KennethT

I've done dry ice ice cream both with dry ice directly in the bowl, and in a bath of denatured alcohol. The difference comes down to whether you want your ice cream carbonated or not. If doing the direct method, I recommend looking at the dry ice first (mine came in big blocks) - if it's pure white, it's fine, otherwise if you see any dirt, just scrape it off. Then break into chunks and throw in the food processor just before addintg to the ice cream - you can get a much more even distribution that way and guarantee that there are no big chunks for someone to potentially bite down on and frostbite their tongue.

There's no problem if you're equilibrium curing - I "over cured" the beef cheeks for the pastrami for 4 days or so, while they recommended 3 and it was perfect - definitely not too salty.

So here's the rundown of the highs and lows of the last set of experiments, including the pastrami incident. Note, most of the dishes were concepts or ideas taken from MC, not necessarily the full recipe verbatim: I sampled the pastrami about 28 hours before being served to anyone, and took a sample over twice the size of any that I'd be serving... after not feeling the slightest bit sick (and I don't have an iron stomach), I decided it was safe for consumption - also I knew that I had no immune compromised people being served. The wagyu beef cheek pastrami was a huge hit. I served it with the aromatic alsatian mustard, which was a little vinegary and loose because I misunderstood the instructions and pureed the mustard seeds with the soaking vinegar. All in all, still a hit though. Sous vide braised snails with garlic puree and parsley puree. The snails were awesome - great texture. The garlic puree is very unmodernist, but rather straight out of the pages of Bernard Loiseau - you basically blanch the garlic 8 times changing the water each time, then remove the germ and puree. I added a bit of vit. c powder to keep it from browning. Time consuming, but always a hit. The parsley puree was actually "Plan D" since plans A through C were failures. The first was a parsley wafer, adapting the spinach wafer from MC. The book says to dehydrate for 2 hours, but I could only get it solid after about 12 hours, at which point, it was still a bit dense, and bitter as it's basically pure parsley. The problem may be with my dehydrator, which is basically my pilot-less gas oven set as low as possible, with the door propped open by a wooden spoon. The thermometer in my oven read about 145-150F. Plan B was a parsley meringue, adapting the beet meringue from MC. The recipe says to pipe into a 2" thick mold and bake at 195 for 2 hours. I piped the parsley meringue into a 1-1/2" mold, but after 2 hours, it was not even close to set. After 6 hours, it was drier but still quite soft. I wondered if it would stiffen as it cooled, so I took it out of the oven. Big mistake! I watched it starting to deflate, and then quickly put it back in the oven overnight. The result was a stratified meringue - airy at the top, and progressively denser to the bottom. Plan C was a parlsey air from MC, but I couldn't get it to foam no matter how hard I tried. Maybe my parsley juice was too thick, or my hand blender not at the right angle, or depth or something... I'll have to experiment more with this later when I have more time. Plan D was to take the failed Plan C in a squeeze bottle and put a drop on each portion. Wild mushroom and goat cheese "taco", where the taco shell was made using the cornet recipe from the TK smoked salmon cones. Came out great - everyone loved the texture and flavor of the shell. Cocoa dusted Aerated Squab liver torchon, scented with star anise, and hazelnut. I actually couldn't do this out of the book because I odn't have the konjac yet, so I found a video of Wylie doing this online. Mine was a combination of his recipe and techniques from MC. So I sweated shallots in butter, and deglazed with Cognac, flambeed, then added to a bag with the squab livers. Cooked at 131 to pasteurize (since I wasn't using them for another few days). Reheated then pureed the whole bag, run through tamis. I hydrated agar in hot water, dissolved in gelatin, then emulsified into the squab livers with some egg yolk. Cooled by blending basically making an agar fluid gel. Put in mason jars and vac'd, then refrigerated. This technique worked really well - I'd definitely do it again - the liver had a great gaminess and consistency, but since it was aerated, wasn't as intense as a pure pate would have been.

