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Everything posted by paulraphael
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Copper vs Stainless Steel Clad Cookware: Is it worth the $$$?
paulraphael replied to a topic in Kitchen Consumer
That copper wok has got to be someone's incredibly cynical joke on tourists. But more on point, you'd be wise to read Myhrvold's full text on the topic before arguing with him. You've got no reason to take my word for anything, but if your knee-jerk reaction is to dismiss the findings of Myhrvold's team, you'll make a monkey of yourself. -
The Bowery shops aren't the bargain they used to be (the Bowery isn't the street it used to be ... ) Definitely still worth visiting, and still a convenient repository of all-things-pro-kitchen in a walkable radius. If you're looking for the very best values, there are enclaves of restaurant supply stores in Brooklyn (Flatbush Ave) and, I believe also in Queens.
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One thing I liked about Pyrex (back when I had a self-cleaning oven) is that you can restore it to brand new condition by leaving it in the oven on the self-clean cycle. Completely effortless. And very much not recommended for most metal pans. The other issue with Pyrex is that it browns the surfaces that face pan very rapidly. This is probably why it's popular for things like cornbread, where people go for extra crisp edges. For other things this can be a problem.
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Copper vs Stainless Steel Clad Cookware: Is it worth the $$$?
paulraphael replied to a topic in Kitchen Consumer
Nathan Myhrvold and company, in Modernist Cuisine, Vol. 2: Contrary to what cooking-store marketers would have you believe, the least important component in sautéing is the pan itself. Only a few general features matter for making great sautéed food easily, and they are widely available in pans of modest cost. Yes, it is undeniable that copper heats and cools faster than aluminum, which in turn is more responsive to heat than the iron-based metals. but does it really matter if one pan responds twice as fast as another to an adjusted burner? We don’t think so. An expensive copper pan doesn’t save you if your burner is underpowered for the amount of food you’re trying to cook. And a cheap steel pan heats more than fast enough if your burner is up for the job. As proof, consider what happens when you use a wok to stir-fry, which arguably represents the ultimate form of sautéing. Woks are made from inexpensive, thin, uncoated iron or steel. Put one in a race for the quickest sear against a $400 pan if you like. Our bets are firmly on the humble wok. There's much more on the topic in these books; I'm quoting the section on sauté pans as an example. For anyone not yet familiar, this 7-volume collection is the most thoroughly researched body of work on cooking and food science ever assembled. It doesn't flinch from recommending a $15,000 piece of equipment, if nothing else will do as well. -
Copper vs Stainless Steel Clad Cookware: Is it worth the $$$?
paulraphael replied to a topic in Kitchen Consumer
Yeah, that can be an issue with a lot of these pans. My favorite cast iron skillet was a gift ... my godmother bought it at a flea market upstate, took it home, and realized she couldn't lift it. One of my friends has an 8-quart 2.5mm copper saucepan. He weighs 250 lbs. No one else in the house goes near that thing. I think that's the main reason he like it. -
Copper vs Stainless Steel Clad Cookware: Is it worth the $$$?
paulraphael replied to a topic in Kitchen Consumer
How? I've owned every kind of pan in question. I've used them side-by-side. And I've done the math (which supports my experience). I still use heavy copper, and I still think it's awesome. My point is that its real world benefits over other materials—when they exist—are wildly overstated. And that the benefits of tin over stainless are nonexistent. If anyone wants to contact me offline about this, I'm happy to chat their ear off. Anyone in NYC ... come by with some food. We can do a comparison with some controls.. -
That's an interesting approach, but why would you get a teflon coating if you're going to layer polymerized oil on top? You can "season" bare aluminum just fine. The oil won't adhere as well as it does to iron, but it should make a more even and durable layer than it would over over a commercial nonstick coating.
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Copper vs Stainless Steel Clad Cookware: Is it worth the $$$?
paulraphael replied to a topic in Kitchen Consumer
Rate of conduction will be lower with thicker metal. Thicker metal will heat more evenly, which is a non-issue. See post on evenness. I'm going to stop responding here, boilsover, because I'm just seeing a miasma of cognitive biasses*. We all want to feel good about our purchases, but there's no need to take this anxiety public. Your pans are awesome and they make you happy. They just don't happen to objectively better in the ways you're claiming. No amount of pushing information around can change that. *See 1, 2, 3 -
Copper vs Stainless Steel Clad Cookware: Is it worth the $$$?
