haresfur

Sous vide and pressure cooking are merely different methods for precisely controlling cooking temperature. They share this commonality with another important cooking technique called "boiling". SV isn't any more "gentle" than other techniques, it however, is fancier because you can control the set temperature.

It can be a pain sorting out all the advice on times and temperatures. The precision means that you can fuss a lot dialing in your results but that doesn't mean you have to worry about it any more than you do with other cooking methods. I'll be a heretic and say that for meat (not fish or veg) you won't go too far wrong adjusting out from 60 C for 1 hour for tender meat and 2 days for tough. Ok for steak you might want to drop the temperature down to somewhere between 55 and 58 but cook one and it will work. For a thin steak 1 hour is longer than you need but won't hurt. For a fat roast you want to go longer but just take a guess and she'll be right. Chicken breast I sometimes like a couple of degrees lower and sometimes a couple of degrees higher. Pork maybe a degree or two lower but no big deal. Relax, don't worry.

I've used Besan to keep yogurt from separating and it works. Don't know how it does as a thickener.

Well then, cooking in clay on the stovetop probably isn't for you. And that's just fine. Do what makes you smile. I am willing to take the small risk (although I don't own an earthenware bean pot, unfortunately). They have been shown to work well with proper care and a mess on the stove is probably the worst that would happen.

There is nothing wrong with being passionate about your work. No one complains if a cook loves the food they are selling. It does get complicated since the clay does vary - even within the same deposit and is affected by how it is prepared. I have heard that in China, some potters aged clay for one or two generations. The time and temperature of firing has a big effect. And then there is the skill in making the pot that is critical to the strength. I'm out of touch since I haven't been doing pottery for a while but I'll try to answer any questions if I can. I will say that all this is a good reason to buy from a reputable source who buys from potters with a record for producing quality pots.

Ok, Ceramics-101. Not complete but this should give you an idea of the differences. Lets start at the dawn of time. People found that mud containing a lot of clay minerals (not that they knew about clay minerals) was plastic and could be formed into pots. The first pots, at least in some areas were formed by pressing into baskets. When set on a fire the pots became permanently firm and could be used to hold liquids. Other materials like granite sand or mica were sometimes added to the pots for strength. The early pots were fired to low temperatures and remained porous. But that doesn't mean it is an inferior thing - just different and with different properties. Many modern ceramics are low-fire like earthenware, terracotta, bricks, roof tiles and some cooking pots. Stick your tongue on one and you can feel the saliva being sucked out into the clay body. The ability to absorb moisture changes the way food cooks in these pots. Romertopf pots are used by soaking in water first to saturate the porous clay and then they slowly dry during cooking. If you want to make an earthenware pot more waterproof, then you have to glaze it. It is actually quite difficult to make a good earthenware glaze unless you use lead, which is frowned upon these days. If you fire clay to a higher temperature chemical changes take place - mainly formation of the mineral mullite. The clay becomes denser and much less porous. The mullite binds the particles together and the clay body is much stronger. The pots made this way are called stoneware. If you take a very white clay and fire it to very high temperatures, to the point where it just starts to vitrify (becomes glassy), it turns translucent and is a true porcelain. So, what about thermal shock? Solids expand when heated. So uneven heating can set up stress and cause the material to break. Glazed pots have different material at the surface from the body and this can make the problem worse because of the differences in thermal expansion between the glaze and clay. Low-fire clay has a different problem - if heated too fast, water in the porous clay can turn to steam rapidly enough to crack the pot. These problems can be avoided in ovens by heating and cooling the pots slowly. Same thing for stove tops but there will always be a pretty strong thermal gradient between the bottom and top of the pot. Earthenware actually handles this gradient quite well because there is a bit of flex in the clay structure. You typically won't find a stoneware that can be used on the stove top. Some modern ceramics get around the differential thermal expansion problem by formulating a clay body with low expansion. This is done by adding a lot of lithium, usually in the form of the mineral spodumene. The glaze has to have an expansion that matches the body. The pots are non-porous. I'm guessing this is how the Emil-Henry pots are made. So the Mexican pots and the 'flameware' pots have completely different properties and strategies for managing the problems of stovetop use. Either one can be damaged if pushed beyond its limits but both are well suited to the job. But because of the different properties, the cooking results will be different. I think that the ceramic flameware won't make a huge difference from cooking in metal - neither is porous. Earthenware like the Mexican pots will produce some interaction between the moisture in the pot and in the food and will provide reasonable insulation on the upper surface so it may be more like a mixture of stovetop and oven. I don't know - the proof will be in the tasting. As an aside, a flameware tagine will benefit from the lower thermal conductivity of the ceramic so the liquid condenses on the top and bastes back down, but it won't have the same properties as an earthenware one. On the other hand, I'm more confident about browning meat in the bottom of mine (gently) and it sure is easy to clean.

I have been remiss in keeping up with this topic. I had some early self-seeded lettuce that didn't seem to grow up before it bolted. I did get a few thinings though. Snow peas were a failure this year as were broad beans. But I think I may actually get some tomatoes that I started from seed. I have about 6 healthy plants and a few more that are trying hard. The heat started early this year so we will see how other things go. The butternut look promising so far. I'm quite pleased with my high-line tomato staking system this year:

Inner Circle rum makes a very adult Sazerac.

