paulraphael

You're not alone; thinning hardly ever gets mentioned outside of knife nerd or Japanese cook circles. But it's a simple byproduct of geometry. A simple option if you want to keep using the knife sharpening machine is to get a cheap, coarse stone or a coarse diamond stone to thin on. You might just use it once a year or so, while you maintain the edges on the machine. It will it keep the knives performing like new until they've been sharpened down to nothing. For anyone who still doesn't know what I'm talking about, here's a diagram (drawn by someone else) with exaggerated angles for clarity:

I haven't tried bacon, but I often s.v. chicken thighs that come vacuum packed like this, and they pose the same challenge. I put the package inside a big ziploc bag, just for insurance. The ziploc stays clean unless the inner bag leaks, so you can reuse it. It's relatively quick and unmessy to bag an already sealed package.

I think part of the problem here is double-cooking the lobster. You can also improve your results by killing it better. To kill lobster in a way that's both humane and most delicious, anesthetize them first. This has become common practice with fish in Japan (I suspect more for flavor than conscience), since the older methods of instantaneously destroying the fish's spinal column require more time and much more skill. Basically, with any sentient creature, time spent writhing in pain or anxiety leads to spontaneous muscle contractions (spasms), that deplete the stored glucose and ATP in the muscle tissue and replace it with waste products. Even instantly beheading a fish causes the autonomous nervous system to create spasms. This doesn't happen if the creature is put all the way to sleep with a central nervous system anesthetic. Commercial fish anesthetics use pure isoeugenol. This happens to be the primary constituent of clove oil, which you can get at any fragrance or aromatherapy shop. Just make sure you get pure clove oil. Some will say something like "contains 75% eugenols," which is ideal. The procedure is to create a solution of 2ml to 4ml clove oil per gallon of salt water. Sea water is ideal, or you can simulate it with a 3.5% by weight table salt solution. Clove oil isn't miscible in water, so you have to dissolve in alcohol first. You'll need 40ml of your cheapest vodka per gallon of water. Be careful handling the clove oil; it's very strong when concentrated and can burn your skin and eyes. Mix the clove oil into the booze (it will get cloudy), and mix this solution into to salt water. Drop in your lobsters. They'll squirm around and then stop. Give them a minute; usually they'll start squirming or backwards-walking again before coming to a final stop. At this point they should be completely limp. If this doesn't work with 2ml / gallon, double the concentration. Some lobsters are resistant to the drug. Once they're out (they'll be alive, but completely limp) they're ready to cook whole or to be be butchered. If you're steaming or sous-viding them, rinse first with clear water to get rid of the clove smell. I've done this several times and the results have been perfect. There's more info on the method at cookingissues.com (If you want to try this with vertebrate fish, start with 1ml clove oil / gallon. They're more responsive to the stuff).

The coarse slot on the chef's choice machine doesn't thin the blade. It's about removing larger nicks and damage, as you suggested. Thinning is about the broad bevel of the blade well above the cutting edge. The more height you grind off the knife during routine sharpening, the fatter the blade will be behind the edge. Your knives aren't magical; if you've been sharpening them regularly they need thinning, if they're to retain the performance they had when they were new. This true of all knives and all sharpening methods without exception. If you're unaware of the loss of performance, it's because it's happened gradually.

To the original post, there's one situation where mail-order sharpening makes sense to me. If you have typical european knives, with fat bevel angles and soft steel, then you have blades that can be maintained for a long time on a butcher's steel. Anyone can learn how to do this, and it takes 10 seconds. Your knives will never be really sharp, but they'll be effective, and you can keep going months or years like this. Just send them off for sharpening when they're so beat-up that you can't bang them back into shape on the steel. I'd still strongly recommend sending them to someone good, like Dave Martell. He'll charge more than the commodity services, it will just be an occasional expense.

There are a couple of things to consider with any kind of automated or semi-automated system. One is that after several regular sharpenings, your blades will have to be thinned. Otherwise, the constant removal of metal is going to change the knife's geometry and the blade will be much too thick behind the edge. You'll have knives with great edges and lousy performance. Thinning requires sharpening higher up on the blade at a very acute angle ... typically lower than 5°. This can be challenging on an edge pro. It's not possible with a machine like the chef's choice. The other challenge is dealing with the blade's geometry at the tip. This requires changing angles both when sharpening and thinning. Gadgets can make this challenging, if they allow it at all

Exactly. When you're a rank beginner you'll probably get more curve than is ideal, but you'll get steady enough. No human can hold a perfectly steady angle; this has never been a problem.

If saving time is in an issue, you can just make the hollandaise sous-vide with plain eggs, and it will pasteurize while cooking. The cooking step takes about 30 minutes; at 65°C eggs will be pasteurized in about 10 mins. I haven't found any downsides to this approach.

