paulraphael

Yes. Measuring by weight will remove all guesswork. The choice of salt is much less significant.

is the question is about flavor subtleties? To make a pretty lazy generalization, the difference between chocolates could be summed up as the cocoa percentage (which does not always correlate with official cocoa solids number), the cocoa butter percentage, the sugar percentage, and finally the subtle flavor and aroma differences. The first three factors are structural and will make a difference in practically everything, although these differences can usually be compensated for if you understand them (use more or less chocolate, add cocoa butter or other fat, add or subtract sugar, etc.). The final factor, the subtle flavors, cannot really be compensated for. But its importance varies a lot from recipe to recipe. If you are adding other strong flavors, I doubt you'd be able to tell the difference. You'd have to have more sensitive palate than mine. I use the best chocolates when it's is the main event and there are no other strong flavors present. If I were adding liqueur or cinnamon, I don't think I could tell the difference between callebaut and michel cluizel. Even in brownies (a recipe I take seriously!) I usually use callebaut, because the difference with higher end chocolates seem minor. But when I make a ganache or a chocolate marquise, I use the best stuff I can afford, and the stuff with the flavor profile I want for the recipe.

FWIW, All salt has the same sodium content. Sea salt contains other trace elements (insignificant quantities), and anything sold as table salt can have up to 2% in additives (anti clumping stuff, iodide, etc... but I believe these have to be on the label).

I'd love to see some experimental evidence on foods cooked to pasteurization in ziplock freezer bags and stored at a range of standard fridge temperatures. Not really a home experiment. You'd want lots of samples, a few different types of food, and a range of fridge temperatures. Real life fridges add a lot of variables with their temperature swings. And you'd need a biology lab, and some agreed-upon standards.

Cool! Have you had these? (apologies if I've turned this into a wussiest chile thread)

A guy I worked with grew Habaneros in his garden. I don't know if he overwatered them or what, but they ended up with very little heat. You could eat them whole ... they were like pepperoncini. And they were delicious. Just incredible flavor. The idea of mild habaneros is probably sacrilege to the keepers of the faith, but I think it's worth exploring. I think it's also a reason my favorite hot sauces are habanero based.

I'm afraid of anything that spins nearly a thousand times as many RPMs as its price in dollars.

I don't know, but it seems like every year some newly-bred monster becomes pain champion. How much hotter must a pepper get?

Yeah, I'm way too squeamish to use a grinder on heat treated steel. I'm sure it can be done with great care. I was happy to pay Dave. He uses a belt sander on European knives ... fast, but not the kind of heat you get from a grinder. I did this when the knife needed other repairs. It's the only time I've hired a professional sharpener, although i've been tempted to send someone like him a high end knife just to see how much better he is than me.

Isn't a week as long as you'd ever do cook-chill?

For your short ribs are you treating them like a braise and cooking in liquid that becomes a sauce?

I think Serious Eats is right when it comes to relative short, dry cooking methods. But bones do seem to contribute if you’re doing a braise / stew / soup … long-cooked wet processes that can liberate marrow and gelatin into the broth. An interesting test would be split some short ribs into on- and off-bone sections, and sous-vide them simultaneously for a long time. If there’s a difference at the end (my money says there will be) you’d probably notice it in the cooking liquids more than the meat itself. Sous-vide would make this test easy, because the conditions could be otherwise identical for both batches. After geeking out with the blind test just mix them all together and call it dinner.

The bolster on my big German knife was too burly for me to reduce on my own. Regular stones weren't enough and I don't have a diamond stone or a belt sander. When I get a chance I'll post pics of what Dave Martell did to make the knife sharpenable. He did a nicer job than I would have.

No, that's the only problem. But it's considerable. It means that your knife will never be sharp at the butt end, and anything you do to try (short of grinding down the bolster entirely) will give you a misshapen edge that won't contact a cutting board properly. Considering that the bolster doesn't add anything, it's hard for me to come to any conclusion besides it being a flawed design.

