paulraphael

I need to keep it fresh for a solid week, which will include a couple of travel days in a cooler. You're probably right that it will be fine. I just have to be careful, since there's no place to go shopping if I mess anything up.

Suppose you want serve some really delicious steak at a dinner party. To a dozen people. On an island, a 12 hour drive and boat ride away. And where the only electricity comes from a solar panel, the stove burns wood, and the propane fridge struggles to maintain 50 degrees. And your budget is $60. Turns out it's nothing a good butcher and cheap immersion circulator can't handle. I had to call around, but finally found a butcher who was excited about the project, and who agreed to dry age a prime chuck roll for me. The man for the job was Rob DelaPietra. He invited me to his eponymous shop in downtown Brooklyn, where we picked a piece of meat together. He cut off a 7.5 lb. hunk from the rib end. Normal price was $10/lb, but since I was buying in bulk he offered it for $8. Expensive compared with regular chuck, but this was a nicely marbled, prime piece of meat. And he was going to charge nothing for the dry aging. My schedule determined that it would age about 4 weeks, which Rob thought would be about right for maximizing flavor with minimal weight loss. Untrimmed Trimmed, but with a bit of funkiness left in place. Final weight is 6.5 lbs. The trim weighed 1/2 lb, so it lost 1/2 lb of water. Seems like very little loss for 4 weeks. All the trim (in another post I'm brainstorming what to with this delicious-smelling stuff) Cut into three 1.75" steaks and two 1.5" steaks. Not as gorgeously marbled as the nicest rib-eyes I've cooked, but still promising. A bit of pre-sear. After this, I bagged the meat and immersed in simmering water for one minute, to kill everything on the exterior. Pre-cooking at 40°C / 104°F for 4 hours, for a final kick to the tenderizing and flavor-producing enzymes (as discussed in this post). It's now finishing off its 48 hours at 55°C. It will be chilled in an ice bath, packed in ice in a cooler, and taken on the road. The wood fire in the kitchen should make searing a snap. A sauce is in progress, not included in the budget. Based on a beef coulis made with pressure-cooked stock and meat jus extracted sous-vide, seasoned with red wine, porcini mushrooms, and thyme. This is just going to be frozen. I'll let you know how it goes. If it's as good as I hope, this may be my new steak paradigm, even for eating at home. I'm really to curious to see how it compares to similarly prepared rib-eye that costs over three times as much.

All great ideas. I just want to make sure there's consensus that the stuff is safe. The thing I'm most concerned about is bacterial toxins, which can be chemical and heat-resistant, and fungus / fungus byproducts, which I don't know anything about. Probably far fetched, but I don't want to make a habit of something that might be sketchy. The beef dust idea is intriguing. A vita-prep sounds ideal for the pulverizing (I don't have one, sadly). I wonder if you lose a lot of important aromatics while dehydrating. And ...kinda beside the point, but I wrote that I got a pound of trimmings above. I meant a half pound. Surprisingly little (starting weight was 7.5lbs, so it lost 1/2 lb water also).

I suspect it gave its life to save innocent herbs from the cruel and unusual punishment such devices wreak.

I don't personally want more than 1kw, but I can see how it would be useful in a commercial kitchen where big, uninsulated cambros are typical. Is there really a history of professional lab circulators with 1.8kw heaters crapping out?

I just had a chuck roll dry aged 4 weeks by my butcher (for cutting into steaks that will be cooked sous-vide). When I trimmed off the crust I ended up with about half a pound of really delicious-smelling trim with the texture of jerky. My cat loves it. I'm disinclined to eat it, because I have no idea what kinds of mold and spoilage bacteria are lurking there, but I'm wondering if anyone's experimented with a way to extract flavors or aromas from this stuff? I smell a science project.

Just announced today, in case we were suffering a shortage of Anova threads. Looks like they're going for Poly Science's jugular. I'm not sure why the 120v model doesn't got 18KW ... other brands do. Otherwise looks like a killer for $400.

Yikes. Do you love North African food? I do, but that would still be a lifetime supply. (one of my favorite lines from the Simpsons ... Marge discovers a costco-style big-box store and is mesmerized. "That's a very good price for 25 pounds of nutmeg!")

Does anyone know a well-researched source of information on infusing herb flavors into ice cream? I've figured out some things by trial and error, but there are a lot of variables, and they differ for every herb. Some concerns are -ideal temperatures and times for extracting good flavors but not bad ones (bitter, grassy, indistinct vegetal etc.). If steeping time should be limited or if an herb can remain while the ice cream pasteurizes / the custard sets, etc.) -if there's any way to improve the solvent qualities of milk, like increasing the sugar content to a certain concentration (the sugar syrup component of sorbet is a much stronger solvent than water ... it behaves almost like alcohol. I don't know how much sugar is required to produce this effect in milk, or if the emulsified fat in milk makes a difference) -if it is important to deactivate enzymes (like polyphenoloxidases) with high heat in order to preserve vibrancy of flavors -if putting the herbs with the mix in a blender is bad news -if being cooked with the mix in a sous-vide bag is bad news

Any thoughts on the shelf-life of yogurt in a sealed container in a bad fridge? Like around 45-50F?

