paulraphael

I think I've cracked the texture issue, after trying the idea mentioned a page ago. I'm balancing the meat mix by adding butter (in this case 5% total weight.) The butter gets worked into a compound butter with 0.7% salt and 0.2% black pepper, relative to the weight of the meat. Roll the butter into a small cylinder with plastic wrap and freeze. When the meat is partially frozen, distribute the various cuts randomly on a tray. Cut the compound butter into small cubes and distribute evenly with the meat. Drop the butter cubes into the grinder along with the meat, striving for an even distribution. Cook S.V. as you normally would. That's it. The result was perfect seasoning, no need for any last-minute seasoning of the patties, and no noticeable toughening from the salt (done without any kind of control; I can't promise there's no change in texture). That's it. I believe the butter keeps the salt sequestered from the meat proteins long enough to prevent much curing to happen. I did this with a blend of 1/3 chuck, 1/3 brisket, 1/3 oxtail. Next time I may try shin instead of oxtail (cheaper and easier) and add the marrow to the mix to compensate for the cut's leanness.

Yes, please report if you get one of those gizmos. So far all the sub-$500 ones I saw could only handle a test tub worth of stuff. Would be nice to borrow one. I have yet to see any theory on what's actually happening in the post-cook blending. The milk and cream are already homogenized, so is this about the egg fat, if any? And if so I wonder why it makes a difference if it's done pre- or post-aging. Or pre-or post-cooking. My mix goes through a blender (to disperse the hydrocolloids) before cooking. Interestingly, the aging process is about helping to unhomogenize (heterogenize?) the mix. It partially crystalizes the fat droplets, and also effects surface changes to aid in their agglomeration. As far as I can tell, the actual agglomeration takes place as the mix freezes.

Interesting. I'd been under the impression that Laiskonis blended after aging, but indeed he does it as you describe. I haven't seen any side-by-side tests of this from him or anyone else, though. He seems to do it on good faith that a stick blender has some homogenizing ability. Have you tested it, or do you know of any tests?

I do blend the mix after aging, partly because of Laiskonis's thoughts on this (he's one of my teachers), partly because some stabilizer blends for a gel that needs to be thinned before you can strain them. Have you tried using nonfat dry milk to up the solids? It's precise and easy. Laiskonis and most pastry chefs do it this way. I believe that freeze-drying skim milk in controlled setting is going to be more repeatable and mess with flavors less than doing it yourself on the stove. Have you calculated your total solids and total nonfat solids? Getting a handle on these numbers can help diagnose problems. At 40% solids and below most recipes are ok.

Thanks Ruben. In the past I've sous-vided for 30 minutes at 85C. This is around what most pastry chefs are doing. No problems with icy texture, or with egg flavors (although part of this is that I'm only using 32g yolk/ 1000g). I'm more averse to egg flavors than a lot of people. But without doing a side-by side comparison, I believe I'm getting a fresher / less cooked milk flavor at 73C. Which seems worth striving for. Some iciness could be due to the change in stabilizer I made to accommodate the lower temp. Right now I'm at 39% solids (fat and nonfat). I might increase this by 1% with a few grams extra nonfat dry milk, which has very high water sequestering properties. And I'll try cooking for 70 minutes, which will give somewhere near an hour at full temperature (allowing extra time for the mix to rise from fridge temp). I think you'll like making ice cream sous-vide. It's fool-proof, you don't have to hover over a pot, and your pasteurized mix is sealed in a bag for later use. I've only begun to experiment with using the sous-vide step to infuse flavors. I suspect it will be ideal for some flavors and not others. For the latter, you can infuse on the stove at a higher temp/shorter time with a portion of the milk.

I suspect it also looks off-puttingly fussy and technical to a lot of home cooks. A circulator doesn't look anything like any familiar appliance, it attaches to a separate container, requires a whole separate packaging step (which may include a whole other weird machine), and uses cooking principles that at best seem foreign and at worst seem like things we've been specifically told not to do. I think it's a tough sell. But the inverse argument may also hold true ... anyone with more than a few geeky bones in their body will drool over sous-vide.

Bacteria are a serious issue. Dyes are a non-issue. Triclosan is a public health issue, but it's not something hurts your directly.

At 54°C it takes 96 hours, but the textures are like nothing else.

These are artisan objects. They don't have any of the qualities I look for in a working knife. Both camps have always existed in the knife world, although the artisans themselves never seem to make the distinction. I have the same reaction to some local knives that have caught the attention of chefs. They are beautiful objects which don't reflect a especially deep understanding of knife performance. There are ugly, $60 gyutos from Japan that will outperform them in every way.

