Edward J

What role--if any--does the fact that the white knife is a good deal narrower, I'd say 25% of the surface area compared to the black knife, have? More knife surface area= more contact with the spud=more adhesion, or if you will, "stickiness". Russets are an o.k. "general purpose" spud, but Yukon golds and reds have a much higher starch content

Thank you. This is your personal experience/observation, and I respect it for what it is-- a personal experience/observation. It is also a viable option to mitigate potato slices sticking to a knife blade, and one used by countless people. I also respect gfweb's observation/experience, even though I wouldn't use it. But again, it is a viable option, and one that is used by countless people . Going over the 5 (five) pages of this thread, I fail to find any personal observations or experiences from dcarch. I don't know why this is, but we have a lot of science, climbing up walls with suction cups, sheets of glass, and yet, no personal observations or experience concerning slicing a lowly spud. The "test" is very easy, it is not time consuming, does not require expensive equipment or elaborate set ups, nor does it require extensive training. It (cutting a simple spud) is also very cheap--I bought potatoes the other day for 69 cents /lb, and after "testing", you can cook and eat the spuds.

Now we're getting to the meat in the sandwich..... Who really cares about suction cups and climbing up buildings with potatoes tied to your feet? The spuds are sticking to the knife, it's irritating, time consuming, and can be dangerous. Do you, Dcarch, have advice on how to mitigate this?

Great example, since most fruits and vegetables also are porous and don't keep out air well. Regardless of potato starch and water being sticky, you can still slice a spud, horizontally or vertically, I must have sliced close to 25,000 lbs in my career. It's just that the slices will cling tenaciously to the knife blade as you slice.....

One of my favorite "must have" chocolate melting equipment items is an electric blanket. The kind drug stores sell for around $25.00. "Low" setting is usually around 32 C. Very handy--and--you can even take it bed with you.....

If you're spraying cocoa butter, it's not necessary to have it in perfect temper, ball park range of 30-35 is good. If you're brusiing it on, however, a good temper is a must. Hope this helps

Yeah-butt, With the above quote, you're implying that I need to change My way of cutting spuds in order to introduce air where there's no space for air in the first place.

Well, if there's no space for air, how am going to get air in that space ? Mysteries abound.... Maybe I could develop a knife with a hollow spine and little channels branching off from that spine exiting on the face of the knife. Then, you hook up an aquarium pump to the port on the handle next to the usb port and pump air through the knife.... NOT!~ You rinse the knife off after every 4 or 5 slices. Not a major inconvenience, considering that peeled spuds should be kept underwater to prevent browning.

You'll have to excuse my strange sense of humour. Of course it's the potato starch on the knife blade causing the potato slices to stick. I said that in my first post, and repeated in my second. And if you read the first few posts on this thread you'll understand I'm not the first to say this. Rotus, of course pickle slices stick to a knife, as do most fruits and vegetables, and I acknowledge this in my posts. My point is, and what Shel B specifically asked, was why potatoes stick so stubbornly to the knife. O.k. no more attempts at humour, back to cooking........

For? Air borne potato starch granules?

Rotus, that doesn't explain why spuds stick to a granton or kullenschliff blade, which is a blade with a series of dimples or grooves on the surface of the blade. Ahhh! But why does a spud stick so tenaciously and other fruit or veg not so? The fruit or veg can be the same size, same water conten as a spud, but it won't stick as badly as spuds. It must have something to do with van der waals forces and climbing up buildings with suction cups and two sheets of glass with water trapped in between. Mind you, although a knife (albeit with a convex edge) can be considered hard, rigid and flat like glass, all fruits, veg, and meat are soft, floppy, and--more importantly, porous. I dunno, why does brie cheese stick to a knife? Just because it's a gooey, sticky hunk of cheese is no proper explanation. As dcarch pointed out, potato starch that hasn't been cooked is not an adhesitive, so in that case, cheese is not an adhesitive either. So, when you encounter the problem of spuds sticking to knives, do what cooks have been doing for centuries now: You rinse the knife off with water after every 4 or 5 slices. Voodoo magic, I know, not very scientific, and besides, rinsing washes off that white, starchy sticky substance on the knife blade that only spuds leave behind. But I can't find an explanation for this procedure other than it works.

Yup, tomatoes and pickles will stick on to a knife, but not as badly as potatotes. What's a tomato? Water mostly, yet they don't stick on to a knife as tenaciously as a potato slice. A potato is mostly starch and water, unlike the tomato, or pickle, or fruit, etc, which has no, or very little starch. Which brings us right back to ShelB's original question as to why potatoes stick so badly to a knife and how to avoid it, or at least to mitigate it. Here's something just about everyone can relate to: You are adding a cornstarch slurry to a soup/sauce/pudding. You stir the starch with a cold liquid in a separate bowl in order to pour it into your boiling liquid. Yet you know that if you stir the cornstarch/cold liquid smooth, the starch will settle down at the bottom of the bowl with the liquid swimming on top in a very short period of time. When you grasp the whisk/fork/impliment to agitate the slurry again, you find it "welded" to the bottom of the bowl. A few brief motions with the impliment will free it from the bed of starch. When you slice a potato you are smearing a thin layer of water and starch on your knife. It sticks.

