paulraphael

Most of us have hardware store torches. Microplanes were originally made for woodworking. At first the inventor seemed incredulous that they were being used in kitches. He seemed to think cooking was sissy stuff. Then he cashed in.

Years ago I occasionally smelled a fishy smell when the oil got very hot. I haven't smelled that in a long time. I also saw nothing but canola oil being used at the sauté station in a Michelin 3 star seafood restaurant, populated by noses more sensitive than my own. So I'm imagining it's a non issue unless you get a defective or very low quality sample. Whether or not the oil has much intrinsic flavor depends on how heavily refined it is. As with all oils, the more refined, the more neutral the flavor and the higher the smoke point. Talk about the evils of "industrially produced" oils, and the intrinsic rancidity of canola are urban legends. Production of canola oil is the same as with any seed oil. The thick residue left behind is the same as with any oil high in unsaturated or polyunsaturated fats. That's polymerized oil; the same plasticky stuff that eventually builds up as seasoning on cast iron cookware. It can be tough to get off if you let too much accumulate. You'll never get it off of a nonstick pan without ruining the thing ... so for these pans a more saturated fat or more moderate heat are a good idea. FWIW, i've become a fan of saflower oil. The highly refined versions are practically tasteless and have a high smoke point and are cheap. I like canola in a pinch too.

In brownies as in everything else, there's the right way, the wrong way, and the army way.

I always assumed the tip was the hottest part too ... but the more important issue is avoiding the flavor or gas or soot. NathanM speaks to this on the Modernist Cuisine blog: "The type of gas that you choose isn’t as impor tant as the com plete ness of its com bus tion. Propane, butane, MAPP, and acety lene are all great so long as you adjust the flame of the torch so that it is a fully oxi diz ing flame. This is a flame that is pro duced with an excess of oxygen—either from the sur round ing air or sup ple mented with com pressed oxy gen. You can tell that you have an oxi diz ing flame when the torch is burn ing dark blue, is rel a tively short in length, and hisses and roars. Frequently, peo ple have too large of a flame that is burn ing yel low at the tip. This is a reduc ing flame, also referred to as a car bur iz ing flame because there are uncom busted hydro car bons from the fuel in the flame that will end up in the food, impart ing an unpleas ant taste. In my expe ri ence, butane torches are espe cially prone to this, but it can hap pen with any torch that hasn’t been prop­erly adjusted before aim ing it at the food. Too often, peo ple aim the blow torch at the food before they have it appro pri ately adjusted. Not only do they often end up torch ing the food with a dirty flame, but there is also some raw fuel being blown onto the food before it ignites. Like an old, car bu reted car (and for the same rea son), it is best to light the torch and adjust the fuel-to-oxidizer ratio before get ting underway. Long story short, always light your torch fac ing away from the food. Then adjust the torch to pro duce a short, hiss ing dark blue flame and you won’t have a problem." The picture on that page shows the meat engulfed in flame ... I was always taught not to do this, but perhaps if the flame is adjusted correctly it doesn't matter.

Several years ago in NYC the farmers markets were a great bargain. The last few years they've been definitively more expensive than the grocery stores, except maybe the most boutiqu-y specialty shops. Not exactly when that change happened or how long the transition took. I now go to the farmers for quality and interesting selections, and only when I can afford to.

With propane torches, it's worth it to get one that has a pressure regulator. Without it, when you've used about half the gas in the cylinder, the flame will sputter out every time you tilt the torch far enough to do most kitchen jobs. And you'll end up with a collection of half-empty cylinders. Not sure if the same applies to butane torches ... worth asking. Dougal is right about how to avoid gas and soot flavors. Small, dark blue cone, no sputtering or roaring, and use the flame at or beyond the tip. This is the same for both propane and butane.

