paulraphael

Ray, what are the similarities/differences in the alloys used in surgical instruments and 18-10 steel? And what do you think of the citric acid/edta process? if I have a pan that already has a salt pit or two, would it make sense to try something like this? Would there be any risk of damage (to pan, self, or planet)?

Yup. Not counting prep time it takes a couple of minutes. If it takes much longer the airiness of the sauce will probably be compromised. If you don't have a decently responsive pan and heat source, this will be difficult to do without curdling the eggs. otherwise it's pretty straightforward. turn up the knob and whisk like crazy. when it starts to thicken it will pull together and the bottom of the pan will start showing. keep going for a few seconds, and then pull the pan off the fire, continuing to whisk for 15 seconds or so. then you can drop the heat down and incorporate the butter.

there's a recipe for passivation with citric acid and edta (tetrasoidium salt) here: http://www.thefabricator.com/TubePipeProdu...icle.cfm?ID=888 these are both lurking in my darkroom boxes somewhere. seems like a safer procedure. what i'm curiuos about is this: passivation is supposed to occur spontaneously with 18-10 steel in the presence of oxygen. does chloride corrosion somehow stop this process from occuring (after the salt and water are washed away)? if not, then it seems like chemical passivation would be unecessary.

i haven't noticed much difference between one steaming device and another. one that i like is a retired calphalon double boiler insert (i always just use a mixing bowl for double boiling) that i drilled full of holes. for bigger batches i have one of those pasta inserts that drops into a stock pot. sometimes when i'm lazy i do it without any kind of insert ... just throw the veggies into a pan with a little simmering water. kind of like a high heat braise. the ones on the bottom get cooked a little more than the ones on top, but it all works out. usually the reason i steam is for time/energy conservation. it's so quick to boil that small quantity of water. but in general i think i like the results of boiling better, if it's done correctly. i think boiling got a bad rap from people using too little water. if you treat the veggies like pasta and dump them into a big pot of raging, salted water, they cook so fast and stay incredibly crisp. a boiling vs. steaming clinic would be interesting also ... see which veggies prefer which methods.

I just took a look at the article on Herzmann's site. It's a nice article, but confusing in that he lumps together liaisons and 'finition.' Sometimes they're the same thing (like with beurre mainié), but often they're unrelated. The liaison is the binding agent that thickens the sauce. It can take many forms. it can be integral with another ingredient (flour in demiglace, gelatin in glace, vegetable starches in purées). In other cases they're separate and added somewhere in the middle (reduced cream). and in some cases they're added separately, typically at the end (butter in various forms, refined starches). Finishes include butter, but also seasonings unrelated to the liaison ... like parsley or other fines herbes, acids, salt, pepper, etc.

Steven's summary is excellent. Some things to consider ... Thickness: traditionally sauces were made quite thick (enough to generously coat the back of a spoon). This was accomplished primarily by using a roux-thickened demiglace. Nouvelle sauces tended to be thinner, creamier. They tended to be thickened by some combination of gelatin (from glace de viande), reduced cream, and butter swirled in at the end. Many contemporary sauces are left unbound and are more brothlike. It's up to you, but you should plan ahead based on what you're trying to achieve. Usually the thinner the sauce, the more intensely it should be flavored. This is because you'll be getting less with each bite. For informal pan sauces, I often make them with stock and maybe wine, with a lot of aromatics to get an intense flavor. I then adjust the thickness at the end to give it just a bit more body than a broth. A simple way is to strain it and then swirl in whole butter off the heat. A bit of arrowroot starch can also work well if you don't want the richness of butter. texture: you can make a great rustic sauce by not straining. if you do this, you can make it nicer by chopping your shallot or other aromatics more finely and evenly. or you can strain, preferably through a fine strainer or chinois, for a velvety texture. flavor: in a simple pan-deglazed sauce made with stock, the ideal is often to simulate the flavor and mouthfeel of a natural jus. This is hard, because stock is never as good as jus, even after deglazing the pan. reduction intensifies flavors, but destroys many fresh and subtle flavors. An excellent solution is multiple deglazes (usually two is enough). here's one way to do it: deglaze the pan with healthy amount of stock, and reduce it down to nothing. allow it to brown on the botttom of the pan. As it's starting to brown, add your aromatics. then deglaze as you would normally. if using wine or spirits, reduce by half, or however much you normally would. If not, go straight to adding more stock. In any event, use less stock, and do not not reduce it. just simmer long enough to extract flavors from any long-simmering herbs you're using (thyme, bay leaf, etc.). For roasts, if you roast on a bed of aromatic veggies (onions, etc.), leave the veggies in the pan with the drippings and the fat, and reduce. the liquid drippings will brown on the bottom, leaving the fat floating. You can then simply pour the fat off (a strainer helps you hang onto the veggies). the veggies can stay in the pan through the second reduction, too. this greatly enhances the flavor. if you're going to strain, do so before adding the liason. The idea is you get intensity, and added roasted flavors from the first deglaze. after the second deglaze, the remaining stock is not reduced, so you get to keep its fresh stock flavors. This is similar to the classic method of making demiglace, where unreduced stock is added periodically to the reduction. I learned about multiple brownings/deglazings from James Peterson.

