paulraphael

An interesting browning method used by Dave Arnold at the cooking issues blog is pour-over frying. Basically, you heat a buch of oil on the stove and ladle it over your sous-vided protein, which you place over some kind of rack so the oil goes away. Takes much less oil and kitchen real estate than a deep fryer, and seems like it gives a better crust and better coverage than a torch. Not super convenient, but maybe worth playing with.

here's what I've experimented with, based on a formula someone posted in another thread: -100g water -2 to 4g glucose syrup or corn syrup -0.25g baking soda a shortcut for small quantities: mix 1/4 tsp honey or glucose syrup and a small pinch of baking soda into a shotglass of water. Sauté in a medium-hot pan with butter. Pan should be hot enough to brown butter but not blacken it. The crust forms quickly, though I haven't timed it.

I probably agree with that. Those pseudo-santokus (especially the ones with the thick blades and the dimples) are just mind-bogglingly useless. I like a thin gyuto because it does so many things exceptionally well. There is nothing that a santoku (even a good one) or a nakiri can do that a gyuto can't do at least as well. The reverse isn't true. A heavy chef's knife (or medium weight cleaver) does do some things that a gyuto can't, so it's a reasonable thing to have around as well. Some of the more commited will use a deba for heavy duty things, but they have to sharpen a portion of the blade to be especially durable in order to get away with this.

e-monster asked if I'd clarify a couple of my comments. My main thought was that for large pieces of meat, it will always be easier to use a pan (or griddle or plancha or a salamander) than a torch. Torch flames are so hot that it's hard to put a crisp crust on proteins; before you can get a deep maillard layer you're likely to scorch the outermost part of the food. And the flames are so small that it's just inneficient to do a whole steak or roast. Touch-ups, sure. Scallops, fine. But a steak, I think, will always be unsatisfactory. I'm curious to know if anyone has contrary experience. I also wasn't clear about why I suggested a medium-hot pan. Generally, you'd expect a thicker layer of overcooked meat at the surface when searing on lower heat. But if you use a maillardizing wash (reducing sugar and alkali), and sear in butter, you can put a crust on the meat so quickly on medium heat that this isn't an issue. The reason to not go higher is that the butter would burn, and with the wash so would the meat surface. A blazing hot pan and refined oil are still a perfectly reasonable option, but since this thread is all about tweaking I wanted to throw that out as a possible improvement. I haven't experimented with the technique enough to know if there are drawbacks (off flavors, etc.). So far i haven't found any.

I watch the Itasan videos mostly for edu-tainment ... I don't butcher many fish, and don't even own a deba yet, so currently I fillet like a trout fisherman and not a sushi chef. I'd like to learn someday. I suspect it will take some hands-on instruction and a lot of practice, in addition to the youtube addiction. Those vegetable videos show much more approachable techniques. With a little guidance and some practice you can learn a lot from them. There must be some Japanese-trained chefs on eGullet ... I'd love to start a thread on this and get their contributions. I feel underqualified to teach this stuff beyond the most basic of the basics.

We're long overdue for a revolution in knife skills pedagogy. As far as I can tell, cooking schools are still teaching old techniques developed for fairly dull blades. I've heard that a lot of the best chefs these days have gotten the message, and have started hiring a cook or two with serious Japanese training to handle the most critical knife work (like fish and herbs). I'd love it if we had a good systematic online resource ... like the egullet knife course, but with techniques for the new millenium. Since the skills aren't widely known, the Japanese knives marketed in this country are mostly hybrid knives--higher performance than the European knives, but not as high performance as the knives people actually use in Japan (either for Eastern or Western cooking). Companies like Shun and Global know that if they sold truly thin, hard knives, people would destroy them mintutes after they took them home ... and blame the knife maker. So they make the reasonable choice, and make serious compromises in the name of durability and familiarity.

Hosting Team Note: This topic has been split off from the The knives you reach for topic in the Kitchen Consumer forum There's a void of information on Japanese cutting techniques online, with the exception of instructional fish butchering videos (Japanese fish butchery is a high craft, and there as many variations on the techniques as there are fish). There's a guy named Itasan who has a lot of content on youtube. He's a real master: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfzGe...e=channel_page http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udTHi...e=channel_page http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVFMj...e=channel_page I can point to a handful of informal videos on vegetable technique, but unfortunately not much instruction. i've had to seek out chefs with Japanese training and bug them for pointers. Here are a bunch of homemade videos by my friend KC ... he's got serious skills. Here's his chicken fabrication video (using a deba).