I used to love breyers ... thought it was a great, lighter alternative to B&J's, etc.. Then when I had it again several years ago I thought it was crap. I assumed this was because of the acquisition and I never bought it again. Maybe it's better again now? Overrun can be hard to increase in homemade ice cream. A multispeed machine like the KA helps. In addition, it's useful to think of ice cream in terms of whipped cream. The process of whipping air into ice cream is identical to the process of whipping cream, and the same factors are in play. The biggest diference is you also have the structure of the sol (mix of frozen and unfrozen water), so you don't need as high a concentration of milk fat. Chilling the base for 8 hours or more helps crystalize the fat globules and make them whippable. It also ensures they'll be cold enough. Many of the ingredients that pastry chefs use to stabilize ice cream (gums and other colloids) also improve whipability. Adequate nonfat solids, like from added dry milk powder, may also help.

If i'm just making some snack-sized thing, then I'll be amateurish and take it to the stove on a bench scraper. Anything bigger, then prep bowls. I use takeout containers or 1 and 2 quart square sided containers. I can wash them in seconds so who cares. If you have good board management habits, it's faster to prep on a big board than on a small portable one, even even if you take into account the time it takes to wash a prep container. A lot faster.

Just don't do this with an endgrain wood board. Total carnage ensues. Sanders work fine, though.

How would it know what you're measuring? And if you're measuring something like flour that can be compressed, how would it know how you scoop / pack your cup?

I lucked into a deal on a scale that reads to 0.1g, so for most things it's plenty accurate. Ordinarilly, the most cost effective approach is to have a scale that reads to 1g from general purposes, and a pocket scale with a low capacity that reads to .01g or so for things like leavening, hydrocolloids, or vitamin concoctions.

Sorry, had to go look. They're Cuisipro. Got on the recommendation of other people here a few years back.

Yeah, I thought to measure mine a few years ago and was pretty surprised. I started a thread about it and people recommended brands that were much more accurate. I got a set of better ones. It doesn't come up much anymore ... I use the scale for just about everything now. When I use the measuring spoons it's generally just as scoops, so the accuracy doesn't matter.

The habits you cultivate with carbon steel knives are good ones to bring to stainless knives. Knife alloys aren't nearly as stainles as the ones used in pans and silverware. Very generally speaking, the higher the quality of the knife steel, the lower the quantity of corrosion-inhibitting chromium. Many high quality knives are just barely stainless. Even if they don't rust outright, the most superficial oxidation can dull the edge. So keeping a clean knife is especially helpful after cutting anything acidic, like onions, garlic, etc.. My stainless gyuto actually stained once from the acids in wild garlic. I needed to use BKF to get rid of the oxidation.

The hot water thing is a myth. As Chris says, water can't get hot enough to do anything to the steel's temper. Hot water is better, because it does a better job of cutting grease. It will also evaporate more quickly, so it's easier to dry the knife. Especially important with carbon steel or any of the less stainless stainless steels. It's ideal to wash with hot, soapy water and dry immediately after use. If you're doing a ton of prep and need to keep moving, a side towel soaked in sanitizer is a reasonable way to keep clean between washings. Just don't use anything containing chlorine bleach; it corrodes steel. I think it's a good idea to cultivate good habits of motion when washing and drying knives. You're going to do it a lot when you're distracted and tired, so it's an easy time to cut yourself.

That's mostly my impression, too. But it's hard to generalize accurately about the place. Some of their ingredients are expensive (medium-quality, stratospherically priced chickens), and some prepared foods are cheap (I satisfy my Clif Bar addiction at WF ... it's the cheapest source in the city).

Essentially no microwave energy escapes from a microwave oven. Cell phones, however, are microwave transmitters, and we hold them directly against our brains. Microwaves are long-wave, low-energy rays that are considered non-ionizing. They are not capable of breaking molecules apart, so they don't have the same mutogenic effects that you get from gamma rays, beta particles, x-rays, or even UV radiation from the sun. This doesn't mean that they're necessarily harmless. Studies on the health effects of longterm microwave exposure (from cell phones) come to mixed conclusions. I'm sure they'll know a lot more by the time we're all dead.