Here are the guidelines for pasteurizing eggs I compiled from Cooking Issues and Modernist Cuisine: Standard method: 55C / 131F x 2 hours Fast method: : 57C / 135 F x 75 minutes (appearance not as good but otherwise ok) With both methods, whites may be more difficult to whip but properties are otherwise unchanged

One way to do it is to push the eggs into the middle of the wire whisk attachment from a mixer. The whisk stays on the bottom, and holds the eggs in place. Kind of like a shark cage. It's not quite as mess-proof as plastic bags, but I think people have found it reliable. It's quick and doesn't use anything disposable. If you had a non-circulating bath (like an s.v. supreme) I'd imagine it's ok to just throw the eggs in. But most of the circulators make strong currents in the water, and could bang the eggs around too much without some kind of containment.

I made a sous-vide bearnaise-ish sauce in the manner of the Modernist Cuisine recipe over the holidays. It had a rough start ... the sauce broke, but then when I blended in some additional softened butter at high speed it emulsified beautifully, and stayed the right consistency overnight. We served it straight from the stick blender (no NO2 siphon). I think with some tweaks this will be my standard hollandaise recipe. It takes longer than traditional versions, but the blender makes a more stable emulsion, and it's a huge bonus that you can pasteurize the yolks.

Forno Rosso was pretty good! Definitely some well made pies in the Neapolitan tradition. After reheating in the oven they had dried out a bit, as predicted. This made the crust less interesting, but it also made the slices easier to eat (none of us is such a traditionalist that we use a knife and fork). These were definitely the best pizzas I've had in Chicago. In Brooklyn they'd get probably get a B or B-. A bit heavy on the cheese, and the crust, while more flavorful than the usual Chicago cardboard, isn't exceptionally so. My guess is that they retard the fermentation long enough to get some flavor development, but that they don't use a natural starter. I'm finding it hard to go back to commercial yeast pizzas after getting spoiled by places like Robertas.

Rotus' basic premise is the right one. Use an oil high in polyunsaturated fat and it makes short work of seasoning. I use safflower oil, which according to this chart is higher in polyunsaturated fats than any of the others. I don't think those small differences are too important ... sunflower and corn and canola oil should work fine. I just happen to have safflower around for sauteeing. It's a good choice if you're shopping for an oil specifically for this purpose. One detail that's helpful is to look for oils that list the smoke point. When the oils are highly refined, they have higher smoke points ... sometimes 450°F or higher. These high heat versions are ideal. I set the oven about 25° higher than the smoke point. You want the oil to partially burn—the seasoning is created by a mix of polymerized oil and carbonized oil. It's the carbonized (blackened) soot particles that make the polymer stick-resistant. If you just polymerize the oil without any blackening, food will stick like crazy. Definitely do it in multiple thin layers. I put oil on a piece of paper towel and wipe it onto the pan very lightly (using tongs when the pan is hot). Put in the oven until it smokes and the smoke starts subsiding. Pull it out and repeat. You can do 5 or 6 layers in a half hour. The house will smell bad for a while.

Understood, but if you have an inexpensive knife, ruining the edge isn't a big deal. You just use this as an opportunity to practice fixing the edge on a coarse stone, and you try again. The big difference between now and the 1970s is the internet ... youtube specifically. There are great resources on how to sharpen knives. I've recently found the videos posted by Jon Broida at Japanese Knife Imports (in LA) to be especially good. He shows you the basics in just one or two quick videos. And if you're hungry for more advanced techniques, or get into single bevel knives or whatever, he's got more specialized videos for those. I realize most people aren't looking for a new hobby in the kitchen, especially one that's about maintenance. But I really think that with even a single medium-grit stone and a few attempts with the help of youtube, you can make your knives better than ever (even if not as good as possible). Spend a few minutes with the stone every couple of weeks and you'll enjoy great performance, and independence from questionable sharpening services and vendors of gizmos.

Re. the need for sharp knives, I'm all for them. There's a pretty wide range of sharp, and you don't need a yanagiba-like edge for everything. But most of us probably learned to cut with dull knives, and sharp ones do everything better. If you're preparing things that will be served raw, they leave much better looking edges. You'll cut with much less effort and more precision. Delicate foods will retain their aromas and vibrance better. Onions won't make you cry so hard. Herbs and fruits won't brown. I used to do things the European way and cut herbs at the last possible minute, so they wouldn't brown and lose flavor. This added to the chaos of service. Now I do herbs first thing, when my edges are fresh. The herbs stay perfect for hours. I can chiffonade basil and it will not be brown or dull smelling 4 hours later. It won't be brown 24 hours later. This is one measure of a sharp knife. It raises the level of what's possible. There's a learning curve to get that level of sharpness, and not everyone is interested. But the good news is that if you decide to learn sharpening, by the time you've practiced just a few times and are barely more than a beginner, your edges will already be better than most of the ones you've ever used. Certainly better than any German knife brand new from the store. It only takes rudimentary skills with the most basic kit to notice greatly improved performance. Whether you want to keep practicing and improving past this point is entirely optional.

Well, I'd recommend first getting a $70 Japanese knife and a $40 combination stone. Then you can practice your sharpening and cutting skills with something you don't feel too precious about. Then when you decide you want a $1000 knife (which, if you're lucky, will be never) you'll better know what you want and also how to sharpen it.

