paulraphael

I wonder if the noxious compounds are broken down under such prolonged cooking. Why else 7 hours? They'll be soft after 1 or 2. If I knew the science behind this, it would be easier to come up with cooking methods that avoid the problem. Re: onions ... I haven't gotten bad flavors cooking them sous vide. But I do cut down on all the usual mirepoix veggies in preparations like stocks, by as much as 2/3. I find s.v. cooking amplifies their contribution relative to other ingredients. Carrots especially.

A lot of people use serrated knives on tomatoes. There are even some serrated utility knives marketed as 'tomato knives.' I'd argue that it's a bad practice, because serrated knives chew up delicate foods like tomatoes. You won't get a clean cut. The practice lingers because you can easily cut a tomato with a dull serrated knife, but not with a dull smooth knife. And most people's knives are in a permanent state of dullness. Serrations are a crutch that lets you get away with this. But anyone who cares enough to learn cutting techniques should also learn to sharpen. If you have even halfway sharp unserrated knives, you'll cut a tomato more cleanly than you will with serrated ones.

Didn't they say they were going to open source the API, so that anyone could write software for it? I would expect that software development isn't what Anova does best.

I wouldn't trust anyone who uses a serrated knife for anything besides bread and cake. There isn't much technique to cutting these things. Just don't apply cutting pressure when you're changing directions, and you should get a clean cut. The only thing hard about serrated knives is sharpening them.

For what it's worth, the time I got the bad flavor was vegetables only (mostly celeriac and fennel), cooked at 85°C for 90 minutes.

I kinda sorta like the idea, but not at the going price—was it $11?? The claim that they'll last 3000 uses seems dubious. Silicone stuff rips pretty easily with rough treatment. If they came down to a couple of bucks each, so you could have dozen of them around in a few sizes, and expect them to last a year or two or three, I'd be tempted.

Just make sure there aren't any hermetically sealed parts that could explode ...

In fairness to the Times, wasn't this my recommendation? I made some pork chops last night, but had some thick-ish ones ... about 1-1/4". Cooked sv at 57C, then seared. Possibly because of leanness, these cuts seem to cook through unusually fast when searing. And these were relatively well-marbled as loin chops go. From a nice farm upstate. What I saw in my finished chops wasn't so much an even, overcooked layer around the outside, but that they simply overcooked in the places where the chops were thinner, like under 1/2". They were pretty unevenly cut. In the thick parts, they cooked well, without much gradient. This is something I haven't noticed before. One thing I do with a lot of proteins, but especially with pork and fish, is treat the outside with an alkali to get it to brown faster. My favorite secret sauce is a 1:5 blend of baking soda and dextrose. You can sprinkle it on or disperse in oil and brush it on. It helps you get a nice crust very quickly. But even with this help, I was surprised how quickly the thinner parts cooked through.

Interesting, thanks. How do you find the difference between garlic powder and sauteed garlic (I assume you're just talking about sweating the garlic a bit)?

That was some really big typography. But I don't see how those authors came to that conclusion based on the source they cited. While the original study (based on 21 pig farms in Argentina) found that "...pigs raised outdoors were more likely to be infected than pigs raised in total or partial confinement," the real correlation with trichinosis was if they were fed waste products that included meat. Organic pork just means that the pigs were fed a diet that meets the organic rules. The final conclusion: "All pigs raised under good hygienic and sanitary conditions were negative for Trichinella infection by both artificial digestion and ELISA" The takeaway is to buy from good farms. There are good and bad organic farms, good and bad conventional ones.

I haven't tried anything yet. Hoping for a simple solution. It's definitely sulfur compounds causing the off-flavors. I just don't know if they're being produce enzymatically ( and then what times/temperatures are required to deactivate the enzymes) or if they're already there and need to be broken down directly by heat (and then, again, by how much).

I think in real life it would take trial and error using the same range and pan and similarly cut chops. A line cook who has to do dozens of these would have a few sacrificial ones at the beginning in order to nail the timing. But if you've only got 2 or three 1/4" thick pork chops, and want them perfectly cooked inside and out, it's going to take a dose of luck in addition to skill.

Does anyone have reliable tricks for getting good flavor out of garlic in a sous-vide bag? I'm talking about using it just as an aromatic, while cooking proteins, or as part of a stock or vegetable puree. The one time I forgot the maxim to leave raw garlic out of the bag, I ended up with celeriac puree that tasted like a tire fire. I see some recommendations to just use less, but in my experience the problem wasn't just too much garlic flavor. It was acrid, inedible flavor. Using less works fine for me with other mirepoix veggies. I also see recipes for s.v. garlic confit (listed by both Anova and Nomiku) and for some reason people say these taste good. How can this be? There was a thread questioning the old saw about blanching garlic multiple times in milk, which didn't come to any hard conclusions. I'm wondering if a quick blanch in water before adding to the s.v. bag, to deactivate the enzymes, would do the trick. But I don't know the actual chemistry behind the garlic tire fire, so am not confident this would work. Some cooks advocate garlic powder; I'm hoping to not resort to that. Thoughts?

