paulraphael

Cast iron and heavy copper have radically different cooking properties. You would never want an enamelled cast iron sauté pan or saucepan, for instance. The near total lack of responsiveness and poor heat distribution would make them the worst choices possible. 2mm copper works ok for some things. It just won't have the evenness of heat distribution nor the heat retention of 2.5mm copper, and the gains in responsiveness from being thinner will in most cases not offset the disadvantages. Every material has an ideal thickness (in terms of heat distribution) based on a formula that considers density and thermal conductivity. The 2.5mm standard is closer to copper's ideal thickness than the 2.0mm standard.

Just another voice in wilderness ... I no longer buy cookbooks, especially pastry books, that omit weight measurements. Part of the reason is political: these publishers need to stop being jackasses and just get a clue. Part is that I don't want to be bothered with inferior recipes, and with reverse-engineering the weights and tweaking the formulas. There are enough high end professional sources that use weight. I'll use them. To attempt a software-based baking forumula calculator that's based on volume would be a fail before the project even starts. I would simply ignore it. On the other hand, if the software included a feature to translate final results into (approximated) volume measurements, for those who don't have a scale, that would be completely reasonable, and probably necessary if it's to find a popular audience.

I'm pretty sure it's true that Falk makes all the copper / stainless laminate for itself and Mauviel and Bourgeat, so the only differences between those brands is esthetics and price. Also I think bourgeat moulds a little lip on the rim of their saucepans ... a nicety I've never been inclined to pay for. Ask yourself why you want copper. If it's for performance, you'd be well served by just one or two copper pans. The advantages over aluminum laminates, in practice, are minor, and you will only notice them in cooking that requires the highest level of control. I've got a bunch of 2.5mm mauviel pans. I bought them before copper prices went insane, so it wasn't such a big deal. If I had to buy at anything close to today's prices, I'd be VERY happy to just have the 1.5L slope-sided saucepan. That's what I use for most serious sauce work. My 11" sauté pan is also wonderful, but an aluminum disk-bottom pan do the job just as well. My other copper saucepans just don't get used for anything where the temperature control of copper would make any difference. I've had plenty of commercial aluminum saucepans, so I'm pretty confident of this.

Bamboo boards can be nice, but a great many aren't, and it's almost impossible to tell the difference before buying. The trouble is that they're made of very small pieces of bamboo glued together, so the glue itself forms a substantial portion of the cutting surface. Many of the glues that get used are very hard ... much harder than the bamboo itself, and outside the recommended hardness range for cutting boards. They can be unecessarily rough on knife edges. Bamboo itself comes in a range of hardnesses, from softer than what's ideal for cutting boards to harder. I just wouldn't know how to buy one.

I've had one for a few years and couldn't recommend it more highly. Mine is standard, un-fancy maple, but still quite beautiful. The Boardsmith greatly undercharges, considering the competition. I haven't seen boards as well made from similar materials at any price. His boards are much nicer than the Boos boards for quite a bit less money. As is often the case, I can't imagine what Cooks Illustrated could be talking about. A good endgrain board is phenomenally tough. Much moreso than edgegrain or facegrain boards (I've had many in both these constructions, mostly made of maple just like my endgrain board). With endgrain, if you're using sharp knives and decent technique, you never cut the wood fibers. The blade just slips between them. With edge and facegrain, you're always cutting the wood, producing grooves that have to be sanded out. The only visible marks I've put in my endgrain board from my serrated bread knife, which is basically a saw. I figured out the first couple of days of owning the board that I had to be gentle with the bread knife or use it on a cheaper board. Otherwise, the surface stays pristine.

I find dull knives to be much more dangerous. If your knives are very sharp, you will undoubtedly get more dumb little cuts, like from bumping into the edge when the blade is sitting on the cutting board. But dull knives force you to use force, which means the knife can slip and go out of control. Most of the nasty cuts I've seen are from dull blades and bad technique. With a sharp blade and good technique, you will never use much more force than the weight of the knife itself, so deep cuts become very unlikely. The only time I cut myself badly enough to consider stitches, it involved a serrated bread knife, bad lighting, and a lot of alcohol.

