paulraphael

It's worth getting used to, if you insist on steeling. You'll be able to hold a more consistent angle, and apply more consistent pressure. When you hold the steel pointed out into space, it's moving all over the place, because you're not a robot.

For the most control with a rod, plant the tip vertically on the cutting board with one hand and very gently arc the knife downward on each side. The tv-chef methods are mostly good for frightening Bugs Bunny when he's tied up in your cauldron.

In today's wirecutter: recommended nonalcoholic cocktail fixins.

I was thinking of of big commercial griddles, or the similar ones built into fancier consumer ranges. But if the technology could scale down, I'd welcome it in a stovetop version. I recently bought 3/16" thick 2-burner stovetop griddle. It's about a 20 lb slab of steel that's lots of fun to cook on, but it doesn't actually conduct heat very evenly. Between its huge size and relatively week conduction of steel, you can't use the whole surface for things like pancakes. I probably wouldn't pay $250. Unless it were an upcharge on a $7,000 range, which would make that kind of money seem cheap.

I suspect this is helping remove the burrs you raise on the stones. But it's a very aggressive way to do so, and it may be undoing some of your progress. If you stick with the rod, I'd suggest using the lightest possible pressure ... less than the weight of the knife. There are also gentle techniques you can use with the stone itself, or with a piece of hard felt, or even with a wine cork or scrap of wood.

Thanks Duvel. I think we'll try this first. We were going to try medium-grain, but she tells me the restaurant's rice looks short grain like ours. And your solution is easy and free.

I bet you won't find anyone using a honing steel on a straight razor (at least not more than once!) But stropping straight razors is pretty standard. Traditionally people would use unloaded leather, which I think mostly served to remove burrs. Now people also use leather as a medium for very fine abrasives, as a final stage of sharpening. You can get powdered diamond or boron that's the equivalent of 20,000 or higher grit stone. This lets you put a very refined and polished edge on a razor, with some ability to deburr, and without as much need for precision as you need on a hard stone. I found this works less well on knives. For years I used a leather strop loaded with 0.5 micron chrome or diamond abrasive for finishing and touching up my gyuto. Then Jon Broida at Japanese Knife Imports convinced me to stop doing this. I went to him looking for a new knife because my Tadatsuna gyuto dulled too quickly. He said the problem wasn't the knife; it was me. And the OCD sharpening techniques I learned from the internet. He wanted to sell me a new finishing stone, not a new knife—a 6000 grit japanese stone to replace my 10,000 grit one and the strop. And he was right. My edges don't feel as much like a straight razor anymore (because I'm not sharpening them like one) but they perform great and hold on to that performance for days instead of hours. That super-polished straight razor-like edge was amazing for about 20 minutes. But for whatever reason it didn't last. The slightly lower grit edge doesn't push-cut quite as well right off the stones, but actually slices better. It slips through things like the skin of a soft, ripe tomato even after several days of use. I sold my years-old 10K stone to someone for the same price Jon sold me the new one. Probably to someone who's serious about shaving! The only thing I miss is that the strop was pretty convenient for touch-ups. But using the stone for touch-ups isn't too bad. Jon got me to try microbevels, which are very fast to create and touch up. It's more of a hassle than honing a European knife, but I only have to do it every couple of weeks, and that's if I'm cooking every day.

My partner loves this stuff, but has declared that what we get from the cheap local Chinese restaurant is better than what we make. We get the stuff from the bulk bin at the local food coop. Type unknown. Cooked on autopilot by Zojirushi. She says the Restaurant rice is chewier, heartier, less mushy. Should we be looking for a specific variety of rice? Maybe from an Asian specialty market? Recommendations?

That would be brilliant. And I should have added the obvious ... no need to stick with pears. Peaches, apples. Any fruit that won't fall apart.

I don't have one favorite, but this is high on the list. I love that it's so simple and imprecise (unlike some of the concoctions I get into). It's a James Peterson idea. Roasted Pears -Peal, halve, and core some pears -Put them on a skillet or roasting pan. Sprinkle with sugar and throw some pats of butter on top. -Cook in a 400° oven til they're soft and the sugar starts browning -Plate the pears. Put the pan on the stove and deglaze with some cream. Throw in some cognac or Poire William if you're feeling sassy. Reduce a bit. Strain if you're feeling fancy. Sauce the pears and serve. Not as simple as Mitch's strawberries and cream, but I promise you can pull this off even if you're nearly too drunk to walk. It's always good.

A griddle would seem like the killer app for this, if there was a fluid that could work at the range of temperatures you'd need. Even with commercial power, it's hard to get a griddle to heat evenly and to have quick temperature recovery.