paulraphael replied to a topic in Kitchen Consumer
Yeah, evenness is rarely an issue in the real world unless you're trying to make esthetically perfect crepes. Most good pans, with the exception of cast iron and its variations, heat pretty evenly. My heavy aluminum aluminum cookware is the most even, followed by heavy copper, followed by thin clad aluminum. But these are differences observed during tests, not cooking. The cast iron / spun steel / enameled iron are the only ones that require any kind of consideration. Copper is about a mix of responsiveness and heat retention ... two qualities that are at odds, but that allow for surprisingly good compromise if you have the conductivity, high mass, and low specific heat of copper. The reason this benefit doesn't make more real world difference is that there aren't many cooking situations that require both responsiveness and retained heat. Retained heat is for searing. Responsiveness is for fine temperature control. The stock answer is sauteeing a lot of meat and making a pan sauce ... but you don't need fine temperature control to make a pan sauce. You'll have every bit as easy a time with a heavy aluminum pan, or a disk-bottom pan, or whatever. This stuff just isn't rocket science. I love my copper saucepans, but to be perfectly honest, I find my friends' all-clad saucepans to be equally responsive. They won't heat as evenly, but you'd need to conduct tests to prove it. There's no task in saucemaking that benefits from greater evenness than what these offer. -
Copper vs Stainless Steel Clad Cookware: Is it worth the $$$?
paulraphael replied to a topic in Kitchen Consumer
I ran the thermal calculations on equivalent stainless-clad, tin-coated, and uncoated copper cookware. My Mauviel/Falk/Bougeat clad material measures 2.4mm copper, 0.1mm stainless steel. I assumed the same dimensions for the tin, but the math shows that even a difference of plus or minus 100% in the plating thickness is inconsequential. The tin-lined laminate is one half of 1% more conductive than the stainless-clad. An unlined 2.4mm copper pan is 1.6% more conductive. If you think you notice these differences, I don't want your pans, I want what you're smoking. -
Copper vs Stainless Steel Clad Cookware: Is it worth the $$$?
paulraphael replied to a topic in Kitchen Consumer
Now you're just making stuff up. Only suggestibility would lead someone to believe there's a perceptible differenc in conductivity of a lining that's 1/10 mm thick. It doesn't matter to me what stories someone tells themselves to feel good about a purchase, but people come here for information. It's not fair to clutter the airwaves with superstitions. -
Copper vs Stainless Steel Clad Cookware: Is it worth the $$$?
paulraphael replied to a topic in Kitchen Consumer
That's what you do when you preheat a pan. It's the whole point. Push a pan with food in it to 450° you have a different kind of trouble: burned food. The point of the preheat is so the pan drops to the right temperature when the food hits it. There's a reason that even in old kitchens equipped with copper pans, cooks seared food on spun steel. -
I'd urge anyone to stay away from nonstick bakeware. The coatings are impermanent and unnecessary, and the dark ones cause overbrowning. The best material, in terms of browning evenly on the air side and on the pan-side, is light-colored, unpolished bare aluminum. Like all the commercial pans. I like the Magic Line pans most. They're welded, so the corners are all perfect right angles. This makes cleaning a little harder, but you don't get odd shaped pieces on the sides and corners. If easy cleaning is more important than perfect edges, there are other brands that are press-moulded, but made with the same heavy aluminum. These have rounded corners. For sheet pans any commercial aluminum half and quarter-sheets work well. I also like the Chicago Metallic aluminized steel ones. They brown things a bit more slowly. For everything, get parchment. You can find sellers on ebay who have it pre-cut to half-sheet size.
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Rats. I liked this place. I think the best brick and mortar shop now is the one at Chelsea Market. They're kind of semi-pro. They have things like commercial sheet pans at commercial prices, along with the usual home cookin' stuff.
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According to Myhrvold, Food scientists have found that the smoke produced by hardwoods smoldering at temperatures around 400 "C I 750 "F yields the most flavorful foods. That temperature seems ideal not only because of what then goes into the smoke—the phenols and other aromatic compounds—but also because of what doesn't: namely, excessive amounts of vaporizing acids that taste terrible. Regarding soaking the wood: Most of these liquids react when heated to form vapors with an entirely different composition than the liquid. By dousing your wood with them, all you're really doing is lowering the smoldering temperature of the wood - and likely damaging the quality of the smoke.
