." I think the varying quality of the meat has a lot to do with this. I belong to the second school, but my circumstances can't be divorced from this. I live in one of the few spots in the country where prime, dry aged beef is available retail, and I consider steak a special treat ... something to have every couple of months, and a reasonable excuse to destroy the food budget. If either of these circumstances were different, I'd be buying less flavorful meat, an my prefered method would probably be the grill. If not sous-vide, my favorite method for top quality steak is the stovetop. I've had plenty of good luck with both high/low temperature confentional sauteeing, and with the slow and steady Ducasse method. It's possible that both these methods give the meat enough time on the heat to infuse some smoke from the fat in the pan to infuse the meat. I don't know. One thing I'd like to improve with my sous-vide method is the char. I would like to go a little longer, perhas on a less hot pan (relying more on time and maillard-enhancing ingredients) and to use enough oil to concuct heat deeper into the surface irregularities of the meat. I don't know if a pre-sear would be worth it or not. It takes a lot more time and energy to sear a cold piece of meat; so it's more challenging to keep the heat just to the surface.

This as part rave, part rant. I'm hoping people will stores for Marie Sharp's hot sauce, which is the best I've ever had. I realize everyone has an opinion about hot sauce ... how else could there be so many on the shelves? But for now I want to talk about two: Marie Sharp's and Melinda's. Once upon a time, I tried Melinda's habanero pepper sauce, and was hooked. It was then the best I'd ever had. It was hard to find, and when I saw it at a specialty shop, I stocked up. Then some time after moving to NYC, I started seeing it everywhere. It seemed that for once, something good had found an in with the public. And then I stumbled onto this article in Belize Magazine. In short: Melinda's was owned by a Belize farmer named Marie Sharp. She created the recipe so she could sell the habanero's her farm produced. Sadly, she wasn't wise to international trademark law, and her American distributor screwed her out of the product name and labelling. They basically stole her product, and started making a quasi-clones sauce with Costa Rican chiles. Marie had to start from scratch. And so the Marie Sharp's brand was born. I get angry every time I see Melinda's now, which is often. Whole foods, lots of specialty stores, my local food coop: Melinda's. I think some of the places would switch to the authentic brand if they knew, or at least if their customers made some noise. Has anyone tried Marie's? The classic version that I linked to is great, but my favorite may be the green habanero and prickly pear cactus. Incredible.

I'm guessing both are important. I never thought of using walnut oil, but it's an ideal choice. It's so high in polyunsaturated (poymerizing) fat that its a traditional ingredient in paints and varnishes. It's up there with linseed/flax, and tung oil. The light coats are helpful because they keep the oil from running and forming drips and puddles. Oil thins when it heats, so heavier coats that look like they'll stay put at room temperature can start dripping in the oven.

There's been a ton of research on different materials, and while microbes behave slighlty differently on different ones, there's little practical difference. Plastic and rubber can go in the dishwasher; wood can't. Wood and rubber can be sanded smooth; plastic can't. Nothing sanitizes itself. All of them can be well cleaned in hot soapy water, as long as they don't have deep knifegrooves. Sanitizing is about killing the majority of the microbes that remain after washing (killing all of them would be sterilizing ... you'd have to shrink-wrap the board afterwards, and it wouldn't be sterile anymore once you opened it in the kitchen). In practice, doing a good job washing is probably enough. Restaurants are required to sanitize. And it's a great idea if you might be making food for anyone who's immune compromised. I do it because it's a useful habit, and because its easy.

I'm leading a more domesticated life this year. Cooking has shifted from experiments in art / science / decadence to a means of feeding people. I'm still trying to figure it out! The possibly cruel irony is that this coincides with the new availability of cheap immersion circulators. I've had to borrow circulators for special occasions in the past. How many of you find sous-vide cooking useful for your daily meals? And how many of you like sous-vide for cooking things besides meat? I've always used it for fantastic pieces of meat, but this isn't what I'm cooking every day. If you have sources on techniques / approaches for sous-viding things like green vegetables, root vegetables, and god knows what else, I'd love to check them out.