I hope so, the stuff really should be abolished. It's a public health crisis in the making. Re: sponges, I like the blue scotch brite or o-cello versions, which don't scratch pans. No problems with color bleeding. If it did bleed I wouldn't worry about it. The worse problem with sponges is that they're unsanitary. It's actually a violation if the health dept. finds a sponge in restaurant in NYC. I use them because they're convenient, especially for dishes. But I wish there were a better solution. If I boiled them daily that would be a different story, but that's just not likely to happen.

Ok, it's hardened now, and I'm not so happy. It's icy and lacking creaminess. It actually tastes much lower fat than it is. Not a good quality! I wonder if the lower temperature is just producing a thinner egg custard with my two measly egg yolks. This would be annoying ... based on charts in the MC series, I'd need to more than double the quantity of yolks to get the viscosity I got at 85°C. Which would defeat the purpose. The fresh milk flavor is nice though. One possibility is that when cooking the mix sous-vide, it spends much of its time below the water bath temperature. Which would suggest a longer cooking time might help.

I use it once or twice a week. SV chicken thighs have become a kind of staple. It's killer for ice cream. Any kind of steak or chop. Tempering chocolate. Insanely long braises. Best kitchen thing I've spent money on in many years. And ok: duck legs. Gotta try it.

I started entertaining the idea of lower fat ice creams when I staged with Michael Laiskonis's and got to taste all of his flavors. This was probably the best ice cream I'd had, and it was all 10% milk fat. He uses 5 or 6 yolks per kg, so it's not entirely low fat, but it was still lean by my standards. The cleanness of the flavors and the mouthfeel made some of the ultrapremium local ice creams taste cloying in comparison. I realized that I didn't like the pasty film they left on my mouth. He does it this way because his ice cream is always part of a multi-component plated dessert, served after many courses of Michelin 3-star food, and he doesn't want to demolish his guests with a butterfat wrecking ball. My constraints, needless to say, are different. So my standard recipe is around 15%—pretty high fat. Just not super rich. And I've had good luck with lower fat levels for some flavors. I think the important thing is to not be dependent on the fat level for a smooth texture. This lets you change the richness from one flavor to another based on your tastes.

Please post! I bet Mr. Martel would be interested in seeing this also. I've personally never handled a Global that was actually sharp.

I did an experimental batch (vanilla) using the lower temperature, and so far I'm really pleased with the result. I've thought about experimenting with cook temperature, mostly to see if it would lead to a fresher flavor from the milk. I wasn't aware of potential texture benefits. I put this off, though, because I used a stabilizer blend that includes locust bean gum, which needs to reach 90°C to hydrate fully. So for this experiment I did some research and substituted lambda carrageenan for the LBG. I use this in sauces, and thought it would be an interesting choice for ice cream. It has a very creamy texture, a clean finish, and it hydrates cold. It probably doesn't have the heat-shock resistance of LBG, but I don't have to ship my ice cream to stores. I just want it to stay smooth in my freezer for a couple of weeks, and to survive trips in a cooler to friends' houses. I cooked this batch sous-vide at 72°C for 40 minutes. It's hardening in the freezer now. I'll try again tonight, and then see how it holds up over several days. I'm optimistic—so far it seems to have a cleaner, fresher milk flavor than what I usually get, and it's as smooth as any batch I've made. The mouthfeel and melt are really nice. No greasiness, no pastiness. None of the artifacts of overstabilized or overly rich ice creams. My methods are different from Ruben's in some significant ways. I go for lower fat ice cream than he does. I generally don't like ice creams with more than 15% or so fat. For some flavors (fruits, chocolate) I drop down to 12%. I also like to use a minimum of eggs, because I don't like any noticeable egg flavor. I use 2 yolks per 1000g. Zero for chocolate flavors. I use added nonfat dry milk, and just under 0.2% of a blend of hydrocolloid stabilizers. This year I started cooking the mix sous-vide, which absolutely rocks.

I'm only saying the the EP can't remove the wire edge.* If you believe that it's doing so, then I'm betting you you've just grown accustomed to cutting with a wire edge. Which is pretty common, even on much easier to sharpen knives. All my knives are easier than Globals, and still, the removal of the wire is the hardest part of the job to do reliably. I'd been sharpening with a reasonable sense of proficiency for about five years before this was pointed out to me. When I realized there was this other frontier to cross, I was fairly quickly able to create knife edges that performed better and that lasted about four times as long. Waterstones don't do a good job of removing it either, but they allow for some steps with a slightly steeper angle that can help a bit.

