Robert Jueneman

Douglas, I've contacted Elsevier, trying to find out how to subscribe to the new journal, but so far I'm coming up with blanks. The one contact address is no longer receiving e-mail, and the other one hasn't responded. Do you know how to subscribe, or when the first issue will be coming out? Is it for real? Any idea who the other first contributors will be? BTW, your web site seems to be down, at least at the moment. Probably too many people trying to download your article! Bob

Vengroff, you've cost me $200! I had to buy an iPhone, just to get your very cool SousVide Dash app! But now I have some questions: 1. Is there any way for me to to add my favorite foods and default times/temperatures? It would be nice to have a variety of vegetables, like corn on the cob, asparagus, carrots, etc., to save me having to drag out the cookbook. 2. Rather than putting a six hour limit on the time (pasteurized) or four hour (non-pasteurized) could you go ahead and display the time to come up to temperature? If it's 6:01, I would probably take a chance, but if it's 8:00, probably not. 3. The PolyScience 7306 has a circulation pump speed switch. Does your value of h reflect the low or high speed setting? 4. I tried setting the starting temperature to say 25C, and the desired final temperature to 5C in a 1C water bath, to calculate chilling times, but you don't allow it. I'll buy the second app, if necessary -- please? 4. I'm still trying to think of a way of computing the time from a frozen state, even if it's just ball-park.

Tonight I tried the Anti-Griddle/vodka chilling again, and did some measurements. I had cooked nearly 3 kg of a chuck roast, cut into six steaks. I took three of those steaks at 55C, totaling 1.4 kg, and put them in a roasting pan along with 3L of vodka at -16C. After 30 minutes, the vodka was up to about -4C. Obviously I should have used more vodka, but I was limited in the size roasting pan I had. And the bottom of the pan wasn't entirely flat, so it was only touching the Anti-Griddle surface in one small spot. And I don't have a Styrofoam cooler large enough to cover the pan, so some heat was lost to the air. Sob! After 30 minutes, I removed the steaks, and cut open one bag to measure the temperature. The subcutaneous surface temperature was 5.4C, and surprisingly, the core temperature was only 5.7C. That steak was about 40mm thick. I figured that was good enough, so I put the steaks in the freezer. I still need to chill the remaining steaks, but I'll get out another couple of cold vodka bottles for that. Overall, I'm quite pleased with this technique. Bob

Beef shank I've head of, but the store didn't have any. Like a lot of other cuts, the name seems to vary depending on your location -- e.g., tri-tip. In my case, I weighed the carrots before peeling and slicing them (contrary to what the book suggests), or it would have required even more! I suspect a typo -- maybe it should have been 50g? Has anyone seen any kind of an errata listing? These days, an on-line errata listing ought to be a minimum standard for ANY reference book!

