paulraphael

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.

Yeah, that was it. I simplified it a bit over the next few years. Then got a PC in 2014 or so. One thing ... I just use celery now, not celery root. I remember the chef who first clued me into the technique said his executive chef had banished celery from the kitchen, because it added an unacceptable bitterness to everything. They used celeriac instead. I went along with this for a minute, but then did some taste tests and couldn't find anything wrong with plain old celery. Since then I've switched to a 10:1 mix of arrowroot and xanthan.

That's what I think is so cool about some of the new methods! They replicate pre-classical, extravagant ideas (but without cooking for a whole week and slaughtering whole pastures full of veal calves).

Similar idea. The coulis from pre-revolutionary France is just taken to exorbitant extremes. Whole joints of meat are discarded in the name of making a final sauce for a banquette. It puts things in perspective ... how Classical cuisine (especially idea of the mother sauces and demi-glace) is really a kind of fast-food simulation of the old ways, designed to make a-la-carte dining possible at bourgeois restaurants.

I don't mean to brag or anything, but Maguy once rescued me when I was lost in the basement of the Le Bernardin building.

I have a Fagor—10 or 12 quart? Dave Arnold did a bunch of blind taste tests with many subjects and found that the Kuhn Rikon PCs made the best tasting stocks. Surprising that there's a difference, but evidently the cookers work differently. The KRs let you maintain temperature without venting any steam. So I'd go for that one. I think I passed on KR because they were out of my price range at the time. For a cheaper option I've been happy with the Fagor. That hybrid coulis process came from a Canadian chef on eGullet some years ago. I can't remember who unfortunately. I described the process to another chef once and he laughed at me. "No one's got time for that in a commercial kitchen!" But someone did! What I got from Peterson was the general idea of meat coulis—that demi-glace is actually a post French Revolution shortcut. What they did back when they cooked for kings is poach a piece of meat in stock, save the poaching liquid (give the meat to the servants and dogs), use the liquid to poach another piece of meat, save the poaching liquid again (more meat for servants and dogs) ... repeat a total of 4 or so times. The final liquid would be a gloriously intense meat coulis that would serve as the sauce base for the final roast. No reduction or thickeners needed. It was a good time to be dog (if you were the right person's dog). I get similar results now with little or no reduction. Unfortunately at the end of pressure cooking, the meat is really quite spent. I my cats did not usually want it.

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.