paulraphael

Or you can just dream about it ...

Without takeout containers my life would not work. I'm not afraid of polyethylene or polypropylene. I did replace my black plastic rectangular takeout containers with white ones after the scare article came out (and before the partial retraction). But not with any real sense of urgency. I remember when research first showed that BPA was harmful. I was struck by an interview with one of the molecular biologists on the research team. She was asked if she was going to get rid of all the polycarbonate in her life, and she said maybe she'd ditch old baby bottles if she had an infant. And she'd look for canned tomatoes in BPA-free cans. But she wasn't giving up her polycarbonate water bottle! And neither did I. No one can have my vintage '80s and '90s Nalgene bottles. They're too good. The amount of bad stuff that gets absorbed is a factor of time exposed, temperature, and acidity. Canned tomatoes are a perfect storm of bad news. Cold water in a hiking water bottle? You are guaranteed to die of something else.

Yup. They were off by an order of magnitude. They now think the daily exposure from using bad spatulas is less than a 10th the reference dose (EPA maximum safe daily dose, established by giving diseases to mice).

Cool, thanks for the updates. I haven't heard of flax fiber (besides as a laxative!). Will check out the video.

Has anyone done a proper triangle test to see if there's a real flavor difference? I'd bet against it. Iodized salt is less than 1 part in 22,000 iodine. And the remaining parts are salt—which has a pretty overwhelming flavor. You want to control for both bias and texture. Which means making something like a 2% solution in pure water. Everyone who tries the test gets three cups ... 2 with one kind of salt, one with the other. Their only job is to identify which one is different. I believe the old standard is that 9 out of 15 participants need to get it right to show a statistically significant difference. If anyone here is a math wiz, please correct this. It doesn't matter how strongly you think you can taste a difference in an uncontrolled test. Human minds (yours and mine included) are too wily to be trusted unless tricked into objectivity.

A few years ago, my parents were on their way to a friend's for thanksgiving. They got on the elevator in their building with a neighbor who was holding a huge covered platter, and looked consumed with rage. When they all got off the elevator, the neighbor muttered, "this is the last time I ask if I can bring anything."

I didn't. Trouble is you can't really know where in the temp/time curve you are. As the bird rests, interior temps rise a few degrees, and then drop. Without a graphing thermometer you won't know what the peak was, which determines how "well done" it is. Older experiments tell me I'm aiming for about 150F in the thigh and 145F in the breast. A few degrees higher is not a problem (and the breast always goes at least a little higher).

The question is all about probe placement. It's so easy to get bad readings (probe end too close to the surface, in an air pocket, touching a bone, etc.) What's your method for poking the bird?

There's a place called East Coast Retinning that's still in business. No experience with them. Or if you're a bit of an adrenaline junkie: https://www.instructables.com/DIY-Hand-Wiped-Tinning-of-Old-Copper-PotsPans-Inst/

The founder of Boardsmith used to participate in kitchen knife forums. He freely gave advice on how to make them yourself. Someone once asked him why he would give away his professional secrets. He said he knew that anyone who tried would report back to the forum how much work it was, and how they'd never try it again. And he was right!

I just cooked what's probably my dozenth turkey, using variations on the same method, and my 4th since getting a fancy multiprobe thermocouple thermometer. As I gloated in that former EG post, the thermocouple-headed hydra promised to vanquish any remaining shreds of stress or guesswork. Sadly, it doesn't. It works almost perfectly with more geometrically simple dinners (rib roasts, etc.). But there's something about a bird that defies reliable measurement, at least for me and my various thermometers. This year, I put more care than usual into probe placement. One of them went into what I thought was the thickest part of the thigh, inserted horizontally from the front. The other went into what I thought was the thickest part of the breast, also horizontally from the front. The third was an ambient probe for oven temperature. I think that ambient probe did its job, which was to tell me that the oven in my new house doesn't actually reach 500°F. Even when you crank it to 525. My IR thermometer concurred. This was an embarrassing thing to notice after roasting in it for 2 years. The worse part was that despite all my tricks, the breast probe was galloping off into the 160°F range (target was 143) while the thigh languished in the low 140s (target was 147). I messed with my foil barding and with rotating the bird and with switching between bake and broil to get the top to brown adequately, and finally just resigned myself to an overcooked bird. Which for me justifies creating an awkward moment for guests as I commit seppuku at the dining table with a carving knife. But alas—good news for me, bad news for the thermometer—the bird was close to perfect. I'm happy with the result, but not the process. It would have been easier and lower stress to just eyeball it. I have not tested the probes yet in boiling water. My strong guess is that they'll be fine. Within a degree or so. Which means that the problem, as it usually is, is with how to put them in the right place. Does anyone have the holy grail of poultry probing wisdom? Or should I surrender, and just eyeball it the old fashioned way?

I like arrowroot the best for sauces. My final thickening touch up for most sauces is 1 : 10 xanthan and arrowroot. Makes a slurry easily and just needs a low simmer to activate the starch. I'm experimenting with replacing the xanthan with tara gum. Arrowroot isn't good for things that will freeze, or for dairy. It's terrible in ice cream stabilizers. Tapioca is much better in these cases. I only like corn starch for where it's traditional. Chinese sauces etc. It has a very assertive texture and look.

