Dave the Cook

Out of curiosity, I checked out the Walmart Supercenter in the neighborhood where my ex lives with our two younger kids. This is in an middle/upper middle-class Atlanta suburb (when we moved there 12 years ago, it was an exurb, but that's Atlanta for you). Within three miles of this particular Walmart, there are two Krogers, two Publixes, a Fresh Market and a Super H Mart -- lots of competition, in other words. I found the store -- the food section, anyway, as I didn't venture into the rest of the building -- unremarkable. When it first opened, it had a fish and meat counter, which they've done away with in favor of an in-store "bakery" (they only do the final bake on site) and an enlarged deli section. The meat coolers were expansive, and held a few things that aren't commonly available in the area, or weren't when I lived there (tripe, goat, whole beef briskets). All of the pork loin cuts were "enhanced," as was about half the chicken, but that's not unusual; Kroger does the same thing. There were local (within 100 miles) chickens, chicken parts and eggs. All fish and shellfish was frozen. The produce looked fresh and was neatly arrayed, and the organic options were plentiful. I didn't see anything labeled "local," but outside of Whole Foods and Fresh Market, that's also not unusual. In other words, it was a pretty typical grocery store, with pretty average prices. The only thing out of the ordinary was the absence of a service counter for meat and fish, which you'd expect to find in this neighborhood. The store has been there about eight years, and as far as I can tell, hasn't put anyone out of business; in fact, a Halal butcher has opened just down the block. (Of course, the area population has doubled in the last ten years, so one wouldn't expect much failure among well-financed stores.) It's worth reading Corby Kummer's "The Great Grocery Smackdown" from the March 2010 issue of The Atlantic, in which he has identical meals prepared from ingredients purchased from Walmart and Whole Foods and serves them to a tasting panel. The results are revealing, as are a few bits of information he discovers along the way:

I was gonna say, with that pitcher of tea (if that's what it is) and the bottle of pickled peppers (if that's what they are), and the fresh flowers, maybe someone from the southern US. But then there's that corner of Sunset magazine . . .

Well, there's the noxious aroma of reheated fish.

Beat me to the punch, David. Fine Fare is the only grocery store within 1/2 a mile...the other store farther east on Grand St. is a...Fine Fare. There's nothing peculiar to NYC about this. It happens in pretty much every urban area in the country.

I've had a glass- (more accurately, ceramic) top for six and a half years, and it does show some scratches. What I think happens is that you get something very hard (could be salt as Mjx suggets; could be some other sort of crystal) caught between something very heavy (like a cast-iron skillet) and the stovetop. Then you push or drag -- or even worse, tip the pan at the point where the dirt is, in effect concentrating the entire weight of the vessel on that one particle, then push or drag -- across the top. Since figuring this out, I've gotten very careful about wiping pan bottoms and burner areas before cooking. As far as I can tell, the scratches don't affect cooking in the least. And it's not like other types of ranges don't acquire imperfections over time.

The problem with Ikea cookware is that their stores are still geographically sparse, and I wouldn't buy a pot or pan without having handled it in person. Their stuff might be great, but I'm not going to purchase it based on a web image. I'll third the Tramontina (also available at Target). I don't know who's calling it the equivalent of All-Clad, but I'd question both their judgement and their criteria. As far as I know, none of the Tramontina stuff is fully clad, not that I think that's very important. Moreover, I'd say that Tramontina's handles are superior to All-Clad's -- but that's a matter of individual preference, and a perfect example of why you should get your hands on a piece before buying. No one's mentioned the deals to be had on overstocks and irregulars at places like TJ Maxx and its spin-off HomeGoods, so I will. I've probably gotten a half-dozen pieces there -- Cuisinart, Sitram, Calphalon -- at stupidly cheap prices. You just have to visit often, and don't buy something until you find exactly what you want.

Larry is correct -- citric acid isn't the same thing as sodium citrate; ask table salt if it would be just fine without that sodium atom! And yes, kappa carrageenan sets more firmly. MC notes that when using low-moisture (defined as less than 41%) non-melting cheeses, you should limit them to no more than 30% of the cheese by weight, and add 10% more liquid.

If you've got the budget (and cookware) for it, definitely check out induction. Otherwise, the most recent electric smoothtops demonstrate improvements in the cooling cycle. ETA: Thanks! You're welcome in my class anytime.

So you grew up with one of those brass "This Home is All Electric!" medallions by your front door, too?

