paulraphael

I'm not sure where anyone's getting the idea that prime doesn't make a difference with tenderloin. or that it's never dry aged. Prime, dry aged tenderloin and cut fillets are pretty widely available in new york city, and are a lot better (flavor and texture) than the choice variety from the supermarket, including the 'certified angus' brand. I can't comment on the science, but I can say from experience that the difference is not subtle.

sure, that's why i usually save up for the prime dry-aged stuff with this kind of cut. it finesses more flavor out of the meat. it's still a pretty delicate flavor compared with a strip steak, but it's delicious. and i admit that i'm a sucker for melt-in-your mouth beef. i usually make some kind of sauce (lightly bound or unbound) to focus the flavors a bit. i'm making some variation on a sauce chasseur this time. i like the way shallots and mushrooms can bring gentle beef flavors into focus without overwhelming them. thanks for all the tips, everyone. i'll report back with results. have a great holiday!

Hi, I'm not talking about true dry aging (for weeks) ... just a day or two outside the cryovac before cooking. Any thoughts on this? good idea? bad?

My mom asked me to cook the dinner on Christmas, and she went out and bought a 6 lb beef tenderloin ... at costco. I've been spoiled by prime dry aged meat in new york, and so I'm not completely confident in my abilities to make this cryovac monster taste delicious. I'm intrigued by some of the information on the home dry-aging thread, and wonder if anyone has suggestions on how to proceed with this piece of meat. There's only one fridge, and my mom has given me permission to stink it up with uncovered beef for at most a couple of days. I'm also interested in some of the debate on los-and-slow vs. high heat cooking. I have always roasted hot and fast, and gotten wonderful results. My last tenderloin was done at 500 degrees all the way through, cooked to 120 degrees on the inside and mahogany brown on the outside. It was delicious, but was also a much nicer piece of meat. If anyone thinks another method would do better with this thing, I'm open to suggestions.

K8memphis, you have to be really careful about what you read in diet books. The title "Doctor" seems to have no connection to the veracity of the information. Medical schools do not teach nutrition, and they do not teach people how to do research. Any information that isn't backed by a study that's been published in a peer reviewed journal is about as compelling as heresay. Notable authors who made careers out of citing unpublished studies include Dr. Atkins and Bary Sears (the guy behind "The Zone"). The real journals are full of studies contradicting almost everything these two ever said. But it didn't stop them from selling boxcars worth of diet books. Do yourself a favor and look for real studies on the subject. You might even find some reviews of this particular doctor's claims.

Yes, I know other things can lead to heart disease. Almost anything out of balance can be unhealthy. The question is, is there room for ingredient X in a healthy, balanced diet? There's certainly room for saturated fats and refined sugar, in moderation. Trans fats on the other hand appear to be more harmful in smaller quantities than other nutrients. Your point about it being a matter of opinion which ingredients are necessary raises an interesting question ... it makes me wonder what a chef might need trans fats for. Besides just doing things the way they're used to doing them. I understand why industry likes them for preservation of texture in processed foods, but I honestly wonder what couldn't be done as well or better without them in a restaurant kitchen. This is culinary question, not a regulatory one.

I would love to see someone do high and low heat method side by side, with the other variables kept the same. Which would mean starting the low heat one a lot earlier, so you eat them at the same time. My inclination is always for more fire: I love the crisp skin and the deep roasted flavors that only come from a healthy dose of the maillard reaction, which won't even occur below 300 degrees. In the last week I roasted cornish hen and pork tenderloin at 550 degrees, and chicken at 500. All came out tender, juicy, and with a crisp, mahogony brown finish with deep, complex roasted flavors. I have no doubt that I'd like the browned crust of the high temperature roast more; what would be interesting to compare is the meat on the inside. I'd expect to see more of a gradient from well done to extremely rare in the high temp version, and I'd also expect it to retain more moisture overall. but i have no sense of which would produce more tender or flavorful meat in the middle. Then there are the 2 temperature methods people mention. If it's a tossup between high and low, maybe the dual approach would give the best off both worlds.