With thin meat it's very difficult to get a good sear without overcooking the inside. Even if you have a commercial range and a million BTUs, the timing is difficult because retained heat can cook the meat through within just a couple of minutes of removing from the pan. It can be done, but the timing has to be maddeningly precise.

For a followup experiment maybe you can glue 3 thin pork chops into a single fat one with activa ...

If you really wanted to make a pet project of it, you could, 1) sous-vide it medium or medium-rare 2) freeze it solid 3) sear it This technique has the rather sci-fi name 'cryosearing,' but is just a basic way to exploit the physics when you want to sear something thin without cooking it through. The results should be perfect. Whether or not it's worth anyone's time is another question ...

According to the CDC, trichinosis infections have been dwindling close to zero in the U.S. Between 2008 and 2012, there was a median of 15 cases per year in the country. 10 of these were related to commercial pork. This means one case per 3 million people. Bear meat and venison seem to be more worrisome. Compare with annual deaths by lightning: you're almost 4 times as likely to DIE from a lightning strike as you are to be infected by trichinosis from commercial pork. Which still isn't a zero. If you're worried about it, you have the option to completely kill trichina without completely killing your pork chop. The easiest way is sous-vide. According to research done by Modernist Cuisine, holding pork at 130°F / 54.4°C for 112 minutes (very pink!) will do it. So will holding it at 140° / 60°C for 12 minutes (respectably medium). This is a rare case where the research points to times that are even more conservative than government regulations—the USDA says hold at 130°F for 60 minutes, 140°F for one minute. As far as killing the usual pathogens, pork is no different from beef. The whole idea that it has to be well-done is just old mythology.

I've used boric acid, not borax (closely related but not the same compound). It's so effective I feel kind of bad about it. I've mixed it with confectioners sugar or sugar syrup (around 1:10 or so) and put it where they, go on little pieces of foil, and within a couple of days the entire colony is gone. Even if they live way outside, in the garden, but have sent a regiment into my kitchen to commandeer some spilled honey, the boric acid will take out the whole population. No worries with pets. The LD50 in mammals is lower than table salt.

This.

The downside of adding heat capacity, of course, is the added time and energy to preheat the thing. I have a 1/2" thick steel (weighs around 32 lbs) and it takes my oven at least 75 minutes to preheat it to 550°F. If you not extra heat capacity (which has been shown to make a big difference when baking multiple pizzas back-to-back, but a very minor difference when baking a single one) the simplest way to get it is with a thicker steel. You maintain the conductivity of the metal all the way through, you have a blackened surface on both sides to absorb radiant heat, and no issues of transferring heat from one piece to another. You can buy steel in whatever thickness you and your oven rack can manage. My advice to most people would be 3/8". That strikes a nice balance. 1/2" is fine if everyone who's going to deal with it has a strong back. If you have big pizza parties and steel-toed shoes, maybe 5/8" would make sense (never heard of anyone using it, though). None of them should be left in the oven full-time.

I would spend the absolute minimum on any booze that's going into a deep fryer. People can't even taste the difference between vodkas when they're mixed with fruit juice. In addition to volatility, alcohol offers the benefit of not developing gluten. Not sure if that's of any practical benefit here (it's a reason people use it in pastry dough).

Sure haven't. Is that a quote from Star Trek?

This is the knife you need: The correct technique is to face away from the cutting board, throw the sandwich in an arc over your shoulder, then spin and bisect the sandwich in midair before it lands on the plate. The whole point of mustard or mayo is to hold the sandwich together in the air (the Japanese word for mayo translates literally to "warrior glue"). [photo by Rich Legg, http://leggnet.com/2013/12/hands-of-a-maguro-bocho-master.html]

Any steel should be food-safe. You only see exotic alloying elements in higher grade steels, and these are common in knives. A baking steel is also something that's going to be dry and that's going to make relatively brief food contact, and that's going to end up covered with oxidation and probably carbonized oil. There's about zero chance of anything leaching from it—even if there was something bad to leach from it. FWIW, S275 is just a plain old low-carbon steel. It's got nothing in it but a bit of carbon and manganese. The rest is iron, and the trace impurities that are in every steel. This is the general kind of steel that makes the most sense for what what you're talking about, because it's cheap to buy and cheap to work with.

On yet another hand, SV gives you the option to pasteurize to the core, even if cooking medium-rare. This is not always the best solution (the longer cooking can mess with the texture and make the meat drier) but in some cases it's ok. And it may be the best option if you have to serve people with serious immune system compromises, in which case you shouldn't assume 100% that the interior of meat is uncontaminated.