paulraphael

I use knuckle bones or oxtail as a foundation; but for enriching stocks I use meat, and for making a jus/coulis (as a substitute for demi glace) I extract additional meat directly into stock. In the past I've used stewing cuts from the chuck. I'm just wondering if there's a good bet that's cheap and that has less than the 15% or 20% fat I typically see in chuck. I'm looking for lower fat just because the fat won't be used. I want that 20% fat in a burger. In a stock it's waste. Makes more sense to use something leaner even if it's a bit more expensive, all else being equal. Re: donations to the cat ... it's not as welcome as raw meat or juicy steak pilfered from the table, but it's accepted. There's still flavor in the meat. As much as what's in the stock (law of entropy, etc.) The worst thing about the used meat is dryness. Shanks / shins (same thing, yes?) sound interesting. Do you ever see these off the bone? How's the flavor compared with chuck?

I'm looking for a good choice of beef for pressure-cooked rich stock and for sous-vide jus/coulis. In both cases the meat will be ground before cooking and donated to the cat afterwards, so texture is unimportant. Ideally one of the cheap/tough cuts, but one with as much flavor and as little fat as possible. Any fat will just render off and will have to be disposed of. My inclination would be to use one of the round roasts, but the last time I used one in a braise the flavor was lackluster. Not sure if that was the cut in general or just the piece I got. Thoughts?

How about a reasonable source for veal knuckle bones and trimmings? Jefferey used get this for $1.50 something a pound. Now it seems like most shops price like a boutique item.

That information still doesn't help you compare to another brand. Consider that all clad pans have a pressed lip at the edges, which can distort the relative thickness of the layers where the edge is visible. And some companies (like Demeyere) make clad pans with bottoms that are a different thickness than the walls.

I dislike both granite and marble, since it's hard to tell if they're clean, they stain, and are generally a maintenance hassle. I lived with marble for a while and have used a lot of granite. Granite is better in every way I can asess. If I could choose any natural stone it would be soapstone. But I'd prefer quarz or laboratory epoxy over either. Keep in mind that there are a hundreds of different kinds of stone that fit under the marketing geologic (and marketing) headings of both granite and marble, and they can be very different from each other.

You can't. You can only indirectly infer it, because you have no idea how much of the thickness is taken up by the conductive aluminum on the inside. This seem like a minor point but it's a major one. In many pans the thickness of the stainless cladding (a very poor performer, from most cookware perspectives) makes up a surprising portion of the thickness. You really, truly, absolutely can ignore the number of layers claimed by any manufacturer. If there is ever a correlation between that number and the thickness, it's purely incidental. The thickest conducting layers you'll ever find are on disk-bottom pans, which are often 2-layer.

Andy, this is a load of serious information. I'm inclined to take this seriously, but it would helpful to see some sources. And it would make sense to send them to McGee, on the off chance he isn't up to speed yet. Last I heard on the subject was his Times article, which said go to town on the leaves. Edited to Add: I hit send before seeing the questions about raw vs. cooked. What do we know about the effect of cooking on those alkaloids?

I just hope they all work it out. I was late to the sriracha party, but now keep it in the fridge all the time. I like that it's mild enough that you don't have to be too careful, it has a prominent garlic flavor, and hardly any acid, so it won't throw off the flavor balance while upping the heat. And come on, who doesn't love the rooster?

I don't think anything's changed fundamentally. There may be some thicker brands of clad cookware, but to know what difference to expect we'd need to saw them in half and measure. Nathan Myrhvold has a budget for this kind of thing, maybe he can chip in. With a thicker conductive core, a pan will behave more like a disk-bottom pan. More evenness, more heat capacity, and worse responsiveness. You can ignore descriptions like "5-layer" and "7-layer." It's marketing drivel. The only things that matter are the thickness and material of the conducting layer, and the total thickness of the cladding.

Tinned copper is a different story. The stainless clad stuff doesn't require more maintenance than any other cookware. I might treat it a little nicer than I treat the all-clad, but that's just because I don't consider it replaceable. Other than that they get fundamentally the same treatment: detergent and water, and sometimes a scrubbing of BKF on the inside. I usually don't even bother drying the outside. The copper looks like old pennies, which is fine by me.

Lisa mentions enzymatic cleaners; you probably already have some in the form of laundry detergent. Maybe test in an inconspicous place to make sure it doesn't leave a mark of its own. I've used a slurry of laundry soap to get wine stains off the walls and ceiling. Worked like magic.

This is an interesting idea. My first thought was like jmachaughtan's, to make a water-ganache with the wine (possibly reduced). Lisa's idea of making the wine gelee hinted at some other possibilities. You might turn the wine into a fluid gel, emulsify with the chocolate, and then foam it with a siphon. The exact gelling agent and method would need some investigation; you're working with acids and alcohol, both of which can be foam destabilizers. But I bet you can come up with somehting cool. Lisa's right that there's a risk of flavor problems. It's a specific wine you're being asked to use? A port would seem like a natural mix for this. My hunch is to use as sweet a wine and as bitter a chocolate as possible.

I don't find copper to be high maintenance at all. But I haven't polished mine in the 15 years I've owned it. And don't ever plan too. There's no need unless you want to be precious.

The BB&B ones look like a bargain. Hard to go wrong at that price. Re: very fine strainers ... besides my fine chinois, which is used mostly for sauces, I get much more use out of a medium-mesh, cheap strainer. My regular fine-meshed strainer doesn't get used much. It's hard to get thicker purees through it and it's hard to clean. For a very fine mesh, consider a superbag, or the much cheaper and equivalent industrial filter bags you can get online. They go as low as 20 microns (maybe even lower) and are reasonably easy to wash.

