paulraphael

I just visited Michael Laiskonis's chocolate lab at ICE, and found it interesting that in a room full of $10,000+ machines, the melanger was this little made-in-India tabletop geegaw. Apparently it does a good job!

I'm impressed by the video. My biggest complaint upthread was that the clamp wouldn't open wide enough for a cooler, but it turns out Anova specs it at 0.7" ... it should just barely fit. This looks perfect for a 2nd circulator, for those times when you need different temperature water baths. It would also be great for travel. I've crammed my Anova 1 into checked luggage. Passable but not fun. I prefer the construction of the Joule, but am just not interested in a phone-only interface. And the construction of this thing looks quite solid. Time will tell if it's built well enough to be a workhorse, but that's now how I'd use it.

That's never been my experience. The reduced moisture intensifies flavor, but at the same time enzymes are breaking down the connective tissue. Dry aging does desiccate the outer layer of meat, and longer dry age times give a thicker layer of desiccated meat that has to be trimmed off. But the meat that remains should be more tender and subjectively juicy than non-aged meat.

This thread is full of white chocolate discussion.

It's hard to give much better guidance than that. 20 years ago or so the landscape was simpler. There was Valrhona, if you wanted the best, then there were a handful of good, higher value brands like Callebaut, and then there was a whole lot of junk. Today it's more like wine and coffee. There are more high-end chocolates than anyone can count, including tiny artisanal bean-to-bar producers who seem to be cropping up everywhere. Most attention is on single-origin chocolates that are appreciated for their complexity and distinctiveness. Valrhona probably isn't even considered top-tier anymore. I still consider Callebaut an excellent value brand; it's more than good enough for anything where the distinctiveness of a single-origin chocolate won't shine through, and costs 1/2 to 1/3 the price of the highest end chocolates. Like most value brands, the flavors are solid but not especially interesting. Seventypercent.com used to be a great review site; it's useless now. If anyone knows a good one, please share. It was useful back in its day.

I usually use a boning knife or big German chef's knife to deal with chicken bones. The German knife is just about burly enough to cut through the neck, if I'm getting chickens that have the head on. The standard technique is to place the back of the blade on the neck, between two vertebrae, and give it a thwop with your other hand. I once made the mistake of trying to cut through a turkey neck with the chef's knife; that sent it to the repair shop. Now I have I have a $10 Chinese cleaver for the times I need to go through something a little bigger than chicken bones. Basically ... Japanese gyuto: no bones Western chef or boning knife: up to and including fish heads and chicken necks Cheap heavy cleaver: turkey necks Hacksaw: anything bigger Edited to add: the chef and boning knives work fine for slicing through the rib cage when fabricating chickens. Just make sure to separate the joints when you get to the bottom, rather than trying to cut through the pelvis (I assume that's what that is).

That's probably a big filter with lots of surface area, so you're not getting a noticeable slowdown before it starts clogging. A standard 10" carbon filter will slow the flow rate more noticeably. Exactly how much depends on your water pressure and the normal flow rate of your faucet. Whether or not it makes sense to filter all the water really depends on what's in it.

An infrared thermometer is helpful in figure out when an oven is preheated. You have to point it at multiple surfaces and guess at how to average them (surprise ... they may vary by 100°F depending one where they are in relation to the fire) but you'll get accustomed to how the surface temperatures correlate with the air temperature when the thing's fully heated. And you'll know when you hit the point where nothing's getting hotter. If there's something heavy in the oven like a dutch oven or a pizza steel, just measure that.

There are a million options, but I think using non-proprietary standard parts is the most versatile and economical. The only real disadvantage is that it doesn't come as a kit so you need to figure out what connectors and hoses to buy. Maybe you can consult with the plumber and tell him what kind of filter housing and faucet you have, and he'll take care of the fittings. I It took me about 45 minutes to install the stuff, not counting my extra trip to the plumbing store. Someone who knows what they're doing could probably do it in 15. The basic parts (prices are what I paid a couple of months ago): -10" filter housing $21 -Carbon block filter $6 -Shutoff valve (so you can turn off water to change filter) $8? -Beverage faucet $43 And then the annoying connecty bits that the plumber might help with: -T-connector (creates the connection from your cold water line) $7 -Appliance hose (connects from the t-connector to the filter) $10–$20 -Threaded fittings for filter housing ~$4 -3/8" LLPE polyethylene hose (connects filter to faucet. Worth getting this stuff; it doesn't add any plastic taste) ~$5 -Compression fitting, 3/8" (connects the 3/8" hose to the filter housing) ~$2 If the plumber isn't helpful, you can snap a picture of your undersink connections (in case you have something odd going on down there), and bring the picture along with your faucet and filter housing to a plumbing supply store / home depot. They'll tell you what to get. You could probably just buy all this stuff at home depot and be done with it, but I find the selection there disappointing much of the time. Edited to add: you can save some money by doing what Kenneth did, and not getting a separate faucet. Just be aware that it will greatly slow down the flow rate of your cold water, and you'll go through filters faster. We're happy to have the extra faucet.

