paulraphael

Ha. I'll just point you to a video. If you can bake a cake you can fix a stupid mixer!

After 8 years i've finally had a problem with my pro 600. I've been experimenting with pizza, and working with stiffer doughs, and yesterday I got some binding and bad noises from the planetary assembly. I'm waiting for a set of snap-ring pliers to show up so I can complete the disassembly and figure out what's going on. So far i have the gear cover open and the worm assembly gears removed and everything on top cleaned up. I'm more impressed with this mixer than I was before breaking it(!) The gears are very high quality and the machining tolerances look better than I expected. After 8 years there is no visible wear anywhere, and the grease is in good shape. I'm not sure what's going down below in the planetary assembly, but clearly that's where the problem is. It's also the part of the mixer that has made inconsistent noises in the past. I may find a worn/broken gear, a worn bushing, or something similar. The best news is that these machines are extremely easy to work on, parts are available everywhere (do some comparison shopping ... prices vary a lot) and there are instructional videos online that show you in about 10 minutes how to completely overhaul them. To save time, I ordered a whole new planetary assembly. It cost about $25. Buying the replacement gears and washers cost about the same amount, so I decided to keep it simple. You need to get a new gasket for the gear housing. About $6 including shipping. If you have an old style plastic housing, you should use this opportunity to upgrade to the indestructible magnesium one. It's a pop-in replacement. You also need to replace the grease. KA uses and specifies their own food-grade grease (which is probably a Shell product). This is one of the weakest links in the whole mixer. It's a poor quality grease by modern standards. It hardens (which stops it from working) and it separates (which leads to the liquid portion leaking out into your merengue). I upgraded to a synthetic #2 grease called Superlube; there are other similar ones. It's food-grade, odorless, impervious to salt and water, safe on rubber and plastics, is completely stable, and has a temperature range nearly 200 degrees broader than the KA grease. People online have said the synthetic greases makes their mixers run more smoothly and quietly. People have also reported that they've discovered inadequate lubrication when opening their mixers ... like a top bushing or planetary gear that not been given enough grease, or in some cases that hadn't been greased at all. It's possible I'll find something like this. This is going to be about $75 worth of maintenance after 8 years of pretty hard use. I anticipate that the mixer will run better than new when fixed and packed with the synthetic grease. The most expensive part of this was the snap-ring pliers ... if you have a pair you're set. If you're shopping for them, be careful—most are too big for the rings on the mixer. I'd also suggest getting some good-quality non-toxic degreaser. You want to get everything squeaky clean before putting in the new grease. Overall, I'd say that fixing a pro-600 is a bit easier than working on a racing bicycle, a bit harder than assembling an Ikea coffee table.

Escoffier also predicted that one day we'd have much better thickeners than flour I like his recipes as a reference, but for anything like sauces, stocks, glaces etc., I think of them as historical curiosities. We have techniques now that will give better flavor and clarity with less time investment and much less waste. I like roux in certain dishes where it's part of the local character, like gumbo. But I wouldn't assume that there's any important difference between the flour you can get and whatever E. used. The chemistry of roux is such that you're basically clarifying the wheat starch. The butter is a cooking medium, and whatever starch you don't transform by browning gets dispersed and forms a hydrocolloid with the water. The protein separates, cooks, clumps together, and joins the scum on top. So it really doesn't matter if you're using flour that's 9% protein or 14%. If you're making a cake that's success vs. failure, but with roux none of it's going to be in your finished product.

Thank you ... I agree it looks pretty good, but the eating was only so-so. And yeah, this dough is sticky beyond what you can solve with cornmeal. It's like a gelatinous blob of glue. For my next batch with 65% or so hydration I'll try sliding it.

Don't bother trying to get 00 pizza flour. It's only of interest if you're baking at 800°F or higher, which is done in the interest of Neapolitan-style crusts, not crisp ones. At lower temperatures and longer cooking times 00 offers no advantages, and may contribute to problems. I don't think the type flour matters nearly as much as the hydration and the way you hydrate it and develop the gluten. Crisp crusts are generally the product of the crust drying out over a longer cooking time. When you try to make Neapolitan pizzas in oven that isn't hot enough, you get crispy crusts. I'd think that some added sugar in the dough might help exaggerate this effect.

