paulraphael

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?

I was intrigued by that one too. In their blog post introducing the new one, they say the old one was a flop. I believe it was just the Anova lab circulator. You could find it on lab equipment sites, but I never saw it marketed to cooks or sold on kitchen sites. My only guess is that people want something more compact. This looks more like the original PolyScience ... not something you stick in a drawer when you're done.

Interesting! I didn't think PIDs worked that way. Is the POS mini thing the nano? What do you hate? I've never seen one but always thought it would be nice as a 2nd one and for travel.

Yeah, I'd guess that with a covered cooler any circulator could easily manage 100L.

Not 100% sure, but usually with this kind of thing, it's some engineering number that reflects the maximum number of watts the thing can draw from the wall for some length of time. Which means the real world max output of the heater would lower. This would be the same for other circulators, as well as kettles, toasters, microwaves, etc. I always start with hot water from the tap, and for large batches I use a cooler, so power output is my lowest priority with circulators. Not sure I'd notice the difference between 800 and 1200 watts. At a restaurant where they've got 30 quart Cambros, with people opening the lid all the time, it might be a different story.

We'll have to see how restaurant owners make their value calculations. Using your kind of thinking, plenty of restaurants use Kitchenaid mixers for light duty countertop stuff, rather than springing for a Globe or Hobart. But in these cases, they're comparing a $400 good-enough mixer to a $2600 commercial mixer. I don't know if they'd see the $150 vs. $400 comparison the same way. $400 is pretty cheap for a piece of commercial kitchen equipment, especially if it's one you'll be using all day every day.

The 1200 watt version is 120v.

It's a distracting detail that you won't let go of in the middle of a more interesting discussion. Re: warranties, 2 years is long for a commercial kitchen appliance. A home Vitamix is warranted for 5 years. A Vita Prep for 1 year. This doesn't suggest the VP is lower quality, just that the company knows it's going to get abused. Rotus, I should listen to you.

No one is going to buy the thing because it's got an extra decimal point of precision. The value of the thing is that it's built to handle more use and abuse than a consumer version. Details like extra precision just tell a buyer that the company's sweating details and using high-quality parts. As far as Poly Science goes, I'd be a bit more specific and suggest that they're overpriced by the current standards of the culinary market—which is a rapidly changing one. Their prices are completely in line with other lab equipment makers (which is their back story) and also in line with the culinary market a dozen years ago (when they were the only game in town). Their problem is that is that they haven't adapted as quickly as Anova. Edited to add: we won't really know that PS is overpriced in the pro circulator market until the Anova has had a chance to prove itself. I suspect PS won't be in trouble unless they sit on their hands for another year ... and the Anova turns out to be as burly as promised.

Where are you? I think it's generally smart to stick with Kenwood in the EU, and Kitchenaid in the US. Both companies make good mixers; both companies have imperfect quality control; and mixers are categorically easy to break. Kenwood has the best service and parts availability in the EU, KA likewise has the best in the US.