Dave the Cook

I thought it was a personal olfactory malfunction, until my son asked the same question. Any ideas?

Boiling water is a constant 212 deegrees. However, once you add salt, you no longer have just water. Salt has the effect of raising the boiling point and lowering the freezing point of water. That's why you add salt to water before you boil pasta and also why you add rock salt to ice when making ice cream. Try picking up a copy of The Science and Lore Of Food, by Harold McGee. It's a wonderful reference work. You will learn more about the whys and wherefores of food than you ever knew theere was to learn. I agree that McGee's work is great. Here are a couple of things I learned from it: The boiling temperature of water is not a constant 212 F -- just ask anyone who lives in Denver. Reasonable amounts of salt for cooking purposes do not raise the boiling point significantly (and in fact any dissolved solid will have pretty much the same effect as salt, because you're increasing the density of the water). The reason to salt pasta water for is flavor.

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For that matter, can't you make your own invert sugar (that's what all of these suggestions are) with table sugar, heat and acid? I would think cream of tartar, citric acid or ascorbic acid (vitamin C) could be used.

Yeah. I was OK with it until I came to this:

Welcome, AlainV! I am not a baker, so often I don't know what I'm talking about in this forum, but it seems to me that Trimoline might work. It's difficult to obtain for home use, but I believe it's more widely available in Europe, and maybe you'll get lucky -- sometimes I've found it at shops that sell home-brewing supplies. Failing that, you might try honey. It will also alter the flavor, but perhaps it will be more to your liking than the Golden Syrup.

Decide for yourself. Its not the pants that gives me pause, its the huge rubber gloves that implies deviancy and perversion. Well, there you go. They seemed perfectly normal to me.

Don't forget Andy Lynes. And my tip for the day is: no matter what you think of his pants or his sexual orientation, always be nice to a sweaty guy holding two cleavers.

Decide for yourself.

I think that's what I would have done, if I'd been in your place, figuring I'd still have some leeway if it looked too stiff. I'm glad it turned out well.

True, if you're using a dry measure for the powder. But I think Nestle assumes that people will take a liquid measuring cup and pour in 1/3 powder, then add to the one-cup line. Yes, it's another assumption, but a reasonable one, I think. I'm as sure as I can be that Nestle tests it this way, because consumers are lazy and don't really know that dry measures aren't the same as liquid measures. But you're right that the volume of milk will collapse upon dissolution, so 2/3 C water probably isn't enough. Anyway, now that we have a weight (23g) to work with, that's irrelevant. Thanks for digging that up, Rachel. But I don't get the 3.2 pounds per 8 gallons. 23 grams is required for 1 cup of milk one gallon = 16 cups 16 * 23g = 368g 368g * 8 gallons = 2944g 2944/454 grams per pound = 6.485 pounds to make 8 gallons, or about 13 ounces per gallon. This agrees with the yield from a 9.6 ounce box: enough powder to make 12 cups, or 3 quarts -- 23 g, or 0.8 ounces, per cup (0.8 * 16 = 12.8 ounces, close enough considering how much rounding goes on with metric-English conversions) So the recipe calls for enough powder to make about 10 gallons of milk (8 pounds * 16 ounces = 128 ounces), 25% more liquid than the recipe needs. You're going to have to remove liquid from somewhere else, but I bet there's not much other liquid in the recipe.

Someone needs to check my arithmetic, and Jason, be aware that this is based on one crucial assumption -- if you've got an empty box around, you should check this. All of this assumes that the information on the label that Rachel linked to is a one-pound box of instant product. Nestle says that to reconstitute to one cup of non-fat milk, you start with 1/3 cup powder. This means you would have to add 5-1/3 ounces of water to make a cup. In a one-pound box, there are 12 servings, or 4 cups per pound, or 32 fluid ounces. The recipe calls for eight pounds of milk -- the equivalent of 96 servings. Using Nestle's formula, 96 servings of milk would require 512 ounces of water (96*5.33) 512 ounces of water plus 256 ounces (a volume measurement of the powder, per Nestle's directions; 8 pounds * 32 fluid ounces per pound) is 768 fluid ounces, or six gallons. The recipe calls for eight gallons of reconstituted liquid (six of water, plus two of powder). I conclude that you need to use six gallons of non-fat liquid milk, plus two gallons water. (crossing my fingers)