Wondra is designed to thicken sauces without any requirement for it being cooked. It won't give you the raw flour flavor that you'd otherwise get (which is actually the flavor of partially cooked flour ... raw flour is pretty tasteless). And since the starch has be pre-gelatinized, it will dissolve easily and have full thickening power right away. It's basically so you can use wheat flour the same way you'd use a purified starch, like corn starch or arrowroot. Since the whole process of making roux, including skimming the released fat, will fully cook and gelatinize any flour, I'm not sure what advantage you'd see from wondra. My inclination would be to go for lower protein flours, rather than higher, since the proteins in the flour just contribute to the scum that you have to skim off. But really, whatever flour you have will work fine. How are people getting lumps in their roux? I've never noticed a tendency for flour form lumps that the requisite whisking wouldn't take care easily enough. Roux should be pretty foolproof. The only thing to keep in mind is that the darker you brown it, the less thickening power it will have.

We just made our first two pizzas on the 1/2" steel in the broiler. Results were ok for a first try, but a fail if comparing to a couple of the wood oven places within 20 minute's walking distance, and embarrassment compared to the best Brooklyn has to offer. I think we can get in the ballpark of the former; probably not the latter. I made the mistake of dropping the broiler rack to the 2nd position, out of fear that the pizza would combust if any closer to the fire (I once sent a ball of flame all the way to the ceiling from the nachos I pulled out of a similar broiler. Made me shy). Because of the added distance, the stone only got up to 540°F or so, and the pizzas took a full 6 minutes. I'd like to get it under 4 minutes. I also cooked the pizzas on parchment, which I find necessary when working with very high hydration doughs. These crusts were about 75% hydration before any added bench flour, and were like glue. It's beyond my art to slide this kind of dough off a peel. I suspect that if we can get the temperatures above 600F and the time down significantly, we'll be able to use lower hydration and then dispense with the parchment. All together this might help get some char on the bottom. Right now we're working with commercial yeast and delayed fermentation (to get some flavor). Once we get the mechanics down we'll get a sourdough starter going. Our favorite pizzas are quite sour.

I contacted a few metal fabricators / scrapyards in the NYC area, and was quoted outrageous prices every time. So that led to shopping for the pre-packaged solutions. I decided to go for a 1/2" steel based on the slight thermal advantages, and since my back is ok. It came to a choice between ones by Dough Joe and by Nerd Chef. With shipping they each come to about $100, either from Amazon or direct from the companies. The Dough Joe is 15" square and would be ideal for using in charcoal grill or kamado. I went with the slightly more rectangular Nerd Chef because it has a couple of big finger holes to make it easier to handle. I assume there would be zero performance difference. In a trial run with my stove (one of those very cheap NYC apartment gas ranges that has a broiler compartment below the oven and no electronics). On the top shelf the steel got to about 510F in 1 hour. It might have gone higher but I ran out of time. More interestingly, the broiler rack down below got up to 640F. These cheap ranges use the same heating element for the oven and for the broiler, which might make them ideal. So for pizza test 1 today, I'm going to try the broiler shelf. I'm not sure if I'll leave the broiler element on for the whole duration of the cook ... that seems like it might set things on fire. Unfortunately there's no way to watch, so it will take some winging it.

I used to cook risotto in any old pan. If you're doing it traditionally, the pan makes virtually no difference, because you never stop stirring. I've used heavy aluminum, which heats very evenly, and enameled cast iron, which does not. Same results. And you don't need fast temperature response for risotto. Just the occasional small adjustment to keep things simmering at about the right rate. A fairly wide pan might help things go faster, since it speeds evaporation. Nowadays I always do risotto in a pressure cooker. So much faster than the traditional method, and no tradeoffs. I haven't tried using the fuzzy rice cooker. Not sure what the workflow would be, or the settings on the machine. With a pressure cooker, you use it as a stockpot when sweating the arromatics, cooking down mushrooms, etc., and then pressurize to cook the rice. I usually undercook slightly under pressure, so I can finish to the exact right consistency while stirring. This finishing step just adds a couple of minutes.

I really wouldn't worry about the legal implications of distilling spirits in a rotovap. While the law is quite clear here (distilling even a teaspoon of booze is verboten) who's going to know or care if it's for personal use? With the quantities you can handle in a vap, you're probably not going to be distilling anything for a group bigger than a dinner party. Smoking weed at home seems riskier. A friend and I looked into getting one and getting a microdistilling license (this is relatively now compared with years past). The plan was thwarted when I figured out how small the batches would be and how long each one would take. It's a lab tool, not a production tool.

