paulraphael

Brining scallops doesn't do what you think it does. At least If you do it the right way. It can be a little helpful for good quality dry-packed scallops, but makes a much bigger improvement on wet-packed and most frozen scallops. It simply firms the flesh a bit and makes them easier to cook well. It doesn't inject them with lots of moisture like typical poultry brining. You go for a much more subtle effect. I brine salmon before cooking sous-vide. If sauteeing I don't bother. Like with scallops, it's a subtle brine done for a specific purpose, with the brine concentration calibrated to the brining time. My point with the seafood brine is that it can be useful, whereas I've completely given up on brining land creatures.

Agree 100%. I experimented with brining chicken and pork back when it was all the rage, and just didn't like it. It does make the meat ... wetter. But this isn't the same as juicier. The brine does not add juiciness that tastes the way I want juices to taste. The processes that make meats taste better tend to involve removing moisture, not adding it (dry aging, etc.). This concentrates flavors rather than diluting them. The secret to making things juicy is not overcooking them. If you brine long enough to start affecting protein structures, textures can get weird. The one thing I still brine is seafood. Especially scallops, or fish that will be cooked sous-vide. I use a formula that firms the texture of the flesh a bit, and helps keep it from oozing albumin. But chicken? I like it with kosher salt sprinkled on the outside. If it's a special bird, I'll do it the night before and let it sit loosely covered in the fridge.

Even many of the things that do dissolve in water won't pass through the cell membrane. I think it was Hervé This who demonstrated this. Any molecule much bigger than table salt is staying on the outside. I forget if sugar was even able to penetrate. This doesn't mean that won't flavor the meat from the outside ... it's just not magically infusing into the cells.

Mitch, no one's going to take your stock pot away. I haven't even given mine away. I still use it for lots of stuff ... just not so much for stock. Sounds like your reason for doing it the old fashioned way is you like it. No other reason needed. But it's not a general argument against a pressure cooker. You're right that the time savings aren't huge for chicken stock. When I did it conventionally, I simmered for 3–4 hours. In the pressure cooker I go 2.5 hours (plus waiting for it depressurize). It's a bit quicker, but the bigger advantages are 1) no skimming (called into question by this thread) and 2) tastes better (to me, anyhow). It also uses way less energy. The real revelation for me, though, isn't chicken stock. It's any kind of meat glace / coulis. What I'd use as a substitute for traditinoal demi-glace. A project like this used to take nearly 2 full days in the kitchen. Now it takes about 30 minutes of work plus 2.5 hours waiting for the pressure cooker to do its thing on day 1. And less than an hour of work on day 2 (which includes portioning into ziplocs for the freezer). It's so easy that I don't do anything generic like veal or a white chicken glace. I use a dish-appropriate meat for whatever meals I'm planning. The degree to which this is better than an Escoffier demi-glace has to be tasted to be appreciated. And you don't give up a whole weekend for it.

Happy anniversary! To state the obvious, you can make a world-class stock the old fashioned way. I don't think any of those books mentions the pressure cooker method because no one was talking about it before 2009 or so. Dave Arnold and Nils Noren had been experimenting with it for years (including lots of blind taste tests) but that's the first I saw them write about it. The Modernist Cuisine crew duplicated their research with the same results, and published in 2011. The pressure cooker, all else being equal, gives more vibrant, 3-d flavors than you get from an open pot. I don't find the difference dramatic, but I appreciate it. And it works in a fraction of the time, and requires no skimming. What's not to love? I don't use the PC for vegetable or fish stock. It's too hot. For those things I get best flavor from sous-vide! Sorry, stock pot. We had good times back in the day.

Before I got into the pressure cooker methods, I learned a modern technique from someone on eGullet ... I can't remember who, but I think he worked under a well-known chef in Canada. I used variations on his method for years, and got results that are roughly as good as the PC. It's just very time consuming ... maybe even more so than the classical methods, so it shouldn't clash too hard with your romantic sensibilities 😁 It's more about meat glace / coulis than stock. But no reason you couldn't adapt it for stock with different ratios. The idea is that you split up the meat and mirepoix into multiple batches. I used 3 batches of meat and 2 mirepoix. You brown the first batches and then add water (or stock) and simmer it down. Then you add a successive batch and more liquid, and simmer it down. And so on. It's a similar principle to the old method of reduction where your first addition of liquid gets reduced like crazy, the next addition gets reduced less, and the final addition gets reduced hardly at all ... you get a balance of volatile flavors and concentrated non-volatile ones. Although here you're dealing with extraction at the same time. I can dig up my exact method if you're interested, but the important thing is the general idea. You're making more efficient use of that meat so you don't need to waste so much. One Modernist Cuisine inovation that would make sense here: use ground or finely chopped meat unstead of big chunks. It exponentially speeds extraction.

