paulraphael

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!

I hope NATO generals in Eastern Europe are studying this. Any strategy that won a détente with those 3 cats should certainly work with Putin.

The way to figure out your actual dilution is to just measure the volume of your cocktail after you strain it. You'll see it's a lot bigger than what you measured into the tin. The difference divided by the final volume = your percentage of added water. If you think you're getting too much, there are ways to remedy this.

Right, and this is what the proposed legislation I've seen is about. Banning gas appliances outright would be too hard and expensive. In our building in NYC, for example, we're not even allowed to have an electric range or oven. The building doesn't have the electrical capacity. This is probably a typical situation in older cities.

The study I saw (reported in the Times last week) showed that there wasn't a consistent difference between expensive and inexpensive ranges. The study was not designed to figure out exactly where the leaks were coming from. It's possible that it was mostly from fixtures and connectors. Much of the released methane is not from leaks, but from gas released by burners before they ignite. This is most significant with oven burners, which use lots of gas and which cycle on and off with the thermostat. Someone in the comments section calculated that the average daily methane leakage from a gas range was about the same as the average daily methane leakage from a human. I didn't check the math, but sounds reasonable! Which would be to say, this is all a minor source of methane when you compare to all the world's other methane leakers (sheep and cows being high on the list). It's really just another problem to pile on top of all the others—not huge in and of itself, but part of a larger picture.

It's true that it makes a difference where the electricity comes from. The arguments for conversion away from gas still include some of the following: This is a longterm project, and the electric grid is slowly transitioning to a higher percentage of renewable sources. Gas-fired power plants have much more stringent pollution controls than gas-fired appliances. Using electricity eliminates the hazards of gas at the endpoints (leaking methane into the atmosphere, pollutants in the home, explosion hazards, etc.)

Unhelpfully, I agree with basically all sides here. Gas appliances are a major problem for many reasons, and in the name of the public good I support all the legislation that's phasing them out. I also love gas ranges, and have never really liked cooking on anything else. I hope to be able to build a kitchen someday with a raging Bluestar range and a commercial hood, and to be able to enjoy cooking with for a few years before the prophesy of Mad Max comes true. I'm hoping induction is as awesome as its converts claim. See "If by Whiskey" for rhetorical clarity.

When I was around 10, my dad decided to make me bartender at one of our big holiday parties. This might not be an example of his usual fine judgment. His thinking was that he could train me to limit the amount of booze in each glass—and maybe, just maybe, there'd be less chance of one of my very thirsty uncles smashing through the windshield and into the hereafter on the long drive back to the suburbs. My Chicago relatives are Irish. They're older, and they're old-school. My dad's plan didn't stand a chance. Instead of being the cocktail police, I became the disciple. A big, friendly, hairy arm would land around my shoulders and I'd hear something like, "come on, kid, I'm gonna show you how to make a martini." The lesson would be something like Hawkeye's. Or, " ... you pour a drop of vermouth into the cap, and just kind of wave it around the rim of the glass before pouring it back into the bottle." Then uncle #2 would pull me aside and say, "kid, forget everything that guy told you. THIS is how you make a martini ..." Good times. And no thanks to me, everyone eventually made it home.

Cool article. I need to pick up some dry vermouth and try to ... uh ... duplicate his lab's results. Interesting that he found a sweet spot for final strength. An idea from Dave Arnold's research: one way to reduce dilution is stir in a shaker tin instead of a mixing glass. Or, pre-chill the mixing glass by swirling ice in it until you feel the cold on the outside (or if you're Dave, swirl with liquid nitrogen). The reason is that a mixing glass has a much higher thermal mass than a tin, and so when you stir a drink in it, a significant amount of ice melts just to chill the (not pre-chilled) glass. So at any given final temperature, you'll get noticeably more dilution. At Dave's bar, he tells his bartenders that they can use a fancy crystal mixing glass if they want, but they have to pre-chill before every cocktail. Most of them give up and just use a shaker tin. It's not that the tin or pre-chilling is inherently superior ... just that Dave has formulated his drinks for a particular final dilution and strength. Same could apply with Wondrich's martini. If you don't have navy-strength gin, you might get into the right ballpark just by stirring in a tin.

