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RobC

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Everything posted by RobC

  1. Ha! Lunch at Galatoire's, followed by lunch at Commander's Palace. Respect.
  2. " . . . a little discomfort most likely attributed to overeating." Seems like a sound hypothesis. Thanks for the fascinating trip report, and for all your great stuff here and on Twitter. If the NYT had a brain in its corporate head, they'd hire you to replace Frank Bruni.
  3. Anybody who orders a side of sausage to go with their steak is okay in my book.
  4. Sorry I confused you with the term "home cook." I meant pretty much what Thomas Keller means on page 38 where he write about making the dishes "manageable for home cooks." You seem to feel it would be beneath TK to create recipes that are more manageable for home cooks; I'd be loath to attribute to him that level of arrogance, because he seems like a very decent and down-to-earth guy. And if TK doesn't have the time or interest to do so, it shouldn't be beyond the abilities of one of his large crew of assistants or indeed someone else the book's editor chooses to employ.The book is fine for what it is, a collection of highly complicated recipes from FL and ps. What it's not is a book that will help the vast majority of home chefs improve their SV skills. That's a pity and leaves a large hole in the publishing market.
  5. With FL and per se. There are a few references to Bouchon, but it doesn't appear to be the source of the recipes. The difficulty of the recipes is a combination of unusual cuts and ingredients, specific purveyors, some molecular gastronomy chemicals, and multi-part preparations of all the components of very refined dishes. There's nothing wrong with any of that, if what you're aiming to do is reproduce a dish at FL or ps. You could even dumb it down some yourself to make it more realistic for home cooking. My regret is that Keller didn't expend a little effort in creating his own simplified, home kitchen-friendly version of some recipes. I'd love to know Keller's suggestion for tasty chicken breasts SV'd at home, for example. But that's most decidedly not this book. Mostly because of liquid in the bag, but sometimes also to achieve compression of fruits. I think it goes somewhat beyond coffee table fantasy material, but it will require a good deal of trial and error and ingenuity to simplify the recipes for use in ordinary home environments. That's something one would have wished the author or editor might have managed as part of the book. Would it have been too much to ask for them to publish a FL recipe and a counterpart recipe simplified for home use--something that surely wouldn't approach the real thing in finesse but would still rise above salting and peppering the damned chicken breast and tossing it in the bag? My sentiments exactly!
  6. I've been reading it today. For those who want to see how SV is done at FL and ps, it's great: terrific photos, lots of recipes from the restaurants. For those who'd like to cook those dishes in our own kitchens, it's a little disappointing. The recipes are as complicated and demanding as you'd expect in Keller's restaurants, which means they generally aren't very accessible for home cooks. Many pretty much demand chamber vacuum sealers, which most home SV cooks don't have. Even the use of metric quantities is less than user-friendly, though obviously not a deal-breaker. So it's a fine book, but it doesn't really provide the comprehensive guide for home SV cooking that I'd been hoping for.
  7. Thomas Keller's book, Under Pressure, shipped from Amazon today. There is a God.
  8. The container I've been using most often is a $5 Rubbermaid bucket. Works great, lightweight and easy to handle, and stores in the bottom of any closet. If cooking at high temperature, I place aluminum foil over the top to minimize evaporation. And for large quantities, I use . . . a larger oval bucket!
  9. Like e_monster, I did baby back pork ribs yesterday, inspired by Daniel's post a few days ago. I dry-rubbed the ribs for a day and a half (using the dry rub recipe in The Best Recipe from Cooks Illustrated), SV'd them for about 9 hours at 185F (the temp used by Daniel), and grilled them with bbq sauce (also using the recipe from The Best Recipe). So higher temp than e_monster used, and longer cooking time. The ribs were great, falling off the bone tender--in fact, the meat fell off the bone a little too readily for easy handling. But the texture was fine. I think next time I'll reduce the cooking time a bit and see if that leaves the meat on the bones a little better.
  10. When I got my FS Pro III I spent an hour with the instruction manual and on the Internet trying to figure out how I was supposed to set the "Sea Level" control. Only later did I look closer and see it was "Seal Level".
  11. Texture was fine, like grilled rib eye--tender but not at all mushy. I'd never cooked this particular cut before, and I was very happy with the result.
