paulraphael

Unless you're quite uncomfortable with the idea, I'd suggest working on it yourself. It's not very hard, and as you've discovered, the web is full of how-to instructions and videos. One of the great things about these mixers is that every replacement part is available. And they're reasonably priced. You'll probably have to get at least one specialized tool, like a snap-ring plier (I'm not sure about this ... it was required for the mixer model that I have). And be warned that it's messy. There's going to be around a pound of 50 year-old, caked-on grease inside that thing. You can replace the grease with a modern synthetic that works better and lasts longer, and will help the machine run even better than new. I have a different relationship with my mixer after having fixed it. It's not mysterious anymore. It's more personal ... almost as if I'd made thing from scratch.

Well, you can't take back the royalties you already payed him. Why not keep the books for the information, but deface all the pictures of him? Or claw his name off the dust jackets? Books are such good conversation starters.

Fortunately no one ever got sick, but they had what might be a couple of close calls. They found samples of lysteria in the kitchen during monthly inspections and as a precaution recalled a bunch of ice cream. This contributed to their decision to offload the raw milk operations (including mixing and pasteurizing the ice cream) to a dairy.

That's the real question. Without having done the necessary experiment, I'll bet that protein denaturing has very, very little to do it. There are two significant things that distinguish his recipes: extremely high total solids, and gobsmackingly high milk fat. He's also got a lot of yolks in there. Duplicate these solids and fat and egg levels by any other method, you'll get basically the same result. Personally I don't like ice cream that's so high in fat. I find the mouthfeel (and stomach-feel) off-putting, and I don't like the way it mutes flavors. You may disagree. If so, be confident that you can a similar texture by just about any method that gives you those proportions. When the solids and fat and custard levels are so high, the texture is going to be very robust. It won't be messed with easily by small changes in process. Manipulating proteins through cooking is an interesting topic. I've built my own process around taking advantage of the possible benefits. I believe these benefits are relatively subtle, though ... not enough to take the place of conventional thickening and emulsifying ingredients unless you're running a very sophisticated process. In my conversations with Jeni of Jeni's homemade, she said she was able to get enough emulsification to go egg-free because she used raw milk. Then she regretted telling me this, because she was afraid I'd encourage people to try this at home, leading to all kinds of carnage.

Thanks!

I'd recommend against this method entirely. It overcooks the milk proteins, it's terribly imprecise (as you've noticed) and it's a pain. Just figure out what nonfat milk solids level you're going for, and get there by adding nonfat dry milk. The key is to use good quality dry milk that's 100% skim milk, that's very fresh (no off-odors when dry or mixed), and ideally, that's been spray-dried at low temperature. I use Now Organic brand. There are some other good ones. I keep mine double-bagged in the freezer. Jeni knows what she's talking about, but I think the method she's recommending is a misplaced attempt to mimic her industrial process. She'd get raw milk from the farm, centrifuge it into cream and skim milk, and then concentrate the milk by reverse osmosis. This is great if you have industrial dairy equipment. At least in theory. It turned out to be too problematic even for her; now she has all this stuff done off-site at the dairy.

I don't have any issues with the cleanliness of my endgrain board. It stays ungrooved, and I spray all boards with sanitizer after washing. I just don't like the sensation of cutting on poly boards. That said, I use them fairly often, and have to admit that they're gentler on my knife edges than the end-grain maple. It's not a dramatic difference, but on plastic my gyuto holds on to its freshly sharpened feel somewhat longer. This goes against some of the conventional thinking. I haven't had the pleasure of using the rubber sani-tuff boards. They're ugly and don't smell great, but I imagine are extremely gentle on knives, and offer dish-washer friendliness of plastic.

My maple end grain board never gets grooves deeper than what can be smoothed over with a regular bench scraper. I've never needed to cabinet-scrape it or sand it. But ... I don't use serrated knives on it. I have a separate face-grain board that I use for bread, and this is indeed hacked up. A bread knife is basically a saw, so it should stay away from anything that you don't want grooves in. Possibly if I used a euro-style chef's knife with a heavier hand the end grain board would get deeper marks.

I think it's at the low end in terms of fanciness, but not in terms of quality. Of everything I've seen, Bluestar stays the closest to the design and construction of a commercial range. Emphasis on burliness, not features. This could be a plus or a minus, depending on what you're looking for.

Yes, thanks, I said the exact opposite of what I meant. Fixed now.

If I were buying a range and had the budget, high quality open burners would be close to the top of my list. I like a lot of power from a range, and BTU figures only tell part of the story. Even the best sealed burner designs send much of the heat energy to the edges of the pan and way beyond. Good open burners send the fire straight up. More even heating, and more of the energy gets to the food. Look up videos for Bluestar's burners; you'll get the idea. I'd also look for a very powerful, well designed broiler, like the infra red top broilers on Wolf and Bluestar. A friend of mine has a 48" Wolf (from before the acquisition by Sub Zero) that has both a griddle and "char broiler" grill on top. When the char broiler broke down, an authorized repair guy spent the afternoon scraping burnt-on gunk from its bowels. My friend asked how to keep it from happening again. Repair guy said, "Sir, you shouldn't grill inside the house." So this is a feature I'd pass on.

