paulraphael

For cooking I usually buy what's cheapest and lightest. When I'm at Whole Foods that's going to be one of the store brand 365 olive oils. Something strange in NYC: even the cheapest bottle at most stores tends to be labelled extra virgin (at lower end stores, the step down will be an olive oil blend rather than a lower grade straight olive oil). This seems silly since there's little reason to pay extra for cold pressed oil that you plan to cook ... and ultra cheap evoo seems dubious. Lighter oils have advantages in cooking, because there's some correlation between darkness and smoke point. The more stuff that's been filtered / refined out of the oil the higher heat you can use. But oddly, most of the very light oils I find are high end ones that I wouldn't cook with. When I bring home a cheap cooking olive oil, I'll taste it. Most of the time now it's plenty good to drizzle on bread or use for day-to-day vinnaigrettes. If not, I'll use one of the nicer bottles I keep in the pantry for the raw stuff.

Actually, it's not about the knife as much as the board. I don't like to use the bread knife on my regular cutting board (see earlier post), so sticking with a chef's knife sometimes saves me a few steps. This is if I'm making a sandwich that involves slicing cheese, tomatoes, fruit, shallots, etc.. For the amount of bread cutting that goes into the occasional sandwich, I'm not too worried about dulling the blade.

I've seen better reviews for the beaterblade, including this one by a pastry chef who replaced his sideswipe. Kim, the new mixer looks great. Can I suggest that you break it in slowly? I got advice from some engineering types at KA.com who think this should be their official suggestion. Make a few batches of easy things. Let the gears work in and allow the grease to warm up and distribute itself properly. These guys suspect that some of the reliability problems come from people setting up a new mixer and throwing triple batches of pizza dough at it.

Supposedly, scalloped knives like the mac are reasonable to sharpen. I'll find out when it needs to be done. So far it's lasted a couple of years without losing its ability to cut cleanly.

This approach has worked in Western kitchens for a long time, but there are reasons cooks have been adopting new ones. Talk to anyone with even second- or third-hand training in Japanese cutting techniques, and they'll probably say they're not going back. Sharp knives may be an object of fetishism (yeah, they're pretty cool). But their real value is that they support a range of techniques that allow you to prep food better. Meaning, more efficiently and with better results. A knife with 18 degree bevels sharpened by machine will do as good a job as any at cutting potato batonettes (even if takes a bit more effort than using a sharper knife). But it probably won't allow you to cut herbs several hours before serving, or to cut raw fish with a glassy-smooth finish that will retain perfect texture, or to make consistent, paper thin bias slices of skirt steak, or to cut apples and pears that won't turn brown. And sharp knives with hard edges will retain this performance for many hours of continuous use ... handy for pros, or for people like me who'd rather leave the house once in a while than hang out with a muddy table full of waterstones. The price of a thin, hard edge is that it's fragile. The good news it that the techniques it supports are delicate ones, so you won't run into too much trouble. This does generally mean owning a heavier knife for the rough stuff. And making a few other concessions to specialization (like a bread knife), which I tend to resist unless the payoff is pretty obvious.

I think the moral of the story is that if you cut a lot bread (especially crusty bread, and extra-especially crusty bread with a soft crumb) a good bread knife is probably worth it. If you don't, it probably isn't. As far as bread actually shredding sharp knife edges .... I've had this experience, with a Hiromoto AS, actually. But as my sharpening technique and cutting technique got more competent, the problem vanished. Now I just find bread dulls the blade quickly, so I only use it on bread in a pinch, like when I'm making a sandwich and don't want to dirty up a second knife.

Like you said, the toughest breads have a hard crust and a delicate crumb. These are the ones that an unserrated knife, even a very sharp one, will tend to crush. You can often compensate with technique, as you discovered ... finding a weakness as a point of entry, or a firmer corner, or poking through with the tip. Incidentally, these are all the same techniques you'd use on delicate protein that has a crisp crust, like seared tuna. A good serrated knife makes short work of any bread, no technique and no effort required. It's faster, and can even be brought to the table for guests to cut their own slices. It won't rip up the crumb, crush it, or make piles of sawdust. The catch is, there aren't many good serrated knives. This Mac is the only good one I've ever used, though there are probably a few others. Notice the reverse scalloped teeth ... they don't attack the crust as aggressively as pointy ones, but the benefit is that they actually cut the bread rather than grinding it up like a saw blade. A reason to not depend on a chef's knife for crusty bread is that crust seems mysteriously potent at dulling blades. No idea why. But a caveat with serrated knives is that they rip up cutting boards. I learned not to use a bread knife on my good endgrain block ... I use a small board that's just for bread. It's full of deep grooves from the serrated edge.

