paulraphael

I'm revisiting methods for sauces, stocks and glaces, and am assuming there are better thickeners available than what my current habits dictate. Long ago I abandoned roux and heavily-reduced gelatinous stock for milder reductions thickened with xanthan gum and arrowroot. The three thickeners involved (natural gelatin, a gum, and a starch) each have their shortcomings but when used together give a nice synergy. But now I'm thinking the starch element is probably obsolete. There must be a gum or other colloid that will mask flavors even less than arrowroot and bring other advantages. Has anyone used methylcellulose for this? I like the idea of something that will work in opposition to the gelatin's tendency to thicken upon cooling. I'm wondering if a combination of gelatin, xanthan, and methylcellulose could give a nice, creamy/syruppy texture with a fairly temperature-independent viscocity. Any other ideas?

Lots of things increase cancer risk. Smoked food and anything charred on a grill increase cancer risk. Going outside in the daytime. Breathing anywhere near traffic. The question is how big is the actual risk? With BPA it's very hard to know what the risks are, because all the controlled studies have been done on mice and rats, and have been done with outrageously high concentrations of BPA. There are a bunch of human epidemiological studies, with results all over the place ... the science behind this kind of study is much weaker (very difficult to establish causation) and no one has areed on apropriate methodology. We know that BPA is an endocrine disruptor and possible toxin to the liver. We know that fetuses and small children are much more at risk from exposure than adults. What we don't know is the level of the risk, or the level of exposure that produces a serious risk. We don't even know all the factors that determine the level of BPA in food or in the environment. A few other tidbits that we know: -BPA levels in canned food (especially acidic canned food) is insanely higher than in foods stored in polycarbonate. If you're afraid of a polycarbonate water bottle, you should never eat food out of a can again. Unless you're sure the company has replaced epoxy can linings with polyester or something else, which some companies are doing. -BPA is not going to migrate through polyethylene sous vide bags. If we were talking about something as deadly as plutonium, maybe that kind of fear would be worth further exploration. But we're not. And something to consider: it's tempting to avoid plastics on general principle, based on dangers we haven't discovered yet. But it's stupid to do so if you're not going to apply the same level of scrutiny to other materials. We believe polypropylene and and polyethylene are safe for the same reasons we believe the various stainless steels, borosilicate glasses, and ceramics glazes are safe: we have strong, but incomplete, evidence.

I like a 12qt poycarbonate container for shorter cooking times, and a big coleman cooler for longer ones. The cooler is also good for more room. Mine is about 30 quarts, but with an insulated container there's no practical upper limit. Just fill with warm water so it doesn't take forever to get going. This is a really good smaller poly container. It's a bit less tapered than the similar Cambro so the circulator fits completely upright. There's just enough room inside for the Sous Vide Supreme rack with the Anova. The Carlisle container is big enough for a few steaks and fits easily in my not so big sink for filling. I've cut reflectix sheet to fit each container for some insulation and to reduce evaporative cooling. A loop of cord tied through one side of the reflectix makes it easy to grab and pull out of the way when the water's hot.

Tell me about it. The KR 12 quart is now $369.

I like to season biter greens like raab and kale with both sugar and acid. Some options are blood orange, any citrus juice, mango chutney, honey, etc.. A little heat, like shirracha, also helps. And obviously don't forget the salt.

I'm inclined to get the 10qt. Fagor duo and see how it goes. The KR looks like a better thing but prices must have shot up recently. The 12 quart literally costs 3 times as much.

I think stains actually add character to pieces like these. I wasn't completely sure if the OP was just talking about stains or actual burned residue above the surface.

I had the same questions, and even tried to pry answers out of Anova. No luck with that. I just went ahead and bought the thing, and don't have any regrets. The improvements I'd like to see are all firmware based, and are all minor. And Anova has so far been helpful about updating people's firmware, if you're ok with sending the thing on a round trip to Texas.

Ajax and Comet will not scratch the enamel. The abrasives aren't remotely hard enough to do so. If the manufacturer is making a blanket statement against abrasive cleaners, it's because they have no way of knowing what some cleaner somewhere might have in it. There may be some industrial cleaner with silicon carbide abrasives in it, who knows. The kitchen and bathroom cleaners don't have anything like this.

Lisa's experience with frozen fries makes me a bit pessimistic ... if anyone could be expected to know about this stuff, it's frozen food manufacturers. I'm under the impression that frozen fries are made from ground up potatoes that are stuck together somehow, which would make them more like a puree than like chunks of tater in a stew. But who knows. Keep us up to date on your tinkering.

I can think of a couple of additives to play with for the purees. This is just theory; I haven't tried any of it. One is low methoxy or low methoxy amidated pectin. The other is xanthan gum. I'd try adding to the milk you use in the mashed potatoes (the pectins would require this; they need calcium to activate). These thickeners are freeze-thaw stable and don't exhibit synerisis, which is the official name for liquids weeping out of a gel. My guess is that potatoes separate after freezing because because potato starch isn't freeze-thaw stable, and that potato starch-thickened gels will exhibit synerisis after thawing but not before. Maybe getting some other thickener in there will help. But I wouldn't bet too much on it. Another thing to try (easy since you have a sous-vide setup) is to retrograde/set the starch when you cook the potatoes you plan to puree. There's a thread on that around here somewhere. I suppose there's a chance that this will reduce synerisis after freezing. One thing to try before messing around with thickeners is to talk to a rep at TIC gums or Kelco. They have experts who give guidance to food industry people. There may be a concoction with a name like MashMaxFreezePro9000 ... and if so they'll probably send you a free sample.