Bob - thanks for your summary! So, I didn't get even remotely sick from my initial portion of the pastrami, and since my sample portion was over double the size of the portion I was giving to guests, I assumed it would be ok. Everyone loved it by the way - the flavor was great, with the smoke really coming through even though I only smoked it for 30 minutes or so in my stovetop smoker. I originally commented that the cheeks were a bit dry in my sample taste, but when slicing for the guests, I noticed it was much more gelatinous and juicy - it was really excellent.

Whenever I cook something for a long time, it is common to get the smell of the aromatics (not just smoke) into the bath water. My bath is covered, so it doesn't get into the kitchen too much, but if I open the cover, you get a large waft of aroma. The aroma is definitely going through the bag - I've seen this happen on sealed bags, as well as ziplocks - but the bag keeps its vacuum, so the seals are fine. Unless you get special bags, most plastic bags are semi-permeable to gases... I know that many vacuum bags will actually allow oxygen to move through it (albeit slowly), and the better bags (and more expensive) have several layers, one of which being either a metal foil, or mylar, which is much less permeable. This is the same as the sample bags of Activa shipped from Ajinomoto - the bags are layers of plastic and metal foil - so you can heat seal it, but the metal foil does an excellent job of keeping out oxygen, which would degrade the enzyme during storage.

Salting would increase these times, but I can't tell you by how much since I don't have MC at the office to see what the salt and nitrite levels are. I hope this information will help you make a more informed decision. It sounds like you could be on either side of the maximum cumulative exposure time (especially when factoring in safety margins and the salt and nitrite levels). OK, here's the total info.... the ratio is: 100% beef cheek 225% water 7.5% salt 1.5% Insta Cure #1 This sat in the fridge for 4 days for about 1.25" thick cheeks The cheeks were then removed from the brine, rubbed, and smoked for about 30 minutes on my stovetop smoker. The brine was boiled, with foam skimmed, then strained and cooled. The smoked cheeks were then bagged with 100% of the boiled brine and cooked at 144 for 72 hours, then taken out and put in an ice bath and forgotten about until the next day in a 65F room. As an aside, I tasted the pastrami and it is excellent as everyone says... although it may be a little drier than I remember Katz's pastrami being... Most of the raves are making this with short rib, so I'll have to try it again, minus the possible bacteria... If people don't hear from me after the next 18-36 hours, you can assume I'm in the hospital!!! haha....

I wonder if 2 days at 131 is too long... I don't have much experience with it but isn't eye of round relatively tender? I think that's what is typically used raw in pho bo, sliced thin... called tai. That would account for the mushy, pasty texture. I would probably try cooking at 131 just to temp and trying it then. If it's tough, you can give it more time, but I definitely wouldn't go more than 24 hours. There's not nearly enough connective tissue in it for that.

Douglas, thanks so much for weighing in on this. Unfortunately, I didn't check the temp. because I didn't discover it - my wife did... I can pretty safely say that it wasn't higher than 65F since we keep the apartment pretty cool, and I know I left the a/c on last night - so the room temp definitely was not higher than that. I'd say I'm about at the borderline for B. Cereus and Perfrigens, based on your info, however I think I will be safe because of the salt and nitrite levels. Unfortunately I don't have the book with me either, but I'll check it once I get home, but the beef cheeks were completely cured (4 days in the equilibrium brine, with cheek thickness about 1") before cooking, not just a surface cure. I'm going to take the beef out of the re-pasteurizing bath tonight. And I think I'm going to eat a small-ish sample - since these are going to be used for 1 bit apps, I'll eat a few slices which will be double the amount that any guest would ever eat, but still not enough to seriously get me sick (I don't think). If I get even the slightest bit uncomfortable by the next day, I won't serve it. Otherwise, I think it'll be good to go - I'll just make sure to keep the portion size small!!!

Thanks for the response Maxime! I always look forward to your team's postings - it is wonderful to be able to interact with the authors of the book in this way. To everyone: I am currently aging the aromatic alsatian mustard to go with my pastrami (hopefully!), and, like Chris, misunderstood the directions and added the mustard seeds and the soaking vinegar, so the mustard is quite thin... What do you think is the best way to solve this issue? I could probably thicken the mustard with agar or xanthan, but I assume (I haven't tasted it yet) that it will be too vinegar-y.... Any ideas? Chris, how did yours turn out?