If you like Peterson's style, you might like "Glorious French Food," in spite of the title. It's not quite as authoritative a tome as Sauces, but it reads much more like a textbook than a cookbook. And it has an interesting organizational style: each chapter starts with a very basic, classical dish. Then the rest of the chapter expounds on the ingredients and techniques of the dish, and and elaborates by adding a range of more and more sophisticated dishes that are built on the foundations of the basic one. It's great reading. I'd suggest you approach the recipes with caution, though. Some seem to be untested, and thrown in just as hypothetical examples. If you're a slave to recipes, this book will get you in big trouble. It might just be his way of saying "stop being a slave to recipes!" A warning would have been polite.

I realized that I haven't used a wooden spoon in years. They've been rotated out in favor of these bamboo spatulas, which I have in a couple of sizes. For serving or tasting, I use metal spoons or ladles. For stirring or deglazing, the spatula shape works better (can clean the bottom of the pan and reach into corners). And bamboo seems much less absorbant than wood, so it doesn't transfer flavors as much, and is easier to clean. It lasts practically forever. It's such a useful shape ... I'm surprised it almost never turns up at restaurant supply stores.

Here's a thought. Hypothetical, and I don't plan to test it, because I won't pander to the well-done crowd! It's routine to cook meat well-done and have it retain at least the impression of juiciness. It's the result of braising, and the succulence has less to do with fat and the braising liquid than many people assume. Most of it is the result of collagen breaking down into gelatin. Interestingly, the cuts that make up the bulk of most burger blends are braising cuts: chuck, brisket, etc... they're packed with collagen, which makes the meat tough when cooked like a steak, succulent when cooked like a braise. The two elements that break down collagen are temperature and time. Hamburger cooking methods tend to overdo it on temperature (excising more fat and moisture than necessary) and underdo it on time (so the collagen doesn't have much chance to break down). We don't suffer toughness from burgers, because the meat grinder is the mother of all tenderizerrs, But we don't get the benefits of all that collagen, either. I bet you could make a killer well done burger, by using the usual braising cuts (with no more than 15% or so fat), and slow cooking. You could do them sous vide, or butter poach them Keller style, at 180 degrees or so. You could hold them at 160 indefinitely. Then, right before serving, throw some sear on them with a torch, a salamander, or a blazing hot grill. It's hard to imagine that a burger done like this wouldn't be insanely juicy. And if the meat were brought up to temperature slowly enough, it would actually stay pink ... which would confuse the diners to no end.

Your picture and complaint reflect my biggest issue with Shun gyutos: they have a really deep belly, like a German knife, instead of the more French-inspired shape Octaveman describes. A more standard shaped 270mm gyuto has around twice as much straight-ish edge as that 8" shun. Cutting technique can be adapted for any amount of belly, but a lot of techniques are just less work when you have a flatter profile.

A few thoughts ... Have you considered something longer than 210mm? I know it's tempting to equate a shorter knife with delicate work, but there's actually no penalty for going with a 240 or a 270. The longer knives are just more efficient and versatile. In fact, my prep knife that I use for veggies is 270, and my heavy knife that I use for hacking things apart is 210. The heavy duty stuff is actually more comfortable with a shorter blade. Also, you mention the possibility of an usuba, but this is actualy a step in the wrong direction, based on your original post. An usuba is thicker and will wedge even more dramatically than you Wustoff. It's a specialty knife, designed for producing extremely thin slices (where wedging isn't an issue, because the slice just falls away). But if you tried to cut an apple in half with it, it would feel like a hatchet. If you're interested in taking your cutting to the next level, which is what it sounds like, I'd put even more thought into refining both sharpening technique and cutting technique than you put into to selecting the knife. Any reasonably thin, long gyuto will be amazing, especially after you start adapting to it. But there's a very good chance that sooner or later you'll sell whatever it is you buy now in favor of something else. And you won't have any way of knowing today what that something else will be tomorrow, so just get a gyuto and hang on for the ride.

I've been experimenting with these. There's something really cool about them. But the saltiness can be a bit overwhelming. I've tried them raw, blanched, blanced and stir fried, and blanched and roasted. Are there any tricks to leach some extra salt? I want to preserve the green and the crunch. A little acid (citrus) seems to mellow the saltiness just a bit. So does a little butter. But I'd like to go farther.

I just stumbled onto some of Mauviel's m'cook pans ... they're made of clad stainless and aluminum, but have the same massive iron handles as the copper pan slkinsey linked. They're lighter and cheaper than copper (though still fairly heavy and pricey).

I just looked in Peterson's soup cookbook, and his advice on onions is the exact opposite of the advice at the top of the thread: use the sweetest onions possible (bermuda, vidalia, or maui). Any further thoughts on this? A technique he suggests that seems like a no-brainer: when the onions are browned, add a small amount of stock, reduce, and rebrown. Repeat a couple of times with the first two cups of stock. This is standard method for amping up roasted flavors in a pan sauce, and I imagine it would improve any French onion soup.