This is a rare case where I'm giving the benefit of the doubt to the reviewer. There is no context in this or any imaginable universe where the mouth-lick dish would be anything but a horror. And the chef's reply pretty much cements him as a narcissist who's rather out of touch with what food is. I tried to find other reviews of the restaurant for balance, but this kerfuffle has pretty much buried all the others in the Google results.

Amen. I have piles and piles of research papers collected just for ice cream. Most of the studies were not conducted with ice cream in mind. There's every kind of study on every kind of sugar, every kind of hydrocolloid (and combination of hydrocolloids), on the ways dairy proteins respond to heat, on flavor perceptions at different temperatures, at different levels of sweetness, at different levels of fat ... it goes on and on. Much of the science is just about understanding the most basic things, like the sugar composition of different fruits. If anyone wants me to ruin ice cream for them forever, I've got thousands of pages of PDFs, not even counting footnotes ...

Not sure, but I think it's on Amazon prime and Apple tv.

Have you tried eating more?

I just found out about it last week and watched. One of the more interesting (and least romanticized) looks at restaurant cooking I've seen on screen. Wiki

That's a great pan. If I were still thinking about buying copper pans something like that would be top of the list. If I lost all my current copper pans in a house fire, the two I'd probably buy again are the 1.5L slope-sided saucepan (just love this) and the 12" long-handled frying pan. Both of these make great use of copper's strengths and I love using them. Interesting's, I've found that the higher the quality of the range that I'm cooking on, the less important the pan. Copper does a great job of distributing heat evenly (unimportant if your burner heats evenly), storing heat (unimportant if you got a lot of BTUs), and responding to temperature changes (as does a thinner, lighter pan, which you can get away with on an hot, even burner). My new range is hot, but not very even, so the copper still helps me out. If I ever get the range of my dreams, the copper will be more about nostalgia. And if I get an induction range, the copper will be on ebay!

Those may well be Mauviel. Theyy often let cookware stores sell under the store brand. A few of my Mauviel pans are stamped "Zabar's" after the NYC store where I got them. Only one pan that I got years later has the actual maker's name on it.

I wouldn't bother. The copper cookware that works well is ~2.5mm thick. The thin stuff is considered "tourist copper." It looks nice. It's often used at restaurants for bringing sauces to the table. But it's not restaurant cookware. I'd think twice about buying any heavy copper cookware today. Cooking on fire is in its twilight period. The day is coming when serious cooks will have to use induction, unless they're in an old building that's getting grandfathered in to gas use. If you're sold on copper, consider getting just the pieces where it will make the most difference, like a medium-sized saucepan that you can use for things that need the most precise heat control. As far as handles ... I disagree with the bronze handle recommendation. Cast iron will conduct heat more slowly, and is more badass. Also don't just look at Mauviel. Consider Falk. They actually make the laminated material used by Mauviel and Bourgeat, so the equivalent pieces are usually a bit cheaper. Bourgeat for some reason is a bit more expensive. Edited: I wrote "...think twice about buying any heavy cookware ..." Meant to write "heavy copper cookware."

I'd experiment in small quantities. The solubility of stuff will be way different in fat than in water. You might get flavors you didn't bargain for. I had to do many experiments just to figure out how to get good flavors infusing coffee into dairy ... about 12% fat content.

We'll need a separate thread on the best mic for popcorn vs. fried chicken. But really, I'm thinking this sounds like the making of a postmodern percussion performance. You could be youtube star.

With a domed wok lid? I'd like an audio recording of that.

I wonder if it's one of those things that some people are extra sensitive to and others aren't.