paulraphael

Based on brief testing, I've abandoned this blend. Did not live up to its promise, and in fact led to the first batch of ice cream I've ever thrown out. There were other variables at play ... I made this batch on vacation in a place without electricity (we used those rock salt and ice soccer balls, and kept the ice cream in a not-very-cold propane freezer). Because of conditions I used 50% more stabilizer than normal. But the results were categorically worse, not just 50% worse. Very pasty texture ... left a coating on your tongue and the roof of your mouth. I'm now experimenting with guar / lambda carrageenan / locust bean gum, at 0.4g, 0.4g, 0.6g per liter. So far it's the best (and most conventional) blend I've ever tried. This is a tiny percentage of gums, but seems to impart all the right qualities. Unlike some previous formulas, it does not form any kind of gel, which makes it much easier to work with. I'll post more when I have a bit more experience wit it.

I just got a vitamix, and plan to test a lot of these ideas over the next few weeks. I'm interested, among other things, in comparing blended almond butter to the stuff I get at the store, which, now that you mention it, isn't especially smooth. It probably has some residual texture because people like it that way. Gives it more of a homemade quality, which would less than ideal for ice cream. Truly smooth nut butters (which presumably are made with a colloid mill) would probably be like cream cheese. Blender technology hasn't changed in any significant way since MC came out. I think you could look at all these different machines as homogenizers that produce different amounts of sheer force. High-powered blenders are on the low end, ultrasonic and high-pressure homogenizers are on the high end, and rotor-stator homogenizers are somewhere in the middle. I haven't had an easy time finding a quantified comparison, but my sense is that a rotor-stator minces the fat globules about an order of magnitude smaller than a vitamix. But the vitamix still gets them really small. I've seen one allegation that high powered blenders can actually create the kind of cavitation produced by ultrasonic homogenizers. Which could change this equation quite a bit. But I'm not convinced. This seems a bit like a sponsored ad, and leaves a few sticky questions unanswered. Yesterday I made my first batch of ice cream using the vitamix. The texture is indeed a lot better than what I've been getting—but since impatience outwitted my scientific curiosity, I changed many variables at once. So take with a grain of salt. One other change I made is a return to the way I did things years ago. I didn't add the cream until after the cooking/pasteurization step. The heavy cream I get is homogenized at the dairy, probably with a high-pressure homogenizer. Way finer fat globules than you'd even get with a rotor-stator. So rather than cooking the cream, which would melt the fat and encourage the globules to glom onto each other, I added the cream after cooking, blasting it into the mix in the blender right after vita-homogenizing. This also gives a head start on chilling the mix before aging in the fridge.

The point about poaching is that I'm not aware of a hard delineation between poaching and frying. Possibly it's considered frying if done anywhere above the boiling point of water, but I'm not convinced of that. There's likely a pretty big no-man's land in between. And yes, I understand the benefits of frying at a lower temperature w/r/t development of toxins, but not w/r/t the other stated cooking benefits, including oil absorption. It does seem to be related to the boiling point of the water relative to the oil temperature, BUT—your descriptions don't explain the mechanisms, the scientific articles don't explain the mechanisms, and one of the articles comes out and says the scientists don't understand it either. So my broader point stands—I don't understand vacuum frying. The only thing I've learned over the last few days is that no one else seems to understand it either.

I don't find that clear at all. You can cook food in oil at any temperature. At what point it stops being oil-poached and starts being deep-fried seems ambiguous. Lowering the pressure has the effects of lowering the boiling point of the oil (which would seem unimportant) and lowering the boiling point of water (as you've said). This latter effect seems central to what vacuum frying is about, but why? Why should we care about the boiling point point of the water? According to Myhrvold and company, water boiling from the surface during deep frying contributes to agitation of the oil and improved heat transfer, and at the same time keeps the surface temperature at or below the boiling point of water—briefly. Once the surface dehydrates and gets crisp, the temperature rises rapidly and the surface browns. So why do we care so much about the brief period when water's boiling from the surface? There's clearly something going on here ... vacuum frying has become a real thing in the snackfood industry. But the mechanism is not obvious. Reading the manufacturer's info has not clarified anything, nor has reading the two research papers I've found on the topic. This particular study says, in regards to vacuum-fried foods absorbing less oil, that "Scant information is available on this topic because scientists are only just beginning to perform research in this field. However, it is clear that vacuum frying of non-traditional fruits and vegetables has great potential."