I did the same thing with six nice rib-eye's -- bagged them up with the chamber vacuum, then left them sitting on the counter! Repasteurization MIGHT be safe, but I would first open the package and smell it. You might have lactic acid build up, which although relatively benign, won't taste or smell very good. I'd say it was time to head for the local deli. Bob For sure, if after re-pasteurizing I open the bag and it stinks I'll go in the garbage... but it doesn't have to stink to not be safe... From what I gather, heading to the corner deli would not be a good substitute for this pastrami (that stuff shoudln't even be called pastrami as it's usually a disgrace) - in fact, Katz's is not far from me, and I gather they've got nothin' on this pastrami either! I was hoping to use this as an additional proof to the claim...

On a related note to Bob's issue, I made a major mistake last night. I was making the MC beef cheek pastrami for a party for Saturday, which involves brining (with nitrates) for 3-4 days, then cooking SV at 144F for 3 days - so it's a big time investment and impossible to recreate for tomorrow to say the least... So, late last night, I took the bag out of the waterbath and put it in a bowl of ice water in the sink to cool. Unfortunately, my wife discovered it still in the sink about 20 minutes ago!!!! I'm going to assume that the ice water bath had gotten to room temp or so probably about 8 hours ago or so. Granted, this is not nearly as bad as the 120F incubator, but I think it's bad enough to consider all the issues. I was considering putting it back into a 140F bath for 6 hours or so to re-pasteurize... any thoughts about this? I'm not worried about botulism, since it was done in a zip lock bag which had plenty of residual oxygen to inhibit that. Thanks in advance for everyone's thoughts - I'd really like to not have to throw these away, but I don't want to get a bunch of people sick either.

I don't think this would cause a major problem, as long as your waterbath water is clean... Did you bag the ribs with any liquid in the bag or were they dry? Did any of the bags have any air in it? I had a small leak a long time ago, and I never saw waterbath water get into the bag - but some juices came out... that was years ago, and I'm still here!

ACK!!! My wife just discovered my 2 wagyu beef cheeks that had equilib. brined for 4 days, smoked, and then SV for 3 days for the pastrami.... in the SINK!!! I took them out of the water bath late last night, put them in a bowl of ice water in the sink to chill rapidly for a party on Saturday... I forgot to put them in the refrigerator before I went to bed - so they've been sitting at room temp for who knows how many hours!!! I was thinking about putting them in a 140F waterbath for 6 hours or so to completely re-pasteurize... anyone have any thoughts about this??? Thanks...

You mean Apiary, right?

Be careful with Activa. Once it's opened and exposed to air it degrades fairly rapidly (or at least that's what they say). I keep my opened pack vacuum sealed and in the freezer as per Ajinomoto's recommendation. I have read (on another eG topic) that some people report decent shelf life for opened packs, but I've not heard of keeping it at room temperature, and I don't want to waste any by trying it out. Cheers, Peter. Hi Peter, Thanks for that. That's kind of what I'm hearing also. It's good to get the information about vacuum packaging and freezing it. I'll definitely do that with what I get. What percent vacuum do you use? I guess over time we'll be the test subjects for shelf life. Regards, Larry Edited for spelling Larry, I've had a sample package of GS that has recently celebrated its 2 year birthday since first being opened. I think it's important to say though, that I'm neurotic about how it's kept. When I plan on using it, I take it out of the non-defrosting chest freezer only long enough to remove the amount I need. I then press as much of the air from the sample bag as I can, and heat seal it shut, then put that in a vacuum bag and remove the air again with my foodsaver (my chamber vac is still in the works). I do it this way because my foodsaver would suck the powder into the pump - which you won't ahve a problem with your chamber vac. The original ajinomoto bag that holds the sample has a metal foil layer and is very good at keeping oxygen out, unlike most plastic vacuum bags. They also have an oxygen absorber in the bag to absorb any residual oxygen. I've actually added more oxygen absorbers as time has gone on, becasue I don't know how effective the original one is anymore. So, if you want to distribute the RM, I'd do the same thing - get a pack of either Mylar or foil lined bags, and stick an oxygen absorber in there with them, and you should be good to go.

