paulraphael

Jeffrey's on Essex. He can buy from the same wholesalers that those other guys use, or he can get from any of a number of small farms. His basic hanger is going to be comparable to what you get from ottomanelli's, but for under $10 / lb. I assume you're ok with marinating it yourself, or not marinating at all.

The idea is that it will cook better if it's closer to room temperature than to refrigerator temperature. Especially if you're doing high heat cooking like sauté. For something like a fish of a few pounds, it should take well under an hour. This time can be also be used to dry it, season it, etc.. I certainly can't speak for Keller, but I think that when most people talk about bringing meat up to room temp, they're really just bringing it closer ... like within 10 or 15 degrees or so. If you can get that fish up into the 60s, it will sauté beautifully. The last 10 or 20 degrees, up to your actual kitchen temperature, will take much longer and won't offer much benefit. You only have to worry about safety if it's such a large piece of meat that it will take hours to come up to temperature. I've rested big roasts for several hours, knowing I was going to brown the outside in a pan and kill anything that starts growing there. Very big fish pose a tougher challenge, especially if they're cold water species that spoil quickly at any temperature above freezing. I'd be curious to hear how people deal with these.

There's actually a middle path ... chickens that are raised humanely but not on open pasture or in boutique settings. I buy bobo chickens in NYC. Bobo's operation would probably count as factory farming, but their factories are small, and run with quality and humane treatment as priorities. I pay aout $3/lb for chicken from them. I don't think this is obscene; in fact it's about as little as I can imagine you could sell a well-raised living creature for. Even if it's close to twice the price of the cheapest birds at the supermarket. I believe there are similar operations serving other big cities. Chinatown markets are a good place to start looking.

With naturally fermented doughs, the acids produced by the bacteria add a lot of flavor. With any dough that gets a long fermentation (a whole day or more) enzyme activity in the flour develops flavors. It's the same principles as with artisinal bread ... coaxing as much flavor out of the wheat as possible.

A friend of mine, grappling with the usual omnivore's dilemmas, has gotten stuck on the central one: death. If we are only willing to kill by proxy, then it seems our ethics stand on nothing more solid than denial. Her solution: see if she is able to overcome basic squeamishness and kill her own bird. If so, she will continue to eat them. If not, she will be a vegetarian forever after. Makes sense to me ... I may have to go cleanse my conscience (and bloody my hands) as well. The rub: where do you go to kill a chicken? The bird should be well raised; there little point in engaging an ethical exercise with a tortured animal. This pretty much excludes the pollo vivero shacks scattered around NYC's outer boroughs. There also needs to be instruction; there's likewise little point to this if there a chance of incompetence turning the slaughter into a bloody, drawn-out ordeal. Surely there must be a farm somewhere near New York that caters to the foodies, the eco supper clubs, the bleeding hearts. Or a like-minded, humane pollo vivero butcher, or something?

If you can't get a direct wholesale hookup, talk to Jeffrey Ruhalter at the Essex St. Market ... 212-475-6521. He might be willing to work out a deal that's pretty close to wholesale. He's even been known to sponsor events like bbqs. As far as quality, he can get anything from the same stuff everyone else has to special order heritage breed from small farms.

And you might not like the same oil in every salad dressing. Sometimes you want flavor from the oil, sometimes not. Flavorful oils tend to have a lot in them that burns. If you're looking for neutral oils in your dressing, then you can probably find a one oil solution.

Darienne's right, those health issues with Canola oil are all made up. I've gotten the fishy smell before, but it seems like it was along time ago. FG is probably right that it's a property that can be engineered out. For light, high heat oils, I've taken to buying whatever has an attractive combination of price and smokepoint (kudos to the makers who put the smoke point on the label). Lately where I shop it's been safflour oil. Works great, virtually tasteless, takes the heat, cheap. Some other oil including canola could knock it off its perch, depending on the brand that's available. Each brand will have different properties, depending on how highly refined it is, etc.

If you've got a high btu range top, crank the fire, and walk away for several minutes, you can incinerate the seasoning. That's probably the only way it will happen because you'll see and smell a ton of acrid smoke as the coating starts breaking down. Think burning plastic. Seems like it happens somewhere above 500°F. In normal use it's just not an issue. You can and should preheat the pan for a long time on high heat. Then add the oil and then the food. It's the only way to brown things properly on any pan, especially one with the high thermal mass and low conductivity of a heavy skillet. You'll know you're overdoing if you start coughing.

