paulraphael
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Posts posted by paulraphael
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I use "steal" affectionately ... as in, "good artists borrow; great artists steal." Which may or may not be true, but it's fun to say.
A nice thing about contemporary cooking culture is that most chefs give away their ideas freely. Recipe ideas aren't considered intellectual property. And if you have cooks working for you, there's no way to keep your tricks secret. So the best way to get credit for your ideas is to publish them. Get them into as many hands as possible, and everyone will know what you did.
And then when someone takes your idea and turns it into something amazing and different, they'll publish their version ... and return the favor.
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18 hours ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:
Sounds good to me, except possibly for the amount of sugar.
In these cases sometimes the best bet is to steal the flavor ideas and graft them on to your own base recipes.
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3 hours ago, Margaret Pilgrim said:
There has been a somewhat push-me-pull-me conversation here regarding desirable textures and how to attain them. Dorie Greenspan describers the pleasures of simple homemade ice cream.
You could also say she's discovering the pleasures of going beyond simple ice cream. She's describing doing quite a bit of the chemistry that pastry chefs do when striving for better textures. She wanted to get rid of eggs, and found a way to avoid thin and icy textures by adding milk solids (skim milk powder) alternative sugars (honey—which is mostly invert syrup, which has more freezing point depression and better water control than sucrose) and another freezing point depressant (alcohol, which isn't a great ingredient, but can work).
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On 8/10/2020 at 9:28 AM, weinoo said:
I want to give a shout out to @paulraphael and his most excellent (albeit geeky) ice cream blog stuff. The book reviews pointed me to Dana Cree's Hello, My Name Is Ice Cream, a fine work for even a beginning student like me. I immediately borrowed it (via Libby) from my library, and it has been ordered for my bookshelf.
Than you, Mitch!
By geeky you mean sexy? Silly autocorrect.
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Just remember that dried whole milk much more perishable than dried skim. I even treat dried skim milk as if it's quite perishable (it isn't really, but it can take on stale flavors easily ... not sure if it actually gets stale of if it absorbs odors). I like to double bag milk powder and keep in the freezer. I'd definitely do this with whole milk powder.
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Making only a pint almost certainly let it freeze faster, too.
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4 hours ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:
I doubt Ruben is reading our topic anymore, however he says he modified some of his recipes to use dried milk not because it gave better results than holding the mix at 77C for an hour, but because dried milk was more practical for the home cook.
On the subject of dried milk: would it help @ElsieD and her less than 40% cream to replace dried skim milk in the recipes with dried whole milk? I stocked up on dried whole milk at the start of the pandemic and I may give it a try myself.
Ruben's ice creams are all so high-fat and high-solids, I'm skeptical that of any of these protein cooking techniques make a real difference. If he's not comparing results with triangle tests, I'm not giving much weight to these opinions. Anything you do with a recipe that has those numbers is going to be rich and dense and smooth. And none of the technique stuff is going to have a meaningful effect on flavor.
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That's great to know, Mitch. I'd be curious to hear your impressions of ice cream drawn at 11 minutes vs. 20, or whatever you were doing.
It isn't guaranteed that the ice cream will be better if you draw it earlier. It's just highly likely that if your machine gets it to that temperature faster than some other machine, you'll see better texture with the fast machine. I think it's safe to say that -5C is a good maximum draw temperature. But I don't think there's harm churning a little longer, if it doesn't cause problems (like making butter!) It's possible that whether you get better or worse results by going longer will depend on how cold your hardening cabinet is (average home freezer? Extra-cold home freezer? Blast chiller?)
One thing to consider: deciding on a consistent draw temperature helps you make your recipes more consistent ... you hope to see them with roughly the same consistency at that temperature.
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22 hours ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:
Nanofiltered milk is available in the local store. @Ruben Porto's method calls for reducing the mix to concentrate the solids, but heating at 77C, not boiling.
Yeah, and she held at 77 for about 45 minutes. She started with raw milk, and centrifuged it to separate it into high-fat cream and low-fat milk.
