paulraphael

The biggest (suspected) issues with GMO salmon are ecological. We already have problems when farmed fish escape from the farms set off invasive species problems. This is likely to be exacerbated by releasing a species with the monsterous growth hormone potential of the GMO salmon. We don't even know what all the ramifications would be. Personally, I prefer not to support such an endeavor. Salmon farming is already done in such a dubious manner that I now consider salmon a seasonal fish and try to stick to the wild ones.

Wild Edibles in NYC has been doing this for years. They don't editorialize on the labels; they use the uninterpreted rating given by the Blue Ocean Institute. I like this approach; it's definitely influenced my buying habits. I think it's disengenuous to put a sticker on something you're selling that says "avoid." If you believe it should be avoided, don't sell it. The Blue Ocean ratings simply indicate the seriousness of sustainability issues with each species. FWIW, 90% of the fish I see at Whole Foods in NYC should be labelled "avoid" purely for freshness reasons. I'm flumoxed by how a store that has such good produce (and reasonably acceptable meat) lets itself get away with such a badly run seafood department. I do shop at WF ... about once a week, and get to check out the fish often.

With a lighter knife, if it's really sharp (able to fall through food with a fraction of the force you're used to), you can adapt your technique in ways that will make you faster, nimbler, and more precise. A heavy knife is great for lopping off the heads of fish and chickens, chopping chocolate, and lending to people. I also like mine for rock-chopping woody herbs like rosemary, or slimy things like sun-dried tomatoes. But for most cutting, a very sharp, light knife with a thin blade will outperform anything else. The caveat is that you have to adapt your techniques to it, because it's more fragile. Forschners represent a pretty good middleground. Same metalurgy as the big Germans, but a thinner, lighter blade. A forschner chef knife will actually outperform a more expensive Wusthoff, but it won't hold its edge any longer.

What style of knife? the lighter, 10" Japanese style knives feel pretty light and nimble ... closer to a typical 8" European style knife. A 10" Euro knife is quite a battleaxe. If you work in a galley kitchen with those 8" deep cutting boards, I can see wanting a shorter knife so you don't go crazy.

I wouldn't worry about the stamped vs. forged distinction; many of the best knives are stamped. Many of the very best are machined, or made by what's called "stock removal." My chef's knife, which is the most expensive thing I've bought for the kitchen, was made this way. The whole trope of the superiority of forging came from the German knife industry, which is heavily invested in drop forging technology. In fact the only fully forged knives, in the pure sense of the word, are handmade by a smith with a hammer (mostly in Japan and in small shops scattered around the world), and these offer distinction mostly as artisan pieces. Needless to say, such art objects are not the most practical choice for culinary school or most commercial kitchens. The Tojiro that victornet linked to is a great knife, although these used to cost barely more than half the current price. Their value led to huge popularity. Now they're at a price point with a lot more competition. The current value leader in Japanese knives (as of the last time I looked) is Togiharu's low end line, available at korin.com. These cost significantly more than the forschners, but less than just about anything else worth considering. Forschner is a great value and has a nice thin blade. The sacrifice is edge holding. You'll have to sharpen more often than with harder knives.

Dunno ... I'd call those guys at gilko. Looks like they have a line for tech questions. You can also join the forum at Alinea (it's called alinea mosaic). The chefs there have all the answers.

What they said. No set. You'll do 90% of your work with your chef's knife, so put most of your money and attention into that. And I wouldn't go crazy. I've heard horror stories from culinary students who had expensive knives. Your knives will be borrowed, sometimes permanently, sometimes just long enough to wreck them. You'll be fine with a $5 forschner paring knife (I know people who cook in high end restaurants who use nothing but) and a cheap bread knife from the restaurant supply store. For a chef's knife, I'd look at one of the more workmanly Japanese knives that you can get for under $100. Probably 270mm. There are a number of brands that will outperform Wustoff at a much lower price. I'd check out the cutlery section at foodieforums.com and the kitchen section at knifeforums.com for expert advice. Read before you post ... a hundred people have probably asked for the same advice. And I'd strongly recommend putting some of your saved money into a couple of waterstones (for starters a combination stone, like a 1K / 6K would be great). If you learn to use this passably, you'll likely be the only person in the whole school with sharp knives. Down the road, when the situation merits, you can treat yourself to something fancier. By then you'll have a better idea of your preferences.