Not all restaurants even have a dishwasher. If you don't heat sanitize you chemical sanitize. Just dunk the jug in a sink full of sanitizer. The commercial vitamix site gets specific on the bleach solution they recommend, but lots of people probably use quaternary ammonium compounds, or whatever else they keep around for the dishes. But I bet you're right that a lot of restaurant employees do throw the thing in the dishwasher. If this is their habit, it probably just takes some life off the bearings. Those are parts that get replaced on the commercial machines every so often anyhow.

Well, it's impossible to prove something harmless. You can only site reams of research that fail to show harm. That's just the nature of science. The reason teflon's believed to be harmless is that it's completely inert with regards to any known tissue or fluid in the human body. This is one reason it's used in artificial joints and heart valves. We have much less evidence that losing teflon is harmless to the blender itself. On another note, I'd hesitate to put a blender pitcher in the dishwasher even if the manufacturer said it was ok. All these high powered blenders have some kind of ball bearing, with physical seals to try to keep the lubricant in and the food out. I don't like the idea of subjecting to them to jets of near-boiling water and caustic detergent.

One other subject I think we ought to address—the bioavailability myth. Some communities-of-truth on the internet actually believe that only they, with their $400 blenders, are getting all the nutrition from their food. Not surprisingly, there isn't a shred of scientific evidence supporting this. The blender manufacturers can't even produce any. Here's a pretty good article on the topic. Some scientists were asked their opinions (all they could offer, since there's essentially zero research): "Oh please. That’s what teeth are for," says one. "If we needed those kinds of blades we would have those in our digestive system," says another. There are lots of other reasons to have a decent blender. But please don't torment your vita-mixless friends with fears of malnutrition.

I'm on my first week with a vitamix 5200 (refurb) and am mostly impressed with it. Any discussion of which blender to buy should address the user interface. Different controls and readouts appeal to different dispositions. For me the choice was easy—I like simple, manual controls, like the VM's on-switch and speed knob. Digital control panels and program modes like the Blendtec's make me want to strangle someone. The performance differences between these machines are minute compared compared with this basic industrial design rift. I also felt that for the kinds of purees I make, a design that incorporates a tamper is the best idea. If you're in it mostly for smoothies and drinks you might come to different conclusions. My blender has the black flake issue. If it persists after a couple of weeks I'll call the company. My concern is purely about whatever engineering mishap led to this. If teflon is flaking off its substrate, is this going to impair the function of a seal or a bushing over the long haul? Worse comes to worse they won't have a satisfactory answer and will send me a new jug. Overall I'm quite happy with the machine. It seems expensive for what it is (I've owned 3 or 4 commercial bar mixers over the last several years, as a reference). I'm guessing the motors in these things are expensive. And to a lesser degree the blade assemblies. The other parts seem quite basic, without anything in the way of expensive looking materials or manufacturing. I'm definitely giving it the benefit of the doubt. I know these things stand up to years of abuse at restaurants (where they do break a lot, but are usually fixable) and to decades of use at home. No expectations of it changing my life. But I like the idea of smooth purees without straining, and expect to have an easier time making almond flour and oat flour. Making nut butters should be pretty nice. And I'm really hoping it will work as a quasi-homogenizer for ice cream mix. That's going to be my first serious experiment.

I'm surprised activa isn't giving you sausage textures. Juicy burgers are easy if you trust the meat and cook it medium-rare. If you have to cook more, it's traditional to compensate by adding more fat. It's surprising how hard it is to even get 20% fat with the cuts that are easily available these days. I'm guessing most of us are making 85/15 burgers. Weedy's 70/30 may go far for some people's tastes. A little butter or marrow added to the grind also works fine.

Have you had a chance to consult the time/temp/yolk/texture table in the MC book? It lets you dial in whatever consistency you want in a custard, by varying the yolk percentage and/or the temperature. I haven't worked with the table, but it looks like a good place to start.

http://www.brooklynbarmenus.com

I face decisions like this a lot (while I talk a good game on the internet, my fridge organization skills struggle against entropy). It often comes down to who I'm feeding. If it's just for myself I usually go for it. If my girlfriend's joining, then I'm a little more cautious. If there's someone pregnant, or people I don't know, or my 80+ year old parents, I do it by the book.

If you have cold packs in the freezer, these work too. Not nearly as efficient as ice in my experience, but it's easy to run out of ice around here. One thing you can do to conserve ice, if you're chilling something that cooked at a high temperature, is not throw the food in straight out of the ice bath. You only have to chill it rapidly after it gets below 130°F or so. Pre-cooling it in plain water works great. Then an ice bath, and then into the fridge after it's down near 40°.

