paulraphael

Considering it won't work at low concentrations like gums, and has a significant flavor of its own, inulin seems to have few benefits and a lot of detractions. I've never detected any flavor at all from arrowroot. I'd be curious to know if anyone could distinguish it in a blind test. One of the reasons I like it more than cornstarch is its fundamental blandness. that's another one I haven't read anything about. I'll check out that article, thanks. In the end I think what I'm trying to do is pretty conventional. Considering the outrageous range of textures available with easily found starches and gums and other thickeners, there should be little reason to bound off in search of exotic solutions. Doesn't this seem like a reasonable assumption?

Update: that ganache with the triple sec was really great. Intensely flavored and delicious. I found it very easy to glaze the cake with, and I have terrible cake decorating skills. It went on smooth, and stayed glossy after being chilled in the fridge and transported through a drizzly night and then sitting out on a platter for hours. Update: I left out an ingredient. There's 30g butter stirred in at the end.

Interesting. I don't think I've come across inulin in any of the food discussions. Do you think the laxation thing could really be an issue when using any of this stuff in hydrocolloid quantities? For instance, I'm using xanthan at well under half a percent. What do you like about roux that can't be achieved with a purified starch?

I just threw this together to glaze a flourless chocolate cake (and get rid of some triple sec that I bought by mistake): 60g unsweetened chocolate 60g bittersweet chocolate 90g sweet liqueur 20g water 30g glucose syrup 5g vanilla extract 1g salt 1g gelatin -chop chocolate, set aside in a coverable bowl (steel or ceramic) -bloom gelatin in the water, add to the liqueur along with the glucose, water, and salt in a saucepan -bring liquids to a boil; pour over chocolate and cover for a few minutes -stir until smooth; stir in vanilla extract and butter Worked great! I won't learn anything about shelf life because it will be eaten tonight. And I won't get much useful feedback because the tasting panel will be blotto.

correction ... in the original post i mentioned "beurre monté" alongside roux; i meant beurre mainié (butter and flour kneaded together, whisked in at the end and left raw).

Whoda thunk that making burgers with scraps previously only approved for use in dog food, injecting with amonia, and serving to school kids could turn out to be a bad idea??

Good point about price. I'd consider experimenting with alternate sources of gelatin, but right now I get veal bones for pennies above wholesale, which makes them cheaper for me than turkey wings, hocks, etc.. I realize that in many places veal bones are marked up tremendously.

Also, the point of adding those things (or of adding pure gelatin) is getting more gelatin. I get plenty from my initial bone stock, and really don't want any more (for reasons mentioned in the original post ... I find too high a gelatin concentration unwelcome.) With chicken stock, I do find it helpful to up the gelatin a bit. Easy enough with a few chicken feet thrown in. How much flavor I'm looking for in the stock really depends on use. When I make veal stock, I'm more interested in mouth feel, savor, and (if it's a brown stock) roasted flavors. Because I'm going to use this as a base for very intensely flavored meat coulis, using different kinds of meat for different applications. The flavor goes in later, which I find works better ... you're not constantly evaporating the volatiles while trying to extract flavors and concentrate the non-volatiles. Escoffier threw so much meat into his stocks because his methods required it ... after all that simmering only a small percentage of the flavor would be left. There are much more efficient approaches.

I used roux for years; stopped using it not out of principle but because I thought other things worked better. Now I'm looking for EVEN better

I'm intrigued by your methodology, Project, but I'm not sure it's the answer to this problem. For one, it flies stratospherically over my head ... and I'm a big geek. Leaving that aside, I think if I were truly starting from scratch-- in other words, my memory wiped clean, and all the cooks and cookbooks and other resources erradicated from the earth--then this kind of approach might be truly efficient. But since we likely have centuries of accumulated experience making brown sauces right here in the egullet community, I was thinking I'd hear, "dude, try half a percent of brand X methylcellulose!" Or something like that. I don't think what I'm trying to accomplish actually requires original research. FWIW, I may have inadvertently exaggerated the amount of work I've put into this problem. I've been making brown sauces for years, but have only recently started experimenting with new ways to control texture.

Yeah, I think it's their assumption that the other kinds of cookers lose volatiles. Knowing for sure will require a much more elaborate experiment design. I'm sure they're on it!

The Cooking Issues post looks like required reading, based on the dramatic results. Pretty sure, though, that it was the Kuhn Rikon that beat the conventional stock, not the Fagor.

higher temps than whole butter, but not as high as high heat oils like refined grapeseed or safflower or canola. seems to me there's been a move among chefs to saute in refined oils and then finish with whole butter, rather than using clarified butter. but clarified butter / ghee etc. work fine if you're careful enough with the heat.