Definitely both, please. And while you are at it, could you please add temperatures below 0 °C to the starting temperature selection? I like to cook stuff directly from the freezer and while the temperature curve doesn't change much, it is a concern with relatively short term cooking. I think going down to -30 °C should cover most non-laboratory freezers. Anyway, thanks for such a great SV tool - it is the first SV app that is really useful! Great work! This seems like such a great tool --- any chance of porting to a Droid? Pretty please? From my perspective, I think it depends on what you are cooking. When I cook a rib-eye, I cook it at 51C, so pasteurization isn't an option. But when I cook a chuck steak (24 hours) or brisket (72 hours) at 55C, pasteurization is guaranteed, so it doesn't matter. Similarly, fish is never going to be cooked to pasteurization, at least by most people. So that leaves poultry, and there pasteurization definitely is an issue. Now, I don't know of anyone Jaccarding poultry, but the process of injecting brine seems somewhat suspect, and many chicken parts have crevices that would suggest that the core temperature is what matters. I certainly agree with adding the low temperature starting point -- almost of the time I cook or rewarm from frozen, i.e., -10 to -20C. But now, how about adding another very important feature -- chill time? Now this is an area where the surface vs. core temperature is very much an issue, and still somewhat uncertain, at least in my mind. Is it sufficient to chill the surface to say 4C, and then put it (bagged) in the refrigerator, even though the core would still be warmer? Assuming you aren't chilling a 100mm thick roast, how much warmer would the core be, and then how much longer would it take it in air to chill down the rest of the way? According to the FDA, it takes DAYS for food pathogens to grow to a dangerous level at 4.4C, so it doesn't seem likely that the time required for the core to be chilled vs. the surface is likely to be that significant. This is an issue that PedroG and I have been discussing offline, but with another twist. I have been doing something I haven't seen anyone else mention. I keep a couple of 1.5L bottles of cheap 80 proof vodka in the freezer at -20C. Then when I want to chill something quickly I pour the chilled vodka into a metal pan of a suitable size, put it on top of my Anti-Griddle (which eventually gets down to -36C), and submerge the bagged food in the vodka. I don't have to fuss with a container with lots of ice (a large bag of ice takes up more room in the freezer than the vodka does), and the vodka is reusable, unlike the ice. In addition to using this for meats that are prepared cook/chill, I also use to save any leftovers, in case my wife or I don't eat all of a nice steak. (In that case, since someone likely stuck a fork into the meat that had just been in their mouth, pasteurization certainly seems like a good idea when reheating it, although I doubt anyone normally does that.) I tried this technique on a 50mm potato slab, and starting at around 22C with the vodka at -16.5C, the core temperature dropped to 5C in 20 minutes, but it took a full hour to reach 0C. I'm going to try it again, and this time monitor the temperature just below the surface as well. Now, Pedro has questioned whether I really want to freeze the surface in order to cool the core to a safe level, and he fears that freezing and then thawing slowly (in the refrigerator) might degrade the quality of the meat. I can see that it MIGHT, but I haven't done the blind tests necessary to convince me one way or the other. And there is still the issue of whether it is sufficient to merely cool the surface to say 4C, or even 0C, before putting it in the refrigerator. Now, if I cook a 50mm steak from frozen, Baldwin's latest tables predict that it will take 5:15 to come up to the core temperature. (His previous tables suggested 3:45, so this is something that needs to be confirmed experimentally -- 5:15 seems pretty long, to me.) By comparison, the heating time from 5C is only 3:30, so it is apparently taking 1:45 to thaw the frozen meat from -18C to 5C. Now, 3:30 is within the four hour rule for non pasteurized meat above 5C. However, the chill time for the same 50mm steak in an ice bath (from 55-80C down to 5C -- presumably the core temperature) is 2:45. But 3:30 (cook time) plus 2:45 (chill time) is 6:15, and that exceeds the generally accepted standard of 6 hours for cook/chill. On the other hand, using the chilled vodka technique, the chill time to a core temperature of 5C would only be 20 minutes, or less than 4 hours total above 5C. In the case of cook/eat/chill leftovers, assuming it takes less than 30 minutes to eat dinner, and maybe another 30 minutes to clean up and set up the vodka, I'm still less than five hours above 5C, compared to the seven plus hours using an ice bath. Does this make sense to people? What is the general consensus -- would freezing the surface of the meat in order to chill the core to 5C be likely to cause an appreciable degradation in quality?

In addition to the Whiskey Ice Cream, I made the Beef Stock, using my big All-American Sterilizer pressure cooker, controlled by a Sous Vide Magic for high altitude use. The recipe called for 500g of peeled and thinly sliced carrots, which he says amounts of 6-7 large carrots. I don't know how big his "large" carrots are, but 500g was around 15 carrots. The recipe also called for diced shin of beef, and my local butcher had never heard of it (and neither had I). Maybe it is one of those UK vs. US language issues? The butcher recommended using beef short ribs, which gave me both the meat and some extra bones. The bones I got were beef marrow bones, so I scooped out the marrow and froze it in a SV bag. The process was a fair amount of work, and to my taste the result was a bit too sweet -- probably because of an excess of carrots. Next time I would cut the amount of carrots in half. But I don't understand the complaint that the recipes in the book require a lot of equipment. Yes, the sous vide recipes assume you have a sous vide machine and a vacuum sealer, but neither are absolutely necessary. You can get by just fine using a Ziploc bag and the Archimedes principle to get most of the air out by holding the bag under water except for the very tip, and then sealing it. Likewise, you could fill up the sink or a beer cooler with 50-55C water, and occasionally top it off. Only one recipe calls for an extended time (18 hours) -- most of the rest take around an hour. Other than the somewhat skimpy sous vide chapter, I didn't see anything that was at all out of the ordinary, other than a scale and perhaps a pressure cooker. No Thermomix, no chamber vacuum, no combi oven, and certainly no Rotovap, centrifuge, or Pakojet! This certainly won't replace Modernist Cuisine for state of the art cooking techniques, nor will it replace the new Volt, Ink book by the Voltagio brothers for extravagant, over-the-top stunning creations. But at least in my case, it may inspire me to stretch just a little bit more than I normally do when cooking for my wife and I.

