paulraphael

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.

Well, in most cases we're talking about canned, frozen, or dehydrated products, so shelf life doesn't come from the salt. And I don't think it's weight. Even the saltiest of foods are only a few percent salt by weight. The weight comes from water. Luckily no ... that's 38% your recommended daily allowance. Still it's a lot! Salt, and mystery protein, but mostly water. Lots of lower end deli meats are pumped full of some variety of brine ... it raises the weight for cheap, and gives a vague illusion of juiciness. If you ever see something labelled "ham and water product," it means they've exceded the legal added water limits of plain ham.

Yup. And I suspect that what you're calling "interesting ingredients" companies like Campbells and Swanson call "expensive ingredients."

Maybe in some homes, but I think a lot of these commercial foods are just oversalted, plain and simple. Part of it is that people who eat a lot of fast food and packaged food get desensitized and think it tastes normal. But the root cause, I suspect, is that salt is cheap, and an abundance of it helps distract from the lack of other flavors. Case in point is commercially packaged stock. Even the "low sodium" varieties have a ton of salt (consider that the optimum amount of salt in stock is none). Before i made my own stock I tried several brands to see if any could be used to make reduction sauces. The answer was no; all resulted in brine. I would use the better low sodium stocks as a partial foundation for soups; the regular stocks I find inedible. And for what it's worth, I feel that I use a lot of salt in my cooking. I don't even think I make any desserts without salt.

We've talked more about materials than shapes. Seems like there are two basic styles: tall and narrow, low and wide. I generally like the tall/narrow ones, which resemble electric mixer bowls. You can whisk more vigorously without food ending up on the walls, and they take up less counter space. But I've seen more of the low/wide ones in commercial kitchens. Thoughts?

I have a bunch of commercial sheet pans bought used from resto stores ... they've been practically demolished by dishwasher detergent, but the damage is esthetic. I use them all the time. I've cleaned them with barkeeper's friend and have no problem with residue coming off on food or anything else. The oxalic acid probably reverses the oxidation just like cream of tartar.

Especially since (to co-opt scientific jargon) several people here have been unable to duplicate their results. Not that anyone here has tried to replicate the exact conditions of their experiment--but considering that their intent was to simulate real world burger-making conditions, and their conclusion was presented as universally true--then we can trust there's something seriously wrong with their methods.

A couple of years ago I saved myself from the insane assylum by doing this. I now use three sizes of those glad or ziplock containers (cheap, decent, and easy to replace) and two sizes of takeout containers (cheaper, equally decent, easier to replace). In addition to storage, these \ all work as prep containers. For bigger quantities i use stainless mixing bowls, but the plastic containers do most of the work. Looking into kitchens at some of the best restaurants, a common denominator is the ubiquitous pint and quart takeout containers used for mise en place. Footnote: I tried to give my old tupperware to the salvation army, and the volunteer out on the sidewalk said, "they won't accept this garbage."

If you don't work for the person and don't happen to respect them, you're free to leave it off. I think it was Oscar Wilde who said, "a gentleman is someone who never insults anybody ... by mistake."

That explains it. I generally roast waxier potatoes. And I get the soft/crisp thing just by using a very hot oven.

Well, they're not even acknowledging the myriad variables they haven't controlled. People throw around words like "scientific" without understanding what the word means. It's more than observation. At the very least, a scientific approach to this experiment would require them, in their analysis, to discuss all the limitations of their approach, and all the variables they were unable to consider. By failing to do that, and by coming to an absolute and simplistic conclusion ("salting before grinding makes sausage!") they've done junk science.