Chocolate ice cream?

If anyone's going really primitive ... backpacking and without a budget for freeze-dried climbing dinners, the NOLS Cookery is a classic ancient text. Its main audience is backpackers or expeditioners who are carrying everything for many days, but probably not going ultralight/high-tech/expensive. And much of the content presumes you'll have time and energy to cook interesting things once you set up camp. So it gets into fairly outrageous stuff, like how to bake a cake in a #10 can on a camp stove, but also covers all the basics. And it gets a bit into foraged food and how to deal with fish you catch, and even includes recipes that take advantage of beer that's sometimes lost by day-hikers when they stick it in the creek to cool off. I have an early edition of this, and haven't used it in years (my overnight trips have been of the light/fast/freeze-dried variety in recent years). But I remember it being a treasure of collected wisdom, and most of it is built on ordinary dried food from the supermarket bulk bins.

How are the Bluestar grates if you have a very small pan, like a 0.75L saucepan? Some of the pictures and videos make it look like a pan could slip between the grates and never bee seen again.

I don't doubt you're right, and since cakes aren't my area of expertise it doesn't make sense for me to set off pushing boundaries and experimenting. I just figured why not start with a wish list, and if Santa says No, I'll have to figure out which compromises to make. The bittersweet chocolate may have to go. I'm facing the same issues with chocolate ice cream, but plan to take that one on as a challenge.

I'm not really against cocoa, but for whatever reason I don't think anyone's making cocoa powders to the same standards as their bittersweet chocolates. In some recipes it doesn't matter, in others it really seems to. For example, none of the companies that make my favorite chocolates, like Michel Cluizel, Amadei, Domori, or Valrhona, makes any single-origin cocoa powders. Some of them make commercial offerings with different structural features (fat%, dutched or not, etc.) but they don't offer the unique and varied flavors you get in the chocolates. This may not matter in cakes ... it's possible that there's too much other stuff in the way to mask the distinct flavors. But I'm not assuming it's so.

From the Harvard Medical School Blog: "A ketogenic diet could be an interesting alternative to treat certain conditions, and may accelerate weight loss. But it is hard to follow and it can be heavy on red meat and other fatty, processed, and salty foods that are notoriously unhealthy. We also do not know much about its long-term effects, probably because it’s so hard to stick with that people can’t eat this way for a long time. It is also important to remember that “yo-yo diets” that lead to rapid weight loss fluctuation are associated with increased mortality. Instead of engaging in the next popular diet that would last only a few weeks to months (for most people that includes a ketogenic diet), try to embrace change that is sustainable over the long term. A balanced, unprocessed diet, rich in very colorful fruits and vegetables, lean meats, fish, whole grains, nuts, seeds, olive oil, and lots of water seems to have the best evidence for a long, healthier, vibrant life."

We recently gave up our Brita pitcher for under-sink filtration and are happy with the choice. We didn't have any gripes with water quality from the Brita, but that's largely because in NYC the water quality excellent. The filter is for removing chlorine, and any bad tastes and smells contributed by nasty pipes in the building. Our building has nasty pipes—probably galvanized steel that's been corroding and developing atherosclerosis since the building was built in the 1960s. Activated carbon takes care of this business easily. The Brita also has some kind of ion-exchange resin, which is capable of reducing hardness and removing dissolved metals. But if you really need to reduce hardness (like to protect an espresso machine) or remove metals (because there's lead or mercury in the groundwater) you should have heavier duty protection than Brita. Tests I've seen show that the ion exchange effectiveness of Brita filters is middling at best, and short lived compared with the carbon portion of the filter. We just use a standard carbon block filter, because we don't need softening or metal removal. We went 100% standard, non-proprietary, with 10" filter housings and plumbing fittings. I got all the parts on Amazon for about $125. This included a nice solid stainless faucet to mount in the sink. The filters themselves cost $6 each, and are rated at 6000 gallons for chlorine removal. The Brita cartridges are $4 each (bought in bulk) and are rated at 40 gallons. That's 1000 gallons/dollar vs. 10 gallons/dollar. Realistically, we'll probably replace the carbon filter once a year, which will be well before 6000 gallons. And we generally used the Brita cartridges past their prime. So the new system won't really be 100 times as cost effective. But it's more convenient. If we had issues with other pollutants, or needed water softening, a system like ours could be augmented just by adding more filter housings. You could have a carefully chosen resin filter for removing metals, and a softening filter. Some people will put in a mixing valve to blend the softened water and the unsoftened water to get a mineral level that they like. This is a pretty user-friendly and economical way to go, as long as you're not dealing with problems that merit a full-on reverse-osmosis system. Several companies make a huge range of filters in the standard 10" size, and all but the most specialized will probably be cheap.