Some of his dishes, such as the Eggs and Bacon Ice Cream, are prepared in the restaurant using liquid nitrogen, but the recipes in the book substitute the more readily available dry ice. I made his Whiskey Ice Cream yesterday, using LN2, and it was absolutely the best ice cream I've ever eaten. Activa and other hydrocolloids may not yet be grocery store staples, but they are widely available on the Internet, and increasingly in smaller, more useful sizes for the home cook. But a quick skim through the index of the new book only shows agar-agar and soy lecithin -- not even any Xanthan Gum, which I find surprising.

Yesterday I made the Whiskey Ice Cream from "Heston Blumenthal At Home" -- absolutely fabulous! The recipe calls for 500 g of whole milk (no cream!) 6 large egg yolks, 175g unrefined caster sugar (I just used ordinary sugar) 270g of "soured" cream (I just used ordinary store-bought) 40g of malt whiskey (I used Tennessee Honey, by Jack Daniels) 1 kg of dry ice pellets, crushed in a clean tea towel with a rolling pin into small crystals. Since I have two Dewars of liquid nitrogen, I didn't use the dry ice, but instead used LN2. This was the first time I've used LN2 to make ice cream. Once you start pouring it into the KitchenAid mixing bowl (already on the stand and ready to go) it is very hard to see what you are doing, or how much you've used. I'm strictly guessing, but I would say less than a liter. Just pour in some, start the mixer, and if it doesn't look cold enough, add a little bit more until it does. The results were spectacular -- the finest, smoothest, tastiest ice cream I've ever had, with absolutely no ice crystals. I can't wait to try some of his other recipes, such as bacon and eggs ice cream, or something I've always want to try here in New Mexico, green chili ice cream. (Hey, Heston has mustard ice cream, so why not? MIght be pretty good on a hot taco!)

Hot Ice Cream, Take 2: First of all, my apologies to those who think that "hot ice cream" is a gross perversion of terminology, or that it ought to be called a custard. If the name offends you, I suppose we could call it something else, like "creme moderne." But what I am trying to achieve is something that tastes like ice cream, although it isn't cold, and in addition, would melt as it cools down, which a custard certainly won't. I'm not quite there yet, but I'm getting closer, and the technique is getting easier. So here's my latest attempt: Combine 375 ml of half & half, 200 ml of whipping cream, 40 g of chopped pecans, 40 g of chopped dried cherries, 6 packages of Equal (6 g) and 7.5 g of SGA 7C methylcellulose. Heat to 80°C, while stirring constantly. A Thermomix set to 80°C, reverse spin, and the slow stirring speed for 10 minutes an effortless way to do this. Pour the mixture into a pan and put in on an Anti-Griddle stirring constantly for 10-20 minutes. Or put it in the refrigerator for several hours or even overnight, so that the methylcellulose can hydrate. Using a wooden spoon, stir the cold mixture to uniformly disperse the nuts and cherries. Spoon the mixture into a silicon mold with six hemispherical depressions about 7 cm across, and microwave it for 5 to 6 minute, until the center comes up to about 80°C Using a spoon, unmold the ice cream and serve immediately. Serve the hot ice cream in an ice cream cone, or over a cold fruit dish such as sous vide pears, or float it in iced coffee to make an inverted affogato. The reason for using Equal as a sweetener is that sugar doesn’t react well with methylcellulose — it can sometimes form an unpleasant compound similar to that in corked wine (2,4,6-trichloroanisole). Using Dow SGA 7C methylcellulose, the hot ice cream didn’t exhibit any obvious tendency to "melt" as it got colder. It did become less firm — again, not unpleasant, but not melting, unlike real ice cream as it warms up. According to Dow, SG A7C forms a very firm gel with medium viscosity at 38-40°C. F50 hydroxypropyl methylcellulose forms a low viscosity, semi-firm gel at 62-68°C. Presumably the higher gelling point would exhibit more of the desired melting characteristics as it cools, so I'm going to try that next. I originally used 60 g of both pecans and cherries, but that seemed a little too much, so I've cut back to 40g in this recipe. If you want something that is closer to ice cream than fruit cake, feel free to reduced the portions even further. When I added the Equal to the cream, I thought it might be too sweet, but it seemed about right once it was cooked. Because methylcellulose replaces many features typically lost in products when the fat content is reduced, I think I'll use 475 ml of half and half and only 100 ml of whipping cream the next time, to make it a little less custardy. Bob

