paulraphael

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.

I haven't experienced this, but suspect it has to do with the thickness of the cut (and the corresponding cooking time). For SV I always get steaks cut to 1-1/2 inches. Any thicker and cook time is too long. Thinner and it's hard to sear them without cooking through (unless you have monstrous BTUs). For prime, dry aged steaks, the best I've had have been cooked s.v. For more modest steaks, I prefer methods that let you put on a more serious sear / char. This meat can use help from the added seasoning of smoke and fire.

I think they don't want to provide customer service to residential customers. It's expensive and time consuming to do so. I believe it's why almost every commercial kitchen equipment company that branches into consumer products ends up spinning off the consumer division as a separate company. BTW, I looked into getting a commercial fridge for home, because they're awesome, and are designed intelligently (room inside for dozens of sheet pans, no stupid drawers, etc.). The problem is that they're all crazy loud. And the ones I saw were energy hogs.

Maybe an offensive one.

Ranges are totally understandable. Commercial ones violate a long list residential codes. They're actually dangerous, unless you make serious modifications to the kitchen to accommodate them. Even then, kids and the uninitiated can get burned from touching any exterior surface. With pans, I wonder if it's something more mundane, like you need a different class of liability insurance if you sell consumer goods, or if experience shows that it's more expensive to to give customer service to individuals rather than restaurants. I've always thought hotel pans were cool, but never found a use for them at home. I prefer to use plastic containers for prep, because they do triple duty for storage and leftovers. And I don't have a steam table. The big sizes do make great litter boxes for cats.

My local hole-in-the-wall fancy beer store suggested I try a tall can of Interboro You're All I Need IPA, and I did, not knowing what I was in for. This wasn't like anything else I've experienced. After having my mind blown, I hit the internet, to figure out what it was, and learned about the "New England IPA" uprising of the last few years, of which I'd been completely oblivious. On the off chance that you're as out of the loop as me, I'll try to describe: these nothing like what you think of as IPAs. They're hopped to high heaven, but most of it is dry hopping, so the profile is much more about fruit flavors and citrus / floral aromas than bitterness. The background bitterness of the hops is balanced by a syrupy, malty sweetness. They're unfiltered—hazy, big mouthfeel, perishable. This particular version was as full-bodied as orange juice, and exploded on the palate with citrus and tropical fruit flavors (all from the hops!). Nothing like what I usually turn to an IPA for, but it was magnificent. I haven't found much of anything written about Interboro, even though they're local to me. And sadly their site says this beer isn't in production anymore. My next stop is Other Half Brewing, in Brooklyn, which gets good reviews, and has one or two NEIPAs on their roster.

In my experience, having the meat freshly ground (within not too many hours of cooking) is most important. The choice of cuts is 2nd priority. Maybe within reason ...

I have an end grain boardsmith board and love it. But I find that my crappy poly boards (which I don't love) are a bit more gentle on knife edges. And I'd bet anything that rubber boards like sani-tuff are gentler still.

The sound of one hand clapping.

I think there's an undercurrent of people flailing wildly for a sense of control, in a world where systems are so complex and where decisions that affect us profoundly are made on such high levels, far out of reach. One of the only places people can find a sense of power is in information and knowledge, which we have in unlimited supply. The trouble is when people's hunger for that power outstrips their critical thinking ability, their basic understanding of science, or even just their patience for being rigorous. This seems to describe practically everyone, and it makes me want punch people in the face by the thousands. Especially all the charlatan authors and bloggers. I'm so over this shit. And yeah, it's a 1st world problem, in all the worst possible ways.

I've never compared the actual performance of the two lines, but I really don't want to reward companies like all-clad for the 5-ply and 7-ply marketing nonsense. It's not too hard to imagine that the 5-ply pans could perform reasonably well. If the steel layers are thin enough, these pans would act a bit more like disk-bottom pans with thicker aluminum. Which is to say they'd be better at some things, worse at others. What I like about the AC triply is that they're thin and fast, so I'm not really looking for changes here.

The flanken cut ones seem easier to trim. It's not much work to get those little cross sections of bone out.

I stumbled onto a nice discovery this weekend, making burgers to bring to a friend's back yard. The supermarket didn't have any brisket or shins, which are part of my standard blend (1/3 each chuck, brisket, shin, plus marrow from the shins). So I improvised and got 2/3 chuck and 1/3 flanken-cut short ribs. All of this was supermarket grade "certified black angus" that totaled about $7/lb ... the same as the preground, prepackaged grass-fed burger meat, with unnamed cuts that I occasionally buy when lazy. This meat was easier to prepare and grind, and the burgers were really, really good. My usual blend is more assertively beefy, but not necessarily in a better way. I wouldn't be surprised if more people would like the short rib blend in a blind taste test. It's also a bit cheaper and easier to prepare. This is a blend I hadn't experimented with, because back when I trying out a million version, my butcher / confidante advised against short rib. He said it wouldn't have the flavor of the other cuts. I'm no longer convinced of this.

Except some of us find the flavor of American cheese insipid and pointless. I don't want to eat it. I'd rather have tasty cheese and a lumpy texture. But the Modernist Cuisine people really have the ideal solution. Get whatever cheese you like most, and melt it with sodium citrate. This is no more "processed" or "molecular" than using baking powder in a cake. It's just an ingredient, and it just works. Here's a way to do it. I'd go for gruyere, or some aged cheddar. Personally, if I can make the burgers tasty enough, I don't bother with cheese at all.

That Panasonic has the exact kind of user interface that makes me want to scream. I realize anyone can adapt to anything, but I don't want to adapt to a toaster. I want analog dials that are obvious at first glance when I'm sleepy and caffeinated. This isn't a lot to ask for, because it's a f'ing toaster. My microwave is like that but worse. Give me dials or give me death. I'm leaning toward the Hamilton Beach model at the bottom of the Wirecutter review. They said it made toast better than anything else under $100, and it has an interface which while still plagued by some utter stupidity, is at least simple.

Ok, reasonably fast, reasonably sturdy, reasonably cheap. And simple. I'll let go of accurate. The inaccuracy bummed me out with the cuisinart because I was hoping to bake with the convenction feature. I don't care about that anymore (but I don't want to pay for the feature).

Maybe, but it seems like some of these simple ones are nicely designed and made. Others (like the Black+Decker one we're getting rid of) aren't. I also had two different samples of a medium-complicated Cuisinart convection toaster oven, that looked like it ticked all the boxes, but was complete trash. Took forever to toast toast, did it unevenly, and the oven thermostat was off by 50 degrees in both directions.