paulraphael

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.

Without having a real sense of the workflow, these pasteurizers look about right. I'm not shopping for one for myself. People have been coming to me for consultation on making ice cream commercially, and I'm trying to figure out how to scale my methods. Back when I worked at an ice cream shop, we ordered our base from a dairy. This what just about every ice cream shop does. It was custom made for us, but still a compromise. It meant every flavor had to use the same base. I do my ice cream sous-vide, which is ok for a couple of quarts at a time, but would be ridiculous to try to scale.

Does anyone know of a appliance that can be used to cook medium-to-large volumes of thick liquid, like ice cream base, to a specific temperature for a specific time? I'm imagining capacities from one to twenty gallons. Something that would have the powers of stirring laboratory hot plate, or some of the powers of an instant pot. Ideally something that will work with a sealed lid.

If only our range would die. I'm sure it's already 25 years old, and will probably keep on sucking forever.

I don't care what people eat, but I care deeply about public dialog getting hijacked by misinformation, distraction, pseudoscience, and needless scaremongering. There are things worth caring about / fearing / fighting against, and things that objectively are not. Energy directed by false prophets toward the latter gets diverted from the former. It's a public education issue and a public health issue. I dream of a world where the Food Babe is so publicly shamed, by hordes of the reasonable, that she never opens her mouth again.

I find myself on campaign against the basic building blocks of these stupid diets. I want the words "chemical" and "processed" to be expunged from non-technical language. In their casual usage, they don't mean anything. I even see advice in the health section of the NY Times on avoiding chemicals and processed foods. WTF? As if everything you've ever put in your mouth wasn't 100% chemicals. And what is processing? Doing something to something. Heating. Grinding. Straining. Thickening. Separating. Refining. Preserving. Aging. Fermenting. Everything we've been doing to food to make it more digestible or long-lasting or to taste better or to have fun with it for the last 10,000 to 100,000 years. Few foods are more processed than wine. Or chocolate. Or coffee. Or whisky. A Big Mac doesn't see a fraction of the processes of these foods. If you want to cut down on McDonalds, find a better descriptor than "processed." It's meaningless. Even if I tease out what you think you mean, that meaning will be inaccurate. McDonalds isn't bad because it's processed, it's bad because it sucks. ["Sucks" might need some clarification for someone who was born recently, or who has only just landed on our planet. But at least a logically coherent definition is possible.] End rant.

I've been using sous-vide to cook ice cream bases, because my method requires bringing the base to 75°C and holding it there for 30 to 45 minutes, ideally in a sealed environment. SV is a little awkward for this, because, there's no temperature probe inside the bag, and it's hard to model how long it will take a bag viscous liquid to come up to temperature. I'm wondering if this would be a good use for an instant pot? Is it simple to program something like "bring this to 75°C and hold it there for x minutes?" Or just let me know when it reaches the target temp?

One of my favorite bits in Kitchen Confidential is when Mr. Bourdain locked the office door so no one would come in while he made fettuccini with the paper shredder.