The trouble is that LN2 and air won't mix evenly. The LN2 will generally dsplace most of the air in the lower half of the room. The other trouble is that unlike C02, it doesn't make people ghasp for breath. People just get sleepy and lie down, often dramatically. I think the most important precautions, mostly already mentioned are: 1) unsealed (and unsealable) container 2) safety goggles. a drop splashed in your eye can be very, very bad 3) ventilation 4) no clothes that could accumulate LN2 and hold it next to your skin (boots that are open at the top, etc...) If you spill the stuff on open skin it just rolls and boils off. But if it ends up inside a glove or a shoe, with nowhere to go, you can get instant and extreme frotbite. I don't think full lab saftey gear is necessary ... my scientist friends who work in actual labs don't bother with it ... but some basic precautions like pants cuffs pulled down over your shoes, long, unabsorbent gloves (if you're wearing gloves at all), etc., are smart precautions.

Nope. See my post above and Slkinsey's, about melting point of tin.

http://www.tsuji.ac.jp/hp/gihou/Basic_Techniques/index.html KCMA's video's are excellent. (and worships his knife) to some pretty melodramatic music.These guys have Japanese training. Curtis mixes in some burly Western cutting techniques (rock chopping, etc.) so I assume he has a more robust edge on his knife. They have better skills than all but a couple of the people I've observed in high end restaurants in NYC. I hope they give some sense of the wicked versatility of the 240 or 270mm gyuto. For traditional (single bevel) technique in fish preparation, Itasan18 is guy everyone looks to.

You could use it as a sharpening project ... try to reprofile and put a real edge on it. I don't know how far you'll get. Those knives are made of mediocre steel at best. Cutco is a marketing company that is best known for getting sued for fraud by former teenage salespeople. It may be best to leave it where it is as long as the inlaws are around. And then get an inconspicuous gyuto for actual cutting.

I wouldn't do it. Tin melts at around 450F; this pretty close to the smoke point of the kinds of oils you'd want to use. Tinned copper is such a great material for things like sauces. A seasoned finish is lousy for those purposes. If you have a tinned copper fry pan, it might be interesting to remove the tin and to season the bare copper. IF you get the coating thick enough to keep acidic food separate from the copper, you'd have an interesting pan.

Any oil that contains unsaturated fats will polymerize. The higher the proportion of unsaturated fat and the more unsaturated, the more efficient the process. You can use lard, which is the old standby, but its low unsaturated oil content means you'll use a lot of it. Anything like canola, sunflower, or safflower oil will work really well and really quickly. Seasoning is more than polymerization. Polymerized oils are actually very sticky. You need to bring the polymer to the smoke point to carbonize some of the oil. This embeds black carbon in the coating which creates the non-stick properties.

My oven's instructions say it's ok to use self-clean on the racks, but that they will definitely discolor and will probably start to squeak when sliding in and out. I haven't tried it yet. I routinely use the self clean cycle on pans that can take the heat ... like pyrex and enameled cast iron. They come out looking new.

Another issue with the usuba, which I forgot to mention, is that it's just not suitable for many of the things we're used to doing with western-style knives. The blade is extremely thick at the spine, so if you want to do something like cut an apple or potato in half, or make thick cuts of anything substantial, the blade will wedge. Also its asymmetry will cause it to "steer" away from the bevel, making straight cuts of these kinds very difficult. The knife is designed specifically for thin cuts and for katsuramaki.

