paulraphael

I think the question is if typical pressure cookers constitute a sealed environment ... they use a relief valve to maintain pressure. It might be more of a hybrid kind of environment. It likely has to do with why Dave and Nils got significantly different blind taste test results with stocks made in different types of cooker (the winner being a type that maintained a true sealed environment). I'd assumed the difference has to do with aromatics getting out, but it makes more sense if it's about boiling vs. not boiling.

Sourdough apple pancake.

If you do it carefully, you should be able to keep it to a low simmer. Easily if you have a more sophisticated pressure cooker, like a Kuhn-Rikon.

Here's the basic idea. My earlier versions used more water and needed some reduction; this is an attempt to eliminate or mostly eliminate that step. Pressure-cooked meat coulis / jus de viande 1250g / 100% Water. 200g / 15% (approx) additional water 800g / 65% Ground Lean Meat Divide in half. (to save time, grind meat coarsely in food processor) 400g / 30% meaty bones, thinly cut on band saw. for beef, ideally use shin 200g / 15% Yellow Onion, thinly sliced 120g / 10% Carrot, thinly sliced 80g / 6% Celery, thinly sliced 10g / 0.8% Parsley leaves and stems Lambda Carrageenan (final measurement should be based on actual weight of jus after cooking and straining: measure to 0.35% Xanthan Gum (final measurement should be based on actual weight of jus after cooking and straining: measure to 0.07% Day 1 -brown ingredients / make reduction. preheat oven to 450°F / 230°C. add bones, half the ground meat, and all vegetables to roasting pan. Cook until well browned (about 45 minutes). It’s ideal to blacken the onions. -transfer ingredients to pressure cooker. Pour off fat. deglaze pan on stovetop with half of the small portion of water. reduce until it dries and browns. deglaze with the remaining water. reduce to make a light syrup. add to pressure cooker. -pressure cook. add the raw ground meat and main portion of water to PC. seal lid and let pressurize to 1 bar. turn down heat for minimum venting. cook 2.5 hours. -depressurize under running water. let cool. gently strain bones into a temporary container with a coarse chinois. as much as possible, use tongs or skimmer or slotted spoon to place bones and veggies into the chinois; don't dump it all in and don't press; let gravity do the work. It’s also possible to remove all but the last of the stock with a siphon. -strain again with a fine strainer / chinois, or better, with a superbag. chill overnight in fridge. Day 2 -defat, reduce, thicken -skim fat off top of container -Reduction: (Is there significantly more than 1L liquid? If not, skip this step). In a saucepan reduce 100ml to a dark brown glaze, then add another 100ml, scrape sides and bottom, reduce until total volume of coulis is about 1L. -turn off heat -add cold unreduced coulis to the saucepan -thicken. weigh final coulis; measure and stir together the gums (if you skipped reduction, heat it enough to liquefy the gelatin) -disperse gums with a stick blender -optional: heat on stove to deflate any foam that formed. Or (more work, but better for large quantities): -place coulis in blender. blend at a speed that makes a vortex and doesn’t splash. pour gums into vortex. cover and blend on high for two minutes. mixture will now be a light-colored foam. -pour into saucepan. heat over low flame to deflate foam. -chill. -package, store: strain again with chinois, measure into ziplock bags. refrigerate or freeze.

That's how I still do it. I like the quality of sear more. And by making it happen so much faster there's less chance of overcooking. For us, steak is a special occasion kind of thing so I don't mind the extra step. If we cooked it all the time I might look for shortcuts. I salt before the final sear. Not sure what it would take to get corned beef flavors from salting too soon ... but I'm fine with the flavor of salting right at the end.

Just play it like all the chefs in the 2000s and put "martini" in scare quotes.

I like Plymouth too. Haven't tried the Navy Strength recommended in the article. Which version do you prefer?

I had no idea. Reality these days is making it very hard to do satire.

The distillers will probably start verifying their bottles with NFTs. And when this takes off, they'll start selling the NFTs without the bottles. Everybody wins! Who wants to buy my authentic digital Pappy?

One of the tricks to getting traditional confit flavor is to do cook / chill, and open the bags before chilling (you can reseal them). Apparently that signature confit flavor comes from the fats oxidizing a bit, which you won't get much of in a sealed bag.

They tell you not to put the jars in the dishwasher. There's a bearing cartridge in there that's sealed against smoothies but not dishwasher detergent. I find them effortless to clean just by blending some warm soap water. Fill it about 3/4, put in a drop of dish soap, and pulse it to high speed 2 or 3 times. Rinse. Spray with sanitizer if you like. For getting every drop of food out of the bottom, ISI makes a narrow silicone spatula that's perfect for this. It's designed for getting everything out of their whipping siphons, but works perfectly on a vitamix. Also perfect for most mason jars. Last I checked these were out of stock everywhere ... I hope they're still making them.

DA's experiments show that rocks do a pretty good job of keeping things cold. The choice is a few smaller rocks, which will keep a drink colder, but dilute it faster, or a big handsome rock, which will let it warm more but will keep it stronger longer. For drinks served up, he's a believer in making them small so they stay cold as long as you're drinking them. Personally, I'd rather have a bigger drink and take my chances. Or drink it faster. I always make my negronis on the rocks, with a couple of ice cubes in a chilled glass. I think that drink does fine with extra dilution, but it needs to be really cold. Whisky drinks I don't mind warmer, but I'd rather avoid dilution. I make old fashionds with a 2" cube.

After this many posts on amateur thermodynamics, I need a cocktail.

