paulraphael

If you're worried about the dangers of using sanitizing chemicals around food (vs. the dangers of pathogens), why does it matter if you're cooking for 5 or for 500?

Well, as much as I love Alton, I think he's been wrong about a fair number of things. And when it comes to definitions, the issue is less righ or wrong, but how universally useful they are. If half the things called broth don't fit your definition of broth, then your definition may have outlived its usefulness. If it was ever useful in the first place! The only kind of broth I've had that's lacking gelatin is canned broth, like the Swansons you mention (and which tastes to me like salt water with a bit of poultry extract). for soup bases I've often used low sodium commercial broths, like the organic Pacific products that whole foods sells. These likewise have no gelatin, but they don't taste like brine (still too salty to reduce for sauces, though) and they have genuine chicken flavor. Every homemade broth I've had was at least gelatinous enough to set up when cold.

I agree with Sean. Keep in mind that the shellfish toxins he mentions are poisons, not pathogens. They're not affected by cooking. So the issue isn't raw or cooked; it's 100% about trusting your purveyor. Also agreed that Wholefoods is not a trusted seafood purveyor. I like the produce and the deli counters, but that's some of the sorriest looking fish I ever lay my eyes on.

You could be right. Though I think it's worth noticing that health departments across the country seem to have unanimously come to the opposite conclusion.

Not surprising if an approach that works well on $20/lb meat and $60/lb meat isn't ideal on $6/lb meat. I've paid more than that for cat food!

You can also presalt and leave it covered in the fridge, if it doesn't need any additional drying. Or leave it covered for a few hours, uncovered or a few. I do it either way, depending on the chicken. With the fresh killed birds I've had, it didn't seem necessary. I may try it at some point to see.

But how do you know what illnesses are from food and what aren't? And what about illnesses of your guests that appear 12 hours, 48 hours, a week after their meal? It's a big assumption to make. At any rate, the real benefit for me is non-stinky, non-contaminated sponges and towels. Sanitized cutting boards are a fringe benefit. As far as safety, the chemicals in question have been used for ages in restaurants. They also exist in much stronger concentrations in many household disinfecting cleaners, especially ones made for use on food surfaces. I suppose there's a chance we'll learn they're harmful someday, but we already know that they're less harmful than lysteria!

I'm planning to pre salt the bird this year, so if you can postpone your thanksgiving 24 hours, I'll tell you all about it Really, I think the most important thing is to pony up and get a really good turkey. All the hoops people jump through with seasonings and brines are really just attempts to compensate for the shortcomings of factory birds. If you get a well raised, free range bird, all you really have to do is cook it well (don't overcook the breasts). Easier said than done, but it doesn't take a genius. Presalting is probably unnecessary, but it's a much better option than brining, unless you're convinced you're going to overcook the bejeezus out of the bird. A brined an overcooked bird won't dry out as much. If you have a very fresh, air-dried bird you won't need to dry it with an open salt rub. It may be ok, but I'm not sure what the benefit would be. I plan to salt the bird and leave it wrapped in the fridge, and for no longer than 24 hours. People have these amazing schemes of brining for 48 hours and then air drying for 24, or whatever ... but don't stop and think that they're adding days of age to a meat that does not benefit from aging. If possible, I want to serve a bird who was walking around merrily a day ago. It will taste better. You won't HAVE to do too much stuff to it. edit: oh yeah ... i plan to use about 1/2 tsp salt per lb., concentrating more on the thick parts. this is what I use on chickens. if it seems like too much for the turkey, i'll use less. i don't think precision is to important.

A quick wipe with soapy water is probably good enough most of the time, but it doesn't assure anything. The whole point of sanitizers is to provide assurance. I'll also risk belaboring the point that when you say "I've never had a problem," you're saddling yourself with a an almost impossible burden of proof. There are literally dozens of types of foodborne illnesses, with wide ranging symptoms, and onset times that range from minutes to several weeks. When I'm just cooking for myself, I'm pretty lax. But when I'm cooking for other people, I feel it's my responsibility to take more precautions. And if I'm going to be cooking for strangers, who's health condition I may know little about, the responsibility is even higher. The health risks of mishandled food wildly outweigh the risks of keeping a jug of chemicals under the sink ... where many people already keep bleach, ammonia, and even bug spray. This chart should give you an idea of the range of pathogens and toxins that are out there, and how far beyond the usual "food poisoning" symptoms the effects can be. As an example, if you or anyone in your family has ever gotten 24 hour stomach flu, that's caused by noroviruses, which are usually transmitted through food. And they're not killed by vinegar, which has become a popular kitchen sanitizer.

And there are others among us who like a house that smells like meat.

ha! if i had a chocolate shop i wouldn't be procrastinating on the internet. just another thought ... you could check out the current thread on water ganache. i'm sure anything those guys are doing with water could be done with wine. i have no experience with this, but i assume you'd get a different texture and somewhat more direct flavors. it's really the same thing as a chocolate butter sauce, but without the butter enrichment.

Scrubbing with soap and hot water is probably all you need to do in most cases. If you're cooking for other people it's a more serious endeavor. You may not know if someone's immune compromised or not. Scrubbing removes most pathogens but not all. Sanitizing cutting boards is a very small part of the picture when it comes to working clean. I actually think sanitzing sponges and side towels is more important, but the same discussion of chemicals applies. All that being said, when you say you have never been sick from eating contaminated food, how do you know? Have you never been sick? And if you have been sick, how did you reach your conclusion about the source of the illness?

