paulraphael
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Posts posted by paulraphael
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Kinda related to this tip ... sometimes I blanche or briefly steam garlic cloves. I do it for some concoctions where the raw garlic gets pulverized by a machine, and I want to cut the pungency a bit. The brief heat partially deactivates the enzymes that make all the harsh sulphur compounds. As a bonus, the shells slip off pretty easily after you do this.
I've been doing this for the chana masala I like to make (has a lot of pulverized garlic). I don't find it necessary when making a vinaigrette with a stick blender.
It's also handy if you ever want to put a garlic clove into a sous-vide bag. Completely raw garlic risks turning the whole meal into a tire fire, but a little preheat can tame it nicely.
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11 hours ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:
In a sealed vessel under constant pressure, vapor and liquid water remain in equilibrium.* Or so I used to once remember. Hence no boiling.
When you pressure release you no longer have a sealed vessel nor a clear stock. Don't do it. Tonight's dinner, Rancho Gordo beans pressure cooking at the moment.
*At least between the triple point and the critical point of water. That is, under any conditions that pertain to cooking in my apartment.
I think the question is if typical pressure cookers constitute a sealed environment ... they use a relief valve to maintain pressure. It might be more of a hybrid kind of environment. It likely has to do with why Dave and Nils got significantly different blind taste test results with stocks made in different types of cooker (the winner being a type that maintained a true sealed environment).
I'd assumed the difference has to do with aromatics getting out, but it makes more sense if it's about boiling vs. not boiling.
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Sourdough apple pancake.
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1 hour ago, gfweb said:
At a higher temp, but still boiling, no?
And with pressure release the super hot liquid ought to boil like crazy
If you do it carefully, you should be able to keep it to a low simmer. Easily if you have a more sophisticated pressure cooker, like a Kuhn-Rikon.
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On 2/14/2022 at 4:32 AM, &roid said:
Paul, I’d be very interested in your PC coulis method - we’ve been doing pressure cooked stocks exclusively for the last few years. Like you I find them tastier and easier. Care to share the coulis version?Here's the basic idea. My earlier versions used more water and needed some reduction; this is an attempt to eliminate or mostly eliminate that step.
Pressure-cooked meat coulis / jus de viande
1250g / 100% Water.
200g / 15% (approx) additional water
800g / 65% Ground Lean Meat Divide in half. (to save time, grind meat coarsely in food processor)
400g / 30% meaty bones, thinly cut on band saw. for beef, ideally use shin
200g / 15% Yellow Onion, thinly sliced
120g / 10% Carrot, thinly sliced
80g / 6% Celery, thinly sliced
10g / 0.8% Parsley leaves and stems
Lambda Carrageenan (final measurement should be based on actual weight of jus after cooking and straining:
measure to 0.35%
Xanthan Gum (final measurement should be based on actual weight of jus after cooking and straining:
measure to 0.07%
Day 1
-brown ingredients / make reduction. preheat oven to 450°F / 230°C.
add bones, half the ground meat, and all vegetables to roasting pan. Cook until well browned (about 45 minutes). It’s ideal to blacken the onions.
-transfer ingredients to pressure cooker. Pour off fat. deglaze pan on stovetop with half of the small portion of water. reduce until it dries and browns. deglaze with the remaining water. reduce to make a light syrup. add to pressure cooker.
-pressure cook. add the raw ground meat and main portion of water to PC. seal lid and let pressurize to 1 bar. turn down heat for minimum venting. cook 2.5 hours.
-depressurize under running water. let cool. gently strain bones into a temporary container with a coarse chinois. as much as possible, use tongs or skimmer or slotted spoon to place bones and veggies into the chinois; don't dump it all in and don't press; let gravity do the work. It’s also possible to remove all but the last of the stock with a siphon.
-strain again with a fine strainer / chinois, or better, with a superbag. chill overnight in fridge.
Day 2
-defat, reduce, thicken
-skim fat off top of container
-Reduction: (Is there significantly more than 1L liquid? If not, skip this step). In a saucepan reduce 100ml to a dark brown glaze, then add another 100ml, scrape sides and bottom, reduce until total volume of coulis is about 1L.