Edgepro just takes the manual skill out of the equation, but it doesn't do anything about the wire edge issue. It can't. You're knives could actually retain their edges a lot longer than they do now. It's just no picnic getting there. Plenty of other knives are easier to sharpen, will get sharper, and will stay sharp longer.

Ruben, I've been reading your site and am especially interested in your experiments on cooking temperature. I've thought of doing similar experiments, but I use a stabilizer blend that contains locust bean gum, which needs to hydrate at 90°C. Your work has convinced me to mess with this. I plan to do an experiment with my formula, with a new stabilizer blend, cooked sous-vide at 72°C. My inclination is cook for 40 minutes, to guarantee that all the mix in the bag gets to temperature and can stay there an adequate amount of time, but I'll reconsider if you different ideas about this.

I do basically the same thing. Felt does a pretty good job on my knives. Some people use a soft piece of wood or heavy cardboard. The sharpener / co-owner at Korin uses newspaper or a circular motion on the finest stone. But I don't know what might work on Globals. If you shoot an email to Dave Martel, he's usually generous with advice. His giving up doesn't mean it's impossible on globals; just that he finds it too time consuming to be profitable.

You can get it sharp. Ish. The trouble is that the steel is gummy and produces a wire edge that's very difficult to get rid of. This means that you're left with a very fragile false edge that will be prone to rolling or chipping.

You can certainly "season" stainless steel the way you can an iron pan. But the coating of polymerized oils will be much more fragile because it won't have much to grab onto. And you'll be undoing some of the biggest advantages of stainless steel: that it's non-reactive, durable, and that its bright color lets you easily see the color of pan drippings as they brown, so you can deglaze at the right time. I've seasoned a raw aluminum griddle. It works pretty well. But the polymerized surface is likewise a lot more fragile than the equivalent on an iron pan. Very easy to flake off. The problem would be worse on stainless.

Stainless steel doesn't cause food to stick; bad cooking technique causes food to stick. Happily this problem can be cured for free.

The problem with Globals is that their peculiar alloy makes them very difficult to sharpen properly, while offering no advantages over the better alternatives. A knife is only as good as your sharpening job, and you need to be a master sharpener to get a decent edge on a global. By decent edge I mean something that a reasonably skilled sharpener can achieve on good steel using Japanese waterstones; a lot of chefs spend their whole careers using sub-decent edges. But these days there's no reason to. If you talk to Dave Martel at japenesknifesharpening.com, he can go into detail about global's steel. The short answer is that he doesn't have the inclination to mess with it anymore. If you send him a Global, he'll sharpen it on belt sander the way he does European knives. He reserves the waterstones for knives made out of the better Japanese and Swedish steels. Questions of knives come up on eGullet often. It's really impossible to make a recommendation without knowing someone's commitment to sharpening, and to modifying their cutting techniques for a high performance knife. For many cooks, a jack-of-all-trades Western chef's knife is going to remain the best choice. They are versatile, nearly indestructible, and can be maintained on a steel with very little skill or effort. Others want to go all-in and are willing to relearn everything. For them the highest performance knives are a reasonable choice, although it can make sense start with an inexpensive version so you don't have to be nervous about making mistakes. And there's a whole world of knives between those extremes.

I like it with really good spring asparagus. I haven't tried with onions, shallots, leeks, etc., and would like to hear more about it. I'm also intrigued by corn on the cob. I assume you'd need a pretty heavy weight to keep it from floating.

I heat pans to 500F or more all the time. It's a matter of storing up as much energy as possible to compensate for a weak burner (I have a typical home range ... probably not much more than 12,000 btu/hr). It takes several minutes to preheat a pan, then the oil goes in, and within a few seconds the food goes in. The food drops the temperature of the oil and the pan dramatically and almost instantly. All that loud sizzle is water turning to steam, pulling gobs of heat energy into the air. The extreme pre-heat is a hedge against the pan temperature dropping too much, turning your sear into a stew. You can't do this with teflon. I'll preheat a teflon pan till it's pretty hot, but I try not to go above 400F or so. The teflon won't break down until much hotter than this, but there's also the concern of cooking oil polymerizing on the surface. Depending on the oil this can happen at temperatures not much higher than 400. If oil polymerizes on stainless steel, you can scour it off with BKF. If it happens on spun steel or cast iron, you've added to the seasoning. But you'll never get it off of teflon. The resulting polymer is tougher than the teflon itself. A non-stick pan with cooked-on oil goes into the recycling. I consider non-stick pans specialty cookware. They're good for eggs. They're good for fish that has the skin on, although I prefer to use stainless steel and good technique. If you're putting a hard sear on something, there's never any reason to use teflon, so this limitation shouldn't be an issue.