Which model do you have? The pro 600? That machine doesn't have a plastic worm gear. Whirlpool didn't add any plastic drivetrain parts when they bought KA. The KA mixers always had a plastic "sacrificial gear," all the way back to the beginning of the company. The newer model bowl-lift mixers are the first mixers in KA history that have an all-metal drivetrain. The plastic gear is designed to protect the motor and the larger gears from overload. The models that don't have it use a thermal overload protection circuit in its place. If someone is charging you $300 to replace the worm gear, they are ripping you off severely. KA's top of the line mixer can be bought as a factory refurb for much less than that. Hobart mixers are not made by whirlpool. They are indeed heavier duty than any home mixer, and you will pay for for the difference.

That's possible too. At any rate, the usuba has proven an extremely frustrating choice for the majority of cooks, including experienced ones, who expect to be able to use it without a serious time investment. What kind of usuba do you have?

It's certainly possible that you're a prodigy. It's also possible that your usuba isn't sharpened to the bevel angles that are standard for this knife. I do know that my friends who have trained with Japanese chefs have pretty consistently reported weeks of practice before they could get reliable results without chipping.

No, an usuba is much, much harder to use than a yanagi or a deba (neither of which is easy to use). And a gyuto sharpened on one side only does not count as a single bevel knife. Part of the issue is that a yanagi only contacts the cutting board lightly and with drawing strokes. An usuba will frequently hit the board rapidly, which will chip the edge if technique is anything less than precise and delicate. The other part of the issue is the complete lack of curve. The blade must be brought to the board dead flat, every time, or a corner will catch and the blade will chip.

I'd leave the usuba out of the discussion, because it really has nothing in common with either of these knives. The usuba is a wonderfully specialized knife that does some things better than any other knife and other things not at all, and which is only useable by someone who has trained with it. It's easily the most challenging knife to use properly. The nakiri is just a western style Japanese knife with a stubby blade. I don't believe that you or anyone can cut garlic or parsely faster with a nakiri than someone who's well trained with a gyuto. A 270mm gyuto in well trained hands is ferociously fast and precise. I would challenge anyone in that contest, and I'm not even a pro. I would not make this challenge against a Chinese cleaver or an usuba. There are some things that the gyuto does better than these knives, but the person wielding the cleaver or usuba would switch knives for those tasks.

Cleavers are serious. I've never used one (as a chef's knife) but am often humbled by people who do. They have advantages over a gyuto, and also disadvantages, in roughly equal measures. Pit a master with a cleaver against a master with a gyuto and you'll see a good contest.

Some people like the compact size of a nakiri. It's a popular style among Japanese home cooks in very small kitchens. Think of it as the precursor to the santoku. It does nothing that you can't do with a gyuto, and it does nothing better. The reverse is not true.

Just a point of clarity for people new to knives ... sharpness is not a quality intrinsic to a knife. It's the product of the skills of the person sharpening it. The difference between one knife and another will be (among other things) how sharp and how thin an edge it will take, and how long it will hold that edge. No knife is very sharp out of the box. Some manufactures provide a better factory edge than others, but none comes close to what a knife is capable of. The factory edge is 100% irrelevant. It will be gone in a couple of weeks or a couple of hours, so who cares? High end knives often come barely sharpened. The makers know the user will have his or her own opinions on sharpening, and they don't want to waste their resources on this unimportant step.

Yeah, and ceramic knives aren't sharp to begin with. When new they are new they are sharper than a dull steel knife, but will never be, can never be, as sharp as a well sharpened steel knife. they hold an adquate edge longer than steel can, assuming you don't break the thing. This is a selling point for some people but in general I wouldn't want one and wouldn't recommend them.

A recommendation I just got: Tojiro Shiroko (white steel) gyuto: $50 And still good choices: Fujiwara Carbon 240mm and Fujiwara Stainless

I'll take another look at one. From my impressions they wouldn't really replace Tojiro or Togiharu, because those were both very high performance knives that just gave up a little bit in refinement and edge retention to their more expensive brethren. The Wasabis don't seem to be in the same league. Which isn't to say they're not good values. I think Forschners are also great values, but I wouldn't bring them up in a conversation about the best knife (except for their $5 paring knife, which is a favorite among some rockstar chefs because of its extreme thinness ...)