What she's calling nanofiltering is just reverse-osmosis. It's a heat-free way to remove water and condense the milk, to up the solids content. This was separate from the pasteurization step (which was done without evaporation), which she tailored for getting the milk proteins the way she liked (which was about texture, and also for flavor, according to her—although in my own blind tests no one could find any flavor difference between ice creams cooked at different times/temperatures within the ranges we tested).
She hinted that her current methods (carried out by a dairy to her specs) are a bit different—maybe a somewhat shorter, hotter pasteurization.
In her homemade recipes, she adds stabilization and milk solids through cream cheese (a pretty funny hack). So I don't know how much she relies on evaporation.
I personally don't like using evaporation to concentrate milk solids. It's tedious, inconsistent, and offers no advantages over adding low-temperature spray-dried skim milk.
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8 hours ago, weinoo said:
She boils the milk, cream, sugar, and corn syrup for 4 minutes before doing the cornstarch thing. Any idea why?
My guess is it's a home-friendly vague approximation of what she does in her commercial ice cream. She pasteurizes at a moderate temperature (I think she said 75°C) for close to an hour. At least this was when she was making the base in-house. The cooking is about denaturing the milk proteins to the right degree so they'll take the place of eggs as an emulsifier. She generally doesn't like eggs in her ice cream. Maybe she found that a 4-minute boil gets the job done reasonably well?
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On 8/5/2020 at 1:36 AM, ccp900 said:
I’m scared of raw milk hehe. I suggest you follow the us standards, a short google would probably show you the temp and time.
i think you can do 1 pasteurizing while you cook the base. That’s what jeni used to do I think
All vaguely traditional ways of cooking the base will pasteurize it. They go far beyond what's required.
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46 minutes ago, teonzo said:
I would suggest to freeze vanilla beans next time you'll be able to get them, they can last years in this way.
Teo
I froze them in ziplock bags. They still eventually dried out. It's been well over 10 years.
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2 hours ago, weinoo said:
After reading this thread and all the formulae etc. etc., it's a wonder I even attempt any ice cream at all.
Yeah, I've sometimes imagined being asked by a grade school teacher to give a lesson on ice cream, and making all the children cry.
"Ok kids, put away everything besides your spreadsheets and your brix hygrometers."
What do you think is a good source these days for vanilla? I used to buy from Vanilla Products USA but that was ages ago.
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3 hours ago, weinoo said:
When I make vanilla (basically the only ice cream I feel comfortable making), I steep scraped beans as well as use high-quality extract. Last batch Significant Eater mentioned was quite vanilla-y.
That's funny, it's the flavor I stopped making, ever since the price of vanilla beans went bonkers. I still have a stash from back when there was a market glut, but they're not in good enough shape now for making ice cream. When they were fresh they were total flavor bombs ... no need to add extract. It was possible to go too far and make ice cream that tasted like perfume.
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5 hours ago, gfron1 said:
I DESPISE cinnamon powder. If any of my cooks use cinnamon powder it's a fast track to the back door! Maybe a tad overdramatic, but seriously, it's not allowed in my kitchen. It takes like tree bark in any applications - even steeped - to me. And there's a good reason why it tastes like that I suppose. And yes, I've explored Mexican cinnamon, Indian cinnamon, Sri Lankan cinnamon...they vary in quality, but the overall impact on my mouth is the same.
That's interesting. What about cinnamon stick?
And ... might it like tree bark because it IS tree bark?
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5 hours ago, coffeinca said:
Hi everyone,
I would like to ask you for advice. I'm just starting my ice cream adventure and I found it really challenging when it's going about cream. According to many books and websites, the amount of fat suppose to be 35-40% or higher. In Portugal when I'm living right now, the 35% cream is always with stabiliser and not on the cold section. All of them are UHT. The one not UHT are 30% and are much less solid but I found them more tasty. What should I use for better ice cream? Should I stay with 35% or maybe use 30% and use less milk instead? What kind of cream are you using?
All the best,
Karolina
I think the 30% cream will be better. Your idea to just use more cream and less milk is exactly right. Milk and cream have the same things in them. Just different proportions. You may just have to do a little math if you want the results the results to match exactly, or one of us can figure it out for you.
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You should also be able to substitute a bit of soy lecithin. You'll need more of it; maybe 1 or 2 grams. It won't give the exact same results but will probably work fine.
