Chris Hennes

Not just the equipment list, did you see the photo of their kitchen?! Holy hell. I want.

What else have you got to do standing in line? Surely you can at least give us a teaser...

As with most words in the English language, that all depends on where you are, Mike. In the northern US the word BBQ is frequently used to mean "an outdoor gathering with a grill involved"; in Australia, a BBQ is synonymous with what we would call a grill here. I think it's sort of funny that no one thinks to assert that calling a "french fry" a "chip" is "wrong", but using the word "barbecue" to mean anything other than "smoking low and slow" is met with such derision.

This morning I started writing the WikiGullet article on Chorizo, so naturally turned to Diana Kennedy's books for information about Mexican chorizo. To my surprise, it's not at all what I expected! I have eaten and made many Mexican chorizos, all of which followed the same basic formula of being flavored primarily by chiles: so when I came across Chorizo Verde I was a little shocked! It all makes me wonder: what other sorts of "Chorizo" exist in Mexican cuisine that I have never heard of? Presumably there are a zillion regional variants?

You can buy an awful lot of propylene glycol alginate for the price of a Thermomix!

Yeah, but how is the floor?!

Max - Nice articles, good to have you digging around in there. The "wiki" way to do what you want is to use so-called "named references." Here's an example: Bacon is made from pork belly.<ref name="Ruhlman">{{Book ref|ISBN=0-393-05829-8}}</ref> It is cured with salt, sugar, and flavorings.<ref name="Ruhlman"/> As you can see, the second reference doesn't doesn't actually list the reference information, it just tells the software that you want it to re-use the reference with the name "Ruhlman". Does that make sense?

Does anyone know if when he calls for "raspberry puree" he is looking for fresh-raspberry-strength, or reduced by some factor?

I used dried shiitakes from the local Asian market, whizzed in the food processor to a fine powder.

I am actually making this soup now. Unfortunately my centrifuge is out at the repair shop so I will not be centrifuging the juice needed for the second part of the recipe. I figured I would try the recipe without the CF juice first and then pay a visit to Dave Arnold at the FCI with my 645 gr of juice and have him spin it for me and try it again to see the difference. I'm making this this week as well: are you just using normal carrot juice, or omitting it entirely?

Gorgeous, Nick. Tell us about the texture of those ribs....

I've made this stock as written in the recipe (not the parametric variation), and I believe the reason it doesn't call for browning the meat is simply because it's a "white" stock. I didn't brown mine and it turned out fine. I don't know about the differences in suggested scalings.

I wonder if that's actually true in your lungs though. The pH of meat is considerable lower than living tissue, for example. I don't think it's a sure thing that it will actually be able to do its protein bonding trick in the environment of your lungs: of course it may, but it's also a very, very fine powder. And I certainly don't sand drywall without a mask! It's not that it will kill you instantly, it's that it'll kill you over time...

Inhaling sawdust (or any other small particles) is quite bad for you.

Please someone correct me if I am wrong, but my understanding of the inhalation hazard with Activa is the same as with fine sawdust and the like, and is not specific to the enzyme itself. Is that not the case?

I had my copy sent to me by my close personal friend Jeff Bezos: I asked him to send it to me last summer (even as close as we are, I felt it was important to get my request in early...and the bastard even charged me for it! Some friend...). I think the current estimate is that the next batch of 25k books will be stateside in a few months.

RDaneel, indeed, I think the cheese slice and the mushroom ketchup are the two elements of that burger that have the biggest impact above and beyond a conventional homemade burger. The bun, glaze, and grinding method do their part, but the cheese and the ketchup... wow. I made another burger for lunch today with some of the leftover ground beef: no bacon, no glaze, just the bun, ketchup, cheese, and the same burger blend albeit a day old. It was still a great burger (though admittedly not AS great). Tonight I ate some of the Modernist pulled pork: in this recipe you smoke at low-ish temperature (150°F) for seven hours, then bag it up and sous vide for 72 hours at 150°F. Unfortunately I misread the recipe and put mine in at 160°F, so I pulled it out after about 42 hours. The collagen was just... gone. Vanished. Hydrolized/denatured/gelatinized, whatever you want to call it, it made shredding a very easy task, and the texture fantastic. The smoke flavor had also more-or-less completely permeated the entire shoulder (actual half shoulder, which is all I made). I have got to try this at the correct temperature, because even screwed up like this the result was easily the best pulled pork I've ever made. Texturally it was also the best I've ever had. Flavor-wise, the pork I used was standard-issue and not really that great: I've had some mighty fine pulled pork from heritage breeds. Next time I do this (and there will certainly be a next time) I'm going to get a nicer shoulder to work with. But the barbecue sauce... oh my. I love these Carolina-style vinegar-heavy sauces, especially on pork. This one is basically vinegar flavored with red pepper flakes and black pepper, sweetened with some ketchup and some maple syrup. No "crazy" modernist stuff going on, just straight-up great barbecue sauce. I served the pulled pork as sandwiches on the buns from yesterday's burgers, toasted in a bit of butter. They were excellent. Here is the unadorned pork: And the assembled sandwich:

Yay, my box just arrived, containing among other things the vinegar and piloncillo. That vinegar is fascinating stuff: besides the ice cream topping thing, what else can I do with it?