Now I understand what you're saying. But it goes against the experimental evidence. I did address the possibility of ice being colder than 0° ... the basic physics and the experiments demonstrate that this makes a negligible difference in the glass. [Edited to add ... I just saw your post describing the experiment.] Of course, if you contrive a situation with huge amounts of ice, and it's much colder than the equilibrium temperature, then that 1/2 calorie per degree per gram would be able to make a significant difference. But is this not relevant to anyone making cocktails!

I'm not 100% sure I understand your point here. It's true that once the cocktail reaches its equilibrium point (around -5°C for the drinks of the strength used in DA's experiments there will be no more melting. And there will likewise be no more chilling. Are you talking about what happens when you put extra cold ice into a cocktail? The experiments address that. You get a very small additional amount of cooling from the colder ice. 1/2 calorie per degree for each gram of ice, vs. the 80 calories per gram you get from the ice melting. This ends up making a minute difference.

He doesn't; he's demonstrates that the mass of ice is irrelevant, assuming there's enough of it. The total surface area of the ice is relevant, but only to the speed of chilling. Not to the final temperature or dilution. "You use “enough” ice. We did initial experiments that showed that using too little ice results in poor chilling and greater dilution. The benefit of adding more ice plateaus at a certain point so that it neither helps nor hurts the temperature or dilution. I don’t have exact numbers for the plateau point (I lost my old data cause I’m a jerk), but using Kold-Draft ice, Eben and Alex shook a 100 ml gimlet with one cube, two cubes, three cubes, and up. They were able to keep getting better results up to at least 5 cubes." I now see the Duveltini experiment, but not sure I understand what you're saying.

I don't see the Duveltini experiment. Is that link right? Are you suggesting a flaw in Dave Arnold's methods or analysis? I'd be curious to hear what it is. I've gone over every one of those results and I don't see an exception to the "melting ice mantra" at any temperature.

Chilling is proportional to dilution, no matter how far you chill. Dave specifically demonstrates this. The amount of chilling due to conductivity, or the coldness of the ice, is negligible. Ice’s tremendous chilling power doesn’t come from the energy required to heat it up, but from the energy required to melt it. It takes 0.5 calories to heat a gram of ice from -1°C to 0°C (this value is called the specific heat of ice,) but almost 80 calories to melt that same gram (this value is called the heat of fusion of water). To put it another way, melting 1 gram of ice provides the same chilling power as bringing that same gram of ice from -160°C to 0°C.

Take a close look at Dave Arnold's research. He demonstrates that cocktails chill to below 0°C. And that essentially ALL the cooling power is from the melting. No need for salt; alcohol works through the exact same colligative properties. In his book he explains this in greater depth ... enthalpy vs. entropy—and why cocktail chilling depends on the same essential principles that guarantee the eventual death of the universe.

Why would you think that? How would this allow 0°C ice to chill a room temperature mixture to -7°C?

A refractometer would be tricky, because there's both sugar and alcohol in there. You won't get an absolute measurement that means anything. You'd have to get a before and after reading, and do some fancy math. I think using weight or volume would be easier and more accurate.

I'm not trying to be dismissive of the minds behind the 25% figure. Just pointing out that it is at best an average. Or as Dave the Cook suggests, a goal with certain recipes. The Cooking Issues link (Thanks Mitch!) shows much of what D.A. talks about in his book. A few takeaways: Size and shape of the ice cubes matter, but not in the ways that many people assume. More/smaller ice cubes chill faster, but not more. They also tend to dilute more, but for a specific reason: bar ice is wet (it's always hanging out at 0°C) and more surface area means there's more water clinging to it. That water adds to dilution without contributing to chilling. Dave recommends shaking the water off of wet ice using a strainer. Temperature of the ice is irrelevant. Virtually all of ice's chilling power comes from its latent heat of fusion (the energy required to melt it). Making it 10 or 20 degrees colder will have little effect. Except, curiously ... Ice colder than 0°C will chill your drink more slowly than 0°C ice. Because science! It will take a bit of time to warm to 0°, during which it does some very inefficient chilling. Only when it hits 0 and starts to melt does the powerful chilling begin. However ... Chilling is asymptotic—you'll eventually reach a fixed minimum temperature when shaking or stirring. But stirred drinks chill slowly enough that ice cubes matter. Because no one stirs long enough to hit that asymptotic low temperature with big ice cubes. To hit the temperature you want consistently when stirring, you need to be consistent about ice cube size and shape, stirring speed, and time. The nuances of shaking technique might have an effect on drink texture, but they don't affect the temperature or dilution—provided you shake long enough ... but not much too long. But we were talking about Martinis, and Sean Connery is dead. Anything that adds significant heat to the drink from the outside will cause extra melting and dilution. This includes a hot ambient temperature, spending way too much time stirring / shaking / hanging out, or using an unchilled vessel that has a lot of thermal mass, like a classic stirring glass.

Right, that 25% percent figure is just an average someone came up with. What I like about the article is the idea that martini perfection starts with a sweet spot for strength. The author's sweet spot may not be yours or mine. But if you figure out what yours is, then you can tweak your ingredients and method to get there. It would have been helpful if he'd mentioned the effect of method. Chilling a cocktail always leads to a certain minimum dilution. But there are a million things you can do (for better or worse, on purpose or not) that add even more dilution.

Yeah, if your goal is a cold cocktail, you should be straining a chilled drink drink over those big rocks. I especially like the 2" cubes for whiskey drinks like an old fashioned. Things I just want chilled a little, and that I don't won't to dilute too quickly. For something I want super cold, like a negroni, I stir with ice and strain. The ice in the drinking glass can be anything (the big cubes do look nice).

That thread's an entertaining read. But In the time it takes to plow through it, you could read Liquid Intelligence, and get the right answers. TL;DR: Much of of what serious imbibers say about ice defies the laws of physics!