nickrey

Hi Jan, You may be able to get what you want from this thread on stock in a pressure cooker.

And if I become as germ-obsessed as it seems some are then I will soon follow you! I grew up without a refrigerator, often without hot water, and I am still here. I just think things can go too far in the direction of reasonable sanitation in a home kitchen. Hear, hear. And I think the advertisers and other people who purport to have miracle products that kill germs so you can "protect" your children are substantially responsible for this.

Prawncrackers, I liked the shot where you wrapped the linguini around the fork. I just would have taken the bread out of the shot.

Sausages.

That happened to me too when I went to a multi level yum cha restaurant and wound up on the level that seemed to exclude Europeans. The reason for the quietness was everyone was looking at my partner and I. That really was disconcerting. On the more general question, I think it is a by-product of modern, minimalist design principles. As I get older my hearing is not what it used to be (too many heavy rock concerts as a youth). Loud restaurants make it very difficult for me to hear my dining companions, which is an unpleasant experience that will lead me not to return to restaurant, no matter how good the food is.

People have a complex set of social reciprocity norms that lead to an almost reflexive response. The use of samples by vendors is based on one of these, the principle of reciprocity. If someone gives you something you feel obliged to do something in return. It's the same principle that made that Hare Krishna's wealthy giving out flowers or stickers in return for a, typically much higher value, cash donation. To avoid it, you can either refuse the sample, as a number of people have mentioned above or be aware that they are trying to persuade you and enjoy the sample whilst basking in your own ability to detect a con. The latter is harder than it sounds and may leave you with an uneasy feeling.

Holly, I'm with dcarch on his suggestions: the plate probably needed to be rotated about 45 degrees clockwise to bring more of the fries into the shot. It would have balanced the picture more. Also where I've seen backgrounds used effectively is to give a sense of place to the food. In this case, it doesn't really so I'd go for a tighter crop with the turned plate and with the fries more in alignment with the grain of the table.

I've just read one of Martin Lersh's excellent pieces at his site blog.khymos.org on a sous vide masterclass conducted by Bruno Goussault. One of the things that Goussault said was that when using cook-chill, you should use a step chilling process rather than plunging the hot cooked food into an ice bath (as is the recommended practice here). He proposed that this allows "readsorption of a portion of the exudated juices." Quoting from the blog: "A suggested stepwise cooling protocol for fish could be as follows: 10 min at room temperature, 10 min in cold water followed by 2 h in ice water." Any comments on the merit of this? Is some of the liquid readsorbed as Goussault proposes? If so, does the process have an impact on food hygiene? In other words, does it work and is it safe?

I'm curious, if you don't use your kitchen sink where do you wash the veggies?

I wonder if this is indicative of a trend? Recently I purchased a cookbook called Table By the River presenting cooking done by Dietmar Sawyere at his Sydney restaurant called Berowra Waters. In the recipes containing some form of meat, almost twice as many were cooked sous vide as were cooked using other means. Has anyone else come across an increase in sous-vide based recipes in generalist cookbooks as opposed to specialist sous vide titles?

You can modify the properties of the product to change this. Create a pork patty using the recommended sausage mix of 70% meat to 30% fat and you'll get a much more tender variant.

The brine solution used to store casings is around 25% salt.

I'd be more worried about inaccuracy in the temperature within the cooker as you won't be getting any natural convection to circulate the water in the SVS.

I've never had a taste of plastic in anything I have cooked sous vide and your temperature and cooking times are nothing out of the ordinary for those of us who do long cooks. You didn't mention what, if any, aromatics you enclosed with the meat. Something that you used may have contributed the taste. The only possible other source to my mind is the bags: I'd be trying a different type.

"Fitzroy, Melbourne," "no worries"? When did your travels take you to Oz? (edited to add: colloquial for Australia)

Bought some aged fillet steak today. I know I cook sous vide a lot but this was classical, as should be done with steak of this quality. Seared and served with a mushroom sauce. Served with carrots and green beans.

A coffee is a combination of the beans, the grind, the technique used, and the person making the coffee. If one of these elements is not functioning well, you can get shocking coffee. Even in cafes where they are using the same coffee and equipment, one barista can produce coffee nectar while another produces undrinkable swill. Good luck to you if you can make good coffees to your own taste using such comparatively rudimentary equipment. If you like French press coffee, that is a good technique for you. I consider coffees made with my home espresso machine much superior to both nespressos and French Press coffees but I also drink double ristrettos which is something you cannot do with either a Nespresso machine or a French press. In my opinion if people want an easy alternative that gives an ok result, the Nespresso is a viable alternative. Not perfect but if I wanted perfect, I'd use an espresso machine in preference to a French Press (actually this is what I do). People can always try different methods to see if they like them. They just need to know that for most methods they will need to learn and practice new skills. With the Nespresso they know that they can recreate exactly what they taste in the shop as the machine takes all of the factors I mentioned in the first paragraph out of the equation.

