paulraphael

I've bought Tellicherry peppercorns from a few different sources on Amazon over the years at pretty good prices. They've ranged from good to amazing. The best ones have a really 3-d flavor with all kinds of floral notes. They're less piquant than ordinary pepper. My understanding is that Tellicherry doesn't really signify anything about the variety or origin of the pepper ... it just refers to the size of the peppercorns (big). This may be one factor accounting for the variable quality. I'll try Penzy's next time, since they have a store in NYC. I'm a bit wary both of their prices and their practice of leaving spices uncovered in bulk bins. But the quality may be there.

Unless your love of these is primarily esthetic, I'd advise against buying the set. Maaaaybe get a saucepan or two. Those won't get preheated on hight heat, so you'll be unlikely to melt off the tin. You'll benefit from the precise temperature control. A little bit ... I have copper saucepans and clad aluminum / stainless saucepans, and in practice the difference is utterly unimportant. They won't make you a better cook. The skillet / sautée pans are a bad idea. Pans like this need to be preheated on high heat. I heat all my pans (except my one lonely teflon pan) to temperatures that would turn the lining into a shiny puddle. Searing food properly makes this a necessity much of the time. Also: the brass handles are highly conductive. The only reason anyone puts brass handles on a pan is that they're pretty. They're not the smartest idea. The roasting pan is just a colossal waste of money. You don't need any of the qualities of copper in a roasting pan. Least of all the price and weight. Generally, there are no sets of anything that are a good value. Different materials serve different purposes. If you do want copper saucepans for their performance characteristics, there's more utility in stainless-clad copper. The three brands are Mauviel (France) Bougeat (France) and Falk (Belgium). Falk makes the laminated material for all these companies, so the performance is identical for all, as long as your remember to get the 2.5mm thickness. Falk is also the least expensive (but often the hardest to find).

How long do your sorbets stick around after you make them? One thing we can also generalize about enzymes is that their activity slows in the cold. If your sorbets all get eaten within a couple of days, it seems less likely that enzymatic breakdown would be minimal. I don't think this is a case where a highly scientific test is necessary. You could make a couple of sorbets with fresh fruits known to have high enzyme activity, one batch with inulin and one without. Compare. Then store them for several days and compare again. You won't know if, say, 15% of the inulin has been broken down, but you'll know if it's still good, and if there's still a pronounced difference between the two versions.

Can you post a typical recipe (in grams)? And figure out the temperature of the freezer? An easy way is to put a bottle of booze or rubbing alcohol in the freezer for at least 24 hours, and then get a reading with a good thermometer. It sounds like your freezer is cold (which is good ... it will harden the ice cream quickly) and that your formula might not have adequate freezing point depression (so it gets hard as a rock at freezer temp). Ideal freezer temperatures are always quite a bit lower than ideal serving temperatures. So you shouldn't expect ice cream to be easy to scoop without sitting out or in the fridge for a while. But if it's hard as concrete, you probably need to fix the formula. Another test is to let the ice cream sit out until it's a good temperature for scooping. It should be scoopable at -14°C, and easy to eat by -12°C. Stabilizers don't have any effect on freezing point depression. And it would be strange if your freezers defrost cycle were so radical as to cause the problems you describe.

