paulraphael

I'll check them out when I'm in the neighborhood. Always seeking good espresso. I've been striking out in Manhattan lately. It's been around 2 years since I've found a good espresso in any of my old haunts, or any of the new ones that have been recommended. O's website is all fluff. Nothing about the coffee. It will be interesting if it was Brazilian coffee you had, since most coffee from there is usually more big and chocolaty than bright tasting. But if it's a single origin it could well go against the regional expectations.

I checked out the kickstarter. It looks pretty cool. I would prefer it worked more like a stirring hotplate that allowed you to use the vessel of your choice on top. Or at least if the vessel were plain stainless steel. I can't stand everything being gratuitously coated with teflon that's going to scratch off in a couple of years.

"A slightly kitchenized lab stir plate" is what I've been begging the universe for. Generally I'm pretty cautious about crowdfunded manufactured goods ... there's so much that can go wrong for early adopters. But I'll keep an eye on this gizmo. It seems to me the killer app for this kind of thing is liquid foods that need to be cooked to a precise temperature ... custards, ice cream bases, etc.. You could maybe temper chocolate in it. Cooking liquids sous-vide is often a guessing game with regards to timing, because the liquid in the bag is not getting stirred, and we don't have any good thermodynamic model for convection and conduction of goopy liquids in a floppy ziploc.

This. Not all fine chocolate is fruity. And while I love fruity chocolates, I agree with the OP on Scharffen Berger. It tastes like cherry cough syrup to me—one-dimensional, unbalanced fruitiness. If you read reviews, you'll find mention of chocolates that emphasize bass notes ... cocoa bitterness, caramel, leather, smoke, wood, spices. Chocolate variety, processing, and roast level all play a part in this.

Cool to see this. Too bad that you sacrifice 30% of the max power when you use non-ferrous pans. I'll guess that this is due to some fundamental physics and not an engineering compromise ... anyone know? A workaround would be to use ferrous pans for the high-heat stuff, like searing and boiling pasta water. 2500 watts should be more than enough for saucemaking.

I don't think consumer immersion blenders are designed to work at full power for long stretches, as you might with a Vita Prep. Commercial versions with similar ratings are usually bigger, heavier, and with more ventilation, like this: https://www.missionrs.com/waring-products-wsb40-quick-stik-plus-immersion-blender-10-inch-24-qt.html?st-t=i00600001&mrsdc=chill25&gclid=Cj0KCQjw6fvdBRCbARIsABGZ-vRL5DJwY6RDWIjtck7zykUCM4gJqDWwcLr7MNaBS9SCXnXO-lZ9Wd0aAuEkEALw_wcB I don't know about about this one in particular, but ones I've seen in the flesh are clearly meant for use in big pots and would be pretty unwieldy for the kinds of things most of us grab a stick blender for. I like the idea of high rpms for some uses. I don't think I need the thing to be excessively burly. If I need to blend a big volume of something thick I'll use a countertop blender.

That's interesting. Do you think the pricing difference between this and a regular Bamix is largely because of different markets? Like the way there was no such thing as a sub-$1000 immersion circulator before the companies discovered cooks? Or is there something inherently expensive in a rotor-stator mechanism? Or does the motor itself need to be much more powerful?

Check out this study: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.622.5104&rep=rep1&type=pdf I've only just glanced at it, but think you're safe with a few days to spare. Just chill that meat quickly, and keep it on ice. (This study was designed to look at the effects of higher temperature cooking on c.botulinum germination time, but they also an uncooked sample as a control. The uncooked sample is probably the one to look at, since your 72 hour cook will probably be lower than any of their test temperatures. Check out the chart on p. 1784)

Beware simplified information like this. All bacteria have a temperature / time curve for pasteurization. Salmonella, e-coli, campilobacter, and trichinella are killed to pasteurization standards at 130°F in under 6 hours. In 72 hours they'd be dead dead dead. I don't have listeria data handy.

My first question is if you're thoroughly chilling the base before spinning it. This makes a huge difference. Consider that much of what you're doing is making whipped cream in the ice cream maker; the milk fat needs to be partially crystallized. 8 hours below 38°F usually does it. Although 6–7% fat is pretty low and probably adds to the challenge. If this doesn't get you anywhere, you could try skipping the lecithin and glycerides and using polysorbate-80 at 0.02% to 0.04%. I haven't used this stuff, but its reputation as emulsifier is that it's especially effective at improving foam structure. A jar of this would last close to a lifetime. Does the ICE-70 tend to produce dense ice cream? If it's a slow spinning machine that favors low overrun, and you're going for a very low fat recipe, this could be challenging.

These are great questions, and they're way beyond any research I've even skimmed. My personal experience is with plain old skim milk powder. I've written a bit about the functional differences between casein and whey, but when it comes to what the specific effects of monkeying with the ratios, or of denaturing whey proteins to one degree or another, most of this knowledge is probably locked up in the commercial labs at companies like Haagen Dazs and General Foods. One person you might try contacting is Dr. Cesar Vega, who's one of the world experts on ice cream science. He's on Twitter at @CesarVega76

You could probably leave it out of these recipes entirely. There's already such a high level of solids form the chocolate and cocoa. The textural difference should be small.

Ha. I know people who wish they didn't. Maybe you can work something out.