I just looked at a boozy ice cream I've made a few versions of; the method is a little different than what I described. It's for cognac-vanilla. Cognac doesn't have a very assertive flavor in ice cream, so I found I had to use a lot of it. Here's what I did: -for a quart of ice cream, take 4oz of cognac, bring to a simmer in a saucepan, flame, and take off heat. After the flame goes out, cool it, and add to the ice cream base. -dd 1 to 3 TB of uncooked cognac, to get the flavor and bite right. Do this to taste ... it's a bit of a guessing game, because the simmering and flaming doesn't do a very consistent job of removing alcohol. (Be sure to use a clean spon every time you taste. Ice cream is mix is a ripe environment for bacteria). I'm not 100% happy with this flavor, but it managed to get a decent amount of cognac into the ice cream without texture problems.

What pastrygirl said. If I'm making a flavor with a lot of alcohol, I'll reduce the sugar, especially any sugars with greater freezing point suppression, like glucose and trimoline. Upping the nonfat solids (powdered milk, etc.) helps. Still, more than an ounce or so per quart of ice cream is a lot. If I need more booze flavor than this will give, then I'll divide it and flame / boil off most of the alcohol from a portion of it. So for instance, I'll take 2 or 3 oz of booze, divide in half, and flame one half on the stove, letting it simmer until it goes out. This removes about 75% of the alcohol. It removes a lot of flavor, too, but some of the flavors will actually get more concentrated.

Agave syrup is some combination of fructose and glucose. It can vary a lot, but my impression is that it is generally higher in fructose than most corn syrups or table sugar, and so will be sweeter. This variablility makes it a wild card. 100% of the negative publicity concerning corn syrup is sham science. There isn't a single shred of scientific evidence supporting any of it. All we know is that too much sugar is bad for you. The type of sugar makes very little difference (there is some evidence that fructose can cause problems that glucose does not, but this does not say anything about table sugar vs. corn syrup, and could suggest that agave is worse). I don't know the degree to which the fructose / glucose ratio will influence success with ganache. My inclination would be to stick with known quantities unless you want to experiement. There will be no advantages to agave besides marketing hype.

Mine's lasted 10 years, including a few unprotected times in an oven 75° hotter than its rating. I suspect they use phenolic because it stays cool when the pan's on the stove. If mine ever breaks or melts, I'll probably replace it with something hilarious looking from the hardware store. That or spend $10 on the official stainless one.

I'd like to know the quantities of stabilizer they use, mostly because I use cream for ice cream. The carageenan content could make a real difference. If I ever use pure cream from the farmer's market, it would be nice to have a clue how much to compensate.

Do we really have reason to believe that added gums cause the cream to clump together? I've had cream clump, but the most clumping I've gotten has been from unhomogenized cream that didn't have additives. I assume gums are added to make whipping easier. Do they serve any other purpose?

I've been meaning to do this. I spent some time in a pastry kitchen that made their own butter, and it was probably the best I've tasted. They bought their cream from the local farmer's market (it's a brand you can get in a few places in NYC ... a bit pricey but has much more real dairy flavor than the supermarket brands). I believe their formula was 2/3 heavy cream and 1/3 creme fraiche. They bought the creme fraiche from the dairy rather than making it themselves.

A scale can't measure fluid ounces, so forget about that. Most scales allow you to choose different units. I use mine metric 99% of the time. There are some kinds of things that I still think about in pounds ... like the weight of a whole chicken ... so I'll ocasionally switch units for that. But it's unimportant. To my knowledge, there aren't any scales that use baker's percentages. You have to do the math yourself (super easy if you're working with metric units). I designed a baker's percentage user interface for MyWeigh a few years ago. They gave me a nice scale in exchange for my efforts, but it seems there wasn't enough demand for them to actually make the thing. I'm sure all the Myweigh scales that people are recommending will do the job. They're a great value. I got one that goes to 0.1g. It's a nice convenience for things like leaveners and colloids, but it's much more cost effective to get a high capacity scale that reads to 1g, and then a second low capacity scale that reads to 0.1 or finer.