paulraphael

Pastry chefs often add milk powder to citrus sorbets. You could say this technically makes it not a sorbet, but it stays sorbet-like. I think industrial makers add things like maltodextrin. It's a sugar with a high molecular weight that adds practically no sweetness ... it's more like a starch. It also has very little effect on freezing point. I haven't played with this because I'm sure there are better ways to get solids. I'd go with powdered milk first. Also, I said "watermelon juice" above but should have said watermelon puree. I suspect this would get some added flavor and color in addition to some solids. If you experiment with reducing some of the watermelon let us know how it goes. I'd like to know what that does to the flavor.

Thanks sweettreat. Good question about the commercial Trimoline. I'll guess that it has a higher percentage of inverted sugar, and so its differences from table sugar will be a bit more pronounced. When you make it yourself, you can get about 85% invert syrup ... the rest is just sucrose syrup. Manufacturers probably have a few more tricks (like chemical or enzymatic catalysts) that let them invert more. The other possible variation is the water percentage. I'm not sure what's in the commercial product. The DIY version has whatever water level you want. The hotter you cook it, the drier it will be. I cook to 235–237°F, which gives a bit under 20% water. This is dry enough so that it doesn't add too much water to the ice cream, and so that it has a long life in the fridge, but not so dry that it's completely annoying to work with. Edited to add: please feel free to ask questions like this in the comment section on the blog, also. It will help me clarify this stuff for everyone.

I just made my 3rd batch of brown chicken stock with the pressure cooker. This is definitely the most flavorful chicken stock I've made. It was a mix of frozen carcasses, some meaty "soup bones" from the grocery, and about 750g of chicken breast bought on sale. Total yield (I'm guessing) is about 3.5L. Since I'm pushing the size limits of my 10qt pressure cooker, I sous-vided the chicken breast (after grinding) 90°C for 90 minutes. Strained the resulting stock into the liquids that go into the pressure cooker. My cat is crazy about the remaining dry meat. My plan was to reserve 60g of this for the pressure cooker, to help clarify, but I forgot. I roasted the carcasses and soup bones and also the mirepoix veggies (about half as much veg as I'd use in a conventional stock ... you don't lose as much of the aromatics). The liquids were the s.v. stock from the breast, deglazing liquid from the roasting, defrosted s.v. bag juices from previous meals, and water. The result is dark brown, heavy on roasted flavors and aromas, with a very 3-dimensional chicken flavor. It's not clear, but not muddy or cloudy either. I think it will be aces in sauces for chicken; the question remains if it's too chickeny to use as a more all purpose brown stock.

Good idea about a post on solids. I planned to make half of the post on sugars about solids, but it ended up seeming like too much information. So yeah, maybe solids gets its own section. The calculator Jo links to is good. I’d love to include excel or google docs spreadheets on the blog, but I don’t know how to program them. And the thought of trying to learn pretty much defrosts my freezer. If anyone’s a spreadsheet whiz who has tips or is interested in taking on the project, please let me know. There’s also a subscription-only calculator at dairyscience.info, and also a bunch of purchasable spreadsheets (they do consultancy for commercial ice cream production)—I’d like to make something with that kind of functionality, tailored to artisanal ice cream, and make it freely available. Right now I mostly just muddle through the math. Which is a bit annoying, because almost every ingredient that you change will change more than one of the variables. For example, if you decrease the milk, you’re decreasing milk fat, milk solids nonfat, and total solids, but you’re lowering the total volume of the recipe, so the relative values of these ingredients might actually increase. Since I’m basically using grade school math, this process sends me around in circles a couple of times until the values work out Re: watermeon ice cream. That’s a great example, and one I haven’t tried. My first thought would be to make a sorbet … which doesn’t solve all the problems, but definitely helps get the most out of the delicate flavor. For ice cream, I’d make an eggless base, no more than 12% fat, use additional stabilizing and emulsifying ingredients, and add a lot of milk powder to get the solids up (think of this as turning the water portion of the melon juice into skim milk). Then I’d experiment with ways to get the watermelon flavor intense enough. I’d play with mixing a portion of straight watermelon juice with some reduced watermelon juice. And I’d almost definitely add some acid, like lemon, which brings out a lot in that flavor. Then you have to account for the sugars. I’ll get into this more when I post about fruit flavors. I have a table of typical sugar makeup of fruits. Watermelon is typically 9% total sugars, 1.6% glucose, 3.3% fructose, 3.6% sucrose. So you can figure out the total number of these sugars your adding, and subtract from the various sugars to compensate (notice that watermelon contains the exact sugars I use in the base recipe). Most of that is just arithmetic; the more interesting problem becomes getting a vibrant, 3-dimensional watermelon flavor. I think it will take some experimenting, but I’m pretty sure you won’t get it with a very rich, custard-based ice cream.