I can't vouch for any of this, but here's a review site. They seem to like the vita prep 3 ... http://www.3blenders.com/Choose.html By the way, I wish someone would call out these manufacturers on their looney-tunes power ratings. 3 horsepower? No way. A motor that's 100% efficient (which doesn't exist) would consume over 2200 watts. The maximum consumption of the 3hp Vita Prep is barely over half this. Such marketing doesn't inspire my confidence, but the makers are all guilty ...

The 1" versions might be more warp resistant. But also more expensive (those are the ones that rival the wooden boards in price). And they get heavy.

I've thought about getting a sani tuff for raw protein. They really are good. I didn't know about the warping issue (except when put in a hot dishwasher). My biggest misgiving is price. They're only a bit cheaper than some pretty nice wood boards. In a home kitchen, cleaning and sanitzing a wood board is so easy that I prefer it to the alternatives. Since heat softens the rubber, maybe you can unwarp the sani tuff by immersing in hot water for a while and then lying flat. I bet they'll sell ten times as many boards if they can figure out how to make them in some color besides puke.

Well, induction is very likely the future. It's tremendously more efficient than anything else. Prices will come down. And abundant, cheap fossil fuels won't be around forever. I suspect over the next couple of decades induction will go from novelty to mainstream ... and if that's the case, guys like me who have mostly copper and aluminum pans are going to have to decide if our allegiance is to the past or the future. It would be great to not have to think about it.

A frying pan has curved sides and a sauté pan has higher, straight ones. I generally prefer the curved sided pans for sautéing, while others don't. I like straight sided saute pans for braises and fricasees and other dishes where you'll be dealing with a high volume of sauce. I assume you're looking at 11 or 12 inch pans. With smaller sizes the advantage of heavy copper over a lighter aluminum or clad pan are minor. If you've never used a straight sided saute pan, you might want to try one out before investing in an expensive copper one. And you might find that an aluminum disk bottom or clad pan performs more than well enough for this task.

Sure, that's the question. I don't know how thick a disk has to be in order to work well on convection. Would be cool if you could get away with a real thin one.

Even heat distribution is pretty easy with any conductive material. It's hard to do better than 1/4" thick aluminum. Copper allows excellent heat distribution AND fast response to temperature change. It's unique in its ability to do both so well. Acording to the guys at Cooking Issues, it's pretty piss poor: http://www.cookingissues.com/2010/02/16/heavy-metal-the-science-of-cast-iron-cooking/ As far as using stainless on induction, there are stainless steels that work, like the magnetic alloys used on the outside of All Clad pans and the equivalent. I don't know what the advantage would be in the case of a disk on a copper pan. The copper isn't remotely stainless, so I'd be most interested in a material's efficiency at tapping the induction energy.

I forgot an important request ... something that would be a fundamental innovation: some kind of thin carbon steel disk on the bottom of the pan, so it would work on induction. It would take some engineering to figure out a thickness that would give good enough induction performance without wrecking the responsiveness of the pan on conventional burners. But I bet it could be done. Ok, I'd want pans of varying thicknesses for different purposes. Bottoms can be thicker than the sides in most cases. Smaller saucepans can be thinner (2.25mm or so) on the bottoms for responsiveness; larger pans like saute pans, which need to distribute heat farther and retain heat can be thick (3.0 + mm). I'm making up numbers ... an engineer working with serious cooks could pin this down better. Since you're plating and not using the pre-made laminated material, you should be able to make pans with varying thicknesses like this. Definitely not brass for the handles ... to conductive. A cast stainless handle, that's easy to grab with or without a side towel, and that's solid but no so massive that it takes forever to cool down, would be ideal. Tradtitional iron also seems to work fine. I'd also want the selection of pans to be limited to (or at least focus on) pans that make sense for expensive copper. There is no reason besides being a sculpture collector for having a copper stock pot. Saucepans (including a sloped or curve-sided range) are most important. Frying and sauté pans are also nice. A copper rondeau is a great luxury (i don't have one, but if I ever find myself weighed down with currency ... )

I have marble countertops in my kitchen now, and consider it close to the worst material I've ever used. The patterns make it hard to know if the surfaces are clean; they scratch; they are not acid resistant; they can stain; they're so hard that it doesn't take much of a bump to chip glasses and plates. I'm hoping natural stone in general is a fad that will soon pass. Among all the natural stone options, marble has got to be the least practical. There are two plusses that I can think of: it's a good surface for rolling dough, and you can set hot pans on it. I'm hoping I misread the line about chopping in the previous post on marble ...