I have no idea if that design will ever make it to market. This was years ago, and the researchers had doubts back then, because the appliance market is so conservative. Their fridge was also horizontal and mounted at eye level, above the counter ... Their stuff worked, though. The institute is in Aspen, and they use all their own technology. They said their winter energy bill went from something like $15 a month to $30 when they got a xerox machine. When I visited, their work in progress was a solar powered hot tub.

This place sells them. They look like an industrial supplier, though, so aside from free samples you might have a hard time buying small quantities. None of my usual potion dealers has them. Possibly because glycerides work in very small quantities and so are hard to use in home or restaurant sized batches ... not sure. Most people I know use some kind of lecithin or gelatin for emulsification.

I saw a prototype / concept fridge designed by the energy researchers at the Rocky Mountain Institute that took advantage of this. The compressor was mounted in a separate box from the fridge freezer, in an outside wall. In the summer, the heat blew outside. In the winter it blew inside. And it was kept far away from the container that you're trying to keep cold. Brilliant.

With most fridge designs (vertical boxes with doors on the front), this actually makes less difference than most people assume. You loose most of the cold air in the first couple of seconds the fridge is open; it basically dumps out onto the floor. Additional seconds lead to comparatively little heat loss. Opening the door less frequently makes a bigger difference than shortening the time it's open.

I have a half inch baking stone that works well, but I'm convinced the best option for pizza (mentioned by someone in another thread) is a big slab of iron or steel. You could get as much thermal mass as you want, and many times the conductivity of any stone or tile. This would let you mimic some of the performance of a much hotter oven. You could get the char and blistering on the crust of an oven that's 100 degrees or more hotter with this approach. You might have to experiement with placement in the oven, in order to not overcook the crust before cooking the toppings ... I hope to experiment with this one day.

Dougal, I'd like to see a real world test. I suspect you'd be surprised. I know you're correct about the relative heat capacities of air and water, but the difference is that when you open the door, you lose air. Most of it. Perhaps drawers are effective in stemming some of convective loss; I don't know because I throw those things out. While it takes less energy to cool a liter of air than a liter of ... anything else, that liter of air is getting replaced constantly with warm air in a fridge that's getting used a lot. This difference only applies when you're dealing with a fridge that's being opened repeatedly. Overnight, or in a storage freezer, it makes no difference. Also, if the stuff filling the fridge is getting cycled in and out (like, you're putting room temp 2 liter bottles of soda in it, cooling them, and then removing them) then of course you'll use tons of energy. I'm not saying it's a big difference. It's dwarfed by simply having a newer, efficient fridge (or by not setting it colder than necessary. But I'm betting it's more than measureable.

The empty vs. full fridge theory is simple; it's not about how hard it is to cool air vs. food. It's about real world use and what happens when you open the door. Cooled air is denser than the air in the room. When you open the door to the fridge, most of the air inside literally falls out. Imagine a fridge filled with some other dense, fluid substance, like water. Every time you open the door, most of the cooled air leaves ... it spills out and flows away along the floor. The fridge then needs to work to cool the warm air that's replaced it. Unless you have packing issues, food and drink containers do not spill onto the floor. Having a full fridge simply means a smaller volume of air that needs to be cooled every time you open the door. The bigger the fridge, the bigger the issue. And this is not an issue at all for things like top-loading chest freezers. Walk-in fridges and freezers are more efficient by design in this regard. Still, they often have plastic curtains to help slow air loss when the door is open.

