paulraphael

I like this trick and use it in some recipes. In a couple of cases when I've used too high a proportion of the dry milk the results tasted bitter, so I try not to go too far. Another approach is one Michael Laiskonis uses ... he reduces and browns cream instead of butter. It's a bit more effort, but the yield in milk solids vs. fat is much higher

I'd be curious to know what the fastest boil would be with 120 volt hob. Theoretically, you could run a 2.4 kilowat unit, if anyone made one, and if nothing else was on the circuit. If the thing is actually 90% efficient, and you don't lose significant amounts of heat to the air (big, useless Ifs, I realize ... ) you could theoretically boil 15 gallons of water in 15 minutes. Who are you feeding?

A comment on Tri2cook's list ... all these ingredients have unique properties, as far as how they behave at different temperatures, the exact nature of the textures they produce, and their interdependencies with other ingredients. There may be two that are equally viable as an ice cream thickener/stabilizer, but you'll much prefer the results with one of them. Also, some that are listed as excellent combinations are considered so because they're hyperadditive ... meaning that in combination they're more efficient than either one used alone. When you're making ice cream in small quantities, this can be a double edged sword, since most of these gums work in minute amounts anyhow. I'm ok with measuring 0.3 grams of something, but if I have to start measuring 0.03 grams, I'll be annoyed (and I'll be saving up for a new scale).

Michael Laiskonis's blog is a treasure trove. He knows more about ice cream than anyone else I've encountered. The Alinea book also has some well-studied recipes and approaches. There's a French book that's supposed to be the holy grail of high end ice cream, but its price has so far put it out of my reach. Unfortunately, most pastry chefs seem to buy pre-blended stabilizer mixes. Undoubtedly the blends include well tested mixes of gums and other colloids. But I don't like the approach. It's like buying curry powder instead of mixing your own spices. It puts you at the mercy of a company's whims (what if they change the formula?) and it cheats you out of any opportunity to learn about the individual ingredients. I've been working it out on my own ... starting with basic home recipes like David Lebovitz's, and gradually tweaking them, with knowledge picked up here and there, to improve the flavor and texture. So far I've gotten pretty comfortable manipulating cornstarch, xanthan, and gelatin. I hope to get my hands on some other potions eventually. I doubt anything out there will magically create textures that I like more than what i get now, but some may well do a better job preventing ice crystal growth, or graininess with brown butter flavors, etc. etc.

Sure! But there's no reason to do so. And cornstarch will break down gradually with extended simmering. I'm curious about this too, but Ice cream isn't the best place to test the concept. You want the milk to taste fresh, not cooked, so it's best to heat it as little as possible.

Opinions aren't all created equal, and the opinionated pastry chef just doesn't know what he's talking about. Cornstarch is a refined starch. It doesn't need to be boiled ... in fact boiling will break it down. It does need to be set with heat, but this happens somewhere around 140 or 150 degrees F--lower than than the thickening temperature of egg custard.

In general I find whole chocolate (when it's good) to have more interesting and more complex flavors than even the best cocoa powder. But cocoa can provide greater intensity. For baking, I think cocoa powders lower in fat offer the most flexibility; they make it easy to mix whole chocolate, cocoa powder, and alternative fats (like butter) to fine tune the flavor, intensity, and mouthfeel. I have not tasted cocoa powder-based cakes or brownies that are as good as chocolate-based ones. But I often use SOME cocoa powder in my recipes for the flexibility it offers. In my brownie recipe, the cocoa also acts as a drying ingredient ... it works alongside the flour to help hold the things together.

In my experience, to get a crackly top conventionally takes a higher sugar content than what I want. I like dark, dark, bittersweet chocolate! There's a simple solution. Hold back a little bit of sugar from the recipe, and sprinkle it on top before baking. I know it sounds too simple to work, but it does.

Amazing. Have you considered putting some kind of pan on the ground instead of foil, to catch drippings? I always felt that roasting was great advance over grilling (which presumeably was invented by cave men) because it allowed you to catch the drippings. I don't know exactly what the traditional arrangement looked like, but I think it involved a pan sitting on top of embers.