Kenneth, just to make absolutely sure that I don't kill someone, please read my response to e-monster, above, and DON'T DO WHAT I WAS SUGGESTING IN MY EXPERIMENT! Bob Bob - exactly... it occurred to me after I had written the last post, which is why I edited it to bring up the safety issue... I'm glad you didn't try eating your experiment!

Kenneth, you may very well be right. However, it certainly isn't obvious to me, at least, that 131F will kill off all enzymatic activity, such that subsequent holding at 120F would then essentially do nothing. Do you believe that it is enzymes that converts collagen to gelatin? I though that was mostly just due to heat? I suppose enzymes must play a role, somehow, but I don't know at what point they would be come deactivated. But I doubt it is as low as 131F. I do understand that lowering the temperature after cooking meat for a relatively short while doesn't somehow "undo" the previous higher temperature, and make the meat go into reverse!. But on the other hand, it is not obvious that cooking something for say two hours at 131 followed by 48 hours at 120 is going to produce an identical result to holding the meat at 131 for the entire time. Certainly we know that as meat cooks, particularly at higher temperates (like in a braise), the muscle fibers contract and squeeze out the juice, and that is what causes an overdone piece of meat to become dry and tough. But it isn't obvious that this takes place instantaneously, such that once it's been subjected to 131F, that's it, and nothing more is ever going to happen. I therefore think that an experiment is in order. I happen to have a couple of pieces of chuck in the freezer, and sufficient SV apparatus to cook both simultaneously at two different temperatures, beginning later this afternoon for dinner tomorrow night. These are 30mm thick, so they will take 1:23 to come up to temperature, after which I will hold them for 90 minutes to pasteurize them throughout. I will then lower the temperature on one to 120F/50C, and keep the other at 131/55C, and taste the difference after 24 hours. Fair? Robert - I am not a food scientist, so I can't say that I know the answers to your questions. But, I am an engineer, and scientifically minded, and like knowing how things work. I don't have the book in front of me, but my memory of reading MC was that most of the enzymes deactivate somewhere above 123-124 degrees. I don't know if that's all, or just some, or most... but I do know that once deactivated, they do not reactivate. From what I've read, it seems that meat undergoes tenderization via several mechanisms - enzymatic happening around and just above body temperature, which is a completely separate mechanism from collagen denaturing. One has nothing to do with the other - while they may go on simultaneously. I remember Nathan saying in the old sous vide thread that collagen does denature into gelatin at low temperatures such as 122 degrees, but very very slowly. Collagen denaturing isn't like flipping a switch in that it's on or off, it's a gradual, logarithmic increase where it accelerates as temperature increases. If I had to guess, I would assume that meat cooked to 131 for 2 hours, then held for 22 hours at 120 would be less tender than meat held at 131 for 24 hours because the collagen denaturing will happen more quickly at 131 than 120. At 120, it's barely creeping along. But, I'm very eager to see the results of your experiment! Another thing to do is to do a search in the sous vide thread (not sure if it's in the old one or new one) for PedgroG's post regarding "turbo-aging" as I think he called it. I think he held meat at various temperatures (increasing) to take advantage of the various enzymes that deactivate at various temperatures. If I have a minute, I'll look for that post and put a link to it... ETA: also - from a safety perspective, I don't know how safe it is to hold meat at 120 for 22 hours, even if it's been pasteurized. In MC, they describe that if you are to enzymatically tenderize, you are to get rid of surface bacteria by dunking in boiling water for 15 seconds (or torching/searing) and then hold at 122 for no more than 4 hours, then put immediately into a pasteurizing cooking bath. 2 hours at 131 may cause a 6.5D reduction in bacteria (or something around there, I haven't done the math to see what the actual reduction would be after 2 hours), but the spores are still alive, and I'd imagine would be very active at 120F!! Just something to think about! ETA (again): here's the link that I mentioned. PedroG, as usual, gives a very thorough treatment in this post, and in the posts linked from it.

