paulraphael

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.

What are the advantages?

Exactly. Companies offer different value propositions for different categories of customer. Not many years back, a circulator designed for constant professional use cost $1100. Then you could get one for $700. Now $400, without any apparent compromises. It's amazing that for $140 to $200 we can get a circulator that will do anything you'd ever need one to do. But we know we're buying a piece of consumer gear, and so don't expect it to take professional abuse, or to have anything like 3-sigma quality control certification. My consumer Anova has worked without a problem for over 5 years. But when it's time to replace it, I MAY decide that some extra piece of mind is worth an extra $200. It's nice to have the option.

The value is that it's built for reliability. Restaurant kitchens have proven to be hard on circulators, even pro lab models, because the lab ones aren't designed to get kicked around by line cooks or to run all day in a steamy environment. For amateurs this model isn't necessary, but it offers extra peace of mind for just a $200 premium. It's not even bulky or heavy like the pro circulators of yore.

Cool article. I'd never heard of all those those drawbacks to lab circulators. In my brief experience the problems were size and price, and sometimes succumbing to steam. But the real takeaway ... there's such thing as a centrifugal evaporator. Am I the last to know?

The dimensions are 1.29kg, 350mm tall, with a 60mm barrel. The barrel is the same size as the Anova One (so it will fit through the cooler lids and cambro lids I've cut out). And it's actually a bit smaller and lighter than the One. I plan to keep my One as long as it keeps chugging along ... but it's nice to know there's a high quality replacement if ever needed. My ideal kit would probably be an Anova Pro, plus a Nano for travel or for those rare times a 2nd circulator would be useful.

Kinda sorta. Anova was originally a lab equipment company. After they developed their first culinary circulator, they spun off the division as Anova Culinary. This was later bought by Electrolux (but seems to remain independently run). For a minute there may have been some kind of relationship between Anova and Anova Culinary (the original Anova Pro culinary circulator was identical to the lab model). But now I can't find any evidence of the original company existing anymore. They're still listed on some lab suppliers' sites, but generally as unavailable. The wikipedia article on the company makes no reference to the original lab equipment company, which seems odd.

Polyscience makes great stuff, but I think their industrial design and their pricing are a decade out of date. If this new Anova lives up to its potential it will light a fire under PS's butt.

$399. https://anovaculinary.com/anova-precision-cooker-pro/

https://anovaculinary.com/introducing-the-anova-precision-cooker-pro/?utm_source=Iterable&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Pro_Launch_Email_5_1_19 Looks promising ...

Sounds like a feature, not a bug ... 😀

I suppose you can't assume that a coffee (or wine, chocolate etc.) will go with something just because there are hints of that thing in the tasting notes. I've never tried Ethiopian coffees while eating actual blueberries, or a wine with "barnyard" tasting notes while eating actual ... never mind.

I think this is how the authors imagined the book would be used. It's much more about surprising possibilities than about the AVOID suggestions.

This might depend on the coffee. My favorite coffees are single-origins roasted light enough that the fruit flavors shine through. Berry flavors are pretty common in East African coffees. I had a wonderful natural process Guatemalan coffee a few months back that tasted distinctly of strawberries.

I wrote an article on modern approaches to chocolate ice cream a couple of months ago. There's an addendum with more notes, including tasting notes on some chocolate. The goal was to convey a sense of dark chocolate (as opposed to milk chocolate), and to capture as many of the origin flavors as possible from a single-origin couverture. TL;DR: Chocolate ice cream is challenging, because cocoa butter is bad for texture. It's rock-hard when it's cold. You can't use lots of couverture and have good texture, no matter how many technical hoops you jump through. You can get a pretty good compromise by supplementing a moderate amount of couverture with cocoa powder. If you could get high-quality, single-origin cocoa powder, you could achieve the best possible results. Just ditch the couverture. Unfortunately, most cocoa powder available today is just byproduct, even you're buying from Valhrona or Cluizel or Amedei. It tastes good, but it's not interesting. Who even knows what you're getting. They don't treat this stuff like their single-plantation varieties. This seems to be changing. Some companies are starting to offer SO cocoas. Callebaut/Bensdorf has a line (but I can't get my hands on a sample). Lots of smaller chocolate companies are offering them, too, but typically are unable to mill the cocoa fine enough for smooth textures in ice cream. But my fingers are crossed that options will appear soon. In the mean time, I make chocolate with a mix of couverture and cocoa. It's pretty great. Some of the tricks for best flavor are to eliminate eggs, keep the milk fat below 10%, keep the sweetness down, and to use sugars with maximum freezing point depression (dextrose, fructose). Total solids should be high ... 40–43%. Finally, serving temperature is important. Cocoa butter is more sensitive than milk fat to temperature. If you don't let the ice cream warm up adequately before serving, it will be slow to melt in the mouth and will have a muted flavor release, no matter how much chocolate you've crammed in there.