Since the idea was to get as much dark chocolate into the brownies as possible (without them falling apart), "heart of darkness" seemed like a fitting name. I also happen to like Joseph Conrad... Later I found out that some cookbook author was using the same name for a completely different brownie recipe (not much chocolate; tons of candy and stuff in the batter. The horror! The horror!)

Along with xanthan, my recipe includes gelatin and nonfat dry milk, which all like to clump. By mixing them together thoroughly with the sugar, like you said, the problem disappears.

I used to use cornstarch in combination with gelatin and egg custard. Traditional custard bases give great texture, but I don't want to taste egg in my ice cream. So I drop the egg content down until it's too little to intrude ... 2 or 3 yolks per quart of ice cream, depending on the flavor. This is anywhere from half to a fifth the yolks you'll see in French ice cream, so the reduced thickening and stabilizing will need to be made up somehow. Gelatin is phenomenal in ice cream because it gives a body-temperature melt similar to butterfat. Cornstarch works well in combination with gelatin because it maintains thickness in the melted ice cream in your mouth ... gelatin by itself will leave you with a somewhat milky/watery feel in your mouth. Cornstarch makes the melt creamier. However, I've recently replaced cornstarch with xanthan gum, and find it superior. It's a better stabilizer (ice cream stays smooth and free of ice crystals longer) and it works in much smaller quantities. The final texture of the ice cream is a bit different than with cornstarch--I find it gives a bit more body/chewiness. So you may prefer cornstarch for textural reasons. There are other gums that I haven't played with. Locust bean gum has a reputation as the best stabilizer for frozen desserts. I imagine it would work well in combination with gelatin.

These are my favorites. They have the most intense chocolate flavor of any brownie I've ever had. The baking temperature is low, so you should be able to make them as thick as you want just by varying baking time ... but I haven't experimented with this. I'm going to experiment with the recipe soon to add just a bit more crumb and structure to them. But that's just me being OCD.

I'm with the OP on everything but thickness. A full pan high (2" thick) dense, fudgy brownie sounds pretty gross to me. Like eating a cinder block!

I'd be curious to know if they were aged under the same conditions. For that matter, I'd just like to know what conditions they used for the 8 month meat. Even with aging times a quarter as long, it's a tricky balancing act: if the humidity is too low, the meat completely dries out ... you get a subprimal sized piece of jerkey. If the humidity is too high, you get a petry dish. If the temperature is too low, the enzymes don't do their job. If it's too high, you get a petry dish. Some people keep the meat under UV light, to slow down microbial action on the surface. I don't know if this is enough to keep the meat from spoiling on the inside.

I'd be curious about the rationale behind six month or longer aging. I don't know if the enzymes keep doing their thing at a continuous rate. Or if they end up doing something else at some point. The drying process will continue indefinitely, however, which means a huge amount of meat will desiccate and have to be thrown out. My butcher custom ages meat for me. He's done everything from the more pedestrian four and five week stints all the way up to ten weeks. After eight weeks, the differences are minimal and inconsistent. In fact, for reasons I don't understand, the most intense aged flavor I've ever experienced came from a six week aged strip steak. I suspect methodology (temperature, humidity, ventilation) has a lot to do with it, and I know for sure that my butcher is no lab technician. At any rate, a meaningful comparison would require two pieces of meat that as identical as possible in all ways except the duration of aging. I haven't had a chance to try this.

I mostly see this kind of discussion in books by individual chefs about their own cooking styles. Seems like everyone has opinions on how the flavors of classic sauces can be improved, especially when it comes to the stock itself: cut the mirepoix in half; use two batches of mirepoix; cut out the cellery; replace the cellery with cellery root; never ever brown the bones; brown the bejeezus out of everything; leave out tomatoes; use more tomatoes and cook them down to brown paste; leave out the onions; blacken the onions; add pigs feet; add chicken feet; use blonde roux instead of brown; use arrowroot instead off roux; use gums instead of starch ... I'm sure anyone passionate enough to issue manifestos like these will end up making a pretty good sauce. As far as which method you'll prefer ... I don't see any way around trial and error. Maybe start with methods used by chefs whose food you like.

