paulraphael

good god! seriously!

There are classic complementary flavors like browned onions or shallots, possibly prepared wth some red wine, or anything with mushrooms: sautéed wild mushrooms in any form are delicious. I often serve something green. In this capacity I like something that isn't too assertive with flavor but that has a nice texture. Baby bok choy is a favorite. For starches I like things that can be plated away from the meat ... i don't want it interfering with any sauce. all the usual potato suspects are fine, but i've becom a sucker for purées based on celeriac.

I saw a cool jar opener that mounted on the bottom of a cabinet. It was basically a kind of cam-like jaw that would grab the lid when you twisted against it. you could twist the jar with both hands ... the thing itself was low profile and completely out of the way when you didn't need it. For cutting, a long chef's knife (at least 8 inches), well sharpened, will let you cut things with very little force or wrist motion. Way easier than gizmos for tasks.

A couple of thoughts: first, the problems of too sweet and too soft take care of each other: use less sugar. second, since alcohol is antifreeze, you can reduce the amount of gin a bit, and then enhance the gin flavor by adding juniper in some other form (make your own infusion ... this would be a cool project). with sorbets, more water tends to give a harder texture. it also gives more iciness. a stabilizer like zanthan gum or locust bean gum will greatly reduce iciness and improve creaminess (they work in tiny quantities). Is all your sugar coming from the tonic? If so, one solution would be to mix in some sugar free tonic (but I think artificial sweeteners are gross, so that would be low on the list). Better would be a mix of tonic and water, and add your own quinine to increase tonic flavor. I don't know where to get quinine, but that would be a cool project too. I'd also be inclined to look up classic tonic recipes online ... it's possible that they were even more interesting once upon a time.

I love whisky and I love chocolate ... skeptical that any of the nuance of the whisky would hold up. possibly a very aggressive, smoky, island malt would come through. never the less, i'd be more inclined to try this with a simpler, spicier, more robust (and cheaper!) bourbon. and yes, water ganache is absolutely the way to do it. you don't want dairy in there adding more layers over the booze.

I make the same glop ... 10% wax by weight works great. I also find parafin works just as well as beeswax. I've been going back and forth and can't tell the difference in practice. End grain boards drink a LOT of oil/wax. Mine needed to be oiled daily for a week or so, a few times a week for many weeks after. Finally it stabilized; now I oil it once a month at most. Be sure to oil it on both sides, especially in the beginning, so you don't encourage it to warp. Dave at Boardsmith makes the nicest boards I've seen or used.

It's just an easy way to season the pan juices if you're going to make a quick pan sauce. If you're not, then it's pretty pointless.

Since the OP is about browning after sous vide, I'll add that I like torches for touch ups and for for putting caramel crusts on desserts, but I don't think they're all that great as a sole source of browning on meat. It's hard to get a crisp crust, and hard to do an even job. For sous vided steak, I'd consider browning in a pan with butter (I like butter on a steak; if you don't you can use a neutral oil). For quick results with minimum risk of adding an overcooked veneer of meat, you can try doing it on medium heat after brushing with a malliard-enhancing wash (water with 2-4% glucose syrup, and 1/4% or so baking soda). Meat will brown beautifully and form a crisp crust very quickly. I have a friend who swears by browning sous-vided steak in the deep fryer, but I haven't tried this. He said he once browned and plated perfect steaks for 50 people in ten minutes using this method.

I haven't gotten off flavors from propane, but it's possible to get them. The culprit is unburned propane. It may have to do with the torch or the adjustment of it, or as David suggests, by holding the flame too close. If you get any torch, make sure it has a pressure regulator. The bernzomatic 3000 linked above is one of the cheapest models that has one. Without a regulator, as the gas bottle gets about half empty, the fire will blow out every time you tilt the torch. And almost everything you do in the kitchen requires tilting the torch. If you get an unregulated head to save money, you'll end up with a collection of half empty bottles. There are professional models that cost more than that one, but their main claim is that they burn hotter. I think all these torches are more than hot enough ... the challenge with them is to brown and crisp skin without scorching the surface. I'd pay more for a slightly less powerful torch, personally. I'm happy with my propane plumber's torch for now. I'll consider replacing it with butane if I start tasting propane.

Of everything mentioned, the one that seems universally silly to buy is salad dressing. I'm kind of amazed bottled dressings exist.

I am a veteran of many butter explosions. I suspect the answer is simple ... for various reasons microwaves heat things unevenly (some related to the oven, others related to the food). all it takes is for some of the water in the butter to start simmering while it's still surrounded by solid butter. Luckily, of all things I've blown up in the microwave, butter is one of the easiest to clean up. Warming the butter first helps. So does nuking on a lower setting. My favorite solution is melting it in a saucepan.

I think the amount of moisture pulled out by salt can be relevent in some respects ... it's certainly enough to make it harder to brown the meat if it stays on the surface. And it might be enough to creaet brine that can then get reabsorbed. But I don't believe that it's enough to lead to the meat drying out perceptibly (if, for example, the moisture gets drawn out by the salt and then wiped off). I'm basing this assumption on tests done by food scientists.

Tests done by Hervé This found that the amount of moisture drawn out of meat by salting was so minimal relative to the total water weight that you'd probably never know the difference either way. If you leave something uncovered in the fridge overnight, you'll lose lots of moisture to evaporation. In many cases this is a good thing ... like if it's meat that's been processed with water or that has water added. One of the advantages of dry aging, for example, is concentrated flavors from evaporation.

Yeah, I love winter salsas ... not sure if this is traditional, but I've made them with roasted tomatoes, roasted bell peppers, onions, and smoked dried chilies (chipotles, guajillos, ets.). So tasty. Very different from fresh salsa but I think just as good.

I have looked at the industrial approaches. The trouble is that their goals and constraints are different. For example, in the interests of economy, they often take advantage of superaditive effects of different gums. This is the phenomenon by which a combination of two gums will have an effect that's greater than the sum of the individual effects. Great for them, when they're manufacturing by the ton, but annoying for me, when it means I'll have to measure in hundredths of a gram instead of tenths. The industrial guys also have use of their industrial mixing and manufacturing methods. I'm looking for something that's easy to use spontaneously ... ideally like a slurry you can throw together and whisk into the sauce. Xanthan is harder to use than purified starches, but it's within the realm of reason.

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.