I've made versions of this soup and have found some complex / odd flavors in it. I liked it, but my girlfriend thought it tasted like a tire fire. I did not judiciously core the carrots, as I believe the MC crew recommends (but the times I did core them, the flavor wasn't all that different). If you're getting this kind of complexity, wine pairing would be harder. I think something acidic and cutting like while Paul O' recommends might work better than something sweet.

I do too, but those smells are a symptom of a problem. I'd rather keep them captive.

What, huh, who? I've missed the idea that salt can aid extraction of anything in a stock. I'd like explore it (or see if it's explored elsewhere). I don't recall seeing anything about this in Modernist Cuisine or in the old James Peterson Sauces book (a gem). As far as skimming, those days are long over for me. Ever since Dave Arnold and Nils Noren posted their pressure cooker experiments (and Mhyrvold & Co continued the thread) I've been all PC all the time for chicken and meat-based stocks. My reduction days are mostly over too. When I want to make a glace or coulis, I start with proportions pretty close to what I'm hoping to end with. Why lose all those aromatics? The Carême and Escoffier methods seem very dated now. They're about throwing in a whole barnyard full of meat in in the beginning, knowing that most of the flavor will go out the window. You can do better even without a pressure cooker.

2 stacked sheet pans work great. I have some insulated sheets, but the stacked pans work equally well. I mostly just use the insulated sheets as baking peels ... they're pretty rigid and don't have rims, so things slide off of them easily.

Exactly. In the middle of those extremes you'll find the polyunsaturated cooking oils. They'll build up a coating faster than bacon grease will, but it will be durable.

Maybe, but it's also meant to be gentle on your skin like other handwashing detergents. Chemically it's not that different from shampoo. So it's not going to be the most effective thing for getting machine oil off of spun steel. I bought a steel stovetop griddle that got some bad reviews because people said it took an hour of scrubbing with dish soap get the factory coating off of it. I used BKF and it took 2 minutes. I won't use BKF as shampoo.

There's a bit of lore in that video that I don't trust. The internet seems obsessed with Dawn detergent, but it's just plain old mild detergent, chemically similar to shampoo. If you want to get manufacturing oils off of a pan, save your elbows and use Barkeeper's Friend. Or Bon Ami. Something that will do some work for you. Flaxseed oil looks good on paper but testing shows it to be not the best choice. It evidently leaves a brittle finish. Other standard cooking oils do a better job. You want something high in unsaturated / polyunsaturated fat. Safflower, sunflower, and canola oils all work well. Flax is even higher in polyunsaturated fat but for some reason doesn't work as well. I can't remember my source for this but, but it was based on experiment and looked credible.

I am so not interested in coffees that cost as much as precious metals. What would happen if I tried one and liked it?? Sadly, with climate change, coffee is all creeping in that direction.

It changes all time. This last year he's been doing a lot of blends for espresso, I think as a concession to most customers ordering milk drinks. I almost always prefer the single origins. But his blends aren't traditional espresso blends. They'll typically be two, or occasionally three different varieties, and they're all beans that he sells as single origins. So it's not about balancing out shortcomings. The site isn't always completely up to date with what he has at the store. He had a washed Ethiopian a couple of weeks ago that wasn't up on the site. It's mostly been central America lately though.

Hearty recommendation for Coffee Mob in Brooklyn. They happen to be a short walk from me. I was happy with Stumptown, Toby's Estate, Joe, 9th St., etc., and then walked in to this place. I saw with some skepticism that they roast their own, and didn't like the high prices, but felt compelled to try. Damn if it wasn't the best coffee I'd ever had. So now I suck it up and pay whatever they ask. The owner, Buck has become a friend. I went with him once to the roasting collective in Red Hook where he works his magic (turns out to be the same place many other boutique NYC coffee shops do their roasting). The selection is always small. He's been doing mostly central American coffees a lot lately ... I love the honey process Guatemal Finca Medina. But my favorites are his Ethiopian and Burundian coffees, especially when he gets in a natural process. He roasts on the light side, and I generally find that the beans are at their peak 1 to 2 weeks after the roast date. Easily 2 weeks if you're making espresso. They lose flavor very, very slowly.

Yeah, they have a good reputation. I've never bought from them. This is the one I have. I'd recommend borrowing a knife in a similar style before taking the plunge. Some of us love these super thin gyutos but not everyone.

That's interesting about "wa." In the tunnel-vision world of knives all those deeper connotations get lost. I was likewise taught that "yo" means "western" .... I wonder if it more literally means "philistine."