Yes, this is the kind of thing demi-glace was invented for, but the result is a separate category of sauce. The question was about achieving the qualities of a pan sauce, which is an integral sauce ... meaning the sauce is derived from the food it's getting served with. This is in direct contrast with stock and glace-based sauces, which are made by cooking something else.

I think you have to look at the dish as a whole and figure out what types of flavors you're going for. A traditional pan sauce is a byproduct of a dish that's deliberately browned in the pan to create those familiar roasted mailllard flavors. The sauce incorporates those flavors. If a dish is being cooked sous vide (or poached, or steamed, or en papillote, or any other method that doesn't brown it) the first question is if browned flavors are appropriate. If so, then you want to figure out how you're going to get them; just using a sauce with those flavors may be too superficial. Options include taking the cooked but unbrowned protein and searing in a pan, on a grill, in a deep fryer or in front of a fire. If you want to make a pan sauce, then obviously browning in the pan would be the smartest choice. However, there are ways of making integral sauces with methods like sous vide or poaching that are as good as pan sauces, but don't rely on browned flavors. For example, you can add a small amount of stock or other aromatic liquids to the food in a sous vide pouch. You're essentially doing a sous vide poach (or braise, depending on the temperature), with a very small quantity of liquid. Juices lost from the meat as it cooks past rare will fortify the liquid in the pouch, creating a delicous sauce or sauce base.

Probably an exasperated attempt at portion control. One of the hardest aspects of managing an ice cream store is keeping the employees from giving away too much. I met Jerry of Ben and Jerry's several years ago. He said that they practically went out of business, because he and Ben couldn't even control themselves when scooping. They were so grateful to have customers that they gave away mountainous cones, along with any hopes of a profit. They realized they didn't have the right temperments to give away less, so they got out of retail and into the pint business. The idea was that you can't put more than a pint in a pint container. The result was a minor empire.

Yes, and as I said earlier, bare feet or the equivalent are not an apropriate solution for a commercial kitchen. If I ran a kitchen that used LN2, I wouldn't necessarily follow all the oficial lab saftey recommendations (gauntleted gloves, neoprene-type boots and aprons, etc.) but I'd want employees that handled it to wear high topped boots like blundstones, with their pant legs over the tops of them. The dangers are similar, but in many cases less intuitive. For example, you can freely pour LN2 over your bare skin and watch it roll off ... something you probably wouldn't do with hot fryer oil. This can lead to complacency. Also, LN2 often gets handled in more awkward ways than typical hot liquids in the kitchen. Pouring it into the bowl of a stand mixer from a 4 liter dewar, while the whole counter is enshrouded in white mist, opens up some unique potential for splashes. In addition, there are dangers unrelated to splashing that people need to be educated on ... like the exploding container potential that started this thread, or the suffocation potential from spilling a bunch of it in a closed space.

The ice cream shop where I worked sold it by the size ... small was 5oz, regular was 8, large was something obscene. But the customers always wanted to know how many scoops. Drove me nuts. I'd give smart ass answers, like, "I guess that depends on the size of the scoop."

Here's the full passage (in the section at the bottom called "The Word's Best Pizzerias": "There is an organization called Vera Pizza Napoletana (VPN) that certifies that pizzerias are making authentic Neapolitan pizza. Most of these places prominently post their VPN certification, with one even claiming their certification is "an international award." However, no VPN pizzeria makes it into my top tier and several are among my bottom tier. Basically it's a marketing organization. You pay a few hundred bucks, you take a course and in a few days you are certified and can post a sign up that proves you are a great pizza maker. Yeah right. Personally, the certification means nothing to me. Certainly the best old school pizzerias don't bother with VPN."

Yes, the chances of it going into a shoe are small. But does a regular shoe provide sufficient protection? Debateable at best. I'll challenge anyone to this: I will happily, with witnesses or on video, pour a fluid ounce of LN2 onto my bare foot. Will anyone here volunteer to pour the same amount onto the opening at the top of their shoe? I sincerely hope not.

Well ... a liquid nitrogen dewar is designed to be closed. They close without creating an airtight seal. Except for the pressurized ones, which have a pair of relief valves. So don't ever close a container of LN2 unless it's designed to be closed.