That's amazing. I'm going to pass that off as my grandma's secret recipe.

Stainless comes in a few different grades; the heavier ones are solid (and quite a bit more expenive than the light ones). You can keep them looking decent by cleaning with an abrasive in the direction of the original brush marks. It won't look new, but it will look ok. I think the biggest argument against stainless is esthetic ... it looks commercial in a way some people don't care for. I've had my eyes on more than a few used work tables, as Steve suggests. I'm always thwarted by the ordeal of getting the things home. The most interesting materials I've seen are modern lab countertop materials. There are at least a couple of companies that are retrofitting the materials for kitchens. My guess is that they're expensive, but cheaper than natural stone. They are essential indestructible, with the exception that they can be scratched (but scratches can be polished out). I posted a link to a couple of manufacturers on an earlier kitchen counter thread. I was hoping to find someone with 1st hand experience (I still don't know anyone).

J.Stevens is talking about traditional single-bevel knives like yanagis and usubas. I didn't even think of these in the context of this thread, but yeah, don't go near them with a steel. They all have extremely accute bevels and you'll just shred the edge. I used the term "japanese style knives" but in reference to double bevel knives like gyutos and sujihikis. These are knives western chefs call "japanese style" (to distinguish from European knives) but that Japanese chefs call "western style" (to distinguish from traditional Japanese blades). The labels are are annoying.

That's a great question, and one that you'll get more than one answer to. There's an orthodoxy that says "never steel a japanese style knife." And there are many cooks who do it with impunity. In my experience, you can maintain some japanese knives on a steel. If the the steel isn't too brittle and / or the edge angles aren't too accute, it will work, although you should use really light pressure, and very smooth steel in general. I can't give any guidelines on where the line is, as far as how thin / how hard. My old hiromoto as gyuto handled a steel fine, until i thinned the edge past a certain point. then i just used a strop or stones for maintenance. my current gyuoto I wouldn't let near a steel.

I know that's the conventional wisdom, but I don't think typical european stainless steel is actually easy to sharpen. It's fast to abrade down because of its lower hardness, but it has a kind of springiness / gumminess that makes it more challenging to deburr than many other stainless steels (and virtually all carbon steels). It can be frustrating to produce a high quality edge. The mystery steel that Global uses is a worse nightmare in this department. Dave Martell at Japanese Knife Sharpening said that he won't bother sharpening either European knives or globals on stones for this reason ... they just get whacked on the belt sander! The euro steel does maintain easily on a honing steel, which may be it's best selling point. More significantly, sharpening the euro steels feels different enough that it doesn't provide great practice for sharpening the Japanese steels. At least in my limited experience.

Learning to sharpen is a pain, but it doesn't take long to get competent. And basic competence will give you pretty impressive edges. In my experience, developing sharpening skills and cutting skills go hand in hand, so I generally push people toward starting out with a knife that's relatively inexpensive, easy to sharpen, and easy to sell. You won't be nervous about experimenting with it. And when you're ready to get a different knife someday, you'll have a better idea of what you really want. But I'm not so convinced of the utility of learning to sharpen on european stainless knives. The steel they typically use is actually quite difficult to sharpen well, and responds quite a bit differently than the steels used in japanese knives (and their equivalents). The edgepro is probably a good way to learn. You can also get a couple of starter stones and a video by Dave Martell, Korin, or Murray Carter. I've seen the korin video (it's decent), and heard great things about Dave's (dave is at japaneseknifesharpening.com)

I can't agree. Every claim I've seen of a knife that stayed sharp forever could be traced to a knife that was never sharp in the first place. A little perspective: if your standard for sharp is the knife's edge out of the box, then you haven't used a sharp knife. Very few knives have decent edges when they're new. Often the higher end knives barely have an edge on them at all; the makers know the users want to take care of this part. Low end knives made of cheap steel won't even take or hold a sharp edge, so it doesn't matter. The part I do agree with: abuse will dull a blade in no time. But regular use will dull a blade pretty quickly too, and without regular maintenance there won't be much difference between a high end gyuto and a lawnmower blade. Guys I know who use high end knives professionally spend a few minutes on the waterstones every day. This translates to a touch up once or twice a month for a typical home cook.