-turn off heat
-add cold unreduced coulis to the saucepan
-thicken. weigh final coulis; measure and stir together the gums (if you skipped reduction, heat it enough to liquefy the gelatin)
-disperse gums with a stick blender
-optional: heat on stove to deflate any foam that formed.
Or (more work, but better for large quantities):
-place coulis in blender. blend at a speed that makes a vortex and doesn’t splash. pour gums into vortex. cover and blend on high for two minutes. mixture will now be a light-colored foam.
-pour into saucepan. heat over low flame to deflate foam.
-chill.
-package, store: strain again with chinois, measure into ziplock bags. refrigerate or freeze.
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19 hours ago, Duvel said:
The presear/resear sequence leads definitely to faster browning. But it adds a step and frankly, I do not do that anymore (and add butter in the final sear to get the color right) …That's how I still do it. I like the quality of sear more. And by making it happen so much faster there's less chance of overcooking. For us, steak is a special occasion kind of thing so I don't mind the extra step. If we cooked it all the time I might look for shortcuts.
I salt before the final sear. Not sure what it would take to get corned beef flavors from salting too soon ... but I'm fine with the flavor of salting right at the end.
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Just play it like all the chefs in the 2000s and put "martini" in scare quotes.
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2 hours ago, weinoo said:
I'm pretty wed to Beefeater or Plymouth for Martinis.
I like Plymouth too. Haven't tried the Navy Strength recommended in the article. Which version do you prefer?
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4 hours ago, weinoo said:
Hmmm...what have you been reading, @paulraphael?
How the NFT phenomenon works in the world of high-end spirits.
I had no idea. Reality these days is making it very hard to do satire.
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The distillers will probably start verifying their bottles with NFTs.
And when this takes off, they'll start selling the NFTs without the bottles. Everybody wins!
Who wants to buy my authentic digital Pappy?
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One of the tricks to getting traditional confit flavor is to do cook / chill, and open the bags before chilling (you can reseal them). Apparently that signature confit flavor comes from the fats oxidizing a bit, which you won't get much of in a sealed bag.
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They tell you not to put the jars in the dishwasher. There's a bearing cartridge in there that's sealed against smoothies but not dishwasher detergent.
I find them effortless to clean just by blending some warm soap water. Fill it about 3/4, put in a drop of dish soap, and pulse it to high speed 2 or 3 times. Rinse. Spray with sanitizer if you like.
For getting every drop of food out of the bottom, ISI makes a narrow silicone spatula that's perfect for this. It's designed for getting everything out of their whipping siphons, but works perfectly on a vitamix. Also perfect for most mason jars. Last I checked these were out of stock everywhere ... I hope they're still making them.
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3 hours ago, weinoo said:
I have a question about the "experiments." Talking about cocktails, even if the shaker, jigger, ice, etc. etc. are all as cold as they can be in a home/bar environment, don't they start heating up immediately, when they're brought out of the environment which made them so cold?
DA's experiments show that rocks do a pretty good job of keeping things cold. The choice is a few smaller rocks, which will keep a drink colder, but dilute it faster, or a big handsome rock, which will let it warm more but will keep it stronger longer.
For drinks served up, he's a believer in making them small so they stay cold as long as you're drinking them. Personally, I'd rather have a bigger drink and take my chances. Or drink it faster.
I always make my negronis on the rocks, with a couple of ice cubes in a chilled glass. I think that drink does fine with extra dilution, but it needs to be really cold. Whisky drinks I don't mind warmer, but I'd rather avoid dilution. I make old fashionds with a 2" cube.
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2 minutes ago, Duvel said:
I like that we both come to the same conclusion 🤗Let’s leave it that in the certainty that craft cocktails and theoretical thermodynamics meet only in harmony if both are applied to the same person. Stat.
After this many posts on amateur thermodynamics, I need a cocktail.