I've rolled my eyes at just about every food fad/demonization that's come along. I always check the supporting evidence, and am always amazed to find next to nothing. Your anti-sugar kick, for example. I've been looking for support for all those claims for years. haven't found any, except concerning people who are diabetic or tend towards unstable blood sugar. Which isn't to say it's healthy to eat with impunity, but that there's a place for it in a balanced diet. Trans fats, on the other hand, are the one ingredient I've seen completely compelling evidence against. What also sets them apart is that they're unecessary. The artificial variety exists purely for the convenience of food manufacturers. I won't miss them. There are many bigger problems in the world, but few that are so easy to fix. I have great respect for all the counter arguments based on limiting the reach of the government. The world would be a scary place without them.

So would I. In general I'm against unecessary regulation, and so I'm one of the nuts who thinks most of the drug laws cause much worse problems than they solve (witness little episodes in history like prohibition ...) I see the trans fat issue as different, and in fact somewhat unique. They're insidious, because they're invisible, abstract (difficult to explain to anyone lacking education and a specific interest in them), and arguably unecessary (they seem to be replaceable with very little trouble, at least in the restaurant setting. The food processing industry might have a harder time, but I suspect they'll discover they have the resources). In the end, I see many potential benefits to doing away with them, and precious little harm. It wouldn't surprise me if the two regulatory steps that have already been taken--the federal labelling mandate on packaged food, and the restaurant ban in NYC--is all that it will take to turn the whole food industry around, at least in this country. We may not even need any more local or state regulation after this.

It's not MY position and it's not hypocritical. I'm not professing a belief that I don't abide by, so I don't see any hypocisy. Philosophically, I'd agree with you that labelling is preferable solution to banning. But it's not something I'm going to complain about, because I think we'll all benefit from a trans fat ban. Manufacturers are going to work faster to make trans fat-free substitutes (like Crisco already has with its fully hydrogenated shortening ... it wasn't even hard to do) and so there won't even be much price to pay. The slippery slope warning is well taken, but it's used as a defense against any and all regulation. I don't really see us teetering on the edge of a regulatory abyss just yet. One city is doing an experiement. Future regulation (or lack of it) will likely be based on how it works out. Practically speaking, there's one benefit to the ban that hasn't been brought up: kids, who don't pay attention to labels, and who eat an inordinate amount of chips and fried crap no matter what anyone tells them. This is a way to make their junk food habits a little less toxic, and they won't even notice.

11 batches of bread a day definitely sounds like hobart territory! That's really professional use. The KA can do it, but like you said, it probably won't inspire much confidence. It was designed with the expectation of having more time to cool down between batches than it's going to get when you're running big bread batches back to back. It was designed to last a long time under serious household use, but it sounds like you're doing ten times more than that.

It's good to keep in mind that scientific knowledge is provisional, but you can take it too far. It's easy to throw up your arms and say "knowledge is always changing, so i don't need any of it!" In fact, studies weren't negated. Generalizations based on interpretations of old studies were negated. The reason is that the old studies were so vague .. they didn't often enough distinguish between one kind of fat and another, or between the fat that was being studied and others that happened to coexist in the diets of the subjects. There's still a lot left to be learned ... the exact mechanisms of the link between trans fats and CHD, what other nutrients work with or against this process, other factors that haven't been considered, etc.. But the current state of the research is sophisticated enough that we're unlikely to discover that trans fats actually aren't bad. The evidence that they're worse than other fats is just too thorough and compelling. Einstein showed that Newton's laws actually needed to be radically revised ... but apples didn't suddenly start falling up.

I think the diffference is that the trans fat is invisible. Anyone who spends more a minute a year thinking about it knows that the bowling ball-sized cheeseburger is bad for them. They're simply making a choice to eat it anyway. But when I eat at a cafe, I have no way of knowing if what I'm eating is made with butter or with trans fat-laden shortening. I have no expectation of either being health food, but evidence points to the trans fat version being a lot worse (I personally think it's likely to taste worse, too, but that's a different conversation). The other law that was just passed in NYC is about labelling, actually. Fast food restaurants need to have nutritional information posted someplace visible. Most people won't care, but it's a reminder to everyone, and it will make it a bit easier for people to make informed choices. I realize that trans fats occur in nature. Those trans fats aren't being banned. They also tend to exist in much smaller quantities than in the artificial substitues. I just bought some french butter that lists 1/2 gram trans fats per serving. Not sure what's in a comparable amount of shortening, but I suspect it's significant. Also, I should add that I don't think this is a cut and dry issue. Matters of policy never are. But I don't think it's an arbitrary decision, either. The city chose to draw a line somewhere, and the distinction implied by that line is one that's well supported scientifically. Whether or not you think it's any of the government's business at all is a different story.