I used to be of the single-honkin'-german-chef's-knife-to-do-everything school. Over the last couple of years I started learning about Japanese knives and the associated sharpening and cutting techniques, and have become a convert. I still try to be a minimalist, but I use a couple more knives than I used to. The slight additional complexity is made up for by the huge improvement in results and efficiency. And fun. I like doing prep now. My #1 knife is 270mm Ikkanshi Tadatsuna Gyuto, which is the most high performance knife I've ever had in my hands. I've had to throw out virtually all my hard-won European cutting techniques in favor of much more delicate Japanese techniques, because the blade is not designed for man-handling. What it does, though is stunning: it falls through the food under its own weight, even though it weighs half as much as my German knife. It makes such clean cuts that food stays fresh longer. Sometimes hours or even days longer. This thing has gotten me to completely rethink everything about prep. A five pound pile of onions or apples doesn't seem like a chore anymore; it seems like martial arts practice. For the things that the gyuto won't do, like lopping off fish heads, chopping chocolate, and rock-chopping woody herbs, I still love my old 8" german knife (a cool Eberhard Schaaf Goldhamster, that has just been improved by Dave Martell, who ground down the bolster). This is a knife I can hand to a guest cook without too much fear of disaster. For hand work, a 3" paring knife. I have an inexpensive Japanese one by Al Mar. A lot of chefs like the $5 Forschners. I cut a lot of bread, so my 270mm Mac bread knife is a godsend. The gyuto does fine on soft bread, but if there's a hard or brittle crust, I grab the mac. Meat slicing: a 270mm kikuichi carbon steel sujihiki (basically the japanese version of a western slicing knife). This is cool, but I'd survive without it. Boning/utility: a 6: Forschner with wood handle. Cheap, perfect. For sandwiches, trimming meat, attacking packages. Soft steel, but easy to whack back into shape. And! I recently got a $10 cleaver from chinatown. Literally $9.95. Medium weight. I got it because even my chef's knife turned out to be no match for the neck bones of an 18 lb turkey. I thought it would be nice to have a heavy, cheap blade for any food that I really need to get medieval on.

I try to have the flavors balanced by the time the food goes on the plate. I'm not interested in correcting or enhancing anything at this point, because I can't taste it. The plating is about presentation, which is both esthetic and practical ... making the food like pretty / interesting / inviting, and making it easy to eat in a way that combines the flavors according your intent. I have less natural aptitude for plating than probably anyone here, so I'm not going to lecture on techniques. But I generally think the final elevation comes from thoughtful arrangement of what you have, rather than the addition of some kind of secret sauce. And I hope the trend of splashing dry spices on the edge of the plate ("BAM!") has been burried deeply.

ha ... I don't take the temp on the water either. I have one of those Japanese water heating gizmos (because I'm a compulsive tea drinker) and it's set to 203 ... that's basically what I have on tap. My scale is always on the counter, so for me weighing is the easiest way to measure anything. Ok, saving my pennies for another trip to the Ace.

I don't like eggs. I do like reheated pasta and reheated coffee. Cliff bars are a major part of my diet.

I think you'll get better and more even results in a pan. One approach would be a very hot pan with refined oil. I'd suggest trying a medium hot pan in butter, after brushing on weak solution of a reducing sugar and baking soda on the meat. This will give you a very well browned crust quickly, without charring, and without any of that intrusion of well done meat you can see in the top photo. Save the torch for touch-ups.

Most of the stabilizers are also texture modifiers, so they can indeed firm up your sorbet. The issue is getting just the right consistency. There are many versions of firm, and many versions of the sense of melting in your mouth. This becomes clear when you taste a weird version. Classic example of something that's overstabilized ... and of the kind of weird consistencies you'll want to avoid.

I like to use brighter, fruitier tasting vinegars for this reason. My go-to vinegar right now is made from grenache grapes and is almost sweet (though I don't think it actually has residual sugar in it). It helps avoid that heavy, vinegariness you're talking about. Another thing that helps is using it very sparingly.