I'd be surprised if locust bean gum is more expensive than gelatin if you compensate for the quantities you actually use. Another path is to just get a commercial sorbet stabilizer. These are blends and are pretty much guaranteed to work well. You just don't have much ability to tweak besides adjusting the quantity.

I don't think there's any special requirement to be a math or science person. But sous-vide does hold a special appeal for people who like science. It cooks with numerical precision and absolute consistency, so you can go directly from a scientific principle to a real-world result—without any special manual skills. And since the process is so controlled, you can easily adjust a single variable, by whatever increment you want, until you get the exact result you've been hankering for. Of course you can always just look at a recipe and punch in whatever numbers it says, just like with more old-timey cooking methods. You'll still get many of the benefits. You just won't be having all the fun the nerds are having.

I think the reason a lot of us end up using both (which can admittedly be awkward and annoying) is that celsius and fahrenheit are a bit like languages, and some aspects of cooking force us to traverse virtual lands and mingle with various tribes that use both. Ovens and most cookbooks and most regular folks in the US: Farenheit. Professional cookbooks, international recipes, food science sources, modernist cooking sources: Celsius. The weather in Brooklyn: Farenheit. My sous-vide scallops and photographic film developer: Celsius. It's just like growing up in a bilingual household. It might make me a little weird. But the back-and-forth is probably better exercise for the mind than some other things (inhaling whipped cream cartridges, etc.).

Gelatin is a pretty good stabilizer. I used to use it in conjunction with xanthan gum (in a ratio of 3 parts gelatin to 1 part gum). This recipe has the advantage of using ingredients that are easy to find and use. It has the disadvantage of not having the very best stabilizing properties, and of not being vegetarian (some people order sorbet specifically to avoid animal products). I briefly discuss a more sophisticated sorbet stabilizer blend here. This is still a work in progress, but it's the product of some evolution and has been tested a few times. It gives a better texture than either the gelatin blend or locust bean gum alone.

I'd be wary of local knife sharpeners. A lot of them are commercial services who sharpen the practically disposable knives used by butchers and low-end restaurant kitchens. They use a grinding wheel and will take off noticeable millimeters of metal each time. Your knives will get thinner and thinner, will have a very toothy, concave edge, and will disappear entirely after a couple of dozen sharpenings. If you want your knives to be really sharp, you have to bite the bullet and learn to sharpen them yourself. Because a knife doesn't stay sharp for more than a few days of hard use. It doesn't stay exceptionally sharp for more than a couple of hours of use. Most of us learned how to cut with European knives of middling sharpness and brutish geometries, that could be whacked back into serviceability on a butcher's steel ... but these knives were never actually sharp. IF this level of sharpness is ok, then you can send your knives off every decade or so and just maintain on a steel. But it would still make sense to send them to someplace good. I'd recommend sending knives to a real pro (like Dave at Japanese Knife Sharpening or Jon at Japanese Knife Imports) if you have a major repair, or need a serious reprofiling, or just need a benchmark for what's possible. But unless you learn to sharpen, you'll spend most of your time using unsharp knives.

I'm packing my v.1 Anova to Chicago tomorrow. Going to turn some prime chuck into rib-eye surrogates and save my mom a couple of hundred bucks. This is one application where I'd be interested in the Joule ... it's tiny and would be great to travel with. Otherwise, I'm not too excited about being locked out of the thing if I don't have my phone / don't have a charge / the app's not working / there are wifi issues, etc. etc..

I doubt they'd do that, and we could never do justice to the dough in a household oven. That would be a disaster. I think it will be fine. I've ordered neapolitan pies often from Roberta's in Brooklyn, and heated up leftovers the next day in a toaster oven. Reheated isn't as good as freshly delivered, which isn't as good as straight out of the oven. But it's very good. People who find the napolitana style too limp and soft might actually prefer it.

It sounds like the slow cooker really isn't up to the task, at least for relatively short cooks. I'm surprised by this; it shouldn't take much power to get the water back up to temperature in a few minutes. Manually intervening as others have suggested is probably a good idea. In general, though, a temperature drop in the beginning will make very little difference to your overall cooking time. At the start of cooking, the temperature difference between the food and the water bath will be very high, even if the bath temperature has dropped many degrees. So the food's temperature will rise quickly. It really only matters that you the bath temperature is exact during the final several minutes of cooking. This is assuming relatively quick cooks of food that doesn't need to be tenderized. If you look at a time/temperature graph of the center food in a water bath, you'll see it rise very quickly to within a few degrees of the final temperature. Then the curve flattens out as it gets to within the final degree. That last degree can take a very long time (which is why it's usually best to set the bath temperature a degree higher than your actual food target temperature). I go into some detail on this here.

Sardines is shorthand for "enemies of the Gambino family." My mom has given Forno Rosso the thumbs-up, so that will be our Christmas eve dinner. Unfortunately, they close at 3pm, and we'll be eating later than that. The pizza will have to suffer delivery and reheating. Not a fair test, especially for something in the napolitano style. I'm guessing we'll still like it more that Giordano's. I hope to try the pizza fresh out of the oven sometime.