I'm not convinced by this, based on experience and on what I've been reading. I've seen the occasional pit in good quality stainless that's never been abused. And every article I've found on 18/10 stainless alloys (and its cousins) warns against exposure to sodium chloride in high concentrations. Passivation is an issue because chlorine bleach and sodium chloride remove it.

What a way to go.

Ha! Yeah, I find that Mr. Pepin dumbs down a lot of information before publishing it. There are reasons to use clarified butter in Hollandaise sometimes. See this thread: http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=87733 Just don't try to use it in a beurre blanc.

Looks like a good subject for a test. I bet there is at least some relevence to the olive oil analogy. Even if butter is pasteurized, this happens at far lower temperature than sautéing. I agree with the idea that you're not looking for neutral flavor with clarified butter. There are plenty of cheaper, neutral flavored oils that can take high heat, for the times you don't want to taste butter. But even so, I have trouble imagining the difference between artisan butter and supermarket butter showing up in a sauté. If you use the clarified butter for other purposes (hollandaise sauce, etc.) I can believe it would make a real difference. If the difference is worth it to you or not is a different story. You'll definitely be clarifying out a lot of the wonderful flavors of that expensive butter. Much of a butter's subtlety is in the milk solids.

I may have to weigh the pans in question to really see if my experience reflects an apples/apples comparison. The differences I see in speed of heating/cooling seem difficult to account for in terms of conductivity alone ... considering we're talking about relatively thin pieces of metal. The vastly superior evenness of heating of the copper is purely a function of improved conductivity. But I'm still betting that the responsiveness issues are at least somewhat related to thermal mass. I could be wrong ... you got me curious. As far as the price of copper cookware, this is something I'm puzzling over. The prices have almost doubled since I bought mine 6 or 7 years ago. I had no idea I was investing in precious metals at the time. The price increase does correspond to big rises in the price of copper, but copper isn't THAT expensive. No more than a few dollars worth in a copper pan (vs. a few cents worth of metal in an iron or aluminum pan). I thought maybe it was the price of the laminated copper/stainless material (all the companies seem to use the same stuff). But the simple, tin-lined pans have gone up at the same rate. Any ideas?

The ideal vessel for making a hollandaise is a slope-sided saucepan. If the pan is of decent quality and you're using a gas stove, then there's no imaginable reason to use a waterbath. You actually want the sabayon to form quickly; if it doesn't, it's not going to be as airy as it might be. The way to get a light, smooth sauce is over medium-high heat, whisking constantly (this is the point of a slope sided pan ... either an evasée or one of those newer curved ones ... to let the whisk get into the corners). It's unvelievably easy. If you're paying attention you won't mess up. Try it once and I promise you'll never go back to a double boiler or blender. What kind of butter to use isn't a matter of dogma but rather of the texture you're looking for. Clarified butter is the best way if you want a thicker sauce; it's also necessary if you're making the sabayon with significant amounts of other liquid (for flavoring). But clarified butter lacks much of the delicate flavor of whole butter. Melted butter allows the lightest, airiest sauce, but since the butter is broken you tend to have a more fragile emulsion. It also can lack some of the delicacy of flavor of a sauce made with whole butter. Whole butter gives the best flavor and most stable emulsion, but will tend to give a denser sauce than melted butter, because of the added stirring required to melt it.

I've read that, and much more rigorous analyses as well. The physics still seems to point to thermal mass and responsiveness being reciprocal.

I haven't worked through all the math (including comparing thicknesses of my pans), but experience suggests there really is a big difference in thermal mass. The iron pans (enamelled or not) take well over twice as much time to heat up. They also stay hot much longer. One of the disadvantages of copper pans is that they're lousy for keeping food warm! If I bring a sauce to the table in the copper pan it will cool noticeably faster than it will even in an aluminum pan. Some of this might be attributable to conductivity (the pan acting as a more efficient heat sink) but that doesn't explain all of it. In fact, I'm not sure how something can have both high thermal mass and high responsiveness. It is true that iron has a higher specific heat than copper (specific heat being the amount of heat Joules it takes to raise one gram of a substance by one degree). I wouldn't say it's a big difference, however. Iron clocks in at 0.449 J/g/K versus 0.385 for copper. But copper is more dense than iron: 8.96 g/cm^3 versus 7.87 for iron. When you combine these to get specific heat per cubic centimeter, they are very similar in their thermal capacity: 3.53 J/cm^3/K for iron versus 3.44 for copper. This means that, if iron and copper pans have a similar thickness -- and most iron pans are unfortunately no more thick than heavy copper pans -- the heat capacity is just about the same. Having a relatively high thermal capacity is actually an advantage of copper. What makes it especially advantageous is that it is also extremely responsive. Think: freight train that can turn on a dime. ←

I've wondered about this too. I've seen "natural flavors" in the ingredients of some high-end looking, artisan butters.