I'm preparing a meal that's going to be served on an island in Maine, where facilities are limited to a wood-burning stove and a propane-powered fridge. I'm preparing a lot of food in advance, either sous-vide or frozen. One idea is a cucumber gazpacho that I'd like to freeze. It's a simple recipe with cucumbers, shallots, garlic, herbs, yogurt, and olive oil. Everything's pureed (the original idea includes smoked salmon, which I'm not including this time. I based the soup on an awesome version at café Boulud years ago). Is it true that I could have issues with the yogurt developing grainy textures when it's frozen and thawed? Is this from the emulsion breaking? Synerisis? Anything that can be done about it? I'm wondering if anything like xanthan gum in very small quantities could help hold it together.

These Coleman "xtreme" coolers have insulated lids. I'd have gotten one if I'd known about them. A lot cheaper and easier than my questionable project of insulating the lid with foam. Some people have questioned the value of the lid insulation, but I'm betting it's worth at least a little. I also use reflectix.

I've never used my silpat in the oven. people do, when they need better release than parchment (or a bit more insulation), but the silicone is especially useful for working with tuilles and hardened sugar syrup and other things that would stick like glue if they dried on regular surfaces.

I cut my sil-pat in half (so it would fit on two half-sheet pans). They tell you not to, but I don't know why. It's fine.

I was wondering about this. I looked up my cooler on the Coleman site. All it says is "insulated case for longer ice retention." It does not say "insulated lid," and indeed the lid had nothing in it. Some of their other coolers are fancier, and the site goes into more detail about what's in there. I don't feel quite curious enough to drill a hole and take a look.

It can even be confusing going from one part of the U.S. to another. Different names for the same things. Before then internet it must have been worse. At least here the differences are mostly just regional naming conventions. If you go from one region of Italy to another the actual cuts are different. And they're different in France and in Germany and just about everywhere else. You have different cuts of the same muscles, sometimes with similar names, and different names for identical cuts. It's a mess. I bought beef once in Rwanda from a butcher whose French was only a little better than mine. I eventually figured out the cut by pointing to different parts of my own carcas and getting him to nod.

Heated up the leftovers today and took a pic ... not a great one but i was hungry. This should give some idea of texture. 60°C, pink, and we didn't need knives.

You can get whatever result you want with pressure cooked risotto. Just like with traditional risotto, the main variables are rice variety, liquid ratio, and cooking time. The tricky part is that you can't see what's going on in the pot. It's not quite as simple to compensate as you go. Unless I've really nailed a recipe for a particular rice type, I'll usually pressure cook for a couple of minutes less than my best estimate. This gets the risotto most of the way there, and I can finish conventionally after depressurizing. A couple of minutes of cooking/stirring softens the rice some more and make it less soupy; doing so while adding liquid makes it more soupy. Then correct the seasonings, stir in cheese, butter etc. at the end.

Yes, but the question is how much. You can calculate the R-value of insulation by measuring the surface temperature of the vessel relative to the ambient air temperature, and comparing to the temperature differential between inside and outside the vessel. The higher the R-value, and the lower the temp. variation between in and out, the less warm you'd find the outside of the vessel. If the cooler were filled with 1/2" closed cell foam, which has very high r-value, I'd expect the warmth of the cooler on the outside to barely perceptibly warm to the touch. At least with a 140F cook, which is only about 70F warmer than the air in the room. I haven't done the math, so I could be wrong about it. Maybe it's well insulated and I should expect it to get as warm as it does. If that's the case, though, a 30 quart cooler with that much warm surface area makes for a pretty big radiator. It's definitely burning up some watts. Imagine the light bulb it would take to warm up a big cooler that much.

Thanks Darienne. I'm just glad the book includes the breakdowns. Not really trying to clone a clif bar, but I'd like to be able to work with her recipes without having to do all the math myself. On another note, does anyone remember the original power bars? I've had the misfortune of trying to eat them in cold weather, miles from other food. I think the main ingredient is fiberglass.

Kenneth, can you elaborate a bit on your testing and what you found? I don't have a meter and haven't done any. I was a bit surprised when doing a long cook in a cooler at 60°C that the outsides of the cooler were pretty warm. I keep a layer of reflectix on the water, and have a lid that's cut with a pretty tight fit. The lid's also insulated with spray foam. I have no idea how good the insulation in the cooler itself is. It's just a $30 coleman.

Do the recipes in the book include nutritional information? People eat bars for different reasons, and I find that some are suitable for one purpose while being useless for another. I'm kind of a clif bar addict but have developed some digestive problems and am starting to suspect the soy isolate. If this turns out to be the case I'll play with making my own with other ingredients. This book looks like it might have some good starting points.

I mean the efficiency of the whole system, which comes down to how much of the electric power ends up heating the food vs. heating the house. I imagine the biggest factor is the insulation of the container, but even so, I have no idea if a circulator maintaining temperature in a cooler averaging 10 watts or 200.

The trouble is that most cuts go across multiple muscles. There's a butchering method that's basically disection, where you actually separate everything along the seams down to the individual muscles, but this isn't a traditional or common method.

Chuck eye is great! Delapietra's is dry aging 8lbs of it for me right now ... going to cut into steaks, cook s.v. for 48 hours, and bring on a trip to maine where we're cooking for a crowd. It's like rib-eye for 12 people for $60.