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Copper vs Stainless Steel Clad Cookware: Is it worth the $$$?
paulraphael replied to a topic in Kitchen Consumer
It's not funny, it's true. The point about BTUs is that the more you have, the less important it is to preheat the pan far above cooking temperature. I have a fairly low output range ... probably under 12,000 BTU/hr. With this kind of output it's always critical to preheat to a high temperature if browning a significant quantity of food. If you don't, the food will drop the pan temperature and just stew. It's true with heavy cooper, with heavier cast iron, with spun steel, with a 7mm disk of aluminum. And sure, you can easily go to 480F and above in tinned copper. You will simply melt the lining into puddles. Every time. If you do not experience this, then you're mistaken about the temperature, or about the lining material. You cannot have fat in the pan if you are preheating to these temperatures. You must preheat a dry pan, add the oil, and then immediately add the food before the oil burns. You probably do not want to add oil or food to melted tin. That's just messy. I wouldn't pay extra for the privilege. -
Copper vs Stainless Steel Clad Cookware: Is it worth the $$$?
paulraphael replied to a topic in Kitchen Consumer
I usually see "Saucier" applied to a windsor / evassee pan that has a curve in the bottom to accommodate a whisk. I don't have one, but it looks like a reasonable update to the classic design. Probably less likely to get curdled egg or other skank in the corners. -
Copper vs Stainless Steel Clad Cookware: Is it worth the $$$?
paulraphael replied to a topic in Kitchen Consumer
My thesis should probably be, if the stuff makes you happy, and you can afford it, go for it. Esthetics and good vibes might matter to you. The question is what price and what other tradeoffs you're willing to suffer. I've cooked plenty on the materials and thicknesses mentioned. And I've worked out the physics. And I've been in the kitchens of some of the best chefs working today (the only top-end kitchen in NYC where they use copper is Jean George, and his kitchen is on display from the street). My conclusions are exactly what I've said before. If your concern is performance, and you make a lot of sauces, then maybe there's an argument for a copper windsor pan. A stainless lined one is more practical. Otherwise copper doesn't offer real world advantages. I sold off my tin-lined copper years ago because it was a pain in the ass. I still use and love the stainless-lined copper, but would probably only replace one of these pans with more copper if they were lost. Re: sauté temperature: don't mistake the cooking temperature with the preheat temperature. Unless you have a very high BTU range, you have to get the pan surface way higher than the cooking temperature before adding the food. If you DO have a very high BTU range, then you'll be dancing a delicate dance with tin. For searing larger batches of food, I typically get a pan surface up to about 480°F. 30 degrees higher than tin's melting point. Also remember that etals soften and lose strength well before their melting points. -
Copper vs Stainless Steel Clad Cookware: Is it worth the $$$?
paulraphael replied to a topic in Kitchen Consumer
Host's note: the following discussion was moved from the Brooklyn Copper Cookware topic. These are lovely as collector's pieces, but it would be foolish to expect any functional advantages over stainless-lined copper from Mauviel / Bourgeat / Falk (which are all essentially the same). And tin brings with it significant disadvantages. No matter what anyone tells you, it is fragile. In a saucepan you will abrade through it with a whisk if you whisk a lot (which you will if you are making things like emulsified egg sauces, which are arguably the only kinds of sauces delicate enough to demonstrate the benefits of copper). Forget about sautéing. A proper sear requires preheating above tin's melting point. The conduction differences in a metal layer that's less that 1/10mm are insignificant. There is no "non-stick" advantage to tin. If food sticks to your cookware, you've got technique issues. There are still a couple of places in the country that re-tin cookware. Look at $70+ for most pieces. Not a big deal if the cookware is decorative, but that will add up if you use the stuff hard. I wouldn't consider thickness beyond 2.5mm an advantage. You will get more heat retention and more evenness, but at the expense of slower responsiveness. And responsiveness is the real reason to use copper. You can get evenness and heat retention for miles from heavy aluminum, at a fraction the cost. Unless decoration is your primary concern, I would be wary of spending money on any copper. I love my 1.5L windsor pan because I'm a sauce geek, and because this pan is made for the things copper does best. But let's be honest ... look in the kitchens of Michelin 3-star restaurants around the world. If it isn't an open kitchen (on display) and if they bought their cookware this side of World War 2, they're probably using some kind of laminated stainless. The differences are vanishingly small in practice. I use my 2.5mm copper because I bought it when the stuff was pretty affordable. I also use laminated stainless / aluminum, disk-bottom aluminum, heavy aluminum, cast iron, spun steel. The laminates get the job done as well as the copper. They just don't look as awesome when they're doing it. If you work out the physics calculations, copper has an edge in some situations, but it's not going to influence your real world results. You could save the money and get an immersion circulator or pressure cooker or something that will give you serious new powers in the kitchen. -
I understand the sentiment. But what if you cut using techniques that evolved to compensate for not-very-sharp knives? And you judge the results good because you have nothing better to compare them to? If someone were to hand you a much sharper knife and teaches you the techniques that such a knife enables, your ideas of "sharp" (and "effortless") will be changed, and you'll be able to do things in the kitchen that you weren't able to previously. Personally, I learned knife skills and sharpening skills, discovered better ones, and started over from scratch—three times. Point being: beware any standards that are based on limited experience.
