paulraphael

I had Uigeadail for the first time over the holidays this winter and absolutely loved it. My dad got two bottles of nice scotch as presents and so we did a very informal blind tasting. I knew one was a special bottling of Lagavulin, and one was the Uigeadail. I liked one of them and was floored by the other. I'd assumed the winner would be the Lagavulin, since I like plain-old Lagavulin more than I like plain-old Ardbeg. But damn if my fave wasn't the Ardbeg. This was especially good news because the special Lagavulin was a really expensive bottle. The Uigeadail is pretty reasonable, and is available every year. I haven't treated myself to a bottle yet. For pandemic season I've been drinking cocktails, not fancy scotch. Maybe in the fall or winter.

If I read that right, you used skim milk powder plus reduction. They're both ways of increasing the solids. I'm suggesting you could make life easier and have quite a bit more control of all the variables if you you used milk solids and skipped the reduction entirely.

Have you tried using skim milk powder instead of reduction? If you get a good brand, it will be low-temperature spray-dried, so basically it will come pre-reduced, but done in a controlled process. You can then choose your cooking time and temperature based just on getting the level of protein denaturing you want. I suspect you'll find the denaturization makes a very small difference—especially in a high-fat, high-solids, high-egg formula. I'm curious to know what benefits you're seeing from the polysorbate when you've got 4 egg yolks in there. FWIW, I don't pay any attention to the different flavor profiles of the dominant sugars (sucrose, fructose, dextrose—besides relative sweetness). It's detectable, but I'd really be surprised if anyone would volunteer that they like the taste of 100% sucrose more than, say, 60/40 sucrose+dextrose, if sweetness levels are well balanced. In a food science study, people are probably being fed unflavored, very sweet ice cream, and then being told to choose. The differences are subtle, especially with something cold. Add flavors, and the differences go away. The ratios of sucrose / dextrose / fructose are all over the place when you compare one kind of fruit to another. I think this is a very minor part of why the fruits taste different. When it comes to choosing sugars, I'm interested in getting the sweetness right (which I think should be lower than just about anyone else who publishes recipes) and getting the hardness right (which varies with preference and your chosen serving temperature).

That sounds great.

We have sweet potatoes roasting in the oven right now, and whiskey is the one thing we hoarded for the pandemic. I'm tempted. How were they?

Why don't I see more people doing this? It's delicious and seems kind of obvious.

I hadn't read the OP ... thought this was just another what-cutting-board conversation. What kind of dough are you rolling? I don't find the poly boards to be especially slippery with dough, unless it's very low hydration. They are slippery on countertops though.

I like this Oxo: It's a lot smaller than the picture. I started by shopping for the cool commercial timer they use on Top Chef. I found it and was about to pull the trigger when I read the reviews. Mostly, "this is great, but it's made for loud commercial kitchen, and the alarm will make you jump out of your skin. There's no way to turn it down." Deal breaker. The Oxo isn't as cool, but is good enough—and it's loud enough without being crazy. It has a quite decent UI with real buttons, so I can usually set it without looking, and while doing something with my other hand. For anything beyond 3 timers, or if I need more features (like labelling what each timer is for) I have kitchen timer app on the phone. The oxo handles things most of the time. Only 2 complaints: it's not at all water resistant, so you could wreck it by spilling on it. And it's a little wobbly. You have to hold it down while pressing the keys or it will tip. It could stand to be heavier and to have the little feet closer to the corners.

Bamboo is one material I won't consider for cutting boards. They're all composites, with a high proportion of glue. You'll never know what they use for glue, or how hard that glue is. But the result is that most bamboo boards are extremely hard on knife edges. The whole point of a cutting board is to give you knife-friendly, technique-friendly, sanitation-friendly surface. Most bamboo boards fail at the first point, and there's no way to tell in advance if you've found a board that's an exception. In terms of esthetics, I like end-grain wood boards. These are beautiful, and relatively easy on knife edges. The hype is that they're super gentle on edges, but that's not really my experience. My beloved Boardsmith maple butcher block dulls my knives somewhat more quickly than my crappy ugly poly boards. But I enjoy cutting on it much more. Rubber boards like Sani-Tuff are probably the most edge-friendly. Opinions are mixed on the cutting experience. They are ugly and don't smell good, but can go in the dishwasher. Poly boards are almost as ugly, almost as gentle, equally dishwashable, lighter, cheaper, more slippery, less smelly. There's no perfect board. My personal choice would be my big (22 inch?) maple butcher block, and a couple of sanitufs in small and medium sizes. My girlfriend doesn't like the heavy weight of the STs, so we have poly boards instead. I also have a couple old wood boards that are used for bread, and for carving. I like them because they're pretty, and I've had them around almost forever.

You don't need 22K in a home kitchen. I probably have 900 and it doesn't hold me back. But if I COULD have 22K? Of course I'd love it. Maybe not for an added $1000, but if I could upgrade down the road for a few hundred, yes please. There are some advantages to big-ass BTUs. Boiling pasta water in less time comes to mind. Preheating a pan for searing anything in about a minute. You can also rethink your pans. If you have that kind of horsepower, you really don't need energy storage. So you can exclusively use lightweight, responsive stuff, like thin spun steel or all-clad, or lighter weight commercial aluminum. You'll never have to wait around for a pan to preheat, and everything will be responsive. There are downsides. People not used to the power might freak out, or burn themselves, or destroy your cookware. You'll set your side towels on fire. But I'd take my chances. For what it's worth, I've never cooked on BlueStar, but it's almost certainly what I'd pick if I had the $$$. I don't see anything else that's as serious, with open burners, and no b.s..

