paulraphael

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.

Leaving aside playground taunts against the most thorough culinary research project ever ... Their takeaway, which is scientifically credible, is that braising produces different flavors from stewing. And modern uncovered braising techniques are essentially stewing. Which flavors you prefer are up to you. The interesting part is understanding the differences.

The Modernist Cuisine guys have written some interesting analysis of this. TL;DR: lots of people braise with the lid off these days, which basically conflates braising and stewing. And yes, the results will be different from a traditional braise (in their opinion not often for the better): Sealing the pot with a lid is crucial for several reasons. First, radiant energy from the lid browns the top and sides of the meat. This process gives the meat an appealing color and creates Maillard flavor compounds that dissolve in the juices below. Without a lid, those aromatic chemicals escape in the air. Although their loss makes your kitchen smell wonderful, it deprives the sauce of some of its best aromas and flavors! Second, the lid keeps the air in the pot humid. As a result, the food heats faster and dries out less. Third, high humidity helps to dissolve chewy collagen and to convert it to succulent gelatin. The gelatinizing process is critical for tenderizing tough, collagen-rich cuts of meat-the so-called "braising cuts." ... Simply adding more liquid to cover the food is no substitute for covering the pot. Although the extra liquid prevents the meat from drying out, it fundamentally changes pot-roasting into a process more akin to stewing. ... One of the more common forms of failure in braising is meat that turns out less tender and succulent than hoped. Evaporation is again usually the culprit here. Most meats contain more than enough water to dissolve the tough collagen inside them into tender, succulent gelatin. If too much of that natural liquid wicks to the surface and vaporizes, however, the meat dries out, and less of the collagen dissolves. To avoid such disappointing results, cooks tend to overcompensate by adding so much liquid to the braising pot that the meat is all but submerged. Drowning the meat certainly solves the collagen problem, but it also transforms braising into stewing. To be clear: stews can be delicious. But stewed foods taste nothing like braised foods. The reason the two techniques produce such a large difference in flavors is that the pool ofliquid surrounding a stew shunts the flavor-generating reactions in a different direction than the bit ofliquid used for braising does. A different set of aromas prevails as a result.

You can use any flour for anything, if know what's going on and you know how to compensate for it. You can make hearty bread with cake flour if you mix in an extra high-protein flour, or just add gluten as a dough strengthener. You can make cake with pizza flour if you mix in some cornstarch. Useful approaches if you don't have the right flour available. I'd consider bread flour for pancakes to be a problem that needed some compensation.

I hadn't even thought of it as part of this conversation, but yeah, a splash of almost any fruit juice in seltzer makes a perfect summer drink. The day I discovered that I stopped buying soft drinks forever.

I just stow them on the back of my chef chair.

I like 4lbs. A good size for roasting or for hearty soup / stew to fill a 7qt Dutch oven. My favorite has been the Bobo Poultry black plume Euro-style chicken. I don't have a convenient source for these right now so usually get decent quality supermarket chicken (Murray's, Bell & Evans, D'artagnan etc.). These are the same breed as all the other supermarket birds but seem better raised. I'd love to try the Sasso bird Mitch linked. Do you order those? Are they available retail anywhere in the city?

I'd think there'd be a lot of attention in this space ... not just "mocktails," but whole new creations built around the flavors of delicious ingredients. No need to try to simulate the flavor of booze. I gather this is what soda fountains were about back in the day. Modern things like coke and root beer are probably sad industrial incarnations of things people used to craft with infusions and fresh-squeezed juices and who knows what else. I hope this tuns into a whole new culinary category and not just the sad-sack options for people who can't imbibe.

Sort of, but the water absorption of higher protein flours comes into play even before you create any gluten. Or even if you don't create gluten. Gluten is a post-hydration product of proteins called gliadins and glutenins, which themselves only make up between half and 2/3 of the total protein content of the flour. But all of the proteins increase the water absorption of the flour. Personally, I'd avoid bread flour for pancakes. I can imagine it's possible to make good ones with it, but it's more likely that you'll make worse ones. Generally with a pancake, you're trying to activate very little of the potential gluten network. A lower protein flour will improve your chances of success. It's why some crepe recipes suggest a combination of AP flour and corn flour—it drops the protein level even lower, so you can get away with mixing in a blender. If you use bread flour, you should absolutely have to change your technique—not just more liquid, but also very gentle mixing. And you shouldn't expect any advantages.

Are you suggesting that great lazy minds think alike?

You just have to do it by feel. Once you figure it out, you can go by measurement if you always use the same flour ... at least if it's a consistent brand like KA. If you switch from bread flour to AP you'll need to reduce the liquid quite a bit. The higher protein content of bread flour soaks up much more water.

Yeah, a Western deba will absolutely handle any of the rough stuff. But they cost real knife money. The advantage of big dumb cleavers (truly the only advantage) is they're practically free. My main uses are beheading poultry (see above) and breaking open Kabocha squash. Which feels more like splitting wood than prepping food. Even my super thin Mac bread knife (also known as the watermelon sword) just wedges in those things.

I have a couple of big dumb cleavers. One is a $5 hunk of sheetmetal from Chinatown, the other a hand-me-down. I use them to cut anything that would be a bit too abusive for my biggest dumbest chef's knife. I learned my lesson when chopping through the neck bone of 20lb turkey many years ago. My German knife went straight in the mail to Dave Martell for repairs. For me the trouble with big cleavers is you need an appropriate cutting board—one you don't mind getting hacked up. That's one more big dumb thing to store, and it takes up more room than the cleaver.

Anyone had a chance to compare the Rationals to the high end consumer combi ovens (like Gaggenau)?

All else equal, buttermilk will make a fluffier, more delicate pancake. Because it's thicker than milk, so you can get a the same consistency with less flour. But it's not necessary. I think the basic tricks are 1) make the batter thick enough. It shouldn't flatten out and spread too much when it hits the pan. 2) make sure your leavening is ok. Baking powder expires. It may lose oomph even before it hits the expiry date. I use about 3g baking powder / 100g flour. That's about 1/2 tsp per cup. This is for non-buttermilk. If the baking powder seems dubious, use more. Edited to add: another common way to add fluff is to separate half or even all the eggs, and just mix the batter with the yolks. Whip the whites (generally to very soft peaks) and fold them in at the end. I used to do this fairly often but decided it wasn't worth it most of the time. There were easier ways to fluff things up.