I use a set of stainless mixing bowls. I divide the hot stock among them and float them in a sink full of cold water. I shuffle the bowls around and stir the stock within them every few minutes ... when the water in the sink gets warm, I replace it with new cold water. Usually about three changes of water is enough to get the stock to room temperature. From simmering to fridge is about 45 minutes. The stainless bowls have plastic covers, so I just cover them and set them in the fridge. when they cool i skim the fat and put it into the final containers.

A BTU is a unit of energy (although I think the way stove manufacturers use it, they really mean BTUs per hour, which is a unit of power ... basically how fast the burner will heat something, all else being equal). There's a lot more than BTUs to a good burner. If all you cared about was power, you could pour some gasoline into a trash can and let 'er rip. (Make sure your marshmallows are on a long stick). A good burner will likely heat more evenly, give more precise control, go down to a much lower simmer, and have a flame pattern that more efficiently gets those BTUs into your cookware. And it might be easier to clean and less likely to break. As with most things, you pay for the details.

Thanks, Ray. If you do get a pit, is the metal their more vulnerable than the rest of the surface? I'd be bummed if it started to grow. In the mean time, I guess I'll stop tossing salt onto vegetables that I'm roasting in a stainless pan.

Cast iron and copper are almost exact opposites. Copper is much more conductive, and has a much lower specific heat, so the pan heats (and cools) much faster than a similarly heavy iron pan. This makes the pan much more responsive and easier to control. If you've ever tried to make a reduced cream sauce or emusified egg yolk sauce in an enameled cast iron pan, you'll know what being out of control feels like! Copper will also heat much more evenly from edge to edge because of its conductiveness. This makes it great in a large sauté pan where you want even browning. The responsiveness helps you control the temperature ... especially nice if you're going to make a pan sauce. The strength of cast iron is specifically its lack of response. For some kinds of cooking, you don't need responsiveness, but you need a pan that will hold a steady temperature no matter what you do to it. If you want to brown or blacken a big piece of meat, cast iron is perfect. You preheat it (whcih takes forever) but then when you drop that meat in the pan, it holds enough stored energy to brown the meat without the pan temperature dropping too much. Copper = sports car Cast Iron = freight train both have their uses.

The differences I've found: the hand hammered ones are pretty (mine shows the wood grain of the mould on the outside. And it seems to be made thicker on the bottom than on the sides. This improves its balance .... it wobbles, but it tends to stay put. I got mine at a chinese restaurant supply store for under $20 ... just a few bucks more than the machine made ones.

I've read that you need to be careful with even high grade stainless steels and salt ... like don't salt the water until it's already simmering, so the salt goes right into solution rather than sitting on the bottom of the pan. Any thoughts on this? I roast mostly with clad metal pans, both with 18-10 stainless interiors. I don't want to pit them, and I'm wondering if salting the food in them before putting them into a 500 degree oven is an invitation to pitting. I've noticed a small pit on the stainless interior of my favorite copper saucepan. No idea how it got there, but if possible I'd like to avoid getting any more.

I think it's a great set of skills to aspire to. I'm always in awe of my friend who works as a personal chef ... not only does she put together whole menus for clients who typically have special (insane) needs, but she whips up a whole week worth of food for them in one afternoon, in their own kitchens. It's hard to get around a completely dull knife or impossibly bad set of pans. But a lot of the stress of cooking in strange settings can be reduced by studying your own procedures (and how the foods respond to them) rather than just falling into habit. Simplistic example: suppose you learn to cook steak by trial and error, and finally base your method on using a certain pan, preheating for 5 minutes, with the gas turned to 4, and cooking for 3 minutes on the first side and 2 on the second. you'll have a reliable method, as long as none of your variables changes. But if you learn the look and feel of a piece of meat that's cooked the way you like, you'll have a much more portable method. You might not like your friend's stove, but you'll be able to manage. To this end, I spent a lot of time getting temperature readings on chickens that I roast. I don't need a thermometer when I roast in my own oven ... I don't even need to look at the bird, because I have the timing down based on weight. But I don't want to be locked into using my own (rented) kitchen, so I've gone out of the way learn then non-equipment specific cues.

You're the first I've seen to mention Descoware. I inherited a couple of beautiful pieces from my grandmother (favorite is an oval dutch oven, maybe 5 qt, that's great for braising. What do you think of these?

the answer is to slave away as long as it takes in the kitchen, poking and tasting as often as you have to, and then right before dinner, have one of your trusted sous chefs swing a heavy skillet at the back of your head. skillfully. all goes well, when you get up off the floor you'll remember nothing ... all ideas and olafactory memories will be dashed to oblivion. a surprise will await you in the dining room: the best of all worlds try to remember to include a couple of aspirin with the amuse.

Bingo. Being in the kitchen all day not only numbs my sense of smell, but also my appetite. I often feel pretty blasé about the meals that I cook, but they might make the best leftovers in the world! I sometimes wonder how pros deal with this ... how to discern flavors when they're immersed in the strong smells for 12 hours a day.