Robert Jueneman
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Posts posted by Robert Jueneman
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Sauce for brisket?
I'm trying to decide on a sauce for the medium rare sous vide brisket for my forthcoming class. I DON'T want a BBQ sauce, but something more classy/classical. The accompanying veggies (so far) will be sauteed salsify, Moroccan carrots, and a small serving of mushroom risotto.
Last night, I tried making the mustard sauce from the iSi "The Trick With The Whip." It called for 125 mm of veal veloute (for which I substituted the au jus from the cooked brisket), 200 ml of heavy cream, 40 g of Dijon mustard, 6 g of mustard powder, and a whopping 640 ml of water, poured into a cream whipper and charged with two cream chargers. (Since I was using a 500 ml ThermoWhip, I cut the proportions in half.)
What a disaster!
When I tried to release some of the foam onto a plate, it splattered everything within about a two foot radius!
I think the sauce was way too thin, and it perhaps could have been made without any water at all, then adding a bit to thin it out if necessary.
Another possibility might be the button mushroom espuma, from the same book. It calls for 250 g of mushrooms, 250 ml of heavy cream, 300 ml of veal stock, 90 ml of white wine, 90 g of creme fraiche, 1 tbsp of cornstarch, 2 shallots, and 2 tbsp of vegetable oil, and one sheet of gelatin if necessary. That sounds elegant, but it might be too creamy for the meat.
I'm inclined to think that the mustard sauce would add just the right amount of bite to perk up the rather bland brisket, if I can adjust the consistency.
Any other ideas or suggestions?
That sounds like a typo in the recipe by a factor of 10. I would try it without any water and only add some if the first shot was too thick.
That was my thought as well, Paul.
Interestingly, iSi has a recipe web site, at www.espumas.com. There they have the same recipe, cut in half for a smaller container, but with the same proportions. So if it's a typo, and I have to believe it is, then they've compounded the error.
I tried it without any water at all, and it was quite nice. Not too sharp, and not too bland.
Bob
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My foie gras mousse is a sure thing if you want to use your ISI for a sauce...
150ml Duck or veal demi
150ml cream
150 grams foie cut into chunks
salt
Heat demi, put in a blender, add foie to emulsify, pulse with cream and it will be around room temp. Then charge with a single. This will be creamy too but there have been applications that I then drizzle with a reduction of sherry vinegar and honey. Makes a nice presentation.
Interesting! And I just happen to have a little left over fois gras in the freezer. Now to find some veal demi glace.
Bob
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Sauce for brisket?
I'm trying to decide on a sauce for the medium rare sous vide brisket for my forthcoming class. I DON'T want a BBQ sauce, but something more classy/classical. The accompanying veggies (so far) will be sauteed salsify, Moroccan carrots, and a small serving of mushroom risotto.
Last night, I tried making the mustard sauce from the iSi "The Trick With The Whip." It called for 125 mm of veal veloute (for which I substituted the au jus from the cooked brisket), 200 ml of heavy cream, 40 g of Dijon mustard, 6 g of mustard powder, and a whopping 640 ml of water, poured into a cream whipper and charged with two cream chargers. (Since I was using a 500 ml ThermoWhip, I cut the proportions in half.)
What a disaster!
When I tried to release some of the foam onto a plate, it splattered everything within about a two foot radius!
I think the sauce was way too thin, and it perhaps could have been made without any water at all, then adding a bit to thin it out if necessary.
Another possibility might be the button mushroom espuma, from the same book. It calls for 250 g of mushrooms, 250 ml of heavy cream, 300 ml of veal stock, 90 ml of white wine, 90 g of creme fraiche, 1 tbsp of cornstarch, 2 shallots, and 2 tbsp of vegetable oil, and one sheet of gelatin if necessary. That sounds elegant, but it might be too creamy for the meat.
I'm inclined to think that the mustard sauce would add just the right amount of bite to perk up the rather bland brisket, if I can adjust the consistency.
Any other ideas or suggestions?