I like my cast iron pans too, but they're not non-stick like teflon pans. Somewhat stick-resistant compared with bare metal, but teflon is radically more innert and stick free. I don't think this is important for most cooking ... cast iron and spun steel are much more useful overall. But if you want something that an egg will slide around on without any oil, nothing is in the same league as teflon. It's just a separate category of pan, with a unique set of advantages and problems.

I cited Kenji's article because it compares results between pressure cooking and braising. It's not the central point (which is that both pressure cooking and braising are generally better than a slow cooker). But there are some useful generalizations.

Boulud's a great chef, and I've loved some meals at his restaurants, and even reverse engineered some recipes from him, but nevertheless, that's a terrible roasted chicken recipe. I don't have to try it to know. And I'd be surprised if he cooks that for his family. That chicken will have some combination of very overcooked breasts and undercooked thighs. There is nothing in the technique to deal with the different cooking requirements of these parts, and trussing actually exacerbates this problem greatly. In this case brining is just a band-aid to help compensate for bad cooking.

This Kenji Lopez article is primarily a rant against slow cookers, but along the way he addresses some of the differences between a traditional braise and a pressure cooked equivalent.

I grew up drinking lapsang souchong, and then lost my taste for it a bit. Part of it seems like the Twinings brand I used to like now just tastes like dust (I swear it used to be pretty good). Nothing I can find in bags tastes any good. And part of the problem is that while I love the smoke, I miss the body and some of the other midrange flavors of other teas. So for the last couple of years I've been drinking Taylors of Harrowgate Scottish Breakfast. This is a big, sink-you-teeth-into-it cup a tea. So a couple of months ago I had the idea of mixing them together. What could go wrong? (cue Wile E. Coyote mixing two varieties of Acme teas and blowing himself to bits). I mixed a bag of Scottish Breakfast with a teaspoon of Harney & Sons loose leaf lapsang souchong (in a little infusor), and damn if it isn't my favorite tea ever. I'd love to know what someone with a more educated tea palate thinks of this. I'm also curiuos to know how this compares with typical Russian Caravan blends ... I never see these so I haven't tried. Anyway, that's my odd and boring tea story. Thanks for listening. Edited to add: my girlfriend thinks the lapsang smells like a burning pile of sweaty work boots, so I'm only allowed to drink it when she's out.

Seriouseats weighs in.

As much of a bombastic Napoleonic autocrat as Escofier was, he acknowledged that better ways would be discovered. Most famously, he predicted that we'd come up with beter thickeners than flour and roux. Every high-end contemporary source on my shelves recommends making white sauce the way Mitch (and the ancient Chinese) do it—by blanching the carcases before making the stock, to get rid of stock-clouding impurities and nasty flavors. It's obviously not the only way to do it, but considering how many people consider it superior to the alternatives, I think it's worth noting. Personally, I only make brown stocks (except with fish, which I do sous-vide) so I don't have my own experiments. I

I just dusted of my Escoffier, and you're right, he doesn't mention anything about blanching the white stock. It must be a later 20th century refinement. Literally every source I've learned from has included the blanching step, so I just assumed it's been canonical forever.

I experimented with brining chicken for about a year, and found that results were consistently worse than when not brining. A brined chicken will absolutely retain more water. This is only a benefit in cases where you're protecting yourself against drying out the bird from overcooking. If you don't dry out the bird from overcooking, you'll have a bird with a subtly altered, slightly cured texture, and less intensely flavored juices (at best) or salty juices (if you're not careful). I find it much easier to just cook the bird well. This requires manipulating some physics, because the dark meat needs to be cooked 5 or 6 degrees F hotter than the breasts, but the breasts are more exposed to direct heat. I protect the breasts with foil for about half the cooking time when roasting. This tweak is usually enough to get all the meat to come to the right temperature at the the same time that the skin browns. I'm typically aiming for white meat temperature of 140–145F, dark meat 148–153F. At least a few high end chefs disagree with me on this. I haven't heard their exact reasoning. Also, I haven't experimented with equilibrium brining, as described in Modernist Cuisine.

I'm pretty sure every culinary textbook advocates this. For white stock. If you don't blanch the bones, you'll have hazy muck. If you're roasting the bones there's no need. If I recall, Thomas Keller blanched the bones more than once at the FL.

Still a mystery. I don't like liver, and if I tasted it in my stock it would go down the sink. But I've been doing PC stock exclusively for the last 4 years.

It's possibly an issue with the design of the Hawkins cookers. Have you read this post on Cooking Issues? This information gets glossed over by just about everyone, including the Modernist Cuisine team.

I wonder if there's something else going on. I've never heard anyone describe this before.

That's peculiar. Does that mean blood flavor? I associate that with metalic / iron taste. Never experienced this in any chicken or turkey stock from the PC. I don't use the PC for fish or vegetable stocks. I get the best results doing these sous-vide at 85°C. Precook the garlic or leave it out; use about 1/3 the onions/shallots and carrots compared with conventional stocks.