I bet a self-cleaning oven would return an enameled cast iron piece to brand new condition. (take the knob off)

Blether, I don't agree about the uselessness of enameled cast iron. Yeah, it's limited. I would only want it for dutch ovens. But these are spectacular for braises (the thermal mass evens out the cycles of the oven), and the non-reactivity of the material makes it my only cookware that goes from fridge to stove. I do most of my braises sous-vide now, but for big batches of soup/stew that i feed on for a week at a time, I can't imagine anything better. As far as sticking ... I'm all for it. The things I make in this kind of cookware brown first and deglaze later. If the fond doesn't stick, its much harder to separate the oil. If you really need non-stick, there's teflon. Once every three months I make an egg or omelet for someone, and the $20 teflon restaurant pan sees some action.

Standard abrasive cleaner with bleach, like ajax or comet. Will make short work of it and won't damage the enamel (the enamel is hard as rock ... there's very little in the kitchen that will scratch it, and probably nothing that will react with it. These cleaners have chlorine bleach, so gloves aren't a bad idea, and if you're sensitive to it make sure there's ventilation. If you don't want to deal with chlorine, you can use a non-bleach abrasive like bon-ami. This won't be as tough on the stains, so you'll need more elbow grease.

Word to the wise about spray foam: call the manufacturer's tech support before buying, to make sure it will work in a sealed environment. I have a mess on my hands with some CRC minimally expanding foam. It will not cure without exposure to plenty of air. This caveat was not at all clear on the labelling ... I had to get a chemist in tech support on the phone to find out. She advised throwing the whole thing out (fears that uncured foam could somehow ooze and come in contact with food. I've drilled a bunch of air holes around the side to see if I can get it to fully cure. We'll see.

Question for the OP: who do you imagine the book is for, and how do you imagine they'll use it?

I didn't see him calling it a cookbook. This alone is an important difference. Some thoughts on that truism, "Write about things you know and have experience with. Period"... whether you put it in bold or not, I think it's a dubious proposition. Some of the most important writing has been on topics the author had no experience with. Theoretical physics, rationalist philophy, and virtually all history, to name some of the more obvious examples. What's the fundamental problem with illuminating ideas and raising questions for future exploration? It may not be as practical as cookbook, but it sounds at least as interesting.

Old question ... rationalism vs. empiricism. I don't think a theoretical book is fundamentally a problem if it's presented as such. The question becomes: is there a market for this book? I don't have any idea. Publishers would probably have plenty of opinions.

That makes sense, but I suspect it's not so simple. Dave and Nils at Cooking Issues are as smart about this stuff as anyone, and if getting a Fagor and Iwatani to produce the same results as the KR was just a matter of regulating the heat, that would have been the end of the story. Unfortunately they never followed up on the post. So we have their initial observation, and a hypothesis, but nothing else to go on.

The recommended method in Modernist Cuisine is to SV first, then cook briefly in a warm oven to dry the surface, and then smoke. This is based on a traditional German method that primes the meat to efficiently absorb smoke. Worth a try, considering Myhrvold's BBQ gold medals. Edited to add: what Steve said. Looks like he's put it to good use ...

This 2009 post in Cooking Issues demonstrated that some pressure cookers make better stock than others. http://www.cookingissues.com/2009/11/22/pressure-cooked-stocks-we-got-schooled/#more-2561 Multiple rounds of blind testing showd that the Kuhn Rikon, which vents very little steam, made the best stock. Conventional stock came in second place, and stock made with jiggle-valve style pressure cookers came in last. These seemed to vent the most steam. I have no experience with pressure cookers, and am having trouble getting a sense of what other cookers work similarly to the Kuhn rikons. I'd like an alternative, since the 8 and 12 quart kr cookers cost a fortune. To obscure things a bit, I just found a Cooks Illustrated article on pressure cookers, which rated a Fagor duo much more highly than a KR. I wouldn't normally give this magazine any weight compared with Cooking Issues, but they measured evaporative loss, and found the kr lost more. It looks like Fagor has many different model lines ... Maybe some are different from the model tested by Cooking Issues. Any thought? Does anyone know of a 10 or 12 quart pressure cooker that vents minimally (like the KR) but for less money? Any specific experience with the Fagor Duo?

I don't know ... that's a good point. I guess when I use the oven it's usually at 170 or 180.

Has anyone done this? My oven is often busy and too hot when I need to warm plates. But if there's a tub full of water between 120 and 185F, either left over or still cooking something, why not drop the plates in? pluck them out with tongs / silicone hot pad, wipe dry, and presto.

Ahhh, ok, thanks. I missed your earlier post on the trehalose. That's an interesting application for it. Re: rotovap ... I've been coveting one for years. Ruben is right that it's not necessary. But you could say the same thing about ice cream ...

I'm interested in the foam less to prevent condensation than to prevent energy waste.