A big part of the problem is that any reasonable comparisons of grass to grain-finished beef has been hijacked by people who compare the best, utopian, idyllic free range farms with the worst, most abusive, industrial feedlot operations. It's not a fair comparison. If we're going to compare methods, than we should compare good, thoughtful implementations of each. And yes, they exist!

Sounds like you made ghee. If it tastes like ghee or beurre noisette, use just as you'd use either of those. You can also use for general sautéeing. Anything that you want to brown, and that you want to cook in butter, will work fine with brown butter. Just beware that it will still smoke at a lower temp than a refined oil.

Possibly On Food and Cooking (though not strictly a cookbook). Close second is Peterson's Sauces (though I'm starting to find it dated). In general I value cookbooks for what I'm able to absorb from them, and incorporate into my own recipes. Once I've done that, I may only refer to the original book a couple of times a year ... so in a sense I can live without all of them. Even though they might have been indispensable for what I learned from them initially.

I don't know if it makes sense to approach this based on what you happen to cook now. Everyone I know who's started cooking sous vide has found that it's transformed their approach to cooking ... they do things now that they'd never considered before the gizmos showed up.

Thanks for all the tips! I'll consult with my hosts/diners/chauffeurs and get a vote. And if we give up, i'll look forward to family xmas at the indian joint and the strip club.

ack! that farmers market won't be open til my last day here and anapolis is way too far. any good food in dc proper during the week?

I've spent years working on various forms of glace, jus, coulis, and the brown sauces made from them. My control over texture gets better all the time, but perfection is elusive. One thing I've figured out is that every liaison, traditional or modern, had good qualities and bad. The bad ones assert themselves when the quantities go up. Examples: Reduced Gelatin: gets gluey; overthickens and gets especially sticky if allowed to cool on the plate Roux / Beurre Monte: gets pasty, opaque, and masks flavors Purified Starches (corn, arrowroot, tapioca, etc.): can get disconcertingly shiny and slick. Xanthan Gum: thixotropic texture makes sauce behave oddly on plate; reckless overuse creates snot. My solution has been to mix them; this allows you to get the benefits of different ones while keeping the concentration low enough that the drawbacks aren't assertive. Lately I've been using a combination of natural gelatin and xanthan gum. It's almost great. The ability to coat food is lovely, and the mouthfeel and flavor release are good as I can ask for. The xanthan even creates an illusion of richness, which lets me keep dairy enrichers (cream, butter) out of the sauces. I like this not out of abstemiousness, but because dairy fat tends to mute flavors. Unfortunately, one of xanthan's star qualities--its higher viscosity while at rest than while in motion (thixotropism)--weirds me out a little. It makes sauces appear gelatinous on the plate, even though they don't feel that way in the mouth. I'm finding myself wanting less of this. I'm considering a couple of paths: -Go to a mix of natural gelatin, xanthan, AND arrowroot. In doing so use less xanthan, get less jiggle -Try a different gum altogether. I'm intrigued by some form of methylcellulose; its tendency to thicken at high temps and thin at low ones exactly counterbalances the qualities of gelatin, and may make a perfect match. I don't know which kind to try (there are dozens), don't know what it will be like, and don't know if it will be too hard to work with (I'm not up for bringing out the blender every time I need to thicken a sauce). I'm open to other suggestions. I have a strong preference for individual ingredients rather than blends ... I don't want to become dependent on one companies proprietary recipe. Thoughts?

Good point about MSG and leavening. Though I wonder if either of these ever contributes a substantial portion of the sodium. What kinds of concentrations do you see with MSG?

Pictures!

I'm staying in DC for the holidays and will be drafted into cooking something. Any recommendations on meat or seafood sources not near the cathedral / Cleveland park? I am geographically challenged here and don't know A street from Z street, but can probably manage reasonable trips with google maps help. Have been to both the Whole Foods near here and find the contents a bit depressing.

I've never experienced that ... but there aren't any soups that I eat both cold and hot, so I don't know. I'm thinking of coldcuts ... garde manger stuff. Everything that was seasoned to perfection for serving hot needs a bunch more seasoning (especially salt) when it's recycled for cold consumption. And then you really don't want to serve it hot again.

Foods eaten cold just need more seasoning because our perception is duller at low temps. Heat up well seasoned cold cuts and they'll be overseasoned.