I just made the Lexington-style BBQ sauce for tonight's pulled pork: it's a great, classic rendition of the sauce. Really acidic, and really spicy. Looking forward to these sandwiches...

I think so, yes: the burger was only barely coherent, and when you bit into it you went right through. It still had some bite when you were actually chewing it, but it didn't have much if any resilience on the bun. Which is part of why you need a good soft bun. I want to play some more with the technique, since my fibers were only well-aligned in the middle of the burger, not towards the edges. And I'm not sure it's really worth the effort, even given that it seems to make a difference: I find that carefully-made conventionally-ground patties can come pretty close to this almost-falling-apart texture.

Yes. Or at least, she liked the burger as a whole, including the ketchup. It's not like it really tastes like mushrooms, after all.

My guess is that a chain of errors in the Amazon.ca warehouse occurred. If you've ever seen one of those "How do they do it?"-type shows, the warehouse is pretty neat. Robots bring items to the packers, they drop them into boxes as the computer instructs, and off they go. But I can imagine a scenario where when the robot shows up with a big box, and the packer is expecting a book, they just dive into the box and grab a book off the top of what they presume to be a stack of identical books. Later on, when the shipping weight gets checked and flagged, someone overrides the computer because hey, how could one book weigh 50 pounds?! Innocent mistake, but wow, big oops! [Moderator note: This topic continues here, "Modernist Cuisine" by Myhrvold, Young & Bilet (Part 2)]

The Burger Lives (Briefly) Phew. Note number one: you must enjoy cooking to even contemplate a project like this. If you don't have fun doing it, there is no way to justify making this burger. Let me be clear: the burger was friggin' awesome. But it also took me something like three times the amount of time the recipe suggested it would. I'm thinking those timings assume that you actually know what you are doing, and aren't just some hack off the internet. So, let's dive in, shall we? First up, the bun, as discussed above. Brushed with rendered beef fat (recipe says suet, I used chuck) and fried 'till crispy: Next up, the insanely complex mushroom ketchup, a.k.a. Umami Overdrive, also discussed above: Now, the short-rib patty with the attempted strand alignment was cooked for two hours sous vide (in a ziploc on the stove: you're not supposed to vacuum seal it, and my sous vide rig is currently harboring a pork shoulder at a much higher temperature). I cooked it at 135°F as a compromise between Nathan's recommended temp and my wife's desire for a well-done burger. It then gets seared off quickly: my sear was in bacon fat, because it was handy. Now on to the reconstructed cheese slice: this is applied in the pan for the last two minutes of cooking. Of course, by design it melts beautifully. It's a blend of Emmenthal and Comté, as suggested in the book for the Mushroom Swiss burger. Now, the real divergence. The real recipe calls for a vacuum-compressed tomato, some vacuum-infused lettuce, and a sauteed Maitake mushroom. I don't have a chamber vac, don't have access to tomatoes worth eating like that, my wife doesn't like mushrooms, and hell: who really needs vegetables anyway? Enter bacon: Next up the glaze, made from beef broth, tomato confit, rendered beef fat, and smoked salt (my salt was unsmoked, I'm sure the bacon made up for it): Finally, the finished burger (top bun got the same treatment as the bottom): The really fascinating thing about this burger for me was how, despite the huge number of components, all the flavors melded perfectly, the whole greater than the sum of its parts (and those parts were mighty fine...). My wife asked after her first bite, "What is the dominant flavor supposed to be?" There isn't one: it's beefy, cheesy, vinegary, umami-y, bacony, crispy, soft, beautiful; everything in balance. But wow, the effort to achieve the result! It was a ton of fun, and I'll certainly borrow bits and pieces for my regular burger routine (hello, mushroom ketchup). But you've got to file this burger under "cooking for fun" not "let's get dinner on the table." It is, however, a demonstration of what the Modernist thought process can get you: reject the notion that the burger is already perfect, and examine each individual component, and each individual component's components, and ask "can this be improved upon?" Look closely enough and you'll be surprised by how often the answer is "yes, of course, as long as time is no object!"

It's just for flavor and liquid, not the alcohol. They have a table called Best Bets for Constructed Cheeses that lists a number of other potential cheese/liquid combinations including a number with water.

Behold: