Chris Hennes

I've previously made a slightly-bastardized version of the Lentil Salad from the original Modernist Cuisine, and cooking lentils du puy sous vide is now my standard. Tonight I went the opposite direction, making the Pressure Cooked Lentil Salad from p. 175 of Modernist Cuisine at Home. In this particular case I actually had all of the necessary ingredients, unlike the one from Volume 5. It turned out reasonably well, though I think I'll go back to cooking the lentils sous vide, I have an easier time getting the texture I want. It's not as good as the full-up MC version, but it's still very good.

You've still got to have something full of water to use the Anova, no? That said, I get buying an SVS when it was the only game in town: I don't get buying one today, especially given the price of this new Anova Precision Cooker.

I think this is omitting the cost and availability factor: when it was released the Sous Vide Supreme was literally the only low-cost (readily-available non-hack) home sous vide machine. I think that its $479 retail price, and even $365 (current) Amazon.com price is really hard to justify now that we've got high-quality immersion circulators for $200 (the Anova Rev 1), $300 (the Nomiku), or $400 (the PolyScience). And now we've got the new Anova that will retail for even less. So you're paying double the money for... what, exactly? A quieter device? That seems like a stretch to me.

I agree about Bayless's frying technique, I've found it much more consistent and reliable than charring over a flame: you get a nice even cooking of the skin, which then comes right off. I do leave the stems on, though, since that's how I grab onto the chiles to manipulate them. Janet, how do you handle them if the stem is off?

Have you considered coding them up essentially as local web pages? You could easily package along some Javascript calculation routines to handle your tables, and with a bit of CSS magic you can make the books adapt to different screen sizes (relatively) easily. This might be a bit too "roll-your-own," but HTML5 gives you some pretty powerful tools to work with, and you wouldn't be tied to any particular device.

Interesting: you can see my results here, I didn't have stability problems at all. I wonder what the difference was?

When Modernist Cuisine at Home was released those two were the only game in town: since then the market has expanded greatly. I've got the original Anova and it works perfectly: there's a limit to how well you can heat up and stir water, after all! If you haven't already done so, I recommend reading the We Test the Anova, Sansaire, and Nomiku Sous-Vide Circulators at Serious Eats to give you an idea of how all these devices differ from one another. I think the big wildcard with this new one is how well the Bluetooth works and how buggy the software turns out to be.

Well, I went ahead and made the recipe as written (mostly: I added chicken to the soup). Here are the ingredients for the infusion: And the finished soup: I used the Masa Harina pasta recipe and cut it into ~5cm squares. Personally I'd have like quite a bit more cilantro flavor from the infusion, and wouldn't have objected to some additional textures in the soup itself. I think actually this would have been more intriguing served as a broth alone, without the noodles or chicken, because the broth did taste like tortilla soup on its own, which was kind of neat.

Has anyone tried to make the Tortilla Soup variation from Modernist Cuisine at Home? I'm making it for dinner tonight and I've got a question. At the top of the page, it lists a blanket set of directions for all of the soups on this page: The ingredients for the tortilla soup are chicken stock, canned tomatoes, onion, tortilla chips, jalapeño, cilantro, lime juice, and cumin seeds. It seems strange to me to use these ingredients (particularly the tortilla chips) solely as an infusion, then serving the soup as a plain noodles-and-broth affair. Has anyone had success with this?

Cindy - Welcome to the forums, great to see someone else from Oklahoma here (I live in Norman). The board automatically keeps track of what you've read, so you don't need to do it manually. To return to the last post you read in a topic, click on the blue circle (or star, if you've posted in the discussion) to the left of the topic name. You can also get a list of topics you have not read, sorted by most recent post, by clicking "View New Content" at the top of the screen and the changing the setting in the sidebar that appears on the left to "Content I have not read". Chris

I've made the pastry cream from Modernist Cuisine at Home with good results: the ratios are Heavy cream 100% Whole milk 100% Sugar 64% Salt .3% Egg yolks 200% Butter 50% The egg yolks are cooked at 80°C for 35 minutes and then blended with the remaining ingredients (potentially after the cream has been infused with a flavoring).

Having ice below freezing is less effective at cooling your drink than you would think, since the vast majority of the cooling action is coming from the phase change, not increasing the ice's temperature. This is not to say it won't have an effect, but the main benefit is from keeping the ice drier, not in more effective cooling of the drink.

Salt takes time to act: are you cooking right after grinding?

I'd be concerned about it freezing into one big block if you just tried to chill the wet ice down.

If I recall correctly the real problem with poor ice is that it's wet. I think I recall reading about someone spinning it in a salad spinner before using it, but I've never tried that myself.

Peeled, quartered, and cooked at 85°C for one hour. Sometimes with butter.

The potatoes I like the best are the Pommes Sarladaises from Modernist Cuisine, p. 3•178. They are sliced thin and bagged with water, duck fat, garlic, salt, and thyme. Cook at 88°C for 20 minutes.

I sous vide vegetables regularly: the trick is, as paulraphael notes, that you can't just toss it in and forget about it. Timing is important, unlike with short-term meat cooking. I agree that asparagus works very well, as do pearl onions, potatoes, rutabaga, and parsnips.

Ars Technica did a series on this a few months ago where one of their writers ate it for a week. The final shipping product has some changes that address a few of the issues he brought up, but I don't expect that Soylent is going to get a lot of traction around here!

For the record, in Under Pressure Keller quarters the fennel bulbs and cooks at 85°C for 40 minutes, until completely tender.

What texture are you trying to end up with? Still some crisp, or cooked until soft?

NOTE: the discussion of the new Anova Precision Cooker and its associated Kickstarter campaign can be found in this topic.

I'm very partial to chuck: more fat than you might like, but I've always managed to find a use for it. I've never found round to have much flavor by comparison.

For those of you bringing chocolate to Vegas: how are you transporting it?

I was unable to find a replacement part when mine died, so I wound up switching to the Anova.