We might be a bit outside newbie territory when we get into specific enzymes... If anyone wants to go farther afield, I've distilled some research on long cooks here, looking not just at texture, but at flavor development. This aspect of enzyme activity doesn't get much attention from the chefs and scientists at Modernist Cuisine. There is some research suggesting that too much cathespin activity can produce off-flavors, which are not associated with calpain. Both these enzymes produce byproducts, which are further broken down by a series of enzymes called aminopeptidases. The flavors we associate with dry-aged meat are produced by these latter enzymes. With a careful choice of temperature, we can do a very low pre-cook that emphasizes these enzymes, while avoiding development of off flavors from too much cathespin. It's theoretically possible to get the equivalent of a few week's dry aging in a few hours of pre-cook.

Well, I think the company will tell you to rinse it off right away. One or two hours is a long enough time to do damage. Which isn't to say it will happen; just that it might. I always either deglaze pans to make a sauce, or douse them at the sink and wipe them out when they're still hot (basically the same process). When I do that there's usually just a bit of polymerized oil left on the pan. Some BKF and and a blue scrubber sponge makes short work of it.

I've read that it's a good idea to get it very active before freezing, since the freezer may kill a good number of the buggers. And maybe not try to keep it frozen indefinitely.

I'm no Steven hawking, but I have this crazy idea for a ketchup jar with a wide mouth that lets you use a spoon.

I'd be careful with that ... the oxalic acid can actually pit stainless steel if left in contact for a long time.

The Cluizel pack was helpful, although I think something was wrong with it. The sampler chocolates are kind of waxy, and the flavor takes a long time to develop, and seems muted. This is the opposite of my experience with cluizel in general, so I just assumed my palette was tired, or I was in a bad mood, or something. I could still tell the difference between them, and was able to pick the one I liked most. Then when the bulk chocolates arrived (these are repackaged in 1lb bags by WWC, as you can see) I tasted them and they nearly blew my head off. Shazazm ... this was the Cluizel I remembered. My girlfriend and I compared to the chocolates from the sampler pack, and indeed, those still tasted waxy and muted. I wrote to WWC to find out what they think. Could chocolate go bad? They didn't look bloomed, or have any of the textural qualities I've found in old chocolate. Re: Valrhona, my go-to blend was about 2/3 Guanaja and 1/3 Manjari. That gave a balance I really liked between the bright fruit of the manjari and and the intensity and long finish of the Guanaja. This is the first time I've bought Cluizel in bulk. It used to cost about twice as much as Valrhona, which put it out of my reach for cooking. But now the prices seem about the same.

Courtesy of worldwidechocolate.com. I bought a sample pack of all the single origin chocolates and picked the Vila Gracinda. And had to get some of the 99% as well They sent me 1kg of Cluizel cocoa powder last week when the Valrhona ran out. I'm looking forward to trying all of this in some ice cream.

I just wrote a long post on Ice Cream Emulsifiers. This will mostly be of interest if you wish to make egg-free ice creams, or if you really want get your nerd on.