That sounds like a typo in the recipe by a factor of 10. I would try it without any water and only add some if the first shot was too thick.
That was my thought as well, Paul.
Interestingly, iSi has a recipe web site, at www.espumas.com. There they have the same recipe, cut in half for a smaller container, but with the same proportions. So if it's a typo, and I have to believe it is, then they've compounded the error.
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Sauce for brisket?
I'm trying to decide on a sauce for the medium rare sous vide brisket for my forthcoming class. I DON'T want a BBQ sauce, but something more classy/classical. The accompanying veggies (so far) will be sauteed salsify, Moroccan carrots, and a small serving of mushroom risotto.
Last night, I tried making the mustard sauce from the iSi "The Trick With The Whip." It called for 125 mm of veal veloute (for which I substituted the au jus from the cooked brisket), 200 ml of heavy cream, 40 g of Dijon mustard, 6 g of mustard powder, and a whopping 640 ml of water, poured into a cream whipper and charged with two cream chargers. (Since I was using a 500 ml ThermoWhip, I cut the proportions in half.)
What a disaster!
When I tried to release some of the foam onto a plate, it splattered everything within about a two foot radius!
I think the sauce was way too thin, and it perhaps could have been made without any water at all, then adding a bit to thin it out if necessary.
Another possibility might be the button mushroom espuma, from the same book. It calls for 250 g of mushrooms, 250 ml of heavy cream, 300 ml of veal stock, 90 ml of white wine, 90 g of creme fraiche, 1 tbsp of cornstarch, 2 shallots, and 2 tbsp of vegetable oil, and one sheet of gelatin if necessary. That sounds elegant, but it might be too creamy for the meat.
I'm inclined to think that the mustard sauce would add just the right amount of bite to perk up the rather bland brisket, if I can adjust the consistency.
Any other ideas or suggestions?
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I would think Cambro has distributors worldwide, but if not, and you really want one of the ColdFest pans, let me know and I'm sure we could work something out
I wasn't really suggesting leaving the A-G on all night -- i was just (a) tired and lazy, and (b) curious to know how cold it would get. Chilling down to 0F or -18C is plenty good enough for sous vide cook/chill, and an hour is about enough for that, especially with pre-chilled vodka.
Bob
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So here's a more general question...
I've been experimenting with sous vide for less than a year, and have been very happy with anything meaty. Ribs, pork belly and salmon are now regular dinner items and the humble chicken breast has been improved beyond recognition.
But sous vide vegetables... well, meh.
Sure they cook ok, but I haven't made any sous vide vegetables that have been an obvious improvement over steaming or microwaving. And although I haven't had any problems, it seems that you can overcook sous vide vegetables, which negates one of the biggest advantages of cooking meat sous vide. By the time you put the bagging step into the equation I find it's easier to just steam them. So far I've only experimented with typical dinner time vegies - potatos, carrots, peas, beans, corn. I also tried brocollini because I read somewhere not to, and I wanted to know what would happen (smelt bad but tasted normal).
Can anyone suggest a vegetable sous vide technique that produces a significantly better result than traditional methods?
If you cook vegetables sous vide using the same methods you use when boiling or microwaving, you shouldn't be surprised if the results are similar. Browse through Thomas Keller's Under Pressure, or Grant Achatz's Alinea, or Heston Blumenthal's Big Fat Duck cookbooks for some more innovative methods.
I think some veggie recipes tend to run a little hot, and particularly corn on the cob, which tastes too "cobby" at 85C. I put a ear of corn in a bag with about a teaspoon of butter, juice of half a lime, and some chipotle chile powder to taste (say 1/2 teaspoon, although I never measure it), and cook it for 30 minutes at 63C.
