paulraphael

I'm guessing you'll find the best answers in farming small industrial food manufacturer forum. Most of us here have scales that go up to a few kilograms. If you learn the best way to do this, I'd love to hear it. Out of totally random curiosity.

If you're making uncooked bases, there probably isn't any benefit to a homogenizer. When you cook/pasteurize an ice cream base, the fat globules get more mobile and glom onto each other, making fewer bigger globules that result in a worse foam structure and texture. The homogenizing step happens right after cooking, when the fat is still hot and liquid. In order of effectiveness: doing nothing < regular blender / stick blender < high-powered blender < rotor-stator homogenizer (like Jo's) < ultrasonic homogenizer < high-pressure homogenizer (like what the dairy uses). Emulsifiers, in my experience (and depending on flavor) make a small but noticeable difference in smoothness and foam quality. Contrary to common sense, they're not used to emulsify the ice cream at all. Milk and cream are already perfectly good emulsions; the surface-active components of the milk proteins do the emulsifying, and the industrial homogenizer at the dairy makes everything stable. We actually add emulsifiers to partially destabilize the emulsion. Added emulsifiers pluck some of the milk proteins away from the fat globules, making it easier for the fat globules to partially coalesce and form a foam structure. Consider that part of the structure of ice cream is whipped cream ... we're trying to make whipped cream with a much lower fat percentage than we usually would. Anything that helps destabilize the milk and cream make this much easier. It takes very little ... there's probably enough lecithin in 1/4 egg yolk to do it for a liter of ice cream.

The relationship of fat to flavor really depends on the flavor. Some flavors are carried by it, others are muted by it. I don't believe any flavors benefit from a fat level above 16% or so, but some, like fat-soluble spices (vanilla) seem to do best around there. Other flavors, like fruits and coffee, are most vibrant and intense at low fat levels. I agree with you about chocolate. The main culprit is cocoa butter, which causes problems not just because of its abundance but because of its hardness at cold temperatures. The sugar and solids aren't so hard to compensate for, but the cocoa butter's always a problem. Using cocoa powder would be the solution, but chocolate companies still think of it as a byproduct. It's what's left over after extracting cocoa butter (which they use for white chocolate or to sell as an industrial ingredient) and they don't pay much attention to the powders provenance. Companies like Michel Cluizel and Valrhona do sell better cocoa powder than other companies ... but it's nothing like the quality of their own single-origin chocolates. This is not because it has to be so; they just haven't identified this as a market. Callebaut is now advertising single-origin cocoa powders to their professional customers. But I don't see a distributor in the US and they won't return my calls. Some smaller makers in the US are making fancy cocoa powder. But last I checked none had the (expensive) machine needed to mill it to a fine texture. So your ice cream would be gritty.

That would be a conundrum. There's a scene in the novel Corelli's mandolin where someone's hiding from the authorities in church balcony where a case of wine is being stored. He desperately needs to pee, and can't think of anyplace to go but one of the wine bottles. But they're all new bottles. So he uncorks one and—since he can't bear the thought of wasting the wine—drinks it before relieving himself in it. You can imagine how this ends, or doesn't.

Someone with autocad and a machine shop could do this as a kickstarter project. I think the simplest approach would be a Vitamix attachment, since that thing is more modular. The cost of the replacement jugs for the VM would keep it from ever being really cheap, even if you could get the blades made in China.

I don't have one because they're huge. A vacuum machine doesn't offer enough advantages over ziploc bags for sous-vide. There are many other things chamber vac is necessary for (vacuum infusion, instant pickling, etc.) but these aren't interesting enough to me to justify the size and expense. If I move someplace with double the square feet, I'll rethink it. But my eye will probably be on more expensive ones that I can trust to not break.

I assume the price is high only because it's a specialized tool sold to science labs—the same reason that once upon a time you couldn't get an immersion circulator for under $1K. I'm waiting for someone to wakeup and make a rotor/stator head for a vitamix or higher-powered stick blender. How hard could it be?

I'm not talking about cleaning, I'm talking about getting all the food out of the thing. The vitamix is clunky at this. Which is why I almost always use it for large batches.

Because it's more work to scrape food out of the jug, and because it's rather heavy and doesn't live full time on our counter. Has to be pulled out and put away. Bamix is more like grabbing an electric toothbrush.

I found it on Amazon. $20, which seems like a lot.

