paulraphael

Blether, that may be so, but those are examples of corruption. The mislabeling of Kobe here is is legal, and so it's completely rampant and it's hard to know what to do about it.

If you have really good Belgian beers or lambics, drink them. Anything full-bodied, and possibly on the dark side will work for cooking. The beer can flat and even a bit stale ... won't matter. The more delicate flavors are going to vanish.

When you see kobe beef in the U.S., you are probably being lied to. In Japan, Kobe is a legal designation. Beef doesn't just have to come from the region, but has to come from specific cattle that have been raised under strict rules governing everything from their feed to their living conditions and daily handling. No U.S. governing body recognizes this designation, so here, Kobe can be attached to anything. Most commonly it designates beef from wagyu cows, which are pretty good cows, but only responsible for a small portion of the true kobe beef quality. Up until 2012, no Japanese beef of any kind was imported to the U.S.. So everything labelled kobe was a lie. In the last two years, tiny quantities have been imported, under new regulations. But the name is still unregulated here, so how can you know what's real Kobe and what isn't? You'd better check the fine print. When I see restaurants offering $8 kobe burgers, I walk away, because it just seems like an insult to everyone's intelligence. It makes me wonder what else they're lying about.

As a followup on pbear's post, a traditional way saucepan makers control the ratio of volume to surface is with a tapered pan. Most serious sauciers will have at least one of these slope-sided pans, called a windsor pan or an evasée. These keep the ratio of surface to volume fairly constant, whether you're using the pan for different volumes of sauce or using it for reduction. The sloped sides also make it easier to reach the whole bottom with a whisk—especially handy with emulsified egg sauces. Another version of these pans has a curved bottom, to make whisking even easier. These are sometimes called a saucier or chef's pan. You give up some of the even taper. Both styles are great; the difference is a mater of preference. My 1.5L evasee is my desert island saucepan. It's the one piece of copper I'd buy again if starting over. It's good for as little as 2 servings, or as many 18 or so.

-a way to sync with via bluetooth with a computer that could text you when you're not home (I know this would be complicated ... but I don't need remote contact if I'm at home with the circulator). -alerts in case of wide temperature fluctuations or power interruptions -ability to program multistage cooking ... like a precook at low temperature for increasing tenderness, followed by the final cook at higher temperature -ability to set an on-timer, so it can start heating the water a half hour before i plan to get home A more advanced app could have the features of the sous-vide dash app, but with better graphics and ability to control the circulator directly. But the developer of that app may be planning such a thing.

A big kerfuffle in NYC is a recent law requiring HACCP plans for any restaurant with a vacuum packing machine. All because of a health dept. that didn't understand sous-vide cooking, and so decided a wild and irrational overreaction was in order. This has placed a huge burden on restaurants that just wanted to cook food the way every other good restaurant in the U.S. and abroad is doing it. I'm not sure how they all manage ... if they're really creating these plans and filing them with the dept., and having consultants and inspectors checking them out all the time, or if they're just hiding the machines in the basement.

The other difference is that a lot of ice cream blends contain emulsifiers ... sometimes lots of mono- and di-glycerides, especially if they're intended for egg-free ice creams. These won't hurt anything, but sorbets don't need emulsifying.

It makes sense to use a stabilizer designed specifically for sorbets. Some stabilizing ingredients (like kappa carrageenan) react with calcium, so they'll give a very different result in a dairy formula than a non-dairy one.

It stands for Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point. Which is wonderfully awful and ambiguous. But it refers to a regimented set of rules for preparing food safely, including documenting the exact source of every ingredient and documenting times and temperatures of every step critical to safety. It's a colossal pain in the ass, and used primarily with foods that pose special hazards or when serving people who have compromised immune systems. It was originally developed for companies that manufactured food for astronauts. As you can imagine, a case of salmonella on the space station or a moon landing vehicle would suck more than the usual amount.

So, the early verdict is that these are great. Just like other twisty trays, but incredibly easy to release. And they stack in really positive and space efficient way. I also got a pair of the Tovolos, which probably won't see everyday use. My main issue with them is that the ice took hours longer to freeze. There's no air space separating the cubes. This would seem to be a tradeoff for the more efficient use of space. Also the cubes are bigger, and silicone may be more of an insulator than the plastic of the others.

Oh, yeah, it's just polyester. Wash and dry it with impunity. I use the microfiber towels exclusively for wet stuff, because it works so nicely. But I use cotton for handling hot pans, because the microfiber scorches and melts at a much lower temperature.

I picked up the habit of using side towels for grabbing pans from restaurant cooks. Now i won't go back. Pot holders feel clunky and are single purpose and don't easily stay on the handle of a pan. Oven mits, yikes. They gross me out ... has the inside of one every been cleaned, in the history of kitchens? Maybe some can be turned inside out and machine washed, but I've never witnessed it. The ones in my experience are petry dishes. I make an exception for a pair of silicone ones (the ones that look like sharks). These are borderline reasonable to clean/sanitize on the inside, they're waterproof (so you can grab hot things that could splash you, or reach into a hot sous-vide tank for something that you might damage with tongs). I mostly use them for reaching into a very hot oven when I'm afraid of bumping into something with arms, back of hands etc.. But that's like once a month.