Actually I'm pretty sure their grills ARE hotter. Typical steakhouse grills are so much hotter than what most people have at home that it almost requires a completely different way of cooking. They think it saves them money? See... the joke is that water and ice are made of the same stuff. Actually, I think this IS half of an answer. Ice is often put in soda for that reason, even though the cost difference is pretty minimal if the soda is from a fountain. Except Winot's right, ice is more expensive than just plain water. (I'm not sure how it compares to soft-drink syrup.) But I think this happens mainly because there's a perception that ice water tastes better than tap- or room-temperature water. The ice also deadens the chlorine aroma.

Yes, including no small number of your fellow eGulls.

I was thinking the tan as well. I've never done my own lard (though I think I will this weekend, thanks to these last few posts), but it seemed to me, based on the chicken and duck fat that I've rendered, that you could adjust for color pretty easily. Of course, you can always mix the white and tan to taste, I suppose. fifi's Lard-rendering procedure

Which would you use for frying chicken?

If they lasted that long.

I'd be interested in the basis for this theory. Why does temperature effect the rate at which food absorbs smoke? If it is true, my guess would be that the surface of the food reachs 140F much quicker than the interior. Are folks wasting a lot of effort by keeping their smokers stocked with hickory during the entire cooking process? This may provide something of an answer. Thanks, dls. This backs up the Smoke Ring information, and adds a bit more.

Surprisingly, low-fat, cultured buttermilk has lots more sugar than heavy cream (which has almost no sugar at all), as well as more protein. The big difference, of course, is fat (cream: ~37%; buttermilk: <1%).

I'd be interested in the basis for this theory. Why does temperature effect the rate at which food absorbs smoke? If it is true, my guess would be that the surface of the food reachs 140F much quicker than the interior. Are folks wasting a lot of effort by keeping their smokers stocked with hickory during the entire cooking process? I have research on this, but I can't get my hands on it for a while. In the meantime, maybe one of you mathematically-inclined types can figure out the time for an eight-pound, 40 F mass to reach 140 F at a depth of, say, 3/16 inch, in a 225 F chamber?

Part of the problem might be the perception of how hot the oil is. The smokepoint of refined peanut oil is in the neighborhood of 425 F to 440 F. Refine grapeseed can be as high as 485 F. It seems to me that using the appearance of the oil is going be misleading. For instance, EVOO gets that shimmery look at a much lower temperature than canola, and I'm guessing that grapeseed will have to be hotter than peanut to get the same look. phaelon56's breadcrumb technique works as a general indicator, but it's really hard to know if the temperature is stabilized, and not continuing to rise (though adding the room-temp fish will certainly dampen all but the most meteoric rise). I'm with Mayhaw Man -- use a thermometer.

Eric: You don't have to brine, but you'll be glad you did, if you have time. If you have the Weber chimney (which is larger than the usual kind, but is highly recommended, at least by me), use about two-thirds of a chimney-full to start. If you have a standard-size chimney, start with a full load. Either way, keep the firebox vents open until you get a feel for the temperature. There's some controversy about the moisturizing and thermal stabilizing effects of a water pan, but this much is agreed: keeping one under your butt will save a lot of clean-up. There are a number of good threads on butt smoking. You'll probably find them both informative and amusing. Here's a couple: I Have Much Pork Behold My Butt! Good luck, and let us know how it turns out.

You poor deprived Yankee. They're in all the markets down here (Atlanta) this time of year.

Pickles in tuna salad.

Sometimes when people say green tomatoes they mean tomatillos (tomate verde), which are not actually tomatoes. In fact, I saw fried green tomatillos on the menu at NOLA (one of Emeril's places) not long ago. I don't think it's a bad substitiution.