Great point. It's a good rule of thumb that the worse your range, the more important your cookware. The handful of high-end commercial ranges I've used made the cookware quality largely irrelevant. You don't need even heating when there are gas jets engulfing the whole pan bottom, and you don't need heat capacity when you have 30,0000 BTU/hr. You could argue that with a heat source like this, a light pan made from any reasonable cookware material would be ideal, because it will be responsive. At Le Bernardin in NYC, they crank out 3-star fish dishes all day long on thin, warped spun steel, and $20 restaurant store non-stick coated aluminum. I don't believe higher end pans would make any difference in that setting. On my crappy stove it makes a difference, although I still believe it's more a difference in my "experience" than in what I'm capable of cooking. I'd have to be drowning in money to pay such a premium for this kind of nicety. To put it in perspective, for the price difference between a single excellent pan made from pedestrian materials and a high end copper one, you could buy an immersion circulator or a pressure cooker ... something that will actually allow a paradigm shift in your cooking.

No way! Just by ingredients alone the stocks I make cost more than the boxed stock. If I consider the value of my time (a dubious proposition, but I still try ...) the homemade stock seems very expensive. Ingredients for my chicken stock are around $8 to $10 / liter, depending on how many bones I've accumulated in the freezer. Beef stock is more, and veal stock more still.

Fluid gels sound intriguing. I wouldn't be surprised if you could get exactly teh results I'm looking for. I don't like the working method, though. Lots of steps, and not easy to make adjustments as you go.

I have several pieces of 2.5mm, stainless lined copper cookware, and while I love it, I can say with few reservations that it's not worth it. It does perform better than cookware made from any other material. The differences, however, are only noticeable during certain types of cooking—those that depend on fast and precise temperature control. And even then, these differences are niceties, not necessities. You can make food that's every bit as good with cookware that colsts a fraction. I completely agree with Andy that cooking certain things in copper feels great. It's like commuting to work in a $200,000 car vs. a $50,000 car. It will feel a bit more awesome, but not 4 times as much, and you won't actually get there any faster. I bought my cookware back when it was only silly expensive, not today's stupefyingly expensive. If I had to start over, I migh splurge and get another 1.5L slope-sided saucepan, which I just love for serious saucemaking. The others I could replace with more reasonably priced stuff and hardly notice a difference. Another thought: if there's induction cooking in your future, the heavy copper will be immediately obsolete. BTW, everything I'm saying concerns the heavy, 2.5 mm stainless-lined copper pieces, like those made by Falk, Mauviel, and Bourgeat. The 1.6mm versions of those pans are for show or for tableware, and offer no advantages. Pans with copper bottoms or copper layers sandwiched between stainless steel usually use too thin a layer of copper for the material to make much difference. This is marketing copper. Heavy, tin-lined copper is wonderful stuff, but in many cases more limited because the tin melts below normal searing temperatures. I've been in the kitchens of quite a few Michelin 3-star restaurants, and saw copper cookware in only a few. One of them had probably bought it half a century ago when there weren't any other high performance options. The others had open (or publicly visible) kitchens ... so you can surmise there was some showmanship going on.

Thanks all. You're answering a different question though! My regular stocks have plenty of gelatin as is.

Thanks Martin, I'll try that. Shel, I'm using the boxed stock for texture experiments. The flavor is beside the point here. I want to add pure gelatin because it's cheap and easy; I'm just trying to approximate the gelatin level of homemade stock so I have a useful starting point.

This is way too broad a question so let me narrow it down. I want to experiment with thickeners, and don't want to waste good stock. So I'm going to use store-bought stock. Brands like Pacific aren't too bad, but seem completely devoid of gelatin. I'd like to add gelatin to simulate the natural viscosity of a stock simmered with meat and bones. Any thoughts on the range of concentrations of gelatin you might encounter with a typical stock? I'm thinking one made for flavor and not primarily for super high concentrations of gelatin.

Has anyone played with propylene glycol alginate?

That's an interesting method, and it makes sense. I'd call it "no water added" since it's all about extraction. But I'm still looking for the ability to adjust texture and thickness, sometimes in finished sauces that may or not be based on that method.

Chris, what kind of carrageenan have you used? I have some kappa here but haven't tried it in this kind of application. I don't want something that will form a gell with the xanthan. From what I'm reading, lambda carrageenan seems like a good bet for sauces. It also seems like the least common type.

I don't want to be dismissive of all chemical dangers, like some industry shill. It's possible we'll discover that BPA is even worst than we knew. But considering that it's been leaching into all of our canned foods for the last half century, it's probably not quite the hideous specter blogosphere would have us think. I still use my lexan water bottle when climbing, because it's unbreakable, and that kind of exposure seems harmless. If I had a kid, I would not use a lexan baby bottle. This is just based on available knowledge right now. I don't see any risks at all with lexan containers for immersion circulation ... when used in the standard way. I've seen people circulate oil directly, and poach whole turkeys and roasts. This practice raises some questions. Polyethylene is used in chemistry and biology labs and is generally considered innert and food safe. We don't know for sure about plasticizers or other additives. I think the people who make food saver and chamber vacuum bags say they don't use anything. The ziplock people don't comment, but people who know about plastics and have investigated the bags seem to think they're safe. We may learn otherwise, but I still bet I'm going to die of something else.