I think you're right that it's folly to try to accurately model something as complex and full of emergent properties as ice cream. But I find it's quite possible to produce useful models. For example, if my model tells me that a certain change in sugar balance is going to increase sweetness by 10% ... but the actual effect is an increase of 12% ... this may still be useful to me, even if it's not strictly accurate. It probably gets me closer than an educated guess would have, and so it saves me a round (or two or three) of trial and error. If, on the other hand, the sweetness went in the opposite direction, or if it went up by 80% ... then you could argue that the model is worse than nothing. As it happens, over the last few months I've been building models to help formulate ice creams and sorbets . Usually my experience resembles the first example. It gets me really close. Occasionally, it's way off. This is educational; it helps me fix the model. Predicting sweetness has been pretty easy. While research shows wide variances in perceived sweetness across different concentrations and temperatures, it turns out that in ice creams we're not working with such wide ranges. And differences in sweetness of plus or minus a few % don't seem all that significant. I haven't found fat content to affect sweetness much. Acid content makes a big difference in other foods, but the range of acidities in ice creams is fairly low. Bitterness is another story. Ingredients like cocoa powder have a significant impact. There's a pretty simple solution; assign these ingredients a negative PAC value. Sounds a bit simplistic, but it really works! Freezing point depression is just chemistry and math. It turns out the math is about five times as hard as I'd imagined (i've had to consult with dairy PhDs on two continents to get my models working right) but once it's done it's done. Modeling the effects of hardening fats is more difficult, because as far as I can tell no one's done it before. I've started with some wild guesses and gradually am refining them (in another thread, Jo told me her pistachio ice cream wasn't doing what my model suggested. Valuable information. I realized I was overestimating the saturated fats in nut oils compared with cocoa butter). Your questions about enzymes and inulin are interesting. I found one study that explored the breakdown of inulin, but in response to ph and storage time. They found that after 2 weeks in storage, strawberry sorbet does exhibit breakdown of inulin into mono- and disaccharides. But not sooner. Otherwise, all I've been able to find is examples of fruits and inulin playing happily together, including commercial pineapple sorbets that use inulin. It's possible that the enzymes are deactivated by cooking. But it's also quite possible that these enzymes are just proteolytic and so don't bother polysaccharides. Clearly, "more research is warranted," to quote every scientist ever. But it seems pastry chefs have been using the stuff in combination with commercial stabilizers and every variety of fruit for some time now, and no one's complaining about weirdness. They seem to like it.

A couple of (non pro) reviews. https://www.amazingfoodmadeeasy.com/equipment/sous-vide-equipment/reviews/anova-precision-cooker-pro https://www.reddit.com/r/SousVideBBQ/comments/bm4s7r/i_tested_a_prototype_of_the_anova_pro/

That's interesting about the short vs. long chain inulins. None of the scientific sources I've looked at mention this overtly, nor do the places selling it in the US (it's one of these annoying ingredients that's sold as a fitness supplement, a health food, and sometimes also a culinary ingredient. So half the people selling it won't even understand your questions. My information seems to be on the short chain variety, which may be more common here. What adds to the complexity is that (according to one study) perceived sweetness drops radically with low dilutions. So what has 35% sucrose equivalent at high concentrations may only have 10% SE at low concentrations. I imagine that with standard usage being below 4%, even the sweet variety is behaving more like 10% SE. Also thanks again for the tip to search Italian sites. Searching for "Inulin Sorbet" turns up next to nothing. "Inulini Sorbeti" goes on for pages!

Thanks Teo, I'll check out those links. That advice about Inulin not impacting sweetness might be reasonable, even if it's not technically quite accurate. My understanding is that inulin is generally used at concentrations between 4% and 7%, so at roughly a third the sweetness of sucrose, its impact on sweetness can be pretty safely ignored. At least if you're trying to keep things simple. I agree with the whole professional secret thing. I'm glad that in most parts of the culinary world that's disappearing. I suspect that since recipes legally aren't intellectual property (and since you'll never be able to keep your former employees quiet) secrets are too hard to keep. So the real way to get credit for your brilliant ideas is to shout them from the rooftops: publish them. Then everyone will know when someone's ripping you off. The internet has accelerated this shift in thinking. But this idea has caught on more quickly some places than others. Edited to add: The Bordas article says that there's more than one type of inulin, and they have significantly different properties. This could explain quite a bit of the contradictory information.

Yes, I've been reading research about it, and am starting to do some experiments. It does impact sweetness somewhat; it has about 35% the sweetness of sucrose. It also impacts freezing point depression (about 65% that of sucrose). So it's on the same spectrum as maltodextrin and dried glucose syrup. Its magic may be that it works in lower concentrations; somewhere between a sugar and a gum. I'm especially interested in experimenting with inulin in sorbets. There's practically nothing written about it. Do you see an pros doing this?