I had the four hour, 13 course, 10 wines tasting luncheon menu at Eleven Madison Park Nov. 4th, but unfortunately the book wasn't yet available in the restaurant then or I would have gotten an autographed copy. In reading through the recipes, it becomes obvious why they had 30 cooks and six sou chefs on duty for lunch, and it wasn't all that busy! Certainly the recipes are complex and the presentation stunning -- the photographs in the book are exquisite. However, one of my purposes for visiting EMP was to see what a high end restaurant is doing in the area of Modernist Cuisine, and in that regard I was a little disappointed. Although they did take me back in the kitchen and prepared an "edible cocktail" with liquid nitrogen, most of the rest of the recipes could have been prepared by Julia Child 50 years ago, or even Escoffier, 100 years ago. And come to think of it, I think liquid nitrogen was first used to prepare ice cream back in the 19th century. (BTW, their safety practices with LN2 made me shudder.) So from the standpoint of learning and perfecting new things, without necessarily being as far out as Alinea or El Bulli, I think that I will probably make more use of the Volt, Ink cookbook by the Voltaggio brothers. If I were to recommend one dish that was exquisite and doesn't seem all that complex, it would be the smoked sturgeon sabayon with potato, lemon, and caviar, served in an egg cup. For those with access to foie gras, the foie gras torchon with cranberry pain d'epices, and almonds was delicious. They cut a small circle out of the center of the torchon, and bruleed it separately.

I would not recommend this, and I would definitely not put the eggs in bags filled with water. In general, you want the water to circulate freely around your food as it cooks. If there is water in a bag with the food then that water is not circulating around the bath back to the heating element. I would not worry too much, though. I cook eggs regularly and breakage has never been a problem. Vengroff, as one Chief Scientist/Amateur Cook to another, I have to strongly disagree with you. In my experience, as well a PedroG's, egg cracking is a quite common problem, and if you are using any kind of a circulator, a real PITA to clean up afterwards. I certainly don't want to ruin an expensive circulator for a minor inconvenience! If the bag containing the eggs is filled with just enough water to cover the eggs in a single layer, and importantly, the water that you use is already up to temperature (having been extracted from the bath), any temperature differential is likely to be minimal. Your could of course test this by sealing a thermocouple inside the bag, using the Archimedes principle, and I confess that I haven't done so, but if it was more than 0.5 degree F I would be quite surprised -- astonished, in fact. Bob

Douglas' tables are for the classic single temperature model, as opposed to the more recent 6X egg technique that Martin Lerch and other have discussed (including myself, at http://freshmealssolutions.com/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=65:search-perfect-egg-jueneman&Itemid=100088). But what happens if something other than chicken eggs are used, say quail eggs, or perhaps duck eggs? Duck eggs are about the same size as chicken eggs, but on the only time I tried them, I got vastly different results, so perhaps the different species protein matters. And for quail eggs, there is both a different species, and a considerably different size, and perhaps a difference in the ratio of white to yolk, as well. Before I waste time experimenting with them, has anyone already done this? Bob

I have very little experience with canning, so take what I'm saying with a grain or two of NaCL. But I would assume that when canning with a pressure cooker, you would NOT clip the lids shut, but just leave them loose. As the contents cool, the lids will seal themselves, just as they do with a loose Mason jar lid. You can then snap them shut once they cool completely. I think!

