paulraphael

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.

You could walk away casually. Those mutant birds don't get around so well.

For a more standard (moist / medium) texture than a confit, I get get great results at 64.5°C. 2 hours minimum; 3.5 hours for more tenderness. Will be pasteurized either way.

A candidate for "Pimp My Mac 'N Cheese." Which also sounds like a Top Chef challenge.

If you need induction-compatible, and you want it heavy, you may have to spend a little more. Here's a selection at a restaurant store. This market is likewise not immune to marketing gobbledygook, so I'm not saying I vouch for all the claims here. Just that I don't think any of the expensive home pans is better than the best of these. Or even the average of these. I'm skeptical of claims of high longevity in nonstick coatings. The most nonstick coating is PTFE, and it seems to lose its oomph after a few hundred cooks. Not sure why. Ceramic (sol-gel) coatings start out with less stick-resistance, and either have similar or worse longevity, depending on who you ask. Some companies reinforce PTFE with ceramic particles. This protects it some from abuse ... like being scraped off by steel spatulas. But it doesn't have any affect on the gradual fade of stick-resistance. At home, if you're using the pan for what it's good for (eggs), and taking reasonable care of it, I imagine you could get a long life out of a nonstick pan. But not if you're (ab)using it as a workhorse. Any chefs / restaurant owners here? Have you ever had a teflon pan last a whole year?

If you want a non-stick pan, go to a restaurant supply store, get a commercial one, and don't spend more than $30. There's no point to expensive non-stick cookware. And no need for nonstick at all outside a handful of tasks, like cooking eggs. For everything else, other surfaces will outperform it by a lot. And anything non-stick is essentially disposable. The surfaces will not keep their performance very long with frequent use, no matter what the marketing copy says. What Creuset does well is enameled cast iron.

Makes me feel better about the $18 vinegar.

I just discovered Despaña in NYC, which is the motherlode of mind-blowing sherry vinegars. I visited the brick and mortar shop but they sell everything online. Get a bottle of the Montegrato Pedro Ximénez vinegar, and curse me later for your new addiction. I've been drinking it straight, and have just formulated an ice cream recipe from it. They also have a whole lot of Iberico and Serrano hams at startling prices that are probably worth it.

Well, "modernist cuisine" is a made-up name that covers all kinds of things, and I'd argue it's a lousy description for most of them. Many people would consider SV a modernist technique no matter what you're doing with it. Here are the origins, according to the Oracle of Wikipedia: The method was first described by Sir Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford in 1799 (although he used air as the heat transfer medium).[2][3] It was re-discovered by American and French engineers in the mid-1960s and developed into an industrial food preservation method.[4] The method was adopted by Georges Pralus in 1974 for the Restaurant Troisgros (of Pierre and Michel Troisgros) in Roanne, France. He discovered that when foie gras was cooked in this manner, it kept its original appearance, did not lose excess amounts of fat, and had better texture.[4] Another pioneer in sous-vide is Bruno Goussault, who further researched the effects of temperature on various foods and became well known for training top chefs in the method. As chief scientist of Alexandria, Virginia-based food manufacturer Cuisine Solutions, Goussault developed the parameters of cooking times and temperatures for various foods.[4] I wonder if the industrial food preservation method from the 60s is boil-in-bag. The Modernist Cuisine books don't make a claim about the first restaurant use, but offer this as a conspicuous early story: On a September evening in 1985, a privileged group of diners sat down to enjoy the cuisine of Joel Robuchon, a legendary French chef whose Jamin restaurant in Paris had earned three Michelin stars and a reputation as one of the best in the world. It was in many respects a typical Thursday dinner scene, with business executives and politicians on expense accounts settling into plush leather chairs before tables set with the very best linens, china, and silver. Michel Cliche, Chef Robuchon's trusted aide of many years, was overseeing the cooking and presentation to ensure that the food met Robuchon's renowned standards. It did not disappoint, and as the guests ate they were also treated to a remarkable accompaniment to their meal: a view of the French countryside whizzing by in a blur. For this evening they were dining not in Jam in but in the Nouvelle Premiere car of an eastbound bullet train streaking from Paris to Strasbourg. Even more amazing, the entire meal had been cooked days before in an experimental kitchen in the depths of the Gare de l'Est train station. Mr. Cliche had been able to reheat the food in the cramped galley of the dining car without diminishing its quality.

There's a lively discussion about the Tongs Embargo back in the archives. The former TFL cook made one good point in Keller's defense: they didn't serve anything that you'd need tongs for. They didn't even make any brown stocks that would require turning bones in a roasting pan. It was all fish spats, palette knives, fingers, tweezers.