Make sure you pure lecithin, not some concoction that's sold as a supplement. And make sure it has a mild smell and tastes very bland. I've used Will Powder's version and it's excellent.
I don't know why the ChefSteps recipe has so much polysorbate ... it works in minuscule quantities.
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7 hours ago, heidih said:
Until you have talked a kid down from too much even in brownie you have no clue
A friend who was freelancing at High Times magazine gave some special peanut butter cups to me and my Halloween date many many years ago. The secret ingredient wasn't evenly distributed. One of us experienced some pleasant sensations, the other had a panic attack she thought was a heart attack, and called an ambulance.
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I recently shopped for cinnamon oil to make some xylitol candy. My girlfriend had bought some, it was really cool, but also way too expensive ... so we decided to make our own.
The health food store had real cinnamon oil and and also "cinnamon" cassia oil. I know that cassia isn't the real stuff, and probably isn't as good ... but I'm under the impression that cassia is what they pass off on us as cinnamon most of the time, and it cost less than a third what they wanted for the real cinnamon ($8 vs $26—and this project was all about being a cheapskate).
I wish I could do a side-by-side comparison. The cassia oil isn't bad, but it's kind of weird. It tastes like there are lot of other flavors going on, as Shain describes. And not in a way I find deliciously complex, like with chocolate or coffee. We're eating all the candy. But each bite is definitely more "interesting" than irresistible.
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4 hours ago, weinoo said:
You know, I have to confess, I don't mind all the weird stuff that goes into vegan products.
As long as the products are worthy.
Talk about burying the lead ... that's a lot of stuff before you get to Cannabis Distillate.
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2 hours ago, weinoo said:
Just from looking at the ingredients, I was gonna say that I'd be pretty sure the ice cream made from that shit would be disgusting. As must be that shit. Ice cream from oils - yummo. Or, as dbag #1 might say - MONEY!
To be fair, lots of people are making vegan ice creams with coconut oil / cocoa butter and nut milks, and some of them are pretty good. This one gets good reviews (I haven't tried it).
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3 hours ago, mgaretz said:
So I found a new item in the market the other day, non-dairy whipping cream (Silk brand). Wondered if this coul be part of the base for non-dairy (or at least lactose-free) ice cream? I am posting a picture of the ingredients and nutrition label.
I have an ice cream shop client in Kuwait who was unable to find fresh cream (truly!) so he was using a product like this. In his own words, the ice cream was disgusting (I never had the opportunity to try it). We came with a few creative attempts to make it work, but he found all of them terrible.
I got frustrated, and stayed up one night writing to just about every dairy in the Middle East. Eventually one of them agreed to supply him with bulk cream. The result: ice cream no longer disgusting.
Your mileage may vary!
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3 hours ago, Yiannos said:
I'm in California just outside of Sacramento, and I believe at least a couple of the natural food stores around here sell raw milk. We are among a handful of states that allow retail sales, according to a quick search. Have never tried it but this site always has a way of piquing my curiosity...
I stand corrected. I thought law was federal but it's state by state (in NY raw milk can be sold by the farm that produces it). Here's list by state.
Please be careful if you decide to work with raw dairy, especially if you're serving anyone who's immune-compromised. This means labelling everything with dates and checking the temperature of your fridge at the location where you'll be storing it.
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3 hours ago, weinoo said:
I’m sure @teonzo would love to host us to try the raw milk products in the Veneto!
And we also see some Veroneses while we are at it!
I'm in.
Home Made Ice Cream (2015– )
in Pastry & Baking
Posted
Intellectual property law has been well tested when it comes to recipes. Neither the ingredients nor the method is protected. All that can be protected is the exact wording of the recipe (which falls under copyright law, not patents or anything that can be connected to ideas). So if you describe the method in your own words, you're not violating copyright anymore than if you describe the plot of a story.
Some people take issue with this, and I understand why. I've just made peace with it. If I share a recipe, and you decide to give it away, I'd prefer if you share the exact wording. Same concern as yours ... please steal my actual ideas, not a bastardized version that's bound to disappoint.
The most petty trope in cooking is the grandma who gives away a recipe but leaves out a critical step so no one can make it as well as her. I haven't experienced this myself. I hope it's a dead idea.