This is discussed in another thread or two. 10mm is definitely better if you're making multiple pizzas back-to-back. The weight difference may be a deterrent. My 12mm steel weighs around 32 lbs. I love it but would not recommend to my mom. There's some opportunity with these things to pinch a finger or smash a foot, or dislocate an oven rack, or burn someone if they forget that it's still going be blazing hot an hour after you take it out of the oven.

I've been playing with this, and don't think it's good enough. Kappa carrageenan gives the wrong texture and lacks freeze-thaw stability. I'm now trying 4: 2 : 2 : 1 Locust bean gum : guar gum : iota carrageenan : lambda carrageenan

Yeah, it doesn't work well. When you freeze the cream, many of fat globules rupture, leaking unemulsified milk fat. Normally they're discrete and surrounded by a membrane of proteins that helps keep the cream emulsified, but if the fats leak out, the emulsion breaks. The cream may still be useable, but it will tend to be grainy and may have an oily texture where the separated milkfat has pooled together. If the cream is already partially coalesced, as in ice cream and whipped cream, it can be frozen without these issues. In these cases the original emulsion has been broken (partially) by churning, and the fat has formed a new structure that's not susceptible to freezing damage. I'm not aware of a way repair it so it will work in ice cream, unfortunately.

I have very little experience with pectin, but after glancing at some of gel cheat-sheets it looks like your problem might be syneresis, which is science talk for weeping. Pectin weeps (and then you, too, weep). Some gelling agents are more susceptible than others. It just means they eventually let some water break out of the hydrocolloid matrix. Pectin supposedly has less syneresis with the addition of calcium; someone here can probably tell you what form to use and how to use it. Additionally, there are other gelling agents that are much more stable. I'm not sure which ones best mimic pectin (or if you'd be interested in other textural properties). It may be possible to stabilize agar with locust bean gum (agar by itself has serious syneresis issues). Possibly also a gel with locust bean gum and iota carrageenan.

Here are some other sources I've found recently ... they get into some of the unknown unknowns. cp Kelco Pectin Book cp Kelco Carrageenan Book cp Kelco Gellan Bookcp cp Kelco Xanthan Book And ... the tech support people at both kelco and TIC gums have always been amazing when I've called.

I'll bet you hit it on the head, and it just took the freezer a long time to recover from defrosting. It can take a fridge / freezer 24 hours just to stabilize after changing the thermostat setting. Not sure why it takes so long. Ideal freezer temperature is a tricky issue, since at home we use the same freezer for hardening, for storage, and for serving. According to Dr. Cesar Vega, the ideal hardening cabinet is -33°C / -27°F. Most actual hardening cabinets are -40, and conventional wisdom is that the colder the better, but Vega says (somewhere) that if you freeze ice cream too cold, the water turns to water glass, rather than crystalline ice, and this can lead to large crystals forming when it warms up. But most of us don't have to face this problem. For storage, he says typical ice creams are completely stable at -25°C / -13°F or below. Ice crystals won't grow, because all the water is solid. For serving, standard practice is -14 to -12°C / 6 to 10° F. Ice cream shop scooping cabinets are probably somewhere around there. Too warm for everything else you use a freezer for. In my experience, -20C / -5°F worked well for everything. It was the coldest my old freezer would go, so I couldn't compare lower temps. It hardened the ice cream quickly and gave great texture, and the ice cream only took a few minutes to soften after you pulled it out. The only drawback I found was energy use. It wasn't the newest of fridges and you could tell it was cycling on a lot. Edited to add I've looked into the idea that a hardening cabinet shouldn't be colder than 33°, and don't think there's anything to back it up. In order for water to form a glass (amorphous ice) it has to freeze to a temperature lower than this in milliseconds. Which is not going to happen when you put a pint container into the freezer. This is something you might think about when making liquid nitrogen ice cream (and it's the whole idea behind dippin' dots). Probably the conventional wisdom is right, and colder is better in a blast freezer.