The new and very interesting modernist cuisine cookbook, "Volt, Ink." by Michael and Bryan Voltaggio (two contenders on a very successful season of Top Chef) has two recipes for venison loin. Michael cooks a 2 pound loin for 1 hours at 56C, while Bryan cooks a 3 pound venison strip loin for 55 minutes at 58.5C. The loins are cooked whole, and then sliced crosswise, and served two to a plate. You can always cook it longer, but you can't reverse it if it gets too mushy or overdone!

The computer shows 5.0 degrees C as the final temp. Surely that's a rather egregious typo?

Hot Ice Cream. There are several recipes for "hot ice cream" on the web, most of them deriving from the recipe in Alexander Talbot's "Ideas in Food," to whom I owe due credit. But those I tried all involved either cream cheese, or mascarpone, and didn't taste all that much like ice cream -- more like hot cream cheese, IMHO. It wasn't obvious to me why they used cream cheese, but I assumed that it was to contain the "ice cream" while they were dipping it into hot water, using a ladle or ice cream scoop, so it wouldn't run all over the place.. In addition, because I wanted to do this for a tasting menu class, I could not afford the time required to make the ice cream balls one at a time. I therefore went back to a rather classic ice cream recipe, and used a silicon mold to make six hemispherical "balls" at one time. Here is the recipe, which could probably still stand some refinement: Hot Ice Cream, Take 1 Combine 375 ml of half & half, 200 ml of whipping cream, 40 g of crushed peppermint candy (7.5 lozenges), and 7.5 g of SGA 7C methylcellulose. Heat to 170°F/76.6°C, while stirring constantly. Transfer the pan to an Anti-Griddle for at least two hours. Once the mixture freezes, turn off the Anti-Griddle, and continue to stir. Or put it in the refrigerator overnight, so that the methylcellulose can hydrate. Fill a sauté pan or hotel pan to a depth of about 4 cm with water and bring to a simmer. Pour the cream mixture into a measuring cup for ease of pouring, and using an immersion blender, blend the cold cream mixture in order to thoroughly mix and partially aerate it, but don’t over-aerate. Pour the cream mixture into a silicon mold with six hemispherical depressions about 7 cm across, floating in the pan of hot water. Leave it in the mold in the simmering water for about 20 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center shows that the ice cream is now reasonably firm throughout (unless you want a more liquid center for some reason). (If the mold is just a little too big for your pan, you could consider trimming the corners, or using a hotel pan. If you use a mold with smaller depressions, it will cook faster. Don’t let the water boil off — add more hot water as necessary.) Serve the hot ice cream in an ice cream cone, or over a cold fruit dish such as sous vide pears, or float it in iced coffee to make an inverted affogato. Other alternatives: Instead of the peppermint chips, substitute kahlúa, or some golden rum, or walnuts or dried cherries, etc.. Or, if you live in New Mexico, throw in some finely chopped green chiles, for some really hot, hot ice cream! If you aren’t using the peppermint candy, you may want to add some Equal to taste to sweeten the ice cream. Don’t use sugar, which doesn’t react well with methylcellulose — it can sometimes form an unpleasant compound similar to that in corked wine (2,4,6-trichloroanisole). Observations: although the peppermint flavor was just right in the cold ice cream mix, it seemed to lose a little bit of “oomph” in the heated version. In addition, the peppermint chips melted in the hot cream, so although there was some peppermint flavor, there wasn’t any crunch. Perhaps toffee, caramel crunch, walnuts, or something else that wouldn’t melt would be better, or at least more peppermint chips. But the taste was better than the recipes made with cream cheese or mascarpone, unless you like hot cream cheese. Even after 20 minutes in the simmering water, the ice cream wasn't really HOT -- more like warm. Not unpleasant, but really not what I had expected. Using Dow SGA 7C methylcellulose, the hot ice cream didn’t exhibit any obvious tendency to "melt" as it got colder. It did become less firm — again, not unpleasant, but not melting, unlike real ice cream as it warms up. Perhaps a different type of methylcellulose would deliver different results. TBD. Bob