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Sharp is a complex topic. There are a few factors that determine how well a blade will cut, and these vary a bit with different kinds of food. Descriptions like "effortless" don't help much, because one person's effortless is another person's dull. A Japanese Kaiseki chef does not think your western chef's knife cuts effortlessly, no matter how you sharpen it. The three biggest factors are the actual fineness of the edge (which you could see with a microscope—how infinitesimally small is the edge formed by the two bevels?), the degree of polish, the bevel angle, and thinness of the blade several millimeters behind the edge. The fineness of the edge is determined by how good a job you do sharpening, and is ultimately limited by the type of steel used in the blade. Here, finer is simply better no matter what. The degree of polish is determined by how good a job you do sharpening, and is limited by the grit level of your finest stone. In general, a highly polished edge cuts most effectively. However, a very rough edge cuts better than a semi-polished edge. This is one reason a lot of people doing rougher work (like butchery) prefer to use a coarse, toothy edge than a polished one. A toothy edge can also be maintained quickly on a steel, while a polished edge is best touched up on a stone or strop. Bevel angle and thinness are closely related. The more acute the angle, and the longer the bevel (which add up to a thinner edge), the more easily the knife will fall through foods. Especially rigid foods. A thick blade will wedge in food like carrots or watermelon no matter how fine the edge. The tradeoff here is durability. The more acute the bevel angles and the thinner the blade, the more fragile it will be. The best knife steels have more edge stability and go thinner with less compromise. But in the end, you have to choose some balance between performance and durability. If you want the highest performance, you have to buy a thin knife made with an appropriate steel, and you have to learn the appropriate sharpening and cutting techniques. Most knives are sold with very obtuse, sturdy edges. They're meant to be home-cook-proof. If you have careful technique, most can be modified with somewhat more acute bevel angles. But it will take some experience and trial and error to figure out how far you can comfortably go. No matter what, you must become well-versed in removing the wire edge. If you don't do this rigorously, all your edges will dull prematurely. This can be especially challenging with some of the gummier alloys, like the ones used in Global knives. It tends to be easy with carbon steel. In the end, the only real test is cutting. Nothing you do with a fingernail or with newsprint is going to tell you everything about the blade's performance or its durability.
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There are at least a few French Laundry and Per Se alums here on egullet. I'd like to hear speculation from someone who knows chef Keller.
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Another player enters the sous vide field: Paragon Induction Cooktop
paulraphael replied to a topic in Kitchen Consumer
Leaving aside if the thing is any good ... is it really ok for a $300 billion company to launch a product with crowd funding?? -
It can be challenging to use a torch without getting off-flavors from unburned hydrocarbons. One of the advantages of the Searzall (which I don't have) is that metal diffuser creates distance, and creates a red-hot screen for the gas to travel through. This eliminates the taint. There's endless discussion on which kinds of gas taste good or bad; Nathan Myhrvold has shown that they're all the same: they taste bad if you don't manage complete combustion. At the very least, you have to hold the torch at a distance. If any flame hits the food, it better be blue. Another problem with torches (ironically) is that they burn so cleanly. That ghost-like blue flame is indeed over 2000°F, but there is very little radiant heat. 1000° dull orange briquets or broiler coils (or searzall screens) produce much more infra-red energy, which is more efficient and controllable at searing food. With a gas flame, you have heat that's much too intense right at the tip of the flame (it just tends to incinerate the surface) but as you pull that flame away from the food, the proximity temperature plummets; there's just too little radiation going on. This is why torches are tricky to control. I use a torch for some things; typically for touching up an unevenly browned roast. For a steak, I'll take a hot pan or griddle every time. I haven't used a Searzall, but suspect I'd find it more useful than my humble torch. A searzall on a monster torch like this new one would be bigger step in the right direction.