Have you noticed that rubbing alcohol now has an expiration date? Ploy or not, I think mustard is something that loses potency as it ages. There's no magical date at which it's bad, but it will tend to better now than next month, no matter how old it is.

I used to live across the street from an ice sculptor who had to make big blocks of perfectly clear ice. His trick was to keep the water circulating ... he used something that looked like an aquarium pump. This apparently stopped air bubbles from forming.

I ordered a couple of Rubbermaid trays that good reviews on amazon, and a couple of the Tavolos. Expecting a hot rest of the summer ...

Preference? I like the beater blade so much I haven't used the original attachment in years, except for abusive things like crushing little rocks of brown sugar. But I haven't tried the others.

I have an earlier model of this Taylor that's super cool. Thermocouple, infra red, and it's water resistant. Taylor 9306N

Yeah, I figured the plastic twisty ones ... that's what I have now. I need some more, and the current ones are only ok ... I fight with them a lot and ice goes flying. I was wondering if they're all basically the same or any of them will make life better.

Those of you unblessed by the automatic icemaker deity, what sucks the least? Ease of getting the ice out, stackability, space savings, and durability are all plusses.

Oh, and here's a template for a really easy tomato sauce. It's less weird/more versatile than the M.H. butter sauce, but not far off. -dice 1/4 to 1/2 an onion -sweat the onion in some olive oil in a saucepan -add a 28oz can of tomatoes ... whole peeled ones if you want chunks, crushed or pureed ones if you don't -optionally, add 1/4 to 1/2 cup of full bodied red wine. I rinse out the can with this. -simmer to get the consistency you want. add herbs if you want (if you're using anything delicate like parsley or basil, add in the final few minutes) -adjust the seasoning. this usually means pepper. If you didn't use wine, you may need to add a bit of vinegar to get the acidity up. Very rarely salt ... most canned tomatoes these days have all you need. If the tomatoes are good, this is a tasty and simple pasta sauce by itself. It can also be the base for all kinds of embellishments. If you want to get fancier, instead of just onions, start with a full-on batuto, which can contain diced pancetta, carrots, garlic, and celery, in addition to the onion. Pork fat may or may not substitute for the olive oil.

The big revelation for me many years ago was that canned tomatoes make great sauce. Most people got that memo a century ago, I know ... My old fresh tomato sauces required enough cooking that they were essentially canned by the time I was done. But these tomatoes were rarely as fresh as the ones that go straight from the field to the cannery. The trick has been finding good brands of tomatoes, which has gotten easier over the years. It's one area where I've looked into avoiding BPA, since tomatoes leach a ton of it (they're acidic, they're cooked in there, they sit for ages on the shelf in there ...). In contrast I use my polycarbonate water bottles with impunity, because evidence shows the amount of leaching is probably insignificant. But I'd like to avoid epoxy-lined cans if possible. Here's a list of companies that are no longer using epoxy linings. I don't know how up-to-date this is, and also don't know of independent testing on whatever lines the cans now. So this is pretty provisional information. Of the brands listed, I've had good luck with Muir Glen. They say they're lining the cans with some kind of vinyl. The only other food use of vinyl I know is PVA that's in cheap, catering-quality cling wrap. It's the stuff that smells like shower curtains. It's a poor choice for food use because it leaches plasticizers, which taste bad (like ... shower curtains) and have potential health effects. I doubt this is what's lining the cans, but also don't know what IS lining the cans.

I don't doubt that you are right, since nothing is standardized anywhere in Italy, and gelato is such a generic term. That being said, I've never encountered high overrun gelato, at least from gelaterias in Italy. And in the U.S., every gelateria and Italian pastry chef I've encountered makes very low overrun product. The other qualities that people debate endlessly (can it have cream? eggs? corn starch? lots of fat? little fat? etc.) seem completely variable. Which is just to say that if "gelato" means anything at all, it's most likely to mean ice cream without much air. And there's plenty of ice cream without much air that doesn't get called gelato ... Edited to add: Carpigiani makes different machines designated for ice cream and gelato (and some for both). There isn't much helpful info on their site, so I wrote an email asking for clarification. I'll post the answer here.

I don't know ... it's just a feature mentioned to me by a pastry chef. I just looked around on their site and they sell way more products than I expected. Details about specific features aren't so easy to find.

How do people like salmon at 45C/113F? I'm curious since the Cooking Issues guys found sweet spots at 108 and 122, but thought the salmon got "toothy" (whatever that might mean) in the range in between. No mention of if this was especially lean or fatty salmon, farmed or wild, etc..

Gelato means something different in every Italian region, and probably to every Italian pastry chef. The one thing gelatos typically have in common is low overrun. So any machine sold as a gelato machine is going to be capable of spinning low overrun ice cream. Likewise, any machine that can be set for low overrun can be used to make a traditional gelato. Since I like ice creams that are low on overrun, the distinction between the two doesn't mean much to me. My Kitchen Aid attachment tends toward low overrun, so I could call my stuff gelato if I wanted. In the commercial world, the Italian Carpigiani machines are top of the heap. These things can be set to whatever overrun and whatever drawing temperature you want, and then get there automatically. A pastry chef I worked with said his spinning times were something like 6 minutes.