"Wa" just means Japanese. They call any handle in the traditional style a wa-handle. They call western-style handles yo-handles. (I believe "yo" literally means "western"). Wa-gyuto means "Japanese cow-sword." But what they really mean by cow-sword is a western-style chef's knife (because westerners like to eat cows?). So it's a Japanese-style western-style knife. Try not to think too hard about it when there's something sharp in your hand. Mine is by Ikkanshi Tadatsuna. They make it with either carbon (white #2) or stainless (ginsan ko / silver #3) steel. I had the carbon for a minute but traded for the stainless, and have had this one for 12 years. It's not easy to find now, and the price has gone up. But there are knives by other makers that are almost identical. Probably the best known is Suisin (their inox honyaki wa-gyuto) which might be the first knife in this style. If I were buying a gyuto today, I might go to Japanese Knife Imports and get the Gesshin Ginga. Jon the owner says the performance between these knives is mostly identical (I trust anything he says). I just weighted them ... the wee-looking goldhamster is 308g. Almost double the tadtsuna's 163g. Here's a choil pic. Shows why it's so light and why it cuts the way it does: The spine on the tad is about 2mm thick. The spine on the hamster is 3.5mm.

The hamster's handle always felt comfortable to me, but I wasn't using it for hours of commercial prep every day. Mine is like every other Schaaf handle I've seen ... a double bolster, with fat, squared-off scales in between. The newer versions (the brand has been taken over by Solicut) have a wood scale option, but mine are bog-standard black plastic. I'm not really a stickler for western knife handles. They all feel pretty comfortable to me, as long as there aren't sharp edges along the spine or bolster. My gyuto has a wa-handle, which is now my favorite for a chef's knife. At least for a light / thin one. If I hold the hamster like a woodsman's axe, I hold the gyuto more like a violin bow. Very different styles for different techniques. I never, ever push hard on the gyuto. It's more like you glance in the direction of the food and let the knife do its thing. My Chinese cleaver is basically a piece of scrap metal that's been cut into the shape of a cleaver. I tried sharpening it once ... a tedious, completely pointless exercise. I keep it hidden away so no one uses it to turn one of my nice cutting boards to kindling. I suspect a santoku wouldn't be the thing for you. That style is for home cooks in tiny kitchens. They seem designed mostly to be unintimidating. I find them extremely frustrating to use. A very light and thin gyuto would be a good complement to your burly German knives. Even a long one will feel smaller and more nimble. I grab my 270 even when I'm just mincing garlic.

Greetings fellow keeper of the Golden Hamster! I have an 8" Schaaf Goldhamster. It was my first "serious" knife, and I used it for everything for years. I love that no one's heard of it, and that somehow the little hamster silk-screened onto the blade has survived all these years. It's also got a mightier blade than other German chef's knives I've used, for better or for worse. My main knife now is a very lightweight 270mm gyuto (actual blade length about 10-1/4"). It's much longer than the Schaaf but feels like it weighs about half as much. It runs circles around its German partner, but is too delicate for many tasks ... so the Hamster comes out when I need the burliness. Chopping chocolate, cutting hard squash, anything with bones, or even things that might have grit that could chip a razor-like edge (leeks etc.) ... all this goes to the hamster. I went too far once ... tried to hack through a turkey neck with the thing. Left a big dent in the blade. Dave Martell at Japanese Knife Sharpening in Pennsylvania fixed it, and also ground down the bolster to make the thing easier to sharpen. I now use a $5 Chinatown cleaver for extra dirty work.

Just a general thought ... we should be careful about generalizations regarding knives and countries of origin. There are great knives made many countries, and there are crappy knives made in Japan (including some of the more famous brands). "Japanese knife" is generally shorthand for "good knife that's been made with certain important Japanese knifemaking conventions." By these standards there many small knifemakers in the Americas and Europe (and probably every other part of the world) who make "Japanese knives." And I'd say that brands like Wasabi and Global are not really Japanese knives. Not in the same sense.

I’m just about done with a bag of a Burundian peaberry by my favorite NYC roaster. It’s good coffee—not my favorite flavor profile, but I’m not sure this has anything to do with it being a peaberry. It tastes to me like a washed East African bean that has some peach a melon notes. The guy who roasted it says cherry and honeysuckle, and he’s got a much better palate than I do. are peaberries known for any distinctive characteristics?

New coffee grinder (for brewed coffee only). Fellow Ode. A nice step up from my trusty old Baratza, that just broke for the 2nd or 3rd time. The great thing about Baratza is they sell all the replacement parts, and post all the DIY videos. But the gizmo I need is out of stock for a few weeks, and we need coffee now! My friend who owns my favorite coffee shop (and does all the roasting) recommended this one. He roasts very light, which is a challenge for grinders that don't have burly motors and burrs ... possibly why my grinder kept breaking. I plan to repair the Baratza and give it to my mom, who has a Capresso that doesn't work right (and that company doesn't sell parts).

I came in 2nd! The winner followed the rules.