paulraphael

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.

Globe is in a whole different category. Those have commercial motors and heavy transmissions, and once you get past the smallest size they have multi-gear transmissions. They're more like bargain Hobarts than like fancy Kitchen Aids. The newer KA 7-quart mixers, which have big motors and planetary gears would probably do really well as a light-duty commercial machine. They're built better than any previous KA machine, notwithstanding all the they-don't-make-em-like-they-used-to nostalgia. Your mom's KA wasn't built like this. I'm pretty happy with the previous generation Pro 600. It's not built like a commercial machine, but it's built well, and all the inner parts are metal and cheaply available and easy to replace. I've had it 14 years and had to replace gears and regrease the thing once. The main thing I'd prefer about the burly new one is how quiet it is.

Sharpening a knife with that many curves sounds a bit ... advanced! Have you practiced on a more boring knife? Getting the basic moves and feeling with a regular chef's knife, including the ordinary curve at the tip, is the important part. I think once you're comfortable with that, the adjustments you have to make for an oddball knife will be more intuitive. That said, I don't really understand how you'd sharpen a blade that had a really concave belly on a regular stone.

The earliest historical accounts say that coffee was first cultivated in Yemen. But the history is spotty, and Ethiopia is practically in the same place, so no one really knows. As far as coffee available today, all you can really do is make generalizations about a country or region. Nowadays we can get such amazing single-origin beans that have unique or even idiosyncratic characters that it's best to talk about the individual farm or co-op. Many of my favorite coffees have been Ethiopian. I have less experience with Yemen, but imagine that the range of coffees isn't too different. If there are differences, then they'll probably be because of economic or political differences. I've been especially crazy about natural process coffees from Ethiopia and Burundi. These tend to have big, dark, fruity flavors that are unlike any other coffees I've had. The washed versions are also great. My coffee roasting guy and I have both noticed that his Ethiopian coffees have been less fruity than in previous years. He's not sure why.

This has become one of my favorites. Our local food coop has had really fresh hazelnuts lately . A vitamix does a great grinding them. I'm sure a mill would be smoother, but I'm sure there'd be a difference in the ice cream. 120g toasted hazelnut butter (65% fat) (make a larger batch so it will blend easily) 570g whole milk (3.3% fat) 120g heavy cream (36% fat) 75g skim milk powder 60g granulated sugar 45g dextrose 20g fructose 2g soy lecithin (get really good quality stuff that's super bland, or leave it out. Willpowder's version is good) 1.5g pre-blended stabilizer or: 0.86g locust bean gum 0.43g guar gum 0.21g lambda carrageenan 1.5g salt The idea here is lots of hazelnuts, balanced by reduced milk fat and zero egg fat. Also the sugar combination is jiggered around to compensate for the hardening properties of the hazelnut oil. Total Fat: 14% Milk Fat: 6.2% Total Solids: 42.1% Solids Nonfat: 28.1% Milk Solids Nonfat: 12.4% Stabilizer/Water: 0.26% POD: 118 / 1000g PAC: 223 / 1000g Absolute PAC: 509 / 1000g Rel. Hardness @ -14°C: 75

Sharpening on water stones is a skillset, just like using knives. It's hard to master. But it's pretty easy to become competent, and if you're competent you'll have sharper knives you will with a sharpening machine. And you'll have sharper knives than you had when they were brand new, and you'll have sharper knives than most pro cooks ever use (outside of Japan). I don't think it has to be such a daunting process. Just start with 2-sided combination stone (say, 2000 and 6000 grit or similar) And a beater knife that you don't mind scratching up—ideally carbon steel, because it tends to be faster and easier to sharpen. It's a longer learning curve than using gadgets, but you'll get so you can touch up a knife really quickly. I also keep a big butcher's steel around for the western knives that I want to keep a fat toothy edge on—my German chef's knife and my Forschner utility knife. Those knives only see the stones once every few years. If you get obsessive, you can end up with a big collection of stones, but this is absolutely optional. I'm a fan of a strop for finishing and quick touch-ups. It's a flat block with a strip of smooth hide that sticks on with a magnet. You treat the hide with a bit of very fine abrasive compound, and it puts a wicked finished edge on any knife you've sharpened to a mirror finish. A few seconds of stropping gets the edge back to crazy sharpness. I only hit the stones when this doesn't work anymore. The strop takes less skill to use than a finishing stone. I can get a better edge with it than I can with a stone. The guy who taught me to sharpen can get a better edge with a stone, so it probably has to do with your skill level.

I've used a paddle on VERY high-hydration doughs, like when doing an autolyse stage, or in the earliest mixing before the gluten gets going. But as soon as the dough gets thick you absolutely risk overheating the motor breaking gears. You also risk overworking the dough, which basically means ripping the gluten strands apart and killing the dough's strength.

Any idea why comparative reviews online often give Bamix lousy scores? I find it confusing. Lot's of people I trust swear by them, but then I've seen at least a couple of reviewers say they were outperformed by much cheaper consumer brands. Just curious. We have a god-awful cheap stick blender that will need replacing in the next few months. I'm not dying to spend Bamix money, but will do so if they merit the hype.

Yeah, good point. A few times I almost bought something from them and then just got mad. They do sell some of their products through Amazon. Sometimes it's a better deal.

Good stuff at Cocktail Kingdom. https://www.cocktailkingdom.com/all-barware/ice-accessories/anvil-ice-pick https://www.cocktailkingdom.com/pitchfork-ice-pick

Many years ago I had the bright idea of sending knives to a local sharpening service ... the kind of place that butcher shops hire. Luckily these were cheap Chicago Cutlery knives. The place just threw them on a bench grinder. They all came back with several millimeters of steel gone, and a concave bevel. They were basically shop knives at that point. Beware!