I'd still just go with a diffuser and the electric. I don't understand why there would be an advantage to gas. My caution above relates to a recall of many of those small gas burners here. I tend to be pretty cavalier about these things but think you should know enough to make a considered decision.

Belted Galloway beef short ribs on the bone at 61 degrees for 72 hours (more or less per MCAH) in the vac-pack they came in. Then bones & fat removed lightly shredded and reheated in commercial Australian bush tomato bbq sauce. I don't think this is a good use of SV because life would be much easier and probably tastier if the temp was high enough to render the fat.

I don't know why any cheap stove top heat diffuser wouldn't work. Camp stoves shouldn't be used indoors because of carbon monoxide danger. I would at least use the stove on the balcony until management catches you.

... pour from a container of dry ingredients in the pantry into a cook pot without thoroughly checking for pantry moths, no matter how well sealed or even if new.

What's the big advantage of a small circulator? I find most of the time I wish mine was longer so I had more flexibility in the bath I use. I have a surgically-enhanced Esky/Cooler that fits the circulator through the lid but it doesn't reach very deep so I use more water than necessary for small batches. Maybe that's not a major issue for some, but I don't see the current size as a too large.

FWW, you can get close out Anova 1s for $79 US right now.

Yesterday, sous vide boneless turkey meat for 50 min at 61.5 C. Diced and re-bagged with mole then heated to 62.5 for about 15 minutes. Carried the water bath Esky over hill and dale to Grandma's Chris' house and it was 57 degrees on arrival. I think the meat was spot on for flavour and texture.

Are you suggesting that he forgo eating the ear and make a silk purse out of it instead?

I suppose if you wanted to get fancy you could SV to medium rare through, increase the bath temperature to medium, SV until you have a layer with a bit more firmness, then blast the outside to brown. It would be like the gradient you get in a conventional steak except minimal well done layer.

Good. I'm not sure it's better than the french press - I think you would have to be careful to use the same coffee and grind. I did a decaf drip, too and it's good enough. All in all I think you need to be more of a geek than I am to get more than the entertainment value out of building a drip system. I'll probably keep using it for a while and maybe do a proper side-by side comparison next time you come up.

Is this for commercial or home use? Seems to me you can keep uncooked pork for a week - especially if vacuum sealed and properly refrigerated. Sous vide pasteurization will essentially reset the clock. If you unbag and cut it then it could be exposed to pathogens in the air but only on the outside and if you keep surfaces clean I would think it would be less risk than you get at a butcher. That being said, what I would do for me, isn't necessarily best practice.

I had one of those stirrers (great for mexican hot choc) but I don't see how you could get a proper flat white micro emulsion with it. Not that I'm very good at getting it with steam but it's very different from cap or latte if done right.

I respectfully disagree with Chris regarding tender steak, although he noted one big advantage for precooking/pasturising. I particularly like it for thicker steak because I'm a crap cook and the main advantage is knowing that the steak is cooked just right all the way through. So pick your temperature, SV, sear, no worries. The main thing is not to leave the meat in the sous vide too long or it will turn to mush. But it isn't that sensitive so you can put a steak in for 30 minutes to an hour and life is good. Another thing occurs to me is that there may be an advantage if you put a rub on your steak but don't want to brown it into oblivion during the sear. I have grown fond of Mt. Pepper berry on steak and it is pretty subtle. I wonder if it would turn out the same if I had to cook the steak through on the grill. Maybe or maybe not. Haven't tried the flipping thing but it seems to me you would still get a well done zone between the sear and the rare. But maybe not or maybe that's what you like. Bottom line IMO is to try things and find what makes you happy.

A perfect activity for sitting on the boat watching the sun go down.

I've been pretty happy with French-press cold brew, but that's never stopped me from playing with a different system, so here is my geek-brew setup. Bought an overly expensive ice-tea dispenser and attached a length of drip-irrigation tube to the spout, using some heat-persuasion. Put a plug in the end of the thick tube and run a thin drip tube down to an adjustable emitter. Fill the dispenser with ice and water and place on a high shelf. Run the drip tube down to an Aeropress with 50 g of coffee in since I'm aiming for ~500 mL and that's the ratio I use for the French press. I put a filter on top of the coffee, too to try to help prevent preferential flow tunneling through the coffee. The emitter was almost all the way off at first but I cranked it open a touch after a while. Another way you could control the flow is to have the water level just up to the tap on the dispenser and fill with lots of ice so the slow melting provides the water to the dispenser. Or you could change the height of the dispenser above the emitter to alter the head. Bonus points for developing a calibration curve by weighing the coffee flow vs. height. The whole contraption. It's still dripping so I don't have a report on the taste yet.

Thank you so much for providing us so much entertainment. Your efforts are appreciated. The Bondi Vet says that if you put a ring in a pigs nose they won't root up the dirt

We get the red fleshed kind here. Looks better than the bland taste IMO