Why not add a large hadron collider to the wish list? The cool kids are only doing quantum gastronomy these days. Seriously, I'd second that the centrifuge is probably more practical. I've been dying to play with a rotovap, and seriously investigated one once, but they're very big and very fragile, and it seems unwise to buy a used one unless you 100% know what you're doing, which was far from my situation. And new ones of course cost a bundle.

I'm reviving this thread after a lot of years, this time because we're actually shopping for new counters. We're not trying to spend huge money, so some of the more interesting options (like Dekton and other sintered surfaces) are off the table. So to speak. It looks like I was wrong about the lab countertops—they're pure epoxy resin. Not quartz bound by epoxy. I'm still interested, though. I saw a picture of a kitchen on Garden Web with all lab epoxy and it looked great. I'm just concerned about scratching. Most of what I read suggests you can't sand deep scratches out of the stuff. It's not a functional issue, but considering we're doing this in part to make the place more sellable, it's not a problem we're looking for. We're open to the various quartz/resin materials also, but don't want to spend $100/square foot. If there's anything good for half that price we'd love to know.

Has anyone tried a steel in one of those ovens that has a separate broiler compartment? The thing that looks like a drawer below the main oven chamber?

My impression with CI is that they always suggest that they're an authority. It's partly their tone, and partly that they don't make the effort to acknowledge the limitations (or even the subjective nature of the choices) in whatever tests they're doing.

Sure, if you're doing your own tasting for yourself. But if you're going to publish a review, especially one with the air of authority that CI assumes, I think you should do your homework. Just like with wine, not everyone is going to like what the trained tasters like. There are recognized flaws wine that some people specifically enjoy, like taint from brettanomyces yeast. But it's irresponsible to print a review that goes counter to the industry standards without acknowledging it. CI was recommending oils that had rancidity flaws—not because they were championing a controversial position, but because they had absolutely no idea. Which means they had so much confidence in their own imagined authority, that they didn't even bother to ask anyone who knew anything. So looking at something like saucepans, why would I trust that anyone there actually knows anything about saucemaking? It's a craft I studied for years—the only meaningful opinions I have about saucepans are rooted in that knowledge. Without it, you'd easily arrive at very mistaken conclusions about what's important, or you'd subscribe to the usual lore, like "use a heavy thick-bottomed pan ..." How many times have we heard that? Advice like this could lead us to sauciers made from enameled cast iron, or ones with a 10mm aluminum disk on the bottom, both of which would be terrible. Useable—because you can make anything work—but definitely the most difficult to use.

I just don't trust CI on this kind of thing. Their ratio of self-assuredness to actual knowledge is just off the charts. It leads them to making sweeping, unquestioned judgements that end up 180° opposed to those of more knowledgable cooks and testers. A rare example of them getting called out was their 2006 olive oil tasting embarrassment, in which four of their top-picked oils were labelled "defective" by trained tasters. Full article here. Sauce pans are easier to test, but I'm still skeptical of everything in the magazine. Since they're so often wrong on things I know about, how could they be trusted on things I'm learning about. Here's some advice on sauciers: if you're using them as intended, for sauces that require rapid stirring and whisking (emulsified egg sauces, etc.), then the most important thing is low thermal mass. You want something that will cool off quickly when you turn the fire down. Good heat distribution is helpful, but by far the best way to ensure that is to use a burner / heating element that's the right size for the pan. Generally for pans this size, hot spots aren't an issue unless the pan is terrible and the burner is badly mismatched. And you want a stainless steel interior so you can see what you're doing. That's it. Something like an all-clad laminated pan with thin walls is perfect. There are lots of similar pans. Stay away from any kind of cast iron, or anything with a very thick disk on the bottom.

Chris, the way I secured the plastic wrap is exactly like what you did, only instead of bagging after the first layer of wrap, I added a second one. Take those pigtails of plastic and fold them parallel with the roll, and then put the second layer over this, to keep it all from unravelling. Dave Arnold demos this method at cookingissues.com ... it's their way of sous-viding anything tube-shaped. I don't remember needing to do anything to secure the roll in the water bath. It looks like you're getting a nice sear without any added glucose. If you want to try it with the enhancement but don't want to buy powdered glucose/dextrose, you can use any reducing sugar. This would include corn syrup, invert sugar, honey, or fructose. Unfortunately table sugar won't be as effective.

That s.v. method should work fine for frozen scallops. I'd expect a bit more moisture loss. And I'd make sure to include the brine step. Here's a good starting point for time: 1” diameter: 40 minutes 1.5” diameter: 80 minutes 2” diameter: 120 minutes 2.5” diameter: 40 minutes (don’t roll. ziploc bag with space between scallops) Here's a more exact formula for the brine: Water 100% ice 20% salt 6% (will be 5% after ice melts) sugar 4.2% (will be 3.5% after ice melts) -disolve sugar and salt into room temperature water in a plastic container -stir in ice and add scallops -cover and hold in refrigerator for 30 minutes -drain and replace brine with plain icewater -soak for 10 minutes

Never had that but am pretty sure I've read about it somewhere. Would be amazing with some very fresh, floral telicherry peppercorns.

Not really what the OP was asking, but the best scallops I've made/had were cooked sous-vide, after briefly brining in a 5% salt, 3.5% sugar solution. The brine helps firm their texture so they hold their shape—I use this step on a lot of seafood, especially before cooking s.v. Roll the scallops in a couple of layers of plastic wrap (don't use the commercial PVC type that stinks). Cook at 50°C. Time varies by size of the scallops. Chill in an ice water bath (still wrapped). this improves texture and keeps scallops from overcooking when you sear. Dry them. Optionally, dust very lightly with a 1:1.5 baking soda/glucose mix to speed browning. Get a pan very hot. Right before searing dust scallops lightly in wondra flour (also optional). Browning should take 15 to 20 seconds per side. The texture is absolutely insane with this method.

"Best" is hard to assert, since there are so many kinds. For rustic ones I leave the skin on and use a masher. For insane Joel Robuchon-style puree (which some call a butter sauce thickened with potatoes(!)) I use a method (probably like what Btbyrd links to). It involves retrograding the starch, which is easiest to do sous-vide, extracting flavor from the skins, and then whipping the potatoes with butter. I use about half the butter Robuchon specifies in his version (which gives me a stomach ache to read). I haven't actually done this in years, because for a very smooth puree I like the flavor of celeriac more. And pureeing it is much easier.

That's funny ... I use my Forschner filleting knife (cheap!) on watermelon and squash even more than on fish. The paper-thin blade is perfect for not getting wedged in the thick rinds of that stuff. Often the knife just slips through. Mine is much too small for the initial butchering of a big mellon (a thin Japanese bread knife works nicely here). But for making slices once the thing is sectioned, the fillet knife is great. I consider using it for a lot of things where the food is hard and rigid, and so the main impediment is the blade getting wedged.

The most compelling reason to replace eggs is if you don't want the ice cream to taste like eggs. Even then, you can do fine by reducing the number of yolks—which is generally what I do. I wouldn't consider all those ingredients egg replacements, though. Most pastry chefs use some kind of stabilizer blend, even if they're making a French-style ice cream with a ton of egg. Such a blend might contain all those ingredients, or everything except the emulsifiers (the gylcerides). While the stabilizer blend looks like a lot of stuff, its advantage is that it works in minute quantities. By weight you'd use between 1/10 and 1/30 as much as you'd use egg yolk. So you can get the texture modification of egg without the interference in flavor release, or the egg flavor itself. Some people look at modern ingredients like these as "additives." But if an additive is an ingredient that doesn't contribute anything you want toward flavor, I'd consider egg yolks additives in ice cream. Then it becomes a simpler question ... which additive to I prefer? The yolks or the powder?

Point being, boilsover, for every restaurant in a given category that uses copper cookware, you'll find many more that don't. So, correct, there's no correlation. You're grabbing all the restaurants that use them, and saying "see? They're used by good restaurants!" I'm systematically looking at restaurants that meet a particular criterion and seeing what they use. I'm also considering work by the best saucier in NYC who's food I've sampled. This was in 2011 when I staged at Le Bernardin. I don't know what kind of evasees he had, but they looked like all clad. Everything else there was spun steel or disk-bottom aluminum. I know for sure chef Ripert would buy the guy a couple of copper pans if he asked! So out of the 6 3-star restaurants, I see one with a closed kitchen that uses copper. Out of the 10 2-star restaurants open or closed, only Daniel. I saw one picture of the Momofuku Ko kitchen (open) where a single copper pan hung among the others. Maybe it was someone's lucky pan.

There may also be a French nostalgia for copper. At bistro DBGB Daniel Boulud decorates with so much of it I wouldn't put it past him to use for planters and umbrella holders.