paulraphael

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.

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.

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.

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.

I've head some bad things over the last couple of years but chose not to believe them. This sounds really messed up. It's hard to reconcile anything we know about Keller with a slip remotely this big. Makes me wonder if he's ok.

I've got kunz spoons in both sizes, and they're perfectly fine. One was a gift. Most likely I'd appreciate them more if I were halfway decent at plating at saucing. Hint: they do not sauce your plates for you.

Alcohol does soften ice cream at a given temperature, but it doesn't help texture in any other way, and can actually promote iciness. I think it's better to use sugars and other dissolved solids to control freezing point. If the sweetness level is where you want it, just substitute dextrose for a portion of the sugar. Between table sugar, dextrose (less sweet, greater freezing suppression) and trimoline (sweeter, greater freezing suppression) you can finagle any combination of sweetness and hardness. (As Jo said, stabilizers do not affect freezing point). Milk solids are generally important ... they suppress freezing point, add body, and encourage a smoother texture by a number of mechanisms. Solids content is traditionally increased by adding nonfat dry milk, although people here have been experimenting with reducing the milk themselves. If you have a lot of solids from another source, like a puree or nut paste you can compensate by reducing the milk solids. Of course things like pumpkin puree add water, also. It's important to take into account the added water as well as the added solids so you don't completely mess up the texture. I've been playing with nut butter ice creams. These add a lot of solids and a lot of fats, so I'm compensating by eliminating cream, and by eliminating dry milk (not sure how the final recipes will be, but probably in that direction). I'd suggest with the pumpkin puree that if you're making it yourself, you cook it by roasting, so it will have as low a water content as possible.

They're claiming to control temperature accurately. A problem that seems to have been solved decades ago. With any luck they're better at making appliances than they are at making videos. Did anyone else think that was completely creepy?

daveb, on 02 Dec 2015 - 10:51 PM, said: If history is any indication, that Gesshin will get popular, and then it will get expensive. That's why threads like this never outlive their usefulness. There seems to be an endless cycle of new Japanese knives discovered for their great value, then getting a cult following, then a big following, and then ... one day they cost what they're worth, and it's back to the internet to find the next great value. My Tadatsuna costs about 50% more today than it did when it was new. At the time it was affordable alternative to Suisin. Now someone else is making the affordable alternative. The cycle goes really fast with the sub-$100 knives. Several years ago Tojiros were the no-brainer super value. Last I looked they'd doubled.

These are the ones I use most. Not pictured are the bread knife (Mac ... these are great), cheap Forschner filleting knife, and junk drawer knives. Top is the lowly Forschner 6" utility knife which does equal duty boning meat, taking birds apart, and slicing open sous-vide bags. Next is a Kikuichi carbon steel sujihiki (meat slicing knife). Almost never used for anything else. The big one is an Ikkanshi Tadatsuna 270mm wa-gyuto. I use this for about 90% of everything. It's the nicest knife I've ever used and cost about as much as all the others combined. A couple of other companies, including Suisin, make knives that are almost identical. The German looking one is an Eberhard Schaff Goldhamster 8" chef. It was my main squeeze before I found the Japanese knives. Now I use it just for heavy duty stuff that would damage the gyuto. It has a fancy handle and a picture of a hamster silk-screened onto the blade, so you know it's serious. At the bottom is an Al Mar pairing knife. This is an inexpensive Japanese knife imported and branded by a US company. The second picture shows the polished bevel on the wa-gyuto, with a cameo of the guy holding the phone. It's sharpened asymmetrically almost to a single bevel ... on the back side I do nothing but debur. The total inclusive bevel angle is under 10°. It's a very thin, very fragile edge.

That's one approach; you can also just set the bath temperature several degrees higher than you want the core temperature, and calculate the right timing.

I just got their email about this and checked it out briefly. Its main feature seems to be that it's tiny. Like, really, really small. Even though it's likely among the most powerful circulators people would buy for home. The other big feature is that it's controlled 100% from a smart phone app. I'm not crazy about this, since I'd like to be able to glance at the thing and see the read and set temps, etc.. But if the app is well designed (or better ... if they open the APIs and people write great 3rd party apps ... that could be cool). But in general I like Anova's approach, where the main controls are on the unit and the remote app is optional. The app they show on the site seems designed for beginners (like ... with video on how to prep a steak). I would like something more like SV Dash running the show. Hey Anova, are you listening? Why don't you guys buy S.V. Dash? The developer hasn't done anything with it in years. "ETA It doesn't look like it needs a clip. Does it attach to the base of the pot?" Yeah, it comes with 2 clips ... one for pots, one for coolers and cambros. Very nice that they went out of their way here here to accommodate both casual and hardcore users.

That's not actually a critique of sous-vide; it's a critique of a common application of sous-vide. In Europe a lot of chefs cook s.v. with a higher gradient than what's common here. You can design whatever gradient you want. Personally, I do not want any medium-well meat in my steak, so I use s.v. conventionally, with very little gradient. But that's just a choice.