This is what we were all taught, but it's not true. In practice, knife edges don't typically roll over in a way that can be straightened. Techniques like stropping and honing just remove damaged metal and create a new bevel (typically a microbevel). Using a steel does essentially the same thing as using a pretty coarse stone, but without much precision. We usually use a steel at an obtuse angle, so the result is a fairly rough microbevel. If you have a polished smooth steel, you can get results that are more like microbeveling with a finer stone. Here's an interesting 2-part explanation by a guy with an electron microscope. This kind of edge can be useful. I like it on my big German chef's knife and Forschner utility knife. And I love how quick and easy it is. I think I had to put those knives on the stones once or twice in 15 years ... steeling just does the job. My thinner bladed Japanese knives don't go anywhere near a steel. There'd no way to use it to get the kind of refined edge I want. But more importantly, those are sharpened to such acute bevel angles that honing would just shred them. You can't put that kind of lateral pressure on an edge when you've got 7° to 10° angles.

Dave A. is buddies with the Anova folks. Their lead product designer has been a guest on his podcast.

Great prices at this place. Thanks for the tip!

Last few batches I've bought have been terrible. I don't even know how to describe the flavor. Any thoughts on where to get good ones? I admit I've been looking for bargains, and trusting online reviews. Lesson learned.

It doesn't explain it, because what's at issue here is when the sugar is added. There's the same amount of sugar in the solution whether you add it first to the eggs or to the milk and cream. We'd need a hypothesis that a high concentration of sugar added directly to the yolks causes some kind of change that later makes them coagulate at a higher temperature, even at the same final sugar concentration. I can't find anything in the scientific literature that talks about this. Edited to add: it would make sense that this would help if you're adding eggs to hot liquid. But if it helps when you add them to cold liquid and then bring the whole mix up to temperature, I don't know what would be going on. I'm a bit skeptical.

Many cooks have learned on something like a King combination stone. You'll probably never need anything better. You may someday want something better. By the time you wear this thing out, you'll have opinions about what you like and don't like. It's under $50. (eG-friendly Amazon.com link)

And if the user is Haagen Dazs, there's a whole lot of proprietary technology and precise protein denaturing in the methodology. Their homey ingredients label belies the science behind it.

I use egg yolks often. Just never more than a couple of yolks per kg of mix. I don't ever want to taste the eggs. I'm interested in why combining with the sugar first would have an effect on curdling. Do you know the science here? It doesn't come up for me because I never cook my mix hot enough for that to be an issue (and the lower the ratio of yolks, the higher that temperature is).

This is one of those areas where there's crossover between something being a tool and being an art object. The thing's value as a tool has no bearing on its art value. A fancy knife doesn't even have to be a good knife (although I understand that Kramer's are pretty good). The value of art objects is influenced by rarity and by some agreed-upon standards of craft, but the rest is pure subjectivity and the whims of the market. Consider how much people spend on handmade, mechanical watches. You can get a more accurate timepiece for $20, but this has nothing to do with the allure.

Why not just add the yolks and everything else to the cold liquid? I haven't tempered an egg yolk in years.

When we get ice cream at our neighborhood grocery store, it's often scarred by neglect. That last stop in the retail chain seems to be especially brutal. We usually get better quality if we walk a few blocks to a store where they care more. I don't know if there's a consistent difference between brands and distributors around here, but the store makes a difference. Re: 14oz. I'll quibble. And I know it's the Haagen Dazs. A cowardly act of shrinkflation.

A factory's biggest hardware advantages are a homogenizer and a blast freezer (or the continuous process version of a blast freezer). And ice cream machines that freeze the mix quickly—typically under 5 minutes. You'll never have anything as good as an industrial high-pressure homogenizer at home. But you can do a surprisingly good job with a vitamix. Some eGullet members have gone as far as getting a rotor-stator homogenizer, which is even better. Not as good as the industrial equivalent, but more than good enough. You could get a blast freezer, or concoct the equivalent. I find that just by freezing ice cream in small batches, like takeout pint containers, and keeping my freezer very cold (around -20C) ice crystals stay small. When you don't have the advantages of industrial equipment, more of the burden falls on your formula. This includes having enough solids, the right freezing point depression, and effective stabilization and emulsification (which can come from eggs or a range of other ingredients). Your expectations are also important. If you eat homemade ice cream right out of the machine, like soft-serve, you can get away with just about anything. If you want to harden it and keep it around for a few days, you'll have more details to work out.

It's just the name of my culinary project. Was once an underground restaurant.

It's easier to get great flavor in homemade ice cream. It's easier to get great texture in factory-made ice cream. If you have some skill (as gfweb says) and dedication, you can get whatever flavor and texture you want at home, making it the best of all worlds. But ice cream is a very technical product. You'll have to do your homework. Re: books ... I wrote a comparative review of several, biased strongly toward readers willing to jump through some hoops for quality.