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16 minutes ago, Duvel said:
Sorry, I do not know how to explain it any better. Please forget about his premise of all ice being at 0 oC (that is seemingly true for the bar environment, but not a law of nature).
Of course the amount of ice matters, and no - unless you are in a mass transfer limited environment - there is no such thing as “sufficient ice”, because every gram of ice you add brings in additional cooling capacity*. Period.
The more you put, the more cooling capacity you have. If you put really a lot and you start out cold, the ice won’t warm up sufficiently to even melt. And if you stay below the melting point of ice (think about it), how can be the phase transition enthalpy be the major (or sole) contributor to cool your drink. How can something that doesn’t melt cool via a phase transition ?
—-*actually heat capacity, but that might confuse people.
Now I understand what you're saying. But it goes against the experimental evidence.
I did address the possibility of ice being colder than 0° ... the basic physics and the experiments demonstrate that this makes a negligible difference in the glass.
[Edited to add ... I just saw your post describing the experiment.]
Of course, if you contrive a situation with huge amounts of ice, and it's much colder than the equilibrium temperature, then that 1/2 calorie per degree per gram would be able to make a significant difference. But is this not relevant to anyone making cocktails!
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48 minutes ago, Duvel said:
If your complete system (ice, shaker, drink) remains under the melting point of the ice, there is simply no cooling by melting ice.
I'm not 100% sure I understand your point here. It's true that once the cocktail reaches its equilibrium point (around -5°C for the drinks of the strength used in DA's experiments there will be no more melting. And there will likewise be no more chilling.
Are you talking about what happens when you put extra cold ice into a cocktail? The experiments address that. You get a very small additional amount of cooling from the colder ice. 1/2 calorie per degree for each gram of ice, vs. the 80 calories per gram you get from the ice melting. This ends up making a minute difference.
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23 minutes ago, Duvel said:
It is not a flaw per se, I‘d rather call it a limitation of his parameters: he limits (actually not specifies) the mass of ice he is using.
He doesn't; he's demonstrates that the mass of ice is irrelevant, assuming there's enough of it.
The total surface area of the ice is relevant, but only to the speed of chilling. Not to the final temperature or dilution.
"You use “enough” ice. We did initial experiments that showed that using too little ice results in poor chilling and greater dilution. The benefit of adding more ice plateaus at a certain point so that it neither helps nor hurts the temperature or dilution. I don’t have exact numbers for the plateau point (I lost my old data cause I’m a jerk), but using Kold-Draft ice, Eben and Alex shook a 100 ml gimlet with one cube, two cubes, three cubes, and up. They were able to keep getting better results up to at least 5 cubes."
I now see the Duveltini experiment, but not sure I understand what you're saying.
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50 minutes ago, Duvel said:
Please forget for a second the „melting ice“ mantra. That’s for a limited amount of 0 oC bar ice. Run your head through the Duveltini experiment, which happens all below 0 oC. A simple mass transfer limited equilibrium, no phase transitions. And I guarantee you with proper ice size and agitation it will be faster that what Dave observes …I don't see the Duveltini experiment. Is that link right?
Are you suggesting a flaw in Dave Arnold's methods or analysis? I'd be curious to hear what it is. I've gone over every one of those results and I don't see an exception to the "melting ice mantra" at any temperature.
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34 minutes ago, Duvel said:
Yeap. At 0 oC, and you pay for that by diluting your drink. If you don’t want that, please see above 😉Chilling is proportional to dilution, no matter how far you chill. Dave specifically demonstrates this. The amount of chilling due to conductivity, or the coldness of the ice, is negligible.
Ice’s tremendous chilling power doesn’t come from the energy required to heat it up, but from the energy required to melt it. It takes 0.5 calories to heat a gram of ice from -1°C to 0°C (this value is called the specific heat of ice,) but almost 80 calories to melt that same gram (this value is called the heat of fusion of water). To put it another way, melting 1 gram of ice provides the same chilling power as bringing that same gram of ice from -160°C to 0°C.