There aren't any illustrations at all - it's all text. The Kindle version should be fine. (In fact, if I ever get an e-reader, this would be one of the first books I'd buy.) They are now offering a book of pictures on their web site, at http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/ideasinfood. Hardcover $60, download $15.

Since I neglected to take pictures of the game hen, I fixed it again last night. Again, I think the skin came out perfectly,. Same procedure as before, but this time I cooked it at 60C for four hours. Then 30 seconds in the LN2, and 60 seconds in the deep fat at 190C, flipping during both the LN2 and fryer, because of the size. My wife had said that she thought the previous night's attempt was a little bit on the dry side, which is why I lowered the temperature a bit. Even so, it was still a bit dry. I don't cook chicken all that often, much less with this setup, but what causes the dryness? Too high a temperature, too long, or what? Maybe just the nature of a Cornish game hen? Bob

I should have -- Next time. In the meantime, see the hamburger picture at Bob

I'm told that many restaurants will allow you to dump your oil in their containers, which are eventually recycled into biodiesel fuel. But I haven't tried it yet. Just don't pour it down the sink! Botulism shouldn't be a problem, because the temperature of the oil is way higher than the sterilization point -- even the botulism spores would be killed. Now, how to store it to keep it fresh is something that I hadn't really considered. Maybe pour it back in the jug and cap it? good question. Bob

Yesterday I fixed a cornish game hen for the two of us, and used about just about every appliance in the house. First I butterflied the hen and added S&P, then sealed in a big bag with my chamber vacuum. Cooked it SV for about six hours at 63C. Then I opened it up, dried it, and immersed it in a double-walled bowl that was half-filled with liquid nitrogen for 30 seconds. Then into the deep fat fryer for 60 seconds. The game hen was perfectly cooked, and the skin was nicely crisped and brown. Served with a couple of stuffed portobello mushrooms. Perfect!

I was doing some triple-cooked french fries (Heston Blumenthal's recipe), and happened to check the oil temperature in my Waring Pro with a digital oven thermometer that I calibrated. I was not pleased to find that when set at 375F, it would only get up to 340,when many recipes call for 425F. So I took it apart, and found the calibration screw on the back of the thermostat, and tweaked it until it was reasonably accurate. Put it back together again and fired it up, only to have it quit entirely! Apparently the second heat sensor is tripping, and then not resetting itself, but that isn't supposed to happen until it hits 500F. So I said to hell with it, and bypassed the over-heat sensor, or at least what I thought was the over-heat sensor. But then the unit would never turn off, even when the oil was at 375, and I turned to knob back to 175! So I said several more bad words, but I went ahead and cooked some tempura. This morning, it seemed to be working normally, and the temperature was pretty accurate. But I can probably understand why no electric units I know of will go beyond 375F, because the peanut oil I was using was starting to smoke pretty badly. But even if this is finally working, I'm thinking about buying the Krups unit, just to keep down the odor with the charcoal filter.

Yes, medium rare (or however the SV cooking does it). Basically, the relatively short time in the LN2 is not enough to chill the whole burger - just the surface. Likewise, the time in the hot oil is not (or at least should not be) so long to overcook it.

They mince the thick pork skin, then effectively reattach it with with Ultrasperse starch and methylcellulose until the the pork "skin" puffs. There is also a recipe for ultra crisp chicken crown,but it calls for a Pacojet.

I just posted a new topic, "Sous vide, liquid nitrogen, and deep frying" at It could as well have gone in the Modernist Cuisine thread,or the sous vide thread, but both of those thread are becoming the size of the "Dinner" thread, and I didn't want it to get lost. If anyone is actually using liquid nitrogen for anything other than making ice cream, please post your recipe and techniques to that thread. Bob