Follow-up: I recently calibrated the sensor using boiling water (I figure, as a standard, it's closer to cooking temps than ice water is), and my sensor was under-reading by about 2.3F. Huge deal? Maybe. I'll have to do more to see. Inaccuracy of 2.3°F/1.3°C is not quite what we desire. If you do not have an ISO- or NIST-calibrated reference thermometer, you might calibrate your sensor or thermometer in ice-water (no need for distilled water, tap water will do, molecular freezing point depression in tap water is neglectable for our purposes) and in boiling water (taking into account altitude above sea level and barometric pressure; a difference of 40 mBar makes a 1°C difference) and against an ovulation thermometer at 100°F/37.8°C. With temperature stability of ±0.1°C in a PID-controlled water bath (SousVideMagic or immersion circulator) inaccuracy of more than 0.2°C is absurd. See the Wikia article Importance of temperature control on pasteurizing times (0.5°C inaccuracy makes a significant difference in pasteurizing times) and the Wikia article on thermometer calibration: sensors and thermometers are not guaranteed to be linear and equally accurate over the whole range from 0°C to 100°C; 50k thermistors (SVM 1500C and 1500D) are better than 5k thermistors (SVM or Auber 1500A and 1500B). See also the sous vide page in wikiGullet (the sum of accuracy and stability should be ±0.25°C or better for long-time cooking and pasteurizing). Pedro's point is a good one. But I do wonder if we can achieve accuracy within ±0.25C unless we all have expensive ISO- or NIST- calibrated thermometers, which clearly most of us do not have. Unless you can absolutely guarantee the accuracy of your set up, it is extremely inadvisable to play around at the lower limits of sous vide temperature for long cooking times. After our discussion on this forum, I believe this is why Merredith went to a much more accurate, and expensive, setup than her Sous Vide Supreme. It is better to add a few degrees on to the temperature and to extend the cooking time to incorporate a margin of error than to risk the health of either you or your customers. If you want to work on the edge, make sure you are appropriately equipped to do so, including having all equipment in the process calibrated and functioning within a ±0.25C error rate.

I am really Impressed by the output of Nespresso machines. If you want a consistently good product with little to no learning required, they fit the bill extrremely well. If you want an exceptional coffee, however, you still can't beat something like a Rancilio Miss Silvia. The difference is that it takes a great deal of effort in teaching yourself or being taught how the use the machine to surpass the Nespresso type standard and most people would not be willing to take the extra effort. Just a note on restaurants using these machines: they use a variant called the Nespresso professional, which uses different pods and has a different build to the domestic machines. I've tried all of them and would rate the domestic machines as consistently good, the professional machines as consistently very good and a well made espresso machine variant as very good but with the possibility of ranging from excellent to outstanding.

Tonight's dinner was a sous-vide cooked pork rasher deep fried and served in its own reduced marinating and cooking juices. Accompanying the meat was wok-wilted boy choy in oyster sauce and deep-fried eggplant with a miso paste glaze (Eggplant Dengaku).

Bessie's bite force is immaterial to what I said, the masseter muscles help cows shut the jaw and move it laterally, allowing them to grind their food. This is how cows "chew their cud." The fifth picture down on this web site shows the masseter muscle on a buffalo. It is obvious how it is involved in chewing. Moreover, "...ruminant species that ingest more grass have relatively larger masseter muscles" Clauss, M., Hofmann, R., Streich, W., Fickel, J. and Hummel, J. (2008). Higher masseter muscle mass in grazing than in browsing ruminants. Oecologia. 157 (3) p.377-385. Either this happens through magic or through the use of the masseter muscle in chewing. I prefer to think it's the latter.

With all due respect to NathanM and his contributions large and small - to eGullet and the general culinary world - I hope that discussion at eGullet will not devolve to quoting chapter and verse of MC. That wasn't a quote from the book, I was just suggesting you look at it for information. ... Correct me if I'm wrong, but does the cheek - in any animal - have anything to do with moving the jaw? A beef cheek is the facial cheek (Masseteric) muscle of a cow. What doesn't it have to do with moving the jaw? ... But it ignores the question that was asked. Can we make a lean cut more tender? I actually thought I was answering this question: Could we use brine/acid/braising/sous vide/jaccarding/injection/transglutaminase/molten lava/philospher's stones/Ginsu knives to transmute an eye of round into a filet?

The answer to whether we can turn eye of round into fillet is: no they have different grain structures and physical properties. If you can get your hands on "Modernist Cuisine," Volume 3 has a very good section on meat, muscle, and tenderness. As Dougal said above though, you can take a highly exercised piece of meat loaded with collagen such as beef cheek (think how much this particular muscle is exercised in a day in a ruminant) and cook it extremely long and slow. This will not give you fillet, it will give you something much better. These cuts are full of flavour that is not present in the less exercised parts of the animal. When cooked properly sous vide, they become as tender as well cooked fillet but with much more taste. This answers the question of why chefs and experienced eaters mostly prefer well cooked secondary cuts to what they consider bland premium cuts.

The Chinese have this covered in their Yin foods. Some examples include strawberries, yoghurt, cucumber, banana, lettuce, watermelon, starfruit, lettuce. As you can guess, salads and fruits are great cooling foods.

I just saw a method for cooking sausages on a food program called "Secret Meat Business" that I wanted to share. The chef, Adrian Richardson, placed his sausages in a pan with a small amount of water and brought it to the boil. Before the water boiled away completely, he turned the sausages to even up the cooking. Once the water was evaporated, he continued cooking them in the same pan until done. He proposed that the use of water early in the cooking process made sure the sausages were evenly cooked without being burnt on the outside. It sounds like your method Chris A without the step of transferring them between cooking vessels.