The issue here is tenderness vs. food safety. Chuck at 125 F for 48-72 hours would certainly be tender, but probably not safe. You can do anything you'd like if the food is not outside of the 4F-131F danger zone for more than four hours until it is eaten -- you can even eat it raw, like beef tartare. Unfortunately, the tougher cuts of meat, such as chuck or brisket, simply won't become tender at those low temperatures for such relatively short times. Instead, they take 24 to as much as 72 hours to turn the collagen sinews into gelatin. By cooking at 131F, you are effectively pasteurizing the beef, and thereby avoiding the potentially nasty bacteriological problems you might otherwise encounter. (I'm assuming here that you don't have access to a nuclear reactor or other way of irradiating your meat!) So you have a choice. If you like your steak really rare, buy a filet or a rib-eye, and cook it at 120F the way I do, and then post-sear briefly with a torch or a hot pan (I use both simultaneously). But if you want delicious flavor and reasonable tenderness at $2.50 a pound rather than $10+ a pound, try cooking a 70mm chuck steak for 24 hours at 131F, or a brisket for 72 hours. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. It won't be blood-red, still-bawling rare, but it certainly won't be a gray medium, either. One more thing, and this is something that I haven't tried yet, but Modernist Cuisine talks about a two-stage cooking technique, where the meat might be cooked at 120F for up to four hours for flavor/tenderness, and then briefly heated to say 131F for the desired amount of doneness. I think it ought to be possible to reverse that approach, and heat the meat at 131F for just long enough to pasteurize it (see the tables in Douglas Baldwin's PDF), and then back off the heat to say 120 for as long as you'd like for tenderness. I don't know, and certainly can't guarantee, that this "backwards" approach would preserve the "rare" look and feel that you are looking for, but it might be worth a try, vs. cooking the meat for the whole time at 131F. Just a bit more on pre-searing and post-searing techniques. Many restaurants use a Jaccard to poke lots of tiny little holes in a steak before cooking it. By severing the meat fibers, it adds to the tenderness, and surprising, causes LESS juice to leak out, because the fibers don't contract as much. However, because of the strong possibility that the outside of the meat is contaminated, if you do use a Jaccard, you really ought to either pre-sear (very briefly -- maybe 15 seconds per side), or blanch the meat in boiling water for about the same amount of time, just to be sure. Also, I find that my Jaccard tends to compress the steak quite a bit, making them thinner than I would like (they then cook too fast when post-searing), so ask the butcher to cut them thicker than they usually do -- 60-70 mm is about right. (If Costco is Jaccarding their steaks before selling them, I would be very, very nervous, and would want to see their HAACP and how they are doing this.) With a nice thick steak, I can heat up a dry cast iron pan as high as my gas stove will go, throw in the steak, and while the bottom is cooking, hit the top of the steak with a MAP torch, then flip it briefly. Spritzing the surface before hand with a 4% corn syrup mixture (no high fructose syrup) will also help the Maillard reaction. This gives me about right tradeoff between having smoke and grease all over the kitchen (if I use something like grapeseed oil in the pan for even better browning), vs. the torch-only approach, which tends to burn the little bumps on the surface of the meat, but doesn't evenly brown the surface. If the steak is too thin, however, this double searing technique may overcook it, even if you SV at 120F. In that case you can compromise and use a cold cast iron pan and a torch, but in that case you might find that the steak is cold and underdone, depending on your taste. YMMV. And finally, adding the Scotch to the pan juices was a waste of good Scotch. It vaporized too quickly, make the whole kitchen smell like a distillery, and I couldn't taste any difference in the final result. Next time, I'll imbue the smokey flavor with the meat and the Scotch in my mouth! Robert, I don't think doing the reverse (131 first, then 120 second) will work, because holding at 120 increases tenderness due to enzymatic action. Cooking to 131 first will effectively denature all the enzymes so holding at 120 won't really do anything. Besides, once meat is cooked to a certain temp, you can't undo it by holding it at a lower temp. So once it's cooked though to 131, it'll never get more rare than that by holding at a lower temp. I've used the MC approach before, and it works great - sear the surface to kill any surface bacteria first (I do a quick once over with the torch - not for color, just to kill bacteria) then hold at 120 or 122 for a couple of hours. Then increase the temp of the bath to 131, and hold to pasteurize. Finally, a torched sear (this time for color and flavor). I find the best crust comes when I first spread some oil over the meat, and then use the torch - the oil layer seems to conduct the heat better than just the torch alone.