How about something that gives everyone terrible breath?

I'm completely unfamiliar with that knife shop and with the SK5 carbon knife. I would be worried about the blade being not straight, and about it need a lot of dressing on coarse stones at that price. I don't have a problem with that steel. It's one of Hitachi's lower-end carbon steels, but my sujihiki in SK5 (by Kikuichi) performs just fine. It's a pleasure to sharpen and takes a seriously fine edge. It just has more impurities in it, and probably worse edge retention than the white and blue steels. You can actually smell the sulphur in it, which I think is kind of cool. I'd see what kind of service you can get from that shop. Will they guarantee a straight knife? One thing I liked about Korin (back when I could afford their cheap knives) is that their knife master would dress any single-beveled blade for you for no extra charge.

I'd advise against it, mostly because it's got a stainless steel blade. In that price range it's going to be made from crap steel that is probably difficult and unpleasant to sharpen, and may not take a sharp edge at all. One of the best reasons to buy a cheap Japanese knife is to have a beater that you can practice sharpening techniques on, without being scared that you'll wreck it. But if it's miserable to sharpen, and doesn't give you feedback similar to a decent knife, you're not going to learn much. The entry level for a useable yanagi seems to be around $140 right now. It used to be Korin's house brand, but those are now around 50% more expensive. You might also find a good deal on a used one. Knife nuts are always buying and selling stuff. Which brings up the next point ... whether you buy new or used, if you get something decent, you'll be able to sell it. It's a good way to experiment / get an urge out of your system. No matter what, make sure you budget (time and money) for at least a couple of decent stones. Sharpening a single-bevel knife is a different skill set, and many people will tell you that the quality of your sharpening stones is more important than with double-bevel blades. When it comes to sharpening, you'll be very happy to have bought a knife that's good enough to have a straight, properly ground blade ... but not so good that the steel is unmanageably hard.

That's a good point. It could be a Paco Jet recipe. That would work fine.

This is a very tricky problem. I suggest baking a quadruple batch and sending to me for analysis.

I've updated some information in this post on sugars in ice cream, including expanding this chart that compares the relevant properties of a bunch of different sugars:

As Jo said, butter is used in some commercial ice creams (I assume when it's more readily available than fresh cream).. When you make butter, you break the cream's emulsion and all the fat globules coalesce. To use butter in ice cream and to get the best texture, the fat needs to be broken up into the smallest globules possible and re-emulsified. Ideally this is done with a high-pressure homogenizer and strong emulsifying ingredients. If you're just using butter as a flavor source (brown butter ice ice cream, etc.) and there's also a decent amount of cream in the mix, it's not too challenging to get good texture. Make sure it's an egg-based recipe or that you're adding emulsifiers, and ideally, blend the bejeezus out of the hot mix with a vitamix or equivalent.

Or faster extraction.

Somewhere between octagon and dodecahedron you'll get so wired you'll be up all week.

Interesting about the time/temp relationship. I'm not sure I use invert syrup in anything where the difference between 70% and 99% inversion would be serious (I just use pure dextrose and fructose in ice creams and sorbets now ... much easier). But in the interest of doing a better job, how do you think a pressure cooker would work? Will acidulated sugar brown at 120°C?

The water's very good. It's almost ideal for coffee, if you live in the parts of the city that get all their water from the Catskills reservoirs. Some might like a bit more mineral content, but you can always add some magnesium and calcium. I've tried ... it's interesting but not really worth it IMO. If you're in parts of Manhattan or the Bronx, your water is mix of Catskills and Croton reservoir water. The mix changes all the time. So the water can be a little harder, or a lot harder. Sometimes good for coffee, sometimes less so. The infrastructure that affects the water is the pipes in your building. Lots of old buildings have nasty, corroded galvanized pipes that add rust and silt and who knows what to the water. A filter takes care of this. If you use a carbon filter it also takes care of the chlorine. Edited to add ... regarding infrastructure investment, they've been building a whole new aqueduct, as a backup for the other two. It's been in progress for 40 years and is the biggest capital investment project in the history if NYC. Supposed to be completed this year. It won't change the water quality. It will let them shut down the other tunnels for maintenance for the first time ever.

Picture? I just looked and it's possible that our teacup shelf is also a wine glass rack (which means that your wine glass rack is also a teacup shelf ... everyone wins). At first it seemed that there wasn't enough head room for them on that middle rack, but it's looking like they just barely fit into a cutout.

Because we don't have a good enough range hood. When I cook, smoke and steam go everywhere, and the wine glasses, which don't get used a whole lot, get coated with a film of grime. Which makes us really not want to use them. Hoping for a rescue.

Beware of getting into pissing contests with food scientists. You'll say "I like it this way better than that way," and they'll say, "how do you know? Have you done a blind triangle test?" If you haven't, you'd better be willing to. Otherwise you're likely just passing off cognitive biasses as opinions. Savvy chefs have figured this out. In many circles it's "triangle test or shut up."

I'll be curious to see reviews. I'm not completely clear on how it maintains pressure at the puck while it's extracting. If the extraction is too long, that's a problem; if it's short, then that tiny boiler is going to have to work hard to equalize the pressure. But I'll give the jet engine engineer the benefit of the doubt on this one. As Rotus suggested, you'll need a grinder that costs a few times what this thing costs before good espresso becomes a possibility.