I've been finding that some flavors need more sweetness than others. Unsurprisingly, bitter flavors like cocoa need extra sweetness to compensate. But I'm also finding that fruit flavors don't taste quite right at my usual low sweetness level. It's a kind of balancing act ... similar to getting salt levels right in order to to pop flavors into focus.

If it's meat that's going to be cooked, it doesn't make a big difference; you probably won't be able to tell how artful the knife strokes were. If you're carving a roast, or if you just want maximum prep karma, then it's hard to go wrong sashimi-style knife strokes. Long blades are better than short. Sharp knives are better than dull (obviously) although for red meat and poultry you'll benefit from a less polished edge than you would for sashimi. The delicate flesh of fish will cut best (by far) with an edge polished on a 6000 to 10000 grit water stone. For poultry or red meat, a toothier edge will generally serve you better; like from a 1000 to 2000 grit stone, and possibly maintained on a steel. Both kinds of edge will cut meat like butter when fresh off the stones, but the toothier one will continue to cut meat well after many hours of use. and it can be banged back into shape several times before revisiting the stones. The cutting technique is to start with a short forward thrust that breaks the surface. This should end with the back edge of the blade over the back edge of the meat. Then complete the cut with a long, crescent-shaped drawing cut. At the end of the stroke, the front of the blade (just behind the tip) should be in contact with the cutting board, and should follow through all the way. It should cut clean through, and by this point, there will be very little blade surface area in contact with the meat, so nothing will stick to the knife. If you can't make the cut in one stroke, don't saw. It's the sawing motion that rips up the meat. Instead, remove all downward pressure, and move the knife forward again without cutting. Then repeat the crescent-shaped drawing motion. This way, all the cutting is one direction, and the cut will be clean and uniform.

Yeah, every home recipe I've seen (and most pro recipes) are way too sweet. I usually go for a sucrose-equivalent sweetness (POD) of around 120g/1000g. Trehalose has roughly 40% the sweetness of sugar (possibly less at low dilutions), so you had the equivalent of 98g sucrose / 750g, or a POD of 130. Sucrose and dextrose in combination also give lots of independent control over sweetness and freezing point.

I found this, but unfortunately DE 95 powdered glucose is for all practical purposes dextrose powder, which I have plenty of sources for. I ended up buying this on Amazon, which is the right stuff but seems like a terrible deal.

I'm looking for someone who sells retail quantities with reasonable shipping prices. Most importantly, I'm looking for products that report DE numbers. Almost everything I see is mystery ingredients. In a perfect world, I'd be looking for very low-DE values. Thanks!

That's helpful. I think I've been overestimating the hardening power of nut oils. Which means the suggested recipe I posted above will be too soft. If you have any more of this left, I'd be curious to know how it is at -9C.

The whole color/flavor thing could have its own topic. I've always recoiled from colored ice creams, but just read something by a pastry chef on the degree to which people need the color to experience flavor. It had never crossed my mind.

I just wrote to Bo Bo to ask for a list of retailers. I used to get them from my old butcher on the lower east side but he's long gone. My understanding is that the birds they call "white plume" are conventional chickens that are just raised well. The black plume ones are the heritage hybrids and are completely different. They call the breed "barred-silver cross," if I remember correctly. No idea what that means. I'd love to try a poulet rouge birds. Does anyone have a source in NYC? And a price?

The best I've had is Bo Bo. Specifically their black plume chickens. I don't imagine these are the best you can find at all costs (who knows what that would be ...) but I find they strike a great balance between quality and affordability. The black plumes are a hybrid between heritage breeds and modern chickens. They mature slowly enough to develop real flavor, but no so slowly as to be priced like a delicacy. They're also humanely raised and very well fed, and always sold with the head on (so you examine the eyes for freshness). Last I checked they were below $5/lb, but this was a while back. They have scrawny breasts (but ones that actually taste good) and burly legs. Mostly I buy Murrays or Bell & Evans, since they're at my local store. I consider these the entry level of chicken that actually tastes like chicken. But they're not remarkable in any way. These brands are well-raised, but actually use the same breed that's raised by Purdue and every other supermarket brand ... ones bred to grow to 4lbs in 6 weeks on 8lbs of feed ... or something close to that. Flavor isn't a real priority. At least the good brands don't actually taste bad. Even the very expensive all-organic, fully buzzword-compliant birds at places like Whole Foods tend to be this same breed (cornishX hybrids). At specialty markets and farmers' markets I often see the pure heritage breeds. I'm sure they're amazing, but I have yet to indulge (not counting the gobsmackingly pricey Amish farm heritage turkeys I've splurged on for thksgiving.