This is my thinking also. The recipes that usually lean on the baking soda have buttermilk or yogurt or something else tangy ... I don't want to kill that flavor. I often adjust these recipes to use just a little baking soda, and get most of the leavening from powder. I try not to go too far, because baking powder's bitterness can be noticeable if you use enough.

We have a Zojirushi rice cooker, and lately I've been impatient and have just been making rice in the pressure cooker. It started when my girlfriend had bogarted the cooker to make brown rice, which is her private pleasure, and was hungry for some man rice. It was so easy I kept doing it. I've been making jasmine rice, 1 : 1:5 water ratio. Throw it in the pressure cooker, turn up the heat. Once it comes to pressure, cook for 4 minutes. Take off the heat and rest for 10. Done. Probably in a side-by-side test, rice from the Zojirushi robot would win. But the PC rice is just fine.

They've got a few different ones: https://hasegawakagaku.com/products_category/cutting-boards/ I've known about this version, which can go in the dishwasher and supposedly don't warp. I didn't see them on Amazon Japan (but didn't look too hard). I've started down this rabbit hole a few times before but got snapped out of it by prices or confusion.

I used to use a spatula, but have started just using a whisk. Turns out that those fears of deflation are imaginary.

The symptoms do suggest gunk at the food end, but I cleaned it and oiled it well, and it spins easily in my fingers. There could be a motor problem. But that wouldn't explain it heating up at the head. Maybe heating at the head is normal, and is unrelated to the speed issues? If that's the case it could also be the circuit board. I might have to give Bamix a call. In the mean time, it's usable. Just not its amazing old self.

Well, the only part that's under warranty still is the motor. I didn't take that apart

Our 3 year-old Bamix M150 is having some problems that I can't figure out. This is one of the smaller ones; we use it mostly for emulsions, blending small amounts of batter, light whipping etc. It seems to run more slowly than it used to, and the pitch of the motor goes up and down. It generates a lot of heat in the shaft right above the head. Running it dry, I measured it at around 120°F with an IR thermometer. The obvious guess was that gunk had gotten in there, so it needed to be cleaned and lubed. I took the whole thing apart. Aside from a little old food right at end of the shaft, it looked pristine inside. It also looked very well designed and built, with a serious motor. I cleaned the shaft, lubed it with silicone oil, put it together, and checked to see that everything spun free and silky-smooth. I plugged it in and ... no change at all. Motor speed still varies. End of shaft still gets hot. Any ideas?

No, but I use it at 4% or under in sorbets, so I wouldn't expect to notice this kind of thing.

"Pull-apart" tender happens with tough cuts of meat that are high in connective tissue (collagen) relative to contractile tissue. The tough collagen converts to gelatin, which has pretty much the opposite qualities of its sinewy precursor. This collagen breakdown typically happens at higher temperatures, like in the well-done range. Lower temperatures will tenderize the meat if you cook long enough, but will produce more of a tender steak texture than a pull-apart stew texture. These techniques won't work on tender cuts of meat. The higher temperature treatment will just dry them out. There isn't enough collagen to turn to gelatin. If you go long and low, you'll also dry them out, while at the same time making them mushy.

I've had good results using Now brand Inulin in sorbets and non-dairy ice creams. They don't tell you anything about the molecule size or even the source (I think a few years ago they at least mentioned the source). This kind of thing worries me, because it means they could change it any time they wanted. But it's easy to get, and my batch from a couple of years ago works great for your purposes.

I like the idea, and I'm glad that mainstream companies are taking scales seriously. I'm just hoping they did the smart thing and made the small platform significantly lower than the big one. Because you want to be able to weigh things in a big pan, or sometimes even a sheet pan. Not going to be easy if the .001g platform is at the same level.

I brought up the hiking filter after reading your earlier post where you said, "In general, the advice given is not to drink the local tap water anywhere in China. Few people, including me, ever do. When I first came here (1996), I didn't even brush my teeth with tap water, but was never concerned about washing vegetables with it (not logical, I know). I would use bottled water for teeth and for drinking. I soon gave up the teeth related usage. As someone mentioned on the thread yesterday, people do get acclimatised to the local water and less prone to negative reactions." I didn't mean to quote the passage about restaurants.

This is great news (even if old news). The Panasonic is also a 240v device, as it would have to be at that power rating. That may be why it's not officially sold in the US. Peculiar that the technology isn't everywhere, including multi-burner cooktops. I only see references to this Panasonic unit, and to a Vollrath one that's harder to find. From my (very brief) reading on this, the engineers don't even have to limit the power. It's naturally limited by the inductance of the pan material. A coil that delivers 3600W to iron will deliver less to aluminum or copper. It's not a matter of efficiency; it will pull less power from the wall as well. A coil that delivers 3600W to aluminum could be made, but it would be more expensive, and would either deliver much more than this to iron, or would have to have its power deliberately limited in low-frequency mode.