This is something my girlfriend is using it for, and she's looking for as fast and easy a solution as possible, with minimal cleanup. We have a Vitamix but that turns everything into a bigger project. She may try pre-grinding the oats, or she may decide this is good enough.

Thanks for the replies everyone. I bought the sharp blade (linked above) and it does a better job than the all-purpose blade. This thing's real strength seems to be emulsions and whipping, rather than making totally smooth purees.

Thanks for all the ideas. I'm interested in the spun sugar/caramel idea. This is the one that occurred to me first, but I don't know if it would be hydroscopic and lose its crunch. I'm also intrigued by the bones of the dead. There may be some marzipan involved in this project. If you were to drizzle caramel that's hot enough to become brittle onto marzipan, would it melt/burn/damage it?

If you were making a confection, and wanted to create the sensation of crunching through little bones, what might you use? Anything that will stay nice and crisp in a moist environment? Could be a glaze or anything else. Asking for a friend.

We just got a Bamix Mono (the 150 watt version) after a decade or so of deliberation. I'm wondering if we got the right one. Lately my girlfriend has been using a stick blender daily for various concoctions, including one where she makes a batter out of eggs and raw oatmeal. The old cheap blender couldn't blend the oats smooth. Surprisingly, the Bamix is worse. The one we got came with 3 blades: the all-purpose 3-edged cutting blade, the emulsion maker, and the flat disk. It did not come with bigger 2-edged blade: Would this do a better job pureeing oats? Or do we need a more powerful Bamix? Or is this something the Bamix design is bad for?

Someone just brought this to my attention: https://diabetestalk.net/blood-sugar/what-is-atomized-glucose The same page scrapes information from my culinary site also. Probably all of the site's content is stolen. Any of the legal minds here have thoughts on this?

Reminds me of the Cheese Cartel propaganda they fed us as kids on Saturday mornings.

I met a guy at a dinner party who was kick-starting a company that made artisanal cast iron pans out of recycled Kalashnikov rifles recovered from war zones. Beat that!

All of this stuff is just about odds. An appliance with a terrible repair rate might have a 25% chance of expensive failure in the first 10 years. That would still mean you've got a 75% chance of no serious trouble. And I'm not talking anyone out of buying anything. Personally, I'd love a Bluestar range. I just think it's a good idea to get all the information and do the math before committing. It also makes sense to consider who you can get to make the repairs. In a big city you've got lots of choices, but if you live farther afield, access to qualified service could be a reason to choose one brand over another.

My friend is a Chicago suburb. I'm not trying to badmouth these appliances. Just repeating what I learned from my own research when exploring possible new purchases. It's like buying a BMW ... they don't just cost more to buy, they cost more to maintain and to keep going. I don't know WHY this would be with an all-mechanical, heavy duty thing, but I've heard the same story from many people.

I don't know anything about that particular range. I've seen Consumer Reports-style longterm ownership reports on these ranges, though, and all the high-end brands have a high cost of ownership. Anecdotally, I have a friend with a 48 inch 4-burner plus grill + griddle Wolf range, no electronics (unless the IR broiler has electronics). He's had a couple of expensive repairs. His is pre-SubZero, back when they were made by Wolf. One of his repairs was because the char broiler got all gunked up. The repair guy said the solution was to not use it ("Yeah, you shouldn't barbecue indoors." Thanks for the helpful tip, repair dude!)

Blue Star is closest to a true commercial range, in several respects. This has pros and cons, depending on your priorities. I like their open burners more than anything else on the market, but someone who prioritizes easy cleanup might hate them. All these "high end" and "semi pro" ranges seem to have worse than average reliability and higher than average repair costs. So be ready for some of the pitfalls of owning a sports car.

I've never heard of anything that will sanitize raw greens reliably. Chromedome's recommendations are the standard ones and are probably the best bet, but there's still some risk if you're serving someone who's got real immune system problems. At home I just do a quick rinse, unless dealing with something like leeks that are full of sand. Never had a problem, but we're not feeding vulnerable people here. I think that for the seriously immune-compromised, greens should be cooked.

I wouldn't even know where to look for that.

It's helpful to think about hot herb infusions as being like making tea. With mint, you'll get mint tea flavors (not very much like fresh mint). And if the temperatures are too high or the cooking time too long, you'll get overbrewed mint tea flavors, which start to inch in the direction of low tide.