have you seen the "Cooking with Modernist Cuisine" forum????

Maybe I'm misunderstanding - but are you trying to expand the foam with a covered mason jar, or uncovered? In theory, you should put the cover on the jar pretty loosely, so air can escape, and put the whole thing in the chamber. When the air comes back in, the pressure seals the mason jar, keeping the vacuum inside the jar even though the chamber is pressurized. Then tighten the ring seal on the jar and put in the freezer. Once frozen, you should be able to let air back into the jar without compressing the foam. This is the same theory behind the aerated foie gras done by Wylie Dufresne... he uses a container with a one way valve and puts the whole thing in his vacuum chamber. When the air comes back into the chamber, the one way valve holds the vacuum inside his container and keeps his foie foam expanded. Then it goes into the refrigerator, where the agar and gelatin will set the structure so it is stable under normal pressure.

Szechuan Gourmet can be very busy at prime time on the weekends - I've seen them turn people away because the wait would be too long. I was there once on Friday at 8PM and it seemed like there was a tour bus full of Chinese tourists waiting for tables! I would recommend calling them that day for a reservation, or go on the earliesh side and you should be ok. During the week for dinner, you should be ok to walk in any time with little wait.

Those double and triple head models are pretty cool... but for the single, I prefer my torch on a 3 foot long hose... again, no tipping of the canister, and the canister can hang from my belt and I have tons of maneuverability!

If you're looking for japanese/sushi, I'd recommend Yasuda - you can order a couple of apps, then stagger the sushi so they pace it out and it can be very relaxing there. For szechuan, I'd recommend Szechuan Gourmet on 39th and 5th (or somewhere right around there, I forget) - I think their food is better than any szechuan in chinatown or even Flushing - a few friends and I (including one who grew up in Szechuan province) compared it to Spicy&Tasty in Flushing over a few meals, and for 9 out of 10, we found SG to be vastly superior.

Ha! Franken-duck... I am definitely guilty of this one... I did a lot of franken-ducks when I first got my Activa back in 2009! Can you believe the opened packages of GS are still good from then?!? In any case, I went a step further back then - I removed the skin and shaved the fat with a knife. Then I removed the piece of tendon that runs through the middle of the duck breast (which basically winds up almost butterflying it). I then glued the meat back together where the tendon was, and glued the almost fat-less skin back on top. After that, I salted (like a quick confit cure but only with salt), then after a few hours, washed off the salt, let dry, then stove-top smoked for about 15 minutes. The whole thing was then cooked SV at 131F or 135, I think, then chilled and sliced. I had a couple of problems back then - I don't know if I used too much activa, but the skin was stuck a little too much to the meat, if you know what I mean. Normal skin isn't completely bonded to the meat, but the above treatment (and yours too, Chris, from the look of the pics) makes it a little un-naturally stuck. I also once tried removing the skin, rendering the fat on a silpat in a hot oven, which also crisped the skin, and tried to then glue that on the raw duck to be cooked SV... but after cooking, it didn't glue so well and it was a pain because first you had to try to get rid of all the rendered duck fat. Chris, did cooking the skin at 131 render the fat? The first pic is post SV I assume?

Right - I thought the same thing - that the wires on the brush are so fine that they disappear. I'm still looking for a decent dog brush (there's no conveniently located pet shop), but I've been using a jaccard on the skin - just no pressing hard enough to go all teh way through the fat, and it works fine with no noticeable holes. And those blades are a lot bigger than the dog brush wires!