I just finished a post on chocolate ice cream. This was a long time in the making! 15 prototypes. There are two recipes; one that uses both couverture and cocoa powder, which I think represents the best compromise for right now. An one that's 100% cocoa, for when we can get our hands on really good single-origin cocoa powders. I think that day is coming. Some of the big manufacturers are advertising them (but I don't know where to find them), and many small makers are selling them now (but they don't seem able to mill the powder fine enough yet). But I'm hopeful. I may slightly update these recipes with some tweaks to the stabilizer blend, but I think they're very close.

I'm compiling a list of single origin cocoa providers. If anyone wants to add, please do. Right now this only includes brands with US distribution; I think there are a few who distribute only in Europe. Callebaut / Bensdorp https://bcfmpreview.barry-callebaut.com/products/single-origin-powders?segment=cereals http://www.bensdorp.com/natural-são-tomé (many regions including a sau tomé natural) Askinosie https://www.askinosie.com/single-origin-natural-cocoa-powder.html (tanzania) KYYA https://www.kyyachocolate.com/products/cocoa-powder-4-oz (ecuador) Omanhene http://omanhene.3dcartstores.com/Cocoa-Powder-Natural-Cocoa-Powder_p_5.html (Ghana) Map Chocolate https://www.mapchocolate.com/holiday-baking-supplies/craft-cocoa-powder-sampler-set (Honduras) Match Chocolate (warns that grain size is too large … not smooth) https://www.matchchocolate.com/current-offerings/ (several origins)

Here's the Indian version: milk solids, sugar, vegetable fat, glucose, emulsifier E471. Stabilizers: E407, E412, E466, water and artificial vanilla flavour http://www.kwality.ae/product/vanilla/ Dr. Parekh is probably making something a little closer to his roots. But I wouldn't be surprised if it's eggless. He's a food scientist, so he should know how to get any texture he wants without eggs. The Times article shows that he gets the importance or lower sweetness ... that's encouraging.

I'd start with an added emulsifier, like lecithin (find a brand that doesn't have a strong taste. Like WillPowder). Then a bit of stabilizer. I like to mix my own. For eggless ice creams, sometimes a little extra lambda carrageenan will give the same custardy mouthfeel as egg yolk.

Vodka will definitely soften the ice cream ... ethanol has enormous powers of freezing point depression. But I don't think adding alcohol is the best solution, because you'll trade hardness for iciness. Alcohol will increase the amount of unfrozen water in the final product, without doing anything to control that water. The most elegant way I know to control hardness is with sugars. Adding dextrose to the mix allows you to control hardness and sweetness independently. Fructose or invert syrup will offer even more control. I've written about this here.

That's an interesting product. It appears to have about 70% the fat content of regular Guanaja. I wonder if other companies make similar versions of their couverture. Here's a sample recipe on Valrhona's site using that chocolate: https://inter.valrhona.com/en/by-your-side/chocolate-recipes/glace-au-lait-p125-coeur-de-guanaja

If I understand the thing correctly, it would be ideal for precision cooking anything liquid. The stirrer would mean you're circulating the food, not just the heat transfer medium. So it would work great for making custards, tempering chocolate, pasteurizing small quantities of anything, and the killer app for me ... cooking ice cream bases.

I don't know about unanticipated. I've been anticipating such a thing for a while, but without any luck. What's unclear to me is the design / purpose of the vessel. Seems like the thing should work with any induction-capable pot on top.

No idea how the upper part of this thing works, or if they'll ever make it. But in principle it's what I've been begging for: http://pdfpiw.uspto.gov/.piw?PageNum=0&docid=10028609&IDKey=C0D9F4BF5D3D&HomeUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fpatft.uspto.gov%2Fnetacgi%2Fnph-Parser%3FSect1%3DPTO2%26Sect2%3DHITOFF%26u%3D%252Fnetahtml%252FPTO%252Fsearch-adv.htm%26r%3D22%26f%3DG%26l%3D50%26d%3DPTXT%26p%3D1%26S1%3D(%2522food%2522%2BAND%2B%2522cooking%2522)%26OS%3D%2522food%2522%2Band%2B%2522cooking%2522%26RS%3D(%2522food%2522%2BAND%2B%2522cooking%2522)

Our many decades-old black + decker dumb oven finally burst into flames, so it was time to act. I picked out a couple of great looking sub-$50 toaster ovens by Toshiba and Hamilton Beach, and we were about to pull the trigger, when my girlfriend spotted deep in the reviews that they have mechanical timers that make a ticking noise while toasting. I thought "who cares?" She thought "I'd rather die." So we descended back to the lower basements of the internet for more research. And what did we find but a smaller, less smart smart oven by Breville. The interface is straightforward and pretty intuitive. It has annoying presets ("Pizza") but you can ignore them and just use toast, bake, broil, etc. There's no convection feature, and I don't care. This will be used 90% for toast, and the rest of the time for reheating, for broiling things like croque monsieurs, and maybe for warming plates. I don't need to roast a cornish hen or bake a cake in my toaster. The thing is about halfway between the size of our old toaster oven and the full size ones that will fit a 12" pizza or full chicken. About right for us. The 1800 watt quartz elements cook toast evenly and reasonably quickly. Haven't used it for anything else yet. I'm especially impressed by the design of the crumb tray. Trivially easy to pull out and clean. Its biggest weakness so far is a complete lack of insulation. You could probably make pancakes on the top surface

I spent some time with this book when it first came out and found quite a few head-scratchers that I suspect are editing problems. I don't remember that exact formula. Have you worked out the math and then analyzed the results, to see if they match the intention?

Cheap alloy aluminum pans sit on 30,000 btu/hr burners in restaurants all day long. The worst thing that ever happens is they warp. I'd maybe worry if we were talking about magnesium.