Ok, acording to my secret formula, a good starting point would be 150g chocolate 44g butter 56g wine This should give you close to the consistency of 150g chocolate/100g cream. If the consistency is wrong it can be remelted and adjusted. Since the emulsion is fragile, it's best to let it come to room temperature on its own (if it's been chilled) and then warm it very gently in a double boiler. once melted, more of any of the ingredients can be stirred in.

In Britain, "hanging" typically means aging. I'm curious about hanging the sense of hanging it upside down by the feet during the rigor period. Not sure if it's supposed to be chilled for this, or how big a difference it makes.

If you tell me what proportion of chocolate and cream you'd use, I can figure out a good starting point for you with butter.

What's the consistency you're looking for? I linked to a pretty foolproof and delicious recipe in my first post in the thread. As written it's a sauce, but with a bit of tweaking (lots more butter) it could easily become a firm ganache. Just keep in mind that cream is typically 36% milkfat and butter is typically 80% milkfat (with most of the rest being water in both cases). To mimic the consistency of a cream ganache you just need to get the butter/wine combination to mimic the quantity of cream in that recipe. It's late ... let me know if that was incomprehensible.

I tried it on 1-1/2" thick pork chops. Since I was going for medium, I used lower heat, and cooked for about 14 minutes on a side. They were great, but not noticeably different from my usual method, which is to brown on high heat and then allow to finish cooking on very low while covered, basting in butter (similar to how I do steak, but the final cooking is lower, slower, and usually covered). The one significant advantage to this method was being able to brown in butter on both sides. The minor advantage was being able to use rendered fat for the initial cooking, instead of oil.

Good to know; that explains why my butcher's birds are so good late in the day of slaughter. I'm still curious about the hanging part. I've read that meat, including poultry, should be hung during the rigor period, otherwise it won't relax properly. But that doesn't seem to be people's experience here.

was your old hobart a hobart kitchenaid or a commercial hobart? how much dough are you making? if ka is giving you the runaround, i'd suggest going to the forums at their website. there are some world class goofballs over there, but some really helpful people too, including ka reps.

That chart's an interesting idea, but I don't know if tells you anything besides relative values if you don't know their exact precedures. Simmering for a specific time doesn't remove a fixed percentage, it removes a fixed quantitiy (in any given pan). So simmering 4oz of booze for a minute will remove a much greater percentage of alcohohol than simmering 8oz of booze for a minute. To proove the concept, try simmering a tablespoon of booze for a minute ... you'll lose 100% of the alcohol (and water) before the time's up. The relative values are definitely worth noticing, though. Intersting how little alcohol flaming removes compared with some methods. It makes sense; you can't flame booze that's lower than a certain alcohol percentage. It never builds up the right concentration of vapors and oxygen to ignite. So once you've burned up enough alcohol to get the percentage down to this level, the fire goes out.

Do you know what year it was made? Could you post your dough recipe? I'm curious. I've had two pro 600s, both newer models with the cast metal gear case. I replaced the first one because of minor problems, but both could handle any dough I threw at them. The only task that even makes them warm is grinding piles of meat with the grinder attachment. KA has definitely had its share of quality control problems (just like all the makers of home mixers). I suspect that if a pro 600 fails at making dough that it used to be able to make, or dough that you could make no problem in a 4 or 5 qt mixer, then there's something actually wrong with that particular mixer.

Does anyone know of a good discussion on what flaming does to the composition of booze? There's some conventional wisdom that it burns off all the alcohol but this clearly isn't the case. I just did an experiment where I weighed some cognac, flamed it, and weighed it again (don't worry; it was cheap). It lost 30% of its mass. It was originally 40% alcohol (by volume, so we can assume it's a bit less than 40% alcohol by mass). If all the lost mass was alcohol, then we'd expect over 3/4 of the alcohol to be burned off, leaving cognac that's less than 10% alcohol. But it tasted much stronger than this. In fact it didn't taste all that different from the unflamed cognac. Which makes me wonder it a lot of water was being evaporated in the process, leaving behind cognac that's slightly lower in alcohol, but in general more concentrated. Thoughts? This came up because I'm experimenting with cognac in ice creams, and I'm trying to get as much flavor as possible wiithout too much anti-freeze.

ahhh, so you're talking about running plastic boards through the planer? that's really interesting. conventional wisdom is that any kind of resurfacing will just melt them. that's great info to pass around ... most people just throw the things out when the surface gets dinged up.

Especially since this is a project for a winemaker, I think you want to avoid any technique that drastically changes the character of the wine (not counting, um, mixing it with chocolate ...) This precludes cooking it, and definitely reducing it. When you cook a wine, all of its subtlety is destroyed. Most of the aromatic compounds are released or oxidized, and you end up with with a vague sense of the original wine's body, fruit flavors, and acidity. Red wine gets altered more; if it's reduced without the right amino acids present in sufficient quantity, the pigments and tanins can drop out completely (though I doubt this would be an issue in a ganache). I think you should look closely at butter ganaches, because they don't require any reduction of the wine ... the cream portion is the butter, which is under 20% water. The wine only needs to be heated to the melting point of chocolate. Not much higher than body temperature. Which is the temp that all good wines end up, eventually If you have trouble forming a stable emulsion, you could experiment with small quantities of added emuslifiers, like lecithin or gelatin.

just to be clear, that panel of scientists did not express an opinion one way or another about the safety of BPA. They were critical of the FDA's approval process, which they said was completely inadequate. so all we know is what you first said, which is that the jury is still out. The only thing I've heard about the difference between flavor from cans and bottles came from an engineer I knew who worked at Coors. He said that in blind tests their trained tasters couldn't tell the difference between beer that had been poured from one vs. the other. This was a while ago. At the time I was under the impression that cans were lined with mylar (polyester ... not sure where I learned that, or if someone made it up).