I agree with you based on what I know. But Myhrvold does say otherwise. “Strictly speaking, vacuum packing is only required (as a safety measure and to prevent oxidation) for cook-chill sous vide, in which the food is stored after cooking.” and “Zip closure bags are inexpensive and available at any corner store. Althought not suitable for cook-chill sous-vide, they can work well in a pinch for improvising sous-vide packaging” I'm curious if there's any substance behind this. Might be that as you suggest, life without a vacuum machine is hust not a life he's ever imagined.

Yup. It's based on policy, not science. Pasteurization times and temperatures are well known. 140°F doesn't correspond with anything. Given time you'll kill all relevant pathogens at 131°F, and nothing multiplies above 126.1F. Here's one freely available source.

Dave Arnold and co. say yes, Nathan Myrhvold and co. say no. Dave makes a good case for it and says that 90% of sous-vide cooking can be done without a vacuum, and that his food saver has been relegated to re-sealing potato chips. Nathan doesn't give a reason. I don't understand why ziplocks couldn't be used for cook-chill applications. Don't we use them to store conventionally cooked food in the fridge? Thoughts?

Mine's on the way. Can't wait. Btw, I couldn't get a peep out of anyone at Anova about new product plans. The people at Studiokitchen are using something that may be a prototype ... it looks like Anova's $900 lab circulator model but with a polished metal finish.

The good news is that for about the same money, you can get a filter that will turn it back into water.

A few years ago a bunch of British chefs were trying to bring mutton back. They felt it had been unjustly maligned. I tried to get some from my butcher at the time, but no luck.

Thanks William. I'm just going to use it for a floating top. For longer cooks where I want the sides insulated I'll probably just use a cooler. Do people still like using this stuff, or is there a better solution?

Or the equivalent? I'm looking for enough to cover some small sous vide containers. It mostly seems to be sold in bulk for insulating an attic. Also curious if anyone has found particular models of cooler (in the 20-30 quart range) to be especially good for modification as a cooking container.

It's not chlorine causing the corrosion, it's chloride ions, which are present whenever salt is in solution. And regarding Edward’s point that the process requires more heat than what’s available in the kitchen, the type of reduction reaction we’re talking about is more active at low temperatures than high ones. Which is one reason brining in the fridge is potentially more corrosive than simmering a salty stock. And it explains the conventional advice not to throw salt into cold water (although the conventional reasoning is incorrect … it’s got nothing to do with undisolved salt, which is harmless). From the metallurgical sources I’ve found, there are two practices that are more likely than all the others to cause pitting in stainless: boiling a pan dry (especially if you don’t clean it immediately after), and storing it dirty (especially carbonized food stuck to it). From The Metals Handbook: If debris of any kind is allowed to accumulate on the surfaces of stainless steel equipment, it will reduce the accessibility of oxygen to the covered areas and pits may develop in such locations because of the reduced oxygen concentration. [...] ...carbon deposits from heated organic compounds are typical examples of this source of [pitting] corrosion of stainless steels.

dcarch, I agree that manufacturers' information is often dubious. For one example, you get wild stories from cast iron pan makers on how to season their products, few of them based on science. But everything I've posted about stainless steel will be backed up by every metalurgical site you check. I promise. Salt is considered a corrosive agent to stainless steels, including the 300 series steels used in most cookware. The conditions and the relevance of this corrosivenes are what's at issue. My opinion is that it's not generally an issue in the kitchen—but that it could be if you did some things you probably shouldn't. Edited to add: Here's the most thorough explanation I've found anywhere. Aaronut's answer.

Yes, I like these products ("quats") more than other sanitizers. Especially more than chlorine bleach, which wrecks towels and sponges and clothes, smells bad, and can theoretically attack stainless steel. Weak chlorine bleach sanitizers won't harm stainless in most kitchen situations ... it evaporates too quickly. I have a friend who brews beer, though, who tried to sanitize a stainless steel keg by filling it with a weak (swimming pool strength) bleach solution. He left it overnight, and by morning the solution had eaten all the way through and flooded his basement.