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50 minutes ago, Duvel said:
If you want to do that, you have to add a lot of salt to the ice, and use it as cooling mantle, not an ingredient.Take a close look at Dave Arnold's research. He demonstrates that cocktails chill to below 0°C. And that essentially ALL the cooling power is from the melting. No need for salt; alcohol works through the exact same colligative properties.
In his book he explains this in greater depth ... enthalpy vs. entropy—and why cocktail chilling depends on the same essential principles that guarantee the eventual death of the universe.
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9 hours ago, Duvel said:
Chilling the drink rapidly is (if done properly) a simple heat transfer process. So mass x temperature of coolant vs. mass x temperature of alcoholic drink.
Why would you think that? How would this allow 0°C ice to chill a room temperature mixture to -7°C?
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14 hours ago, Duvel said:
Thanks ! I would have probably just used a refraktometer, but your method certainly works as well …A refractometer would be tricky, because there's both sugar and alcohol in there. You won't get an absolute measurement that means anything. You'd have to get a before and after reading, and do some fancy math. I think using weight or volume would be easier and more accurate.
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I'm not trying to be dismissive of the minds behind the 25% figure. Just pointing out that it is at best an average. Or as Dave the Cook suggests, a goal with certain recipes.
The Cooking Issues link (Thanks Mitch!) shows much of what D.A. talks about in his book.
A few takeaways:
- Size and shape of the ice cubes matter, but not in the ways that many people assume. More/smaller ice cubes chill faster, but not more. They also tend to dilute more, but for a specific reason: bar ice is wet (it's always hanging out at 0°C) and more surface area means there's more water clinging to it. That water adds to dilution without contributing to chilling. Dave recommends shaking the water off of wet ice using a strainer.
- Temperature of the ice is irrelevant. Virtually all of ice's chilling power comes from its latent heat of fusion (the energy required to melt it). Making it 10 or 20 degrees colder will have little effect. Except, curiously ...
- Ice colder than 0°C will chill your drink more slowly than 0°C ice. Because science! It will take a bit of time to warm to 0°, during which it does some very inefficient chilling. Only when it hits 0 and starts to melt does the powerful chilling begin. However ...
- Chilling is asymptotic—you'll eventually reach a fixed minimum temperature when shaking or stirring.
- But stirred drinks chill slowly enough that ice cubes matter. Because no one stirs long enough to hit that asymptotic low temperature with big ice cubes. To hit the temperature you want consistently when stirring, you need to be consistent about ice cube size and shape, stirring speed, and time.
- The nuances of shaking technique might have an effect on drink texture, but they don't affect the temperature or dilution—provided you shake long enough ... but not much too long. But we were talking about Martinis, and Sean Connery is dead.
- Anything that adds significant heat to the drink from the outside will cause extra melting and dilution. This includes a hot ambient temperature, spending way too much time stirring / shaking / hanging out, or using an unchilled vessel that has a lot of thermal mass, like a classic stirring glass.
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1 hour ago, Duvel said:
And as much as I like the accuracy to close in on the spot, I’m feeling disappointed about the formula to get there, simply assuming 25% dilution. I know it is more complicated than that, with more variables, but given my tendency to overthink these type of issues, I will do my best to just let it go (and keep drinking straight gin martinis) …
Right, that 25% percent figure is just an average someone came up with.
What I like about the article is the idea that martini perfection starts with a sweet spot for strength. The author's sweet spot may not be yours or mine. But if you figure out what yours is, then you can tweak your ingredients and method to get there.
It would have been helpful if he'd mentioned the effect of method. Chilling a cocktail always leads to a certain minimum dilution. But there are a million things you can do (for better or worse, on purpose or not) that add even more dilution.
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Great Garlic Tip
in Cooking
Posted
If I don't need to tame the enzymes, I just give a light whack with a knife or bench scraper. Just enough to crack the shell so it slips off.
Not a fan of smashing. I find the traditional technique of smash and rock-chop-to-death isn't any faster than just mincing, and doesn't give much control or consistency. So I'll often treat garlic just like a little onion. With a sharp knife you could also get slices as thin as Paulie's but in a fraction the time. I've just haven't yet needed transparent garlic slices.