I love my end-grain maple board (made by the Boardsmith in US, so probably impractical for the OP). I've been using it happily every day for over ten years, but have to report that it doesn't completely live up to its promise of being gentle on edges. It's gentler than edge-grain and face-grain boards, and gentler than those terrible bamboo boards, and of course gentler than all the boards made out of stuff that boards should never be made from. But my sharpest and most fragile Japanese knives have much better edge retention when I use crappy poly boards. I don't enjoy cutting on these boards. But in practice they let me hold onto that fresh-off-the-stones feeling for about twice as long. I don't have much experience with hard rubber boards, like sani-tuff. I suspect these may be the overall best for performance, although they're kind of ugly and don't smell great.

Eggs are also a stabilizer Most of the problems people are describing here are from too much stabilizer. These gums work in tiny quantities. Also keep in mind that ingredients like polysorbate 80 and mono/diglycerides are emulsifiers which serve quite different purposes. If you're using even 1 yolk per liter, you don't need those (although they're generally included in commercial stabilizers, and you may like the effect). I usually use 0.15% stabilizer by weight. If your blend includes emulsifiers, you may need more. 0.5% is lots. Unless you're using a commercial blend that includes neutral ingredients like dextrose or maltodextrin. They sometimes include these to help disperse the gums or to add bulk to make weighing easier. If you're making a recipe with a whole henhouse full of eggs (looking at you, Jo!) you'll need less stabilizer than with a low- or no-egg recipe. Here's my stabilizer article. And on one emulsifiers.

We've relaunched our site and blog at under-belly.org. It's got all the old content and comments, with a clean new design and a more accessible format (no ads, no account needed to post a comment or question). Emphasis of late has been artisanal ice cream and sous-vide techniques. More is on the way on both topics, as well as a in-depth series on modern saucemaking. Responding to demand, we've also started a consultancy. We advise culinary professionals around the world on ice cream recipe development, and are also available to consult on other areas of expertise. And we're building a recipe archive ... we hope to have it online in the next couple of months. Come by and have a look!

I'm consulting an ice cream shop in Kuwait City. One challenge is that they haven't found a local dairy company that sells fresh cream. They've been forced to use packaged UHT cream from France, which is less than ideal. Any thoughts on how they could get fresh cream in wholesale quantities? Possibly direct from a farm? Or from Abu Dhabi, Doha, or Riyadh? Thank you for any ideas!

What you call snide I call generous. I'm offering lighthearted mockery rather than my unfiltered response to the presumption that readers would have the choice to buy a new house when they don't like their counters.

Yeah, just get a different house. How about one in the South of France? Or Catalonia. Or both. Each with lots and lots of BTUs. And a wood-burning oven and a view of the sea. And horses. Treasured advice.

It seems to be up to the whims of the local Whole Foods manager whether or not to put more specific labels on the chocolate. The ones where I've shopped usually let you know the cocoa%, which gives enough of a clue as to which Callebaut product it is. Sometimes it just says "bittersweet" or something similar, in which case it could be anything. I like most of the 70%+ callebaut chocolates I've bought there. They aren't special ... just solid workhorse chocolates for making cakes and things. The prices are excellent. Quality-wise they're a step below Valrhona and few steps below Cluizel and some of the other smaller production SO chocolates you can get these days. People still love the stuff in baked goods.