paulraphael

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.

Has anyone compared flavor / texture of potato puree made with retrograded starch methods vs. single-step cooking?

A pressure cooker adds some maillard flavors to a stock. Used correctly, it also keeps the stock below a simmer, so fats are less likely to emulsify and you get more clarity (visual and flavor). And if you can keep the pc from venting, it holds in more of the aromatics. I've never used an IP ... isn't it a pressure cooker too?

Cool, thanks. How do the Sasso birds compare with the Bobo "black plume" birds that Jeffrey used to sell? I thought those were great, and only about $4/lb at the time. Do you recall what Lapera charges for the Sassos?

I think the issue isn't so much Brooklyn as the particular lay of the land around your garden. My old BK patio got too much sun for a lot of plants. Now we're in the shadow of buildings all around.

The MC chapter on smoking talks about the importance of surface moisture. When they smoke after SV cooking, they do an intermediate stage in a warm oven to get rid of excess moisture. You want the surface to be slightly damp / tacky. More moist than that, the smoke will likely get trapped by surface liquid that drips off. Drier than that, too little smoke will be adsorbed onto the surfaces. I gather that the SV / warm oven / smoke is their favorite method.

All in the freezer. When my freezer had shelves in the door, I put the bottles there. Now we have drawer-style freezers. I found plastic organization bins (Container store?) that fit the bottles fairly well, though not as convenient as the door shelves. between buying whole spices whenever possible and keeping them in cold storage, they stay much fresher. I alsways have a small mortar/pestle and microplane handy.

Yeah, I have a couple of pieces of nearly 30 year-old Calphalon that are similar. Back when it was just the Commercial Aluminuminum Cookware Co. of Toledo, OH. The stuff is totally burly .. 6 or 7mm thick throughout, riveted iron handles, commercial lids. Much of the anodizing has vanished from the interior of these pans, and I don't love anodized cookware generally. But these pans still work, and will probably outlast me. I've occasionally thought about replacing the 5qt beat-to-hell rondeau with a heavy copper one, or an induction-ready clad stainless one, but then sobered up and realized that the old war horse is more than good enough. In a perfect world I'd prefer old beat-up All-Clad MC or stainless.

What do you know about their chickens? Their site doesn't have much info.