Haha, yes, I meant "don't" ... so annoying to say the exact opposite of what you're trying to say. I was talking about the same study that you mentioned, that found low incidence of heart disease among Inuits. The French seem like an anomaly because most older studies ignored that regional diets high in saturated fat tend to also be high in hydrogenated oils. The French and the Inuits provide interesting models because their diets are high in the saturated fats but not the trans fats. I'll have to go back and see where my information on China came from. If I'm wrong I apologise for the misinformation. None of these broad population-based studies is controlled for genetic differences, but fow whatever reasons the researchers don't seem to think this is a major factor. In general, recent research, focussed on distinguishing between different fatty acids, supports that trans fats are a more potent culprit in CHD. Here's a metastudy published this year: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.f...l=pubmed_docsum

Those tend to be abstracts to metastudies, where a researcher compiles and analyses the results of many other studies, trials, etc. Well, in the case of popular journalism on the topic, I always look for references and go straight to the source. The Times is head and shoulders above most papers on these things, but I find their journalists get lazy a lot of the time in their interpretations of the studies, or in their ability to find the most current studies. They're simply ten years behind the current state of research if they think trans fats are only on par with saturated fats in their effect on cardiac health. Yes, most of the damning research is from the last five or six years. I wouldn't give weight to a 1997 study without looking at what's come since. Also, remember that the American Heart Association, like the FDA is a political body, and so it's reports are connected to policy and not just science. You'll have better luck getting to the bottom of things by going straight to the scientific journals. Even if you can only access the abstracts, you'll get more relevent information than you will out of a typical newspaper article. I only linked to the first handfull of studies that I found. If you want to dig deeper, and even explore some contradictory viewpoints (you'll always find something) I suggest wiling away some time on pub med.

Right, and there is also a mountain of evidence linking saturated fat to heart disease ← Is there really a "mountain" of evidence linking trans fats to heart disease? While there have been a few studies, I wouldn't characterize the evidence as anything near mountainous -- or near conclusive. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.f...l=pubmed_docsum http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.f...l=pubmed_docsum http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.f...l=pubmed_docsum http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.f...l=pubmed_docsum http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.f...l=pubmed_docsum http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.f...l=pubmed_DocSum http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.f...l=pubmed_DocSum http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.f...l=pubmed_DocSum http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.f...l=pubmed_DocSum This is the tip of the iceberg. There are hundreds of published studies in peer reviewed journals that come to similar conclusions. It's hard to find this kind of consensus on any nutritional topic.

The plastic gear on the KA mixers is what's called a sacrificial gear ... it's designed to break if the machine is overloaded, to protect the much more expensive motor. Contrary to popular internet rumor, the KAs have used a sacrificial plastic gear singe hobart introduced them decades ago. It's not the most elegant solution to the problem, but it's a cost effective one. They replaced the plastic gear with a metal one on the pro (bowl lift) models several years ago, and switched to a thermal shutoff to protect the motor. More elegant, but also more expensive.

Wattage tells you how much power the machine draws from the wall. It tells you nothing about about the durability, the heat diispersion, or the ability to generate torque at the low speeds you need for kneading dough. Pro machines are rated in horsepower, which is about the actual output power. This makes much more sense, but still tells you nothing about torque or durability or cooling. The main reasons the pro machines like the Hobarts kick ass is that they have a geared transmission. Like a car. At low speeds you use a low gear, which gives you more torque. You can run the engine at high speed (where it actually generates the most power) while the beater turns slowly. It makes little difference to have a 700 watt mixer if has electronic spped control (no gears), if it's nowhere near 700 watts at kneading speeds, if it has very little low-speed torque, and if it has poor heat dissipation under load. FWIW, here's a pretty good review at consumersearch.com... http://www.consumersearch.com/www/kitchen/mixers/index.html

Right, and there is also a mountain of evidence linking saturated fat to heart disease, and sat fat happens to constitute a much higher proportion of our fat intake than does transfats. So, shouldn't we ban butter in favor of trans-fat-free shortening? ← It's not that black and white. Saturated fats are a natural part of the human diet, as they have been for millenia, and in moderation do not appear to be a major problem. The Inuit tribe eats a diet consisting largely of saturated fat and they don't have lower rates of heart disease than Americans. The French eat butter and lard and goose fat in impressive quantities and they also don't have our high rates of heart disease (although that appears to be changing, along with the rate of obesity, now that our fast food chains are infiltrating). Meanwhile, China has a very high rate of heart disease, and fairly low saturated fat intake. As early as fifteen years ago researchers were establishing a link between heart disease in china and partially hydrogenated oils. You could make a case that saturated fats aren't great, but you could just as easily make a case that trans fats have no redeeeming qualities whatsoever, outside of the convenience they provide for processed food manufacturers (and lazy chefs).