I just put them in ziplocks and freeze. My basil loses its color, but the flavor lasts a long time. Everything else stays pristine for months.

Mostly towels ... I always have a couple out that are pure cotton and dry (they only get used for handling hot things). most are scorched. I also keep a pair of silicon mits in a drawer. They're handy for when I have to reach deep into a hot oven. And really handy for pulling out a sheet pan or roasting pan that's got hot liquid or grease in it ... anything that can splash around or soak through a towel. The silicon mits are easy to clean compared with fabric.

The KA dough capacity ratings are simplified to the point of being useless. 11 cups of flour? 9 cups of "specialty flour"? You could make a high hydration dough with 30% more flour than the mixer's rating, and have no problems. You could also stall the mixer with a lesser amount of extremely dry and stiff dough. You really just have to use your senses. Watch the machine, listen to it, feel the back of it for heat. It's easy to tell when it's humming along vs. when it's laboring. Some cases of people wrecking their machines come from defects, but I'm guessing most come from simple lack of attentiiveness. I know of a number of people who have demolished mixers (including professional models) by trying to cream frozen sticks of butter. You might as well throw bricks into the bowl ...

Thanks so much! The butter didn't break at all. Stayed nicely emulsified. I ended up keeping the juices from the bags ... in the fridge the butter has separated. The stuff smells great but I don't know what to do with it. I couldn't put it in the sauce because it would have killed the clarity.

Our steak dinner went off beautifully. Thanks everyone for the advice. After some tests we ended up cooking at 54C for 2-1/2 hours. Steaks were salted and peppered, and bagged with beurre monté made with about 1/2 oz cultured butter, 2-1/2oz water, and salt. I used mounted butter because I was bagging in ziplocks and needed a volume of liquid to take up air space in the bag. If I'd had a vacuum machine, a lump of plain butter probably would have sufficed. Details and pics here.

Quick question: do you find any need for resting sous vided steaks after resting? I did a trial today with a hanger steak (3 hours at 56C, glucose wash, hot skillet). It came out gloriously, although it lost quite a bit of juice when I sliced it. Not sure if a quick rest would help or be pointless.

I'm a little wary of brine ... I don't want to add moisture to meat that's been dehydrated by dry aging. How much moisture does meat typically lose when sous vided at 53C?

Thanks everyone. I'm going to stay conservative since I won't have much chance to experiment. 1.5" sounds good, and I'll probably go for 2 hours. When I cook steaks in a pan I typically finish with butter (unless I'm using the long, slow Ducasse method, where I'll use butter for the whole process). The flavor works so well with aged beef. Has anyone experiemented with putting a little butter in the bag with the meat? Also, when cooking in a pan I generally pre-season with salt and pepper. Would there be any disadvantages to preseasoning before sous-vide?

I can cut the steaks to whatever thickness. I was thinking about 1", which would allow everyone to have a little more crust than if they were cut thicker. 53C sounds reasonable. I don't think that will be too rare for anyone. I won't need to hold them for a long time at all. i'd prefer to go straight from circulator to searing, just to keep things quick. There won't be any extra hands in the kitchen, so the less time i can spend searing etc. the better. Do you think 2 hours at 53 is reasonable? At this temperature is there any tenderizing effect to consider over these relatively short cooking times?

I'm going to be serving some very prime, 8-week dry aged shell steaks to a big group of people this weekend, and have borrowed an immersion circulator to make it happen (I'm going to think of it as a sous chef with two buttons and no mouth). My plan is to cook at 55°C with a little cultured butter in the bag, then sear on a griddle after brushing with a maillard-promoting glucose solution. I'll serve the steaks sliced on the bias across the grain, in strips a little less than 1/2" thick. I'm wondering about cooking time. Seems like anywhere from an hour to forever will work, but more time seems to equal more tenderness, and this is already a tender cut. At what point will I risk crossing over from tender to mushy?