I'm going to be teaching a class in modernist cuisine on October 17th, at Max's Restaurant in Santa Fe, that will feature a 10-course tasting menu. The menu will include a compressed watermelon topped with goat cheese and a balsamic vinegar pearl, a shrimp & crab mosaic made with meat glue and decorated with an avocado foam, sous vide asparagus topped with the perfect egg yolk and a Gewurtztraminer foam, a smoked spinach salad with hot bacon dressing, an intermezzo of melted sorbet encased in white chocolate, a mushroom-bacon cappuccino, 72-hour sous vide brisket and a vegetable medley, sous vide pears with vanilla-infused brandy, and a blue cheese foam and gelled port made on an Anti-Griddle to finish off the evening.
For the asparagus, I cook both white and green asparagus (in separate bags) for a hour at 83C. Then I put the green asparagus in a Thermomix and puree it to make a mousse, and serve it in the middle of a plate. Four stalks of white asparagus then radiate out from the center of mousse, and the perfect egg yolk is placed on top, then topped with the Gewurtztraminer bubbles.
For the vegetable medley, I'm planning to serve Moroccan carrots made with honey, vinegar, olive oil, smoked paprika, and ancho chile powder, and cooked sous vide at 83C for an hour, until tender.
Another interesting veggie will be salsify, prepared sous vide a la Alinea. Salsify used to be a common root vegetable, and is still popular in Europe, but I had never seen or tasted it until I saw some in Whole Foods. It's one of the ugliest looking things you've ever seem, like a gnarly dark brown carrot, and it's tricky to prepare. You need to wear disposable gloves when you peal and then wash it, because otherwise a very sticky sap will get all over your hands and require Goo Gone to remove. But the inside is a pearly white. Escoffier has several recipes, but recommends cooking in a Blanc. I had to look it up, but a Blanc is made with a tbs of flour, a liter of water, 2 tbs of lemon juice, a onion studded with a clove, and brought to a boil with the food to be cooked, then topped with a layer of fat such as beef kidney suet chopped finely. The purpose of all this is to keep the food from coming into contact with air and discoloring, but obviously this isn't necessary when you are cooking sous vide. The salsify is satisfying when just cooked in butter and dotted with fresh parsley, but it can also be breaded and fried briefly, or served with a cream sauce such as Béchamel.
I'm still trying to decide on the third vegetable. A julienne of red cabbage with butter and balsamic vinegar cooked sous vide is one possibility, as are sous vide Cipollinni onions (if I can find any).
The vanilla poached pears are from Jason Logsdon's "Beginning Sous Vide" book (as is the Moroccan carrot recipe, which I've jazzed up a bit). Instead of using vanilla paste, I use a couple of teaspoons of vanilla-infused brandy (made in a cream whipper using the nitrogen cavitation technique). After cooking the pears, they are sliced lengthwise and fanned out on the desert plate, with the juices poured over them. Delicious, and particularly so with a sweet white wine, such as a brandy-fortified Muscat from a notable New Mexico winery near Taos, La Chiripoda.
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I used to use an Iwatani torch, but moved to a MAPP torch from the hardware store for an even hotter flame. And the great benefit of the torch vs. a very hot skillet with oil is that it doesn't smoke up the rest of the kitchen.
The problem with the torch, however, is that the little surface bumps of meat are likely to burn while getting a nice Maillard reaction elsewhere. That's a problem that doesn't occur with the hot oil technique.
For that reason, I've started using a Le Creuset grill pan and ridged panini press instead of the torch, at least for flat steaks. I heat the grill pan and press on two gas flames to the point where both are quite hot, then spritz a little rice bran or grapeseed oil and perhaps some invert sugar on the meat, which has been previously dried with a paper towel. The oil keeps the meat from sticking to the pan or press, but there isn't enough to smoke up the house.
And the result is a nice cross-hatched pattern, like it was cooked on the grill.
Bob
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I believe what they really mean is their "Mushroom Broth" rather than Mushroom Stock. See p. 6•19.
Lachyg wins the sleuthing prize! He found the recipe for mushroom stock, on page 5-129, buried in the middle of a recipe for ragout of grains. It calls for 2 kg of mushrooms, 100 g of grapeseed oil, and 800 g of water.