Well, fois gras is an ethics issue, not a health issue, so it's not the same thing. As far as sugar and white flour doing horrible things, I have yet to see any clinical evidence of them being the villains that certain health food communities make them out to be. And I've done a lot of searches through orignal research on Pub Med looking for it. On the other hand, there are mountains of evidence linking trans fats to heart disease. In general I've believed the axiom that there are no bad foods, only bad diets ... but trans fats call this into question. They really appear to be as bad as the hype suggests.

Aparently even some acclaimed chefs in NYC are upset about this ... http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/11/nyregion/11fat.html Does it strike anyone else as odd that experienced chefs think they need crisco to make good pastry? I'd be embarassed to admit it, and I'm not even a pro. I find shortening based crusts to be so bland that I don't care what the texture is. And it seems like a simple matter of skill to produce a pretty flaky crust with pure butter (especially with good butter). If you still can't get the texture you want, there are so many possibilities: trans fat-free shortening, leaf lard, suet, goose fat, or if you're really obsessed with flakiness, just make the damn thing with puff pastry. Is there anyone who really prefers a shortening based tart shell to a (skillfully made) butter one?

I wouldn't get seduced by wattage. The Hobart N5 is significantly lower wattage than the top end Kithchenaids, Vikings, and Delonghis, but is effectively much more powerful and will outlast all of them, especially with pro level use. It will also cost much more. If you really need professional quality, you need to shell out the dollars. For anything less than continuous heavy use (like making multiple batches of dough back to back every day) my money is on the top end kitchenaid. There are some nice things about the Delonghi, but the trouble is that service is nonexistant, at least in the U.S.. If it breaks (and they do break ... delonghi has its quality control issues just like KA), you're in for an epic. I know less about Viking ... they seem to have less of a track record than the others. I'm skeptical of them in general, based on the price/performance of their other products. KA has the best service service network and policies of all of them. Remember that you'll have an easy time breaking ANY mixer, even a floor-standing hobart that's as big as a hot tub. You have to pay attention to capacities, to how the motor sounds, and to common sense. Most mixers will also benefit from a gentle break-in period, that lets you warm the grease in the transmission and get it flowing everywhere it needs to go, before you really crank on the thing. Kitchenaid doesn't acknowledge this (they don't want to scare you away) but if you check out the forums at kitchenaid.com you'll find some engineering types who give their educated opinions.

Has there been any discussion of the theory behind no-knead techniques? I'm assuming that the very long proof combined with the high hydration is just allowing the gluten to form on its own, but I'm wondering if anyone has studied it. It seems similar to the pain a l'ancienne technique that Peter Reinhart writes about, although instead of depending on refrigeration it uses tiiny quantities of yeast. Any thoughts on this? Advantages/disadvantages vs. other delayed fermentation techniques?

if you're worried about uneven heating (from being close to the sides, etc.) you can always turn them and shuffle them around two or three times over the course of cooking. Kind of a nuissance, but it can solve the problems. I also recommend putting a doubled layer of foil over the breasts for the first 10 or 15 minutes. This eliminates all worries of the breasts getting overdone while the dark meat cooks. Helps with nice even browning, too. I'm indebted to James Peterson for that technique.

This is an interesting subject ... I've always wondered how people managed with this kind of thing. As a purely amateur cook and baker, I'm baffled by how anyone can make money unless they're working in a real production environment, cranking things out in multiples. Even then, it would seem like affter ingredients get paid for, the hourly wage would be ridiculous. I'm not even considering overhead. Just the other day I made a couple of tarts. They turned out pretty well ... better than most of the professionally baked tarts I've had. but when I factor in the cost of ingredients, and pay myself a reasonable wage, I'd have to charge around $40 each, wholesale! This ignores overhead, and also ignores that no one is going to pay that much for a tart. What kind of hourly wage do good bakers expect to earn?