One of the best ranges I ever cooked on was a Thermador gas unit that had star burners and thin steel continuous grates. As you say, it's a design that takes full advantage of what gas offers to the home user. Unfortunately, Thermador has succumbed to the popular rage for cast iron and they don't seem to make it any more. If they did, I might well have gotten it instead of a smoothtop electric -- and this article would never have been written.

My guess is yes, though it wouldn't be as dramatic, or as Meeker and gfweb might put it, as sexy and primitive.

Just theorizing here, but my guess is that this relates to the efficiency issue. If you think about a graph that has energy input on the x-axis and efficiency on the y, the plot for electric is probably pretty close to a straight line at 70% (assuming you've matched pan-size to burner size properly). The plot for a gas burner would start high, but fall off as you crank the heat up.

Thanks, Heidi! Believe it or not, that wasn't my intention; I'm agnostic on energy choices because the difference between the two is much smaller than most people seem to think. What I do believe is that people deserve to know the facts so they can make truly informed decisions. To my mind, the best reason to buy a gas cooktop, however, is: That blue flame is alluring, and if that matters to you, by all means go for the gas. Just don't think that it's more responsive or more precise than electric, or that how restaurants cook has all that much in common with home cooking. I first heard it from a coworker about 15 years ago. She swore it was her, her mother and grandmother in the story, and that's how I always related it -- until a student told me not long ago that it was a pretty common myth. So in these classes, I not only teach, I often learn, too. Another valid reason!

Modernist Cuisine devotes a lot of space (scattered throughout the book, as well as in a dedicated 125-page chapter) to explaining the fundamentals of things like roasting, boiling, steaming, frying and braising, all the way through practical applications like pot roast, barbecue, roasted chicken and the like. If those aren't traditional, I don't know what is.

Perhaps this outfits machines do a good job but the only residential machines I have encountered produce soft wet warm ice like the kind that comes from a hotel ice machine. That's been my experience also, which includes teaching at cookware stores that sell dedicated icemakers, as well as countless Florida rentals. The photo if the ice in the Scotsman brochure is notably wet (and the shape appears to be a hollow cylinder, though they call it a "cube"). If the choice is between clear, wet, 0°C ice and cloudy, dry, -15°C ice, I'll take the latter every time. When I complained about standalone units in an earlier topic, andisenji referred to U-Line, which makes units that are essentially bigger versions of what's in most domestic freezers. If I were in the market for a dedicated icemaker, that's what I'd get, unless a windfall allows for a Kold Draft.

Is this a single-handle control? I ask because on some of those, you can install the control rotated 90 degrees off, and it makes everything wonky.

I love the icemaker in my run-of-the-mill Kenmore fridge. As I explicated here, every upmarket standalone icemaker designed for home use that I've encountered (and there have been quite a few) seems to be intentionally designed to make bad ice.

I haven't seen the KCAL segment, but in the link that opened this topic, it was pretty clear to me which "steaks" were which -- not the least because of the perfect roundness of the fabricated item (thanks in part to the wrapping). There were also easily discernable seams, even in the low resolution of TV-over-internet. It's unfortunate, but what news programs consider "important" isn't always in alignment with the public interest.

I don't think surimi has ever been anything but a transformation of white-fleshed fish into something that resembles the meat of crustaceans. Are you implying deceptive practices?

The first commercial application for transglutaminase was surimi -- aka crab sticks.

If what you're measuring is close in density to water, it's the same thing. Beyond that, some scales do claim to "measure" fluid ounces from among a limited selection of common liquids, but they're not really measuring, they're converting. The two-scale solution is the way to go. Affordable scales that weigh to ten or eleven pounds won't be accurate below a gram. But in fact, a scale that reads to a particular resolution is going to be inaccurate in its finest displayed measurement because it has to round. I'm sure the Taylor is a fine piece of equipment, but it won't measure down to 0.1 gram, let alone mcdiarmid's need for 0.01 gram.

That is what's on page 55, but tomatoes aren't on the list.

It seems like it would freeze pretty well, but we keep finding other uses for it. Two good ones are as a condiment for Tater Tots and tossing it with roasted green beans.

I'm sure you can find "French fried" as a common adjective to this day. But "French fry" as a verb (which is the subject of the topic) is so rare as to be obsolete. Note that even in the recipe Andrew Fenton linked to, while the poorly worded title uses the former, in the recipe itself, "deep-fry" is used as the cooking instruction.

Nomenclature, I believe.