I've had a lot of delcious tenderloin. It's mild, but the flavor can be excellent. The best tenderloins have real marbling and aren't ghost-white. Brining strikes me as the wrong approach. I don't want the mild flavor overwhelmed by salt. I want the juiciness to come from corect cooking. And this cut does not need to be tenderized. Sous vide likely works well. I've also had good luck with the opposite approach, blasting them in a 550 degree oven. I preheat a skillet in the oven, put in the stove on maximum heat, throw in some refined oil, and lightly brown the tenderloin on three sides. Flip the the fourth side down and slip it into the oven for about 10 minutes. Pull out, let it rest, for another ten or so minutes tented. Make a pan sauce in this interrim. The pan and oven sear the outside; the inside cooks almost entirely during the rest period. It's a small enough piece of meat that I've been able to get it medium rare almost all the way through. I find it a bit tricky ... the meat cooks fast, it's a small enough cut to make thermometers unreliable, and it's pretty easy to over or undershoot. I also find it much harder to do in an oven that won't hit 550. But if you can nail it, it's simple, quick, and tasty. Absolutely requires a good sauce.

One approach is to think in terms of performance/fragility instead of just size/shape. I have a gyuto that handles most of my prep. But the price for its thin, hard edge that makes it perform so well is that it's fragile. So tasks that are tougher on a blade, like lopping off the head of a fish, taking a chicken apart, and chopping blocks of chocolate, go to my much heavier German chef's knife. This knife is fatter, is made of tougher, more resilient steel, and is sharpened to more obtuse angles. So it leans toward durabiltiy rather than performance. It can handle any task in a pinch, but I need it for the rough stuff.

Whether you pay $20 or $100, they will all stop releasing food. Sadly, Teflon coatings are not long for this world. Some of them have hard particles embedded in them (ceramic, diamond, kryptonite, whatever) to let you get away with metal utensiles, for a while. But they'll start sticking, just like everything else. I'd rather pay $20 than $100 for something that comes with an expiration date. But it also sounds like some other questions are in order. There are very few foods that warrant a nonstick surface. Eggs, very delicate fish, and ... I'm not sure what else. If chicken is sticking to your pan, this is a matter of technique. Even with the skin on it. If you refine your methods, you'll never have a problem getting chicken to release from a stainless steel surface. There will be other benefits, too: the meat will brown faster and brown better. The drippings will adhere to the pan surface, which allows them to brown and develop deeper flavors. And which allows you to pour off extra fat without losing the drippings, and which allows you to deglaze and get more flavor into pan sauces and fricassees. The bright surface makes it much easier to judge the level of browning. And you get to buy a pan that isn't disposable. Final benefit: if you keep a nonstick pan around and use it purely for the few things it does well, it will last much longer than it would as an all-purpose workhorse.

Steve is right. Teflon is a brand name for PTFE. The marketing B.S. has succeeded in bamboozling the Saveur food writers. All nonstick surfaces use teflon in one form or another. All will lose their magic powers sooner or later. Sooner, if you use them a lot and don't handle them with kid gloves. And they all do a lousy job at many cooking tasks. Moral of the story is to use nonstick only when necessary, buy cheap ($30 for a frying pan should be the upper limit) and expect to replace and recycle fairly often.

Have you tried them during actual cooking? If you know anyone who has them, something to try is to handle them with a towel wrapped around the handle. The skinny stainless handles stay cool enough enough much of the time that you don't have to do this ... but any pan that's been at the back of a hot stove, in the oven, or on high heat for a while will need a towel. The AC handles grab onto a towel really well. Some of my other pans feel more likely to pivot and spill when held like a towel, even though they're a bit more comfortable to hold bare-handed. If it's still an issue, there are some pans that have a big, tubular handle. Some of the nicer commercial brands might offer pans with this and with clad construction.

I agree with Octaveman. There's nothing one of those wee knives can do that a gyuto can't. But a gyuto can handle much more than they can, much more efficiently. I'd consider a Nakiri/santoku if I was limited to using a truly tiny cutting board. but in that case i'd probably just use it to open a vein and check out of the kitchen for good!

I'm pretty sure it's demmeyere, and it's very good, and for the most part way overpriced. They make one roasting pan that I had to have because it was the only one made in a shape that I like, but that's it. I'd reconsider the all clad. The handles feel uncomfortable when I'm playing with them, but I've never once even noticed the handle on my a.c. frying pan while actually using it. I think handles are largely irrelevant, as long as they stay attached after long hard use, which cannot be assumed with many brands.

Have you checked out the user forums at the KA website? There are fanatics there who talk about mixers every day. They might even be able to point you to resources that would let you fix the broken one yourself.

Can you elaborate on the distinction?

Yeah, I agree. And if you have a good thermos, there's really no need for an automatic machine. I find that full thermos keeps coffee hot and fresh tasting overnight. There's some shift in flavor, but I feel that there's a worse decline if you grind the beans 8 hours ahead of time. I think it makes more sense to buy a cheap press pot or drip cone, and put the money into a decent burr grinder. Brewing is easy; grinding is hard.