At first I thought, "Wow, that seems like a lot of grapeseed oil!" But on looking up the recipe, I see that they are coating the mushrooms in oil, roasting them at 175C/350F until golden (30 minutes), then simmering in water for an hour, and straining.
From a culinary linguistics standpoint, this makes more sense, because a broth is a finished, highly flavored essence in it's own right, whereas a stock is used in combination with other ingredients to make the finished dish.
However, the differences are interesting. If you scale up the mushroom broth ingredients to the same scale as the mushroom stock, you would have 2kg of peeled(!) mushrooms (Crimini, in this case), 3575 g of water(!!), 121 g of olive oil, and 529 g of shallots. Obviously the shallots would add a lot of flavor, but I'm not sure that it would be a mushroom flavor. The recipes also differ in that the broth is sauteed, vs. roasted, but I doubt that makes much difference in the taste. Likewise, I don't know that pressure cooking for 15 minutes vs. simmering for 30 minutes would make all that much difference.
I thought I would double-check this recipe with Escoffier's Le Guide Culinaire, but surprisingly, I couldn't find any kind of a mushroom stock listed, even under morels or champignons. Cream sauces, and other preparations, such as a mushroom sauce made from Demi-glace, yes, but not a separate stock.
Now I guess I'll have to try both methods.
Bob
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I believe what they really mean is their "Mushroom Broth" rather than Mushroom Stock. See p. 6•19.
Well, thanks, Chris. That makes a reasonable amount of sense. But it's strange that they don't list mushroom broth in their section on broths, either.
Now I'll have to drag out the pressure cooker which someone gave me. I haven't used one for more than 55 years!
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Mushroom Stock
I want to try the Mushroom-Bacon Cappuccino, but it calls for mushroom jus, which in turn calls for mushroom stock, which is supposed to be presented on 2- 296, but mushroom stock isn't listed there, or in either of the indices!
Another reader asked the MC Cooks Forum if you were supposed to use the recipe for vegetable stock, substituting mushrooms instead of veggies, but hasn't received an answer yet. (Is a mushroom a vegetable? I didn't think so.)
But in any case, the water is scaled at 100%, and the vegetable oil used to saute the vegetable is scaled at 5%, but nowhere is there a scaling for the vegetables/mushrooms! So how much are you supposed to use?
If anyone has made a decent mushroom stock, or if you've found a secret recipe somewhere else in MC, would you please post it?
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I've tried looking around a little bit, but haven't been able to find a recent discussion on the current state of LTLT cooking equipment.
It looks like my setup has bit the dust and I'm doing research into options so I can get back in the game. As of right now there don't seem to be a huge amount, at least from what I can find. Is there anything out there besides my short list below?
- PID controller - for a rice/slow cooker or it can be coupled with a heating element (Auberins or SVM style)
- Sous Vide Supreme - water oven
- Polyscience Professional - immersion circulator
I like the flexibility of something more along the lines of a circulator/PID controller as opposed to a water oven, but I don't know if there are other options out there.
The Sous Vide Magic is certainly the lowest cost option, and the most flexible. You can use it with a rice cooker or a crock pot, a turkey fryer, an electric smoker, or with the Fresh Meals Magic heater in a beer cooler or even your bathtub! And they can achieve excellent accuracy and temperature control if you program them correctly, although that takes some effort.
The Sous Vide Supreme is a nicely integrated unit that might appeal more to the housewife than the DIY equipment geek (my apologies for the sexist comment!) And some have questioned the accuracy and temperature stability of the SVS compared to the SVM, although I haven't used one personally.
The PolyScience 7306 unit with the cage is certainly the gold standard, and the one most often seen in restaurants and on cooking shows. There are several Cambro tank sizes and cut-out lids available, depending on your needs and space available. If you use the larger tank, you may need to fill it with pre-heated water. But the accuracy and temperature stability is the best-in-class.