Do you have any idea what temperature the ice cream was when you were scooping it? If it was a normal consistency at normal serving temperatures, then I need to take another look at my data on pistachio oil. I use spreadsheets that I've been building for my own purposes. The last few weeks I've been up to my neck in polynomial regression equations and correspondence with Ice Cream PhDs. Here's your project looks like ...

Has no one mentioned financiers? I've never made a proper financier, but the batter is just about the most versatile and delicious quickbread concoction there is. Financier batter can be used for anything from petits fours to mini muffins to best non-pound cake pound cake you've ever had. You just need almond flour and egg whites and the usual stuff from your pantry.

I ran your formula through my software and got: Total Fat: 20.4% Milk Fat: 10.4% Total Solids: 47.1% Solids Nonfat: 26.6% Milk Solids Nonfat: 4.8% Stabilizer/Water: 0.41% POD: 135 / 1000g PAC: 157 / 1000g Absolute PAC: 394 / 1000g Rel. Hardness @ -14°C: 92 A few thoughts … Total fat is really high, because of the combined cream and nut butter content. This mutes flavor release; the best thing to do about it is to shift the ratio of fats toward nut oil. Total solids is higher than what’s ideal, but there isn’t much to be done about that. Stabilizer content is high. The emulsifier values seem flipped. Polysorbate works in much smaller quantities that GMS. Did you arrive at those numbers experimentally? If not, I’d suggest reversing them. Sweetness is fairly high, at POD 135, but freezing point depression is low. Combined with the hardening power of the pistachio oils, I’d expect this to be very hard to scoop unless its allowed to warm up quite a bit (my tools only give a rough estimate here, but they suggest it will hard as a brick at -14°C, Here’s a suggestion: 321g Whole Milk 141g Heavy Cream 36% 174g Pistachio Paste 174g Pistachio Paste 103g Dextrose 17g Fructose 1g Locust bean gum 0.1g carrageenan 0.25g GSM 0.05g Polysorbate 80 2.0g Salt 764g Total Analysis: Total Fat: 20.6% Milk Fat: 8% Total Solids: 51.3% Solids Nonfat: 30.8% Milk Solids Nonfat: 4.3% Stabilizer/Water: 0.31% POD: 136 / 1000g PAC: 322 / 1000g Absolute PAC: 763 / 1000g Rel. Hardness @ -14°C: 80 Re: vanilla ... I usually go with around 0.25% the water weight of the formula. For emulsifiers I use around 2g soy lecithin per 1000g formula. Mono/diglycerides are usually used at around 0.1-0.2%. Polysorbat 80 is usually .02-.04%. My understanding is that the glycerides will have the most impact on increasing overrun; the sorbitan esters will have the strongest effect on fat coalescence. But I haven't experimented with these; lecithin has worked fine for me.

They're all ugly if you're a carrot.

Nut flavors are challenging if you're looking for intense flavors, without the texture turning to peanut butter. My general model is along these lines: -no eggs -add ~2g soy lecithin/kg for emulsification/de-emulsification -no more than 10% milk fat (total fat will still be high from the the nut paste) -pay close attention to total solids. Aim or somewhere between 37% and 42%. The nut paste is essentially 100% solids, so you'll add less than the usual amount of skim milk powder, or maybe none at all. The exact right level of solids will depend on preference with a given nut paste. Too little and you'll have ice problems and thin body, too much and it will be like eating peanut butter. -ideally, customize a stabilizer blend. High on the locust bean gum, to reduce ice crystals. Low on the guar (it tends to add body and chew ... you won't need help here. No xanthan. It forms a gel with lBG.

That sounds like a cocktail.

Some info here. Does anyone still make things out of borosilicate glass?