Heavily marbled, grain-finished steaks work brilliantly also. Especially aged ones. Honestly, I haven't met a steak that wasn't perfect for sous-vide. There's a certain amount of anti sous-vide rhetoric concerning steaks, and I don't understand any of it. I don't believe there's such thing as a "sous-vide texture" or even a single characteristic that's intrinsic to the technique. Sous-vide simply offers perfect control, which you may use any way you like. Decide how your perfect steak is cooked, design a sous-vide process to create that, and then reproduce it precisely and effortlessly every time. Some people have commented that it's hard to get as thick and crispy a crust with s.v., without overcooking the meat. This may be the case, if you're really looking for a serious crust (like what you can get with Alain Ducasse's method). But I suspect a bit of ingenuity can solve this ... like a minute or two dunked in ice water before unbagging and searing, and then doing the sear with plenty of butter ladled on in the last minute or so.. Browning can also be enhanced by controlling the pH and using reducing sugars. I make a maillard-enhancement mix that's 1:5 baking soda and dextrose. Sprinkle it on before browning and let it soak in a bit. Magic. Also be sure to use plenty of oil in the pan, to get the heat into all the meat's crevices (yes, this is the purpose of oil in a skillet ... you cannot get solid browning with a couple of tablespoons of oil).

I was surprised to discover this, not just because of all the lore, but because Jeni Britton Bauer (of Jeni's Splendid) cooks her base at 75C for something like 90 minutes, saying she likes the flavor of cooked milk ... which she describes as sweeter. Possibly this is a marketing statement. Her other reason for the long cook is turning milk proteins into stabilizers and emulsifiers. I'm playing around with this idea also. So far I haven't noticed a textural differences with different amounts of cooking. But Jeni must be on to something, since she uses neither eggs nor hydrocolloids in her mix. [edited to add: cooked egg flavor is likely a different story. My tests weren't designed to learn anything about this, since I use so little egg. But for anyone making a more traditional french style ice cream (4 or more yolks per 1000g) it may be worth testing. However ... with this much egg, you're already getting a lot of stabilization and emulsification from the custard and lecithin.]

I haven't experimented with temperatures below 71C, but did some systematic tests cooking the mix at 72C, 75C, and 80C (sous-vide, with agitation) for times ranging from 15 to 60 minutes. I used a mix that had 2 egg yolks per 1000g (because I don't like a lot of egg) and no flavoring ingredients. It was 10% MSNF. Milk and cream were low-temperature pasteurized, from a local farm coop with grass-fed cows. I did two rounds of blind triangle taste tests on myself, and one round on my girlfriend. The differences were extremely subtle. So subtle that after tasting four or five samples, fatigue was strong enough that we couldn't tell the difference between any of them anymore. I have doubts that there would be any perceptible difference if the ice cream had any flavor ingredients. I doubt that cooking at 70C would have made much difference. We were not tasting for texture.

I'm going to suggest that milk powder is the best way to add MSNF, short of reverse osmosis. The trick is to find a good brand like Now, which 100% skim milk solids, and which is spray dried at low temperatures. If your goal is to concentrate milk solids while exposing them to the minimum amount of heat, you're not going to beat an industrial spray drier with your stove. I've found that with the package sealed in an additional ziploc bag in the freezer, this kind of dry milk lasts months without developing off flavors.

The salt is actually part of an ion exchange system; it swaps sodium (from the salt) for calcium (from the water).

This is the lore, I know, but in truth it just makes the wok slightly easier to clean. And there's no difference in practice between seasoning applied over many years and seasoning done efficiently in 20 minutes. Ain't no magic going on! The woks used by professional Chinese cooks have virtually no seasoning; they get preheated hot enough to burn off any old oil every time they cook. Jeans are another story

Super cool. I looked into those a while ago. A bit too pricey for me at the moment, but if you have a need in the kitchen they look ideal. I can see using a thin, dedicated pan with a little hole drilled in the lid.

This looks like an interesting and well-designed product. I see it having potential to complement an immersion circulator, rather than replace one. I'm thinking of the ability to go beyond heating a s.v. water bath to doing foods like custards, which you might want to cook to precise temperature in an open pot. With this in mind, I'd be curious about the possibility of adding a magnetic stirring feature, like in a laboratory hotplate. It's easy to imagine a conflict between magnetic stirring and magnetic induction; I don't know if the two are compatible. Maybe the induction coil could form a ring, with the stirring feature in the center? I would find the magnetic stirring feature more compelling, even if it meant using a standard conductive hotplate surface.

The principle is exactly the same as with a cast iron skillet: you're polymerizing oils (which means heating them to the point where they oxidize and turn to a tough plastic consistency) and carbonizing them (which means burning some of the oil to soot, which embeds in the polymerized oil and gives the nonstick characteristics). This will happen on its own just from using a wok. If you're in a hurry, you can fully season the thing in 20 minutes or so if you're efficient about it. You need an oil that's high in unsaturated fats, preferably in polyunsaturated fats, and that's highly refined so that it can take high heat. Look for something a refined canola or safflower oil. Put a VERY THIN coating on the pan, and heat the wok. You can use a powerful burner, or else put the wok in an over (for more even results). If using the oven, I set the temp to around 25°F higher than the smoke point of the oil. When the oil stops smoking, take a piece of paper towel dipped in the oil and paint another thin coat on the pan (use tongs!). Repeat. After a few cycles of this, the wok will have an even, black, durable coating. This is the same as for cast iron. Just be aware that spun steel is less porous than cast iron, so the coating will be less durable. Also be aware that if you use the wok at true stir-fry temperatures (like with a commercial wok burner) this is probably a pointless exercise because you'll burn the coating off the wok every time you use it. Any instructions you find that mention using salt, or any kind of food, or saturated fats like shortening, are based on pure folklore. There's nothing scientific or practical to recommend any of that.

"Blonde" sounds quite a bit lighter than anything I've encountered. It seems that most of the high-end roasters these days don't talk much about the darkness of the roast in traditional terms. They figure out what they like best for each new batch. It's just that they're finding the sweet spot in a lighter place than they did back when the beans they sourced weren't so good. And much lighter than the starbucks standard. It's certainly possible to underroast coffee, and yeah, you'd expect it to be super sour.