The PolyScience Sous Vide Professional Chef Series is a couple of hundred dollars cheaper than the 7306, but I would be a bit skeptical of the black plastic, at least if you have hard water.
There are other immersion circulators, including a number from Europe, but I don't know anything about them.
- PID controller - for a rice/slow cooker or it can be coupled with a heating element (Auberins or SVM style)
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It still seems a very inefficient system, energy consumption wise, compared to the normal ice bath system. Is it really that much better to justify the cost? I can't see this taking off as an appliance any time soon, the possible uses just are too limited.
In saying that, I still want one.
I hear you. However, an ice bath won't actually freeze something, unless you use a heavily brined solution, and that makes a mess if you spill some of it.
As I said to Maxim, once you have succumbed to temptation and it is a sunk cost, you might as well figure out a better use for it than making popsicles!
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Mark, just do it. Start at page 1-1. You can sleep when you are dead.
So true. It seems so many people want to skip to 'the best part', but each volume is loaded with information even when it seems like the information might be common knowledge they MC team tries to go above and beyond, often succeeding.
Start from the beginning and enjoy the entire set.
Agreed. But try to keep your head from hitting the books after midnight, as you wouldn't want to to get sweat marks on a page! :-)
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OK, I tried the ColdFest chilling pan in combination with a stainless steel loaf pan, partially filed with cheap 80 proof vodka from the freezer at a nominal -8F, in order to cook-chill a sous vide dish -- in this case a good sized piece of leftover brisket at 55C.
When I first put the meat in the loaf pan, with the thermometer probe on the bottom of the pan in the alcohol, and the ColdFest pan fresh from the freezer at around 0F, the temperature initially read 11 F. Then, somewhat to my surprise, over the next 30 minutes or so it climbed to about 18F, I assume as the heat from the meat radiated outward. Then it slowly began to drop.
I decided to leave the AntiGriddle on all night, and went to bed. I got up and checked it around 3-4 hours later and it was down to around -10F (as I recall), and by the next morning it was down to -20F.
So the Cold Fest pan is a great solution to the problem of losing too much of the chilling effect to the atmosphere. Unfortunately, a loaf pan is a little bit too small to hold what I want, and nothing larger that will fit inside the ColdFest pan seems to be available. I tried remolding a cheap aluminum lasagna pan into the right dimensions, but that was basically a flop and the vodka spilled every which way.
I may have to pay a local metal fabricator to make me something out of copper to my specifications, if I can't find something suitable that is pre-made.
Anyway, this seems to be a very useful alternative to a big tub of ice in an ice-bath, for SV cook-chill.
I've also found the Anti-Griddle to be useful in quickly chilling down something I had just been heating, e.g., some grocery-store balsamic vinegar that I reduced by 50% in order to concentrate the flavor.
And certainly it is much more convenient, if admittedly much more expensive, than a pan full of dry ice and vodka; or an equally priced Dewar of liquid nitrogen, for such purposes.
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Thanks everyone. I did the right thing then.
The beeping is low water circulation from having too much in the demi, so the temp in the bath wasn't evenly distributed either. I need to build a large version because I tend to cook in large batches on the weekend and stock the fridge/freezer for my busy week and my daughter (the one that's not a breatharian) when I'm gone every other week. Oh for more time, sigh.
Thanks again.
Larry
Larry, if you need to cook large quantities of food at one time, and can't afford a PolyScience circulator and the large Cambro tank they sell for commercial applications, I can think of two options.
One is the Fresh Meals Magic from Fresh Meals Solutions, which includes a heater and a PID controller, along with a pump. I don' t have one yet, but PedroG does, and he apparently loves his. You could even cook in your bathtub, if you need to cook a LOT of food!
The other possibility would be to use the SVS Demi as water heater, and then rig up a circulating pump that would transfer hot water from the Demi to a larger container, and then let it flow back to the Demi via a siphon that you would have to prime. In that case you might need to insulate the tank with some polystyrene foam to keep the heat loss down to something the Demi can handle.