  12. The wine was frozen and placed in the SV bag.
  13. Same here. Cooking at target temp also avoids the need to recalibrate if starting temperature is different from that used by Nathan and the possibility of overcooking portions of cuts that are of varying thickness (e.g., chicken breasts). SV'd some beef chuck eye steaks tonight, browned and cooked with wine, tomato paste and herbs for 7.5 hours @ 131F. Powerful good.
  14. My own experience cooking shrimp to 113F was less than great. I ended up tossing them into a hot skillet with butter to give them a quick sear and firm up the texture. Others with more sophisticated tastes no doubt disagree.
  15. I'm thinking the same thing you are. If the meat had marinated for several days before you SV'd it, then sat for two additional days in the marinade as it cooked, that's at least 5 days of marination. If you'd been marinated for five days, you'd be mushy too.
  16. Like you, I did brisket at 147F for 48 hours, after first seasoning and browning the meat. The result wasn't at all mushy. In fact, I'd say it had better structural integrity than a brisket done in a traditional braise.
  17. Thanks for the update. We brisket lovers will look forward to future experiments. It's all in the interest of science!
  18. FWIW, Thomas Keller at FL uses 147° for 48 hours.
  19. I was trying to achieve the breakdown in collagen one gets from a slow braise, but it may well have been excessive--though the result was quite good. Neither of the briskets was falling apart; the lower temp version had the greater structural integrity. Compared to a traditional braise, the sous vide versions seemed much juicier (especially the lower temp brisket) and also less likely to shred.
  20. I did a small experiment this week with beef brisket. I divided the brisket in half and cooked the halves at different times and termperatures. Both halves were trimmed of fat, salted and peppered and browned, then rubbed with a little liquid smoke and sealed. One brisket was cooked at 190° for 24 hours. It was very good. The other brisket was cooked at 147° for 48 hours, which is apparently the procedure used at The French Laundry according to an NPR story a couple of years ago. The result was outstanding--juicy, tender, and so tasty it could make a blind man see. Both worked out well, but my vote goes to the longer cooking time and lower temperature.
  21. I've tried a number of options, including doing a little surgery on a plastic/foam cooler. The container I find myself using most often for one or two bags of food is a simple Rubbermaid bucket. The immersion circulator sits firmly on the rim, between the clamp's metal housing and the device, so there's no need to tighten the clamp. I haven't seen any deformation in the plastic from high temperatures.
  22. Thanks for the quick responses, and especially to Nathan for all the hard work he’s put in creating the charts. I do plan to sous vide at just above the target temperature and will, as Nathan and slkinsey suggest, ignore the resting time column. I continue to find some of the data entries anomalous. For example, the red meat chart (130°F final temperature) shows that with a 131°F bath, a 150 mm thick piece of meat has a resting time of more than 9 hours. Similar anomalies exist for all thicknesses 75 mm and above in a 131° bath. Below 75 mm in thickness, the resting time numbers make sense. There are some similar issues with the highest thickness entries in the white meat (140°F final temperature) chart. Because of the near congruity between cooking time and resting time at the higher thicknesses, I’m guessing there may be a data entry glitch. The alternative explanation is that there are fundamental laws of the universe that I’m powerless to understand—which come to think of it pretty much describes my attempt to slog through A Brief History of Time.
  23. Emboldened by all the great info on this forum, I’ve sprung for a FoodSaver Pro III and PolyScience thermal circulator and plan to sous vide my brains out. But after reading through all 39 pages of postings, I do have a few questions: 1. Nathan’s authoritative charts—or as I like to think of them, Nathan’s Famous Hot Logs—assume an initial temperature of 5°C/41°F. But Nathan also comments that “it is actually preferred to go straight from the freezer.” Can anyone offer a rule of thumb or guidance about how much one should increase the cooking times in the charts to compensate for food starting at freezer temperature? 2. As long as I’m being Mr. Curious, why does Nathan use 41°F as his starting point, when it was my understanding that preferred refrigerator temperature is between 35°F and 38°F? 3. I’m still having trouble getting my head around the “Rest time” column in Nathan’s charts. Nathan describes this column as “the time until the core temperature stops rising and starts to fall.” When the cooking temperature is roughly equal to the final temperature, the charts show a rest time essentially equal to the cook time. But wouldn’t it be the case that the core temperature would start to fall as soon as the food is removed from the water bath?
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