The commodity butter I buy is whole foods' house brand. $2.69/lb. The cheapest at my local supermarket is much more expensive. For some things I go for the European butters or farm butters from upstate or Vermont. These cost more than double the cheap stuff.

No, what I'm calling hysteria is the tendency to read a warning about one kind of plastic, and then leap to the conclusion that all kinds of plastic are equally dangerous. And also the corresponding leap of illogic, which is to then assume that all things not made of plastic are somehow without issues. Sadly I've been encountering a lot of this. I strongly encourage everyone to research the specific plastics that they use. My original post was an effort to find resources to make this easier.

It would be a good enough reason for me ... I just got a pasta roller and it's not designed to be taken apart for thorough cleaning, and it can't be soaked in anything. Best to keep salt away from it.

I think the problem is just too little heat for the quantity of onions. All these other factors make small differences, but no matter what they're not going to brown if you stew them ... at least not before they've cooked off all their moisture and turned to mush. You just don't want to go TOO hot ... if you do they'll blacken on the outside before browning all the way through.

Kinda like a starter, but it doesn't usually substitute for the yeast. One of the English names for the technique is just "old dough." It serves like a bigga or poolish or any other kind of preferment to enhance flavor. Dough that's been kept around for a long time develops more flavor than fresh dough, thanks to enzyme action in the flour.

Thanks Daisy, I'm using a burr grinder (barazza maestro) and french press. I weigh my beans (generally 80g beans for 1400ml water with a medium roast). Filtered water 203°F, 4 minutes brewing. The Guatemalan you mentioned is another of the staff picks. So was the Ethiopia Yirgacheffe Grade 2 (is that worse than grade 1? better?). I'll try one of these next time. Interesting about the seasonality ... I hadn't considered that. Maybe I'll start with africa.

The "third wave" coffee revolution of the 1990s has recently found its way to New York, and among other lofty participants, Stumptown is roasting their own here. I had a pretty convincing blind tasting when I ordered coffee at the brick oven pizza joint that recently opened in a semi-legal industrial shack in my neighborhood deep in brooklyn. One sip into it, I hollered for the waitress to come back. "What IS this?" ... It was the best cup of joe I'd had in years. Stumptown, of course. I forgot to ask what variety. So I finally made my way to their stylized storefront in the lobby of the Ace Hotel, and after reading all the flowery descriptions and then getting advice from the staff, chose their one Indonesian coffee. What can I say? It was lousy. I'd asked for something full bodied, earthy, and spicy (I'm generally a sumatra fan). What I got was thin and spicy and metallic. Nibbling on the beans gave the same flavor profile, so I don't think it's anything I'm doing in the brewing. Anyone have a favorite stumptown variety? I'm especially interested in the big body, spicy, earthy kind of flavor profile.

I use britta-filtered NYC tap water. The filter makes a difference, primarily because the water hear has noticeable amounts of chlorine in it. Sometimes in the summer, they put in gobbs of chlorine (like when they detect cryptosporidium, or other such things) ... then the water makes ghastly coffee and tea. In general the water here is quite good, besides that, and a humble britta removes enough to make it undetectable. Some people in the city have nasty pipes ... their water tastes strongly of rust and other minerals. Brittas work well for them, too. I would not trust a britta if I thought there was anything actually hazardous in the water. It's not purifier ... not even close. Boiled water tastes bad because most of the disolved air has been driven out. You can make it fresh again just by shaking it up. Try a side-by-side test. It's pretty cool.

I wouldn't say you did anything 'wrong,' but by messing with more than one variable at a time you made it a lot harder to figure out what did what!

The 3000 has the same flame shape as the other torches I've used: narrow. The shape is helpful for touching things up, and a pain for browning large areas. If anything the flame is too hot. It's tricky to brown food without scorching the surface texture. I'd love a torch with about half the BTUs, and a flame that can adjust from narrow to wide. In practice the 3000 is fine for the way I use it, though i can imagine a more perfect torch finding more uses in my kitchen.

Seems like it would be a smaller issue, but there's no way to know for sure without testing. Some of the tests of other kinds of can linings gave results that surprised the manufacturers. I'd assume that a small piece of material makes less difference than a big one, and a lid makes less difference than the walls ... but those are just assumptions.