Possibly the biggest danger when storing sv'd food a long time is spores from anaerobic bacteria like c. botulinum. The spores aren't killed by normal cooking temperatures, and the oxygen-free environment inside the bag is exactly what triggers the spores to activate. The two things that keep this from happening are high-acid environments (which you don't have with meat) and temperatures below 38°F (for c. botulinum type-e). So yeah, it would be a good idea to get a conservative read on your fridge temp at the location where the meat was stored. One way to do this is to put a container of water in there for 24 hours, and measure its temperature after a time of day when the door gets opened a lot.

I'm still not sure I understand the gastrovac. It looks like a serious professional piece of kit; I just don't understand the low-temperature frying aspec. I understand using it for rapid infusions or for no-cook reductions, but frying thing needs better explanation.

Yup. I boil a fairly wide pot, like what you'd use for pasta. So far I've found it easiest to just hold the bag by the top while wearing a silicone mit. I use ziplocs, and boiling temperatures weaken the plastic a fair amount, until they cool again. So I don't like tossing them in or using tongs. It also helps to keep stray parts of the bag from touching the rim of the pan ... this can be hot enough to damage the bag. I'd like to come up with something more efficient for big jobs. This may just be a time when chamber vacuum bags are superior. You could probably just toss them into a pot and pluck out with tongs.

The bacteria in question are spoilage bacteria, as opposed to the pathogenic bacteria we're usually talking about. They can gross you out but are generally harmless (not that you'll ever be tempted to find out). There are myriad varieties of spoilage bacteria, and they're not nearly as well understood as pathogens. If someone brought a sample of baby-diaper short ribs to a biologist it might end up being original research. But anyway. I'm emphatic about dipping in boiling water before long cooking at low temperature. Even if I pre-sear. Searing can't be counted on to get all the surfaces. A dip in boiling water probably isn't foolproof either, but has a better chance. I would suggest 30 seconds full immersion if using vacuum bags, and 60 seconds if using ziplocs (the added fluid required in a ziploc bag puts a bit more insulation and thermal mass between the meat and the hot water). I haven't ever had problems with this method, either with spoilage or with the quick boil overcooking anything.

This is important for any method. And it's one of the reasons my ice cream's been suffering. I moved to a place with an old fridge, and it's getting older. I can only get the freezer down to 0° to 4°F. At my old place I could get it to -5. These few degrees make a big difference. Consider that commercial ice cream goes into a blast freezer that's between -20 and -40. I've been trying to compensate by using more effective stabilization, with mixed results.

I'm curious about this thing. It's hard to imagine the advantages of low-temperature frying (it seems the point of frying is the high temperatures that it allows). But low temperature reduction offers worlds of possibilities. The Rotovap is probably the most powerful tool for the job, allowing precise control over temperature and pressure, and capturing the distillate you can make all kinds of things that are impossible with conventional tools (and some of the most amazing tasting spirits ever, if you don't tell anyone about it). Unfortunately these gizmos are awkward, complex, and generally cost even more than a gastrovac. They're designed more for a lab environment than a production environment. On the topic of sous-vide terminology, yes, it's misleading and annoying. I blogged about it in the intro to my sous-vide series.

Cool, we'll check it out. Thanks.

We're looking for recommendations on a great, un-stuffy, contemporary restaurant. Something representative of the new garde of anti-Michelin young chefs. The Parisian David Changs. Thoughts?

You shouldn't have to worry about price. In Brooklyn this meat cost $10/lb, before aging. It would be perfectly good without the aging step, I'm sure—you could skip it if the butcher wasn't into doing it, or if you just needed a couple of steaks. If you are buying a big chunk for aging, you might get a discount. BTW, it looks like the store you linked gets its meat from these guys. You might have better luck going to the source; they probably do all the aging and butchering.

You should be able to find someone in Boston who'd do this for you, no? I'd think anyone who dry ages and isn't a total crank would be happy to sell you a big chunk of meat and throw it in the cooler. It was indeed delicious. Unfortunately if you want it aged you have to be cooking for a big crowd. This was only the second occasion I've found for it.

Here's a quick pic from right before serving. Warmed in a pot of water on a wood stove and seared on a griddle. (These are slices across the grain ... many slices to one of those steaks)

No one's ever shown that it makes any difference. The old argument is that edge-down wears out the edges, since you're rubbing them against the wood. But you rub them against wood a lot harder when you cut things. My block holds the blades sideways. I can imagine this causing problems with carbon steel blades (moisture could accumulate between the wood and the big flat surface of the blade). But it doesn't happen. Never has, even in the most humid conditions. The only issue I would have with with the edges pointing up is the extra bit of contortion required when grabbing or putting away. Don't see any danger here, just don't see any reason to do it this way. You can safely get whichever knife block you like most. Consider the orientation of the blades an esthetic choice.