Slice a spud a few times with a knife, and let the knife sit out on the counter for a few minutes. You will see a thin crust of starch forming on the knife. When still wet, it wipes off fairly easily, when dry it has to be scrubbed off, or you can scratch it off with a fingernail. A spud is mostly water and starch. Slice it, and some residue will adhere to your knife, and this residue dries very quickly. You just have to wash it (the starch) off.....

And compare that to, So which theory is it now?

Potato starch is partly water soluable. You knife is coated with a thin layer of starch and the pieces of spud stick to the starch. So, you do what countless cooks the world over do, dip you knife in water every few slices to wash the starch off.

Yeah-butt.... Those professions aren't earning minimum wage, or even below minimum wage....

As others have noted, "glazing" is a fairly common method, and has been around for quite some time, particularily with seafood, ie: whole head/off salmon, iqf prawns and shrimp, and 5 lb blocks of whole prawns. You can view this as "enviromentally friendly", as it uses very little packaging; plain old cheap, as it uses very little packaging; convenient, as you only need to pull out of the package what you want, no need to defrost the whole package; very sneaky as it increases the weight, and you are buying by weight, sneaky in that you are buying larger packages which you might not use up in a reasonable time; all of the above, or non of the above. What's more of interest to me, is if the said chix brsts have an "ingredient list". That is, if they are "flavor enhanced", or pumped with a protein solution, usually in the area of 15-20%.

1st layer: Omit the egg, and increase the butter by that amount. If you have qualms about using butter, use butterfat (aka ghee) or coconut fat 2nd layer: Omit the cream and icing sugar, use white chocolate, butter, and custard powder. (I use dehydrated coconut powder in place of custard pwdr) 3rd layer: Use straight dark couverture and score the slab into bars before the couverture sets. Yes, not "original" but pretty fine tasting inspite.

1) Run a successful restaurant for at least 36mths. Makes sure your books and your bank are congruent with your success. 2)a) Minimum 35% of the investment plus the original sum of the investment back within 18 mths. b) Failing the above, ownership of the property--NOT THE LEASE, but the actual property. In other words, basically, the same thing the Banks want. Why do you ask?

Neither. And I don't have a guitar either. What I have is a roller--a home made affair consisting of a series of 4" s/s discs spaced 1" apart on a threaded rod with rolling-pin style handles at either end. I pop this in a warm oven for a few minutes. Then I spread tempered couverture with a palette knife on my slab, and quickly invert the slab onto a nylon cutting board with a sheet of parchment ontop. While the couverture is still wet, I run the roller over the slab, (the nylon cutting board has the right amount of "give") leaving me with 1" wide strips, I quickly rinse the roller off, pop it back into the oven to dry and heat up, and roll it across again, giving me 1" squares. Since the s/s discs are warm, it rolls through the ganache like--well--like a hot knife through butter. Since the slab is "glued down" to the parchment and the couverture hasn't crystalized yet, the strips (and squares) don't have a chance to creep up and wrap around the discs. Once the couveture has crystalized, it releases well from the parchment. I find this works well with just-crystalized ganache, which is still somewhat flexible. Slabs that have crystalized completely tend to crack and fracture badly with this method.

Ahh samples... Running a chocolate place, I get very indignant customers if I don't have a sample tray right by the cash register. Mind you, it's only the "seconds" that get chopped up into bitty pieces for samples, but still... "Samples? Maybe you could try at the bank, I'm sure they must give samples away"..... Not. Don't think that would work. If you have house mayo and ketchup, why not package it into a "sampler pack" for, say, $10.00? "Yes you can sample our house made sauces and condiment for only $10.00!"

"We bake fresh daily" And you DO. It's just that some items were baked yesterday or the day before. But it's not like you fire up the oven and only bake once a week Why do some customers ask that question? -Some are "trained" to ask, and if the answer is "no" , the training kicks in and they want a "day-old" price -Some are lousy conversationists, and "is this baked today" is the same as asking "how much did you pay for that purse/car/condo? "

chocolate

Because wax paper is translucent and very smooth, I like to use it for chocolate work or piping out icings--slip a pattern underneath and pipe away. Parchment has a very "rough" surface to it when you do chocolate work on it, which may be a good thing if that's the effect you want.

Over 30 years working in professional kitchens around the world and I 've never come across one yet. Private homes yes, many. Most of the kitchens I've worked in have "0" tolerance for any glass in the kitchen, be it bottles or glasses. Tempered glass isn't magic, it breaks as easily as regular glass, it just breaks in itty-bitty pieces as opposed to great jagged shards. And tempered glass shards have a unique ability to fly astounding distances (if you've ever had your car window broken or a store front window broken, you know you can sweep up glass shards for weeks). Hence the "0" tolerance for glass in most commercial kitchens. Most cutting boards get rough abuse--tossed into the d/washer, and then slung on to a baker's rack or other rack to air dry. Glass is slippery and many foods are moist, most professional kitchens have nylon or sani-tuff boards. When these get wet or slippery (ie boning/skinning salmon or other fish) the standard simple trick is to use a plastic baker's scraper to squeegee the crud off the board.