Ahh, interesting. Are they actively developing it? I hope they keep it a generally useful tool and don't find a way to bind it to some proprietary technology. Edited to add: based on iTunes store reviews, it sounds like they rebranded it and changed the color from yellow to red.

Not sure if anyone's mentioned it upthread, but one of the best and cheapest accessories is the S.V. Dash app. Rather than using generic recipes or tables, it lets you pick your own target temperature, and find a time based on the real dimensions of your food. Sadly the developer hasn't touched it in the last two years, so its future is uncertain. I'm hoping Anova or someone buys it. I wrote a tutorial on how to best use the app here.

Freezer problems are a drag. The freezer in my old place could be set to -5F / -20C and hold it comfortably. My current freezer struggles to maintain -1F / -18C, and it makes a big difference. Even with all the improvements I've made in my formula, it's hard to get the ice cream as smooth as it was with the better freezer.

100% the latter. By evaporating water, you're increasing both the nonfat solids and the fat. There is possibly some effect from denaturing the whey proteins, but I don't believe you're going to notice it in these recipes. Mainly because they are very heavy on egg custard, so they have more than adequate added emulsifiers already. There is some research suggesting that with prolonged cooking, whey proteins can aggregate with casein proteins, forming a hydrocolloid with thickening / stabilizing ability. But this seems difficult to accomplish. Even Jeni Britton-Bauer of Jeni's Splendid—who's a pioneer in using milk proteins as emulsifiers in egg-free ice cream—adds starch as a stabilizer. If you want to increase the fat and nonfat solids of an ice cream, evaporation is a way to do it. But you'll have an easier time and get more consistent results by just using a higher percentage of cream and dry milk. In my experiments, cooking milk proteins to varying degrees in a formula that's lower in fat and much lower in egg yolk than Ruben's formulas, I find the effect to be extremely subtle. It's likely that you will only see any effect if you're using milk that's been pasteurized at low temperatures (and dry milk that's been spray-dried at low temperatures). Edited to add: There's something I'm leaving out. The differences aren't 100% evaporation; some of the difference is from adequately thickening the egg custard. Contrary to what used to be taught in cooking school, custard consistency is a factor of not just concentration and temperature, but also time. An egg custard brought to 162F for two minutes will thicken very little compared with one held at that temperature for 15 minutes. Dr. Cesar Vega confirmed this in tests done with a rheometer.

I don't know what goes into the manufacture of dried pasta. It definitely seems like more than just durum semolina and brass dies, because many brands use those and their products aren't equivalent. Based on the amount of flavor in the good pasta, I'm assuming there's some aging that goes on. The semolina flour itself might be quite variable. And the coarse dies themselves don't seem equivalent. Some of the pastas have much more mountainous, irregular surfaces than others.

I'd recommend a standard sorbet stabilizer. Ideally you want one without dairy (you want it to stay sorbet-like. You can always add dry milk powder to ingredients that are especially low on solids, like citrus) and without gelatin (which works great in sorbets, but people expect them to be vegetarian). The ingredients you mention mostly add solids and bulk, and emulsify some oil. I'd try something that uses hydrocolloids that form a gel. The mix will get pudding-like when it chills, and then you blend it to break the gel and freeze it in a machine. It will have more creaminess and body than an unstabilized sorbet, and a lot less iciness. This formula's an idea based on a couple of previous experiments I've done (but I'm not finished with this project yet ... so there's probably room for improvement). 4: 2 : 1 : 1: Locust bean gum : guar gum : lambda carrageenan : kappa carrageenan Use between 0.2% and 0.3%

Of note in Carlton's example recipe, the stabilizer blend is designed to form a gel, which is part of what gives body and whipability to a 6% milkfat base. Kappa carrageenan gels in any dairy product (from the calcium) and xanthan and locust bean gum gel when combined. After you age this mix, it will probably be like pudding; it may need to blended to convert to a fluid gel before pouring into a machine. This particular blend seems like it would be ideal for a soft serve ice cream; I wouldn't recommend it for regular ice cream.