I have TCB, but have been under the assumption that her methods are about giving a finer crumb, like a sarah lee cake. Am I wrong about that?

We need to consult the classic texts.

I'm resurrecting this old thread in search of a recipe or template. The chocolate cakes I make have always been flourless (I spent months working out a recipe many years back) or at least low in flour (I love Pierre Hermé's friend Suzy's cake, and use it as a template for variations). But I'd like to be able to make a chocolate cake with a more traditional American moist-crumb texture. I'd like to be able to do this with great intensity of chocolate—not just generic chocolatiness, but with a three-dimensional explosion of the flavor profile of whatever chocolate I use. Which is why I'm not interested in cakes that use cocoa powder (unless they're just used to supplement the chocolate). I'm also quite biased toward butter over oil, because butter tastes good, especially with chocolate. Other qualities, like structural strength, keeping ability, etc., are welcome but not priorities. So I'm looking for: -intense, direct chocolate flavor, primarily from chocolate, not cocoa -large, very moist crumb -butter, not oil Thoughts?

I haven't experimented much with egg pasteurizing times/temps. Do you find that a 20 or 30% time difference influences texture or function? Semi-relatedly, I'm curious to know how the 6.5D standard for pasteurization was arrived at. Some of these standards came about through a lot of rigor, while others just seem to be pulled out of thin air. Edited to add: I'd also be curious to know what Anova has to say about the differences between the home and the lab circulator. I assume the lab version is more robust and reliable, but don't know if it would stay in calibration significantly longer. It might be assumed that in a lab environment, people have the tools and wits to calibrate stuff. The status of that circulator is also a bit of a mystery. It looks like such a nice unit and a great a value. And it's sometimes been on the Anova Culinary site and sometimes not. It's usually on the Anova scientific site. I don't understand how these companies are related to each other anymore, now that Electrolux has bought the culinary division.

From what I see on the chart on p12 of this old paper, it looks like a change in 0.2°F (roughly 0.1°C) corresponds with a 10% change in time. So if you thought your circulator might be off by a fraction of a degree you could just add 20% to the holding time. Or just accept that pasteurization standards are kind of arbitrary to begin with (who said that log 6.5 reduction is safe, but log 5 isn't? This is without even knowing the starring bacterial colony size). If you're getting inspected in a professional kitchen, that's a different story.

The Italian makers consider most American or French style ice creams "high overrun." The normal gelato machines put in very little air ... I'd guess 10–20% overrun at most.

That thing's really cool, but a lid is important for my purposes. I work with aromatic ingredients and want to keep them in. Flavors like coffee would be diminished by 30 minutes or more cooking and agitating in an open pot.

For home use I've been using an immersion circulator, which does the job, but I think something more along the lines of a lab hot plate would be easier and more efficient. I'm even curious about the ubiquitous Instant Pot. Although that thing doesn't stir the ingredients, so it would be hard to know how much to trust the temperature reading. I'm interested in other ideas. A fairly well sealed lid would be ideal, as would temperature accuracy within 1°C or better.

I'm just glad to know this whole product category exists. It seemed like it would have to; I just didn't know it would fall under the label "homogenizer." A steam-jacketed kettle doesn't look like it mixes or gives precise temperature control, so I don't think it's an option. The Masterchef gizmo is interesting. It's also an ice cream batch freezer. Bravo makes a batch freezer that can do all the mixing and cooking, although the guy I know who uses one professionally doesn't use these features, because it's impractical for him to have these functions in one machine. He wants to chill/age the mix for several hours before spinning, and this would put the whole machine out of commission for anything else. I've been looking around, and lots of companies make pasteurizers or the equivalent in every imaginable size.