As long as you aren't cooking at high temperatures (above 65C), a submersible garden fountain pump is very inexpensive, and ought to do the trick. For slightly more money, LightObject sells a DC powered pump that is rated up to 100C, and is FDA approved for use in espresso machines, etc. Check Amazon.
Bob
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I have a question.
I got home from work about 7:00 last night looking forward to taking my now 48 hour cook of dry rubbed pork ribs out of the sous vide, and browning and glazing on some sauce on the hibachi using hot burning hardwood lump charcoal for quick browning/glazing. It was the first time I've tried ribs sous vide and couldn't wait to see what the result was. Was pretty upset to find the demi unpluged, my stepdaughter had unplugged it earlier in the day because it was beeping which she found annoying, apparently I had too much pork in there and the water wasn't circulating well (something else to look into). They had been sitting there for who knows how long, I'd guess the water was down to 90degF or so.
I tossed them.
This morning I'm wondering if I had taken them back up above pasteurization temp for the required time, would they have been safe (ignoring the beeping issue)? Even if I had thought of it then without knowing for sure I would have tossed them. Could I have just turned it back on at 140f and gone for another 24 hours?
Dag-nab-it, I was bummed. Heading out of town tonight for the week on business too so I have to wait to give it another go.
Thanks for any advice.
Larry
There was a discussion up-thread where I had initially proposed pasteurizing meat for the minimum amount of time, and then lowering the temperature to the point where maximum tenderization occurs. But after much discussion, I became convinced that wasn't a good idea. I think it applies in your case as well.
Although raising the temperature back up to 140 would have re-pastuerized the meat, you can' t be entirely certain what might be going on with various spores, as well as such possibilities as lactic acid build-up, which won't kill you (unlike botulism), but won't taste good, either.
So I think you did the only prudent thing.
Now you have to sit down with your stepdaughter and explain what sous vide is all about. And If the pork hasn't already gone out with the trash, I think I would put it back in the demi, and try to figure out what was causing the beeping!
Bob
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I did it. I pulled the trigger and ordered my copy. Amazon says it arrives in about a week. For those of you that have been studying the thousands of pages, can you give me your TOP 3 THINGS to immediately check out when my collection arrives?
Who knows how long it will take me to get through it all. Your top 3 list would be much appreciated. Thanks!!!
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Certainly the entire Sous Vide discussion, three times if necessary!
The wine discussion was also very informative.
The fundamentals -- sautéing, braising, roasting, wok cookery, pizza grilling on a super hot oven -- all very useful, and lots of new insights.
Bob
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I'm satisfied that my home-made rig is good within about half a degree C. Its probably better than that, but I can't be sure (without more investment in calibration), so for now an indicated 55.5 is my bottom end for long cooking.
The price of a decent basal (ovulation) thermometer, e.g., the Geratherm, is about $13, and in my tests they were as accurate as my NIST-certifiied reference thermometer could read, to within 0.1F or better.
Anyone who has ANY kind of a sous vide rig, from a DIY up to a PolyScience immersion circulator, and uses it without calibrating the temperatures produced, has got rocks in their head and may be endangering their health and their loved ones.
Bob
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Because PolyScience already sells the Cambro tanks for use with their sous vide kit, I checked the Cambro web site and found a ColdFest pan that is just the right size -- 10 1/4" x 12 3/4" x 6", made of high-impact ABS material and filled with a non-toxi gel. The product number is 26CF, at http://cool.cambro.com/ColdFest_Storage.ashx. Cambro sells it for keeping food cold without ice -- you freeze the pan, and then fill it with pre-chilled product, and it will stay cold for eight hours. So freezing it and then inverting it would make a very effective insulating cover. I've ordered one from www.webstaurantstore.com, along with a 1/4 size stainless steel hotel pan to hold the chilled vodka. Voila -- instant ice bath for sous vide cook-chill!
When it arrives, I'll let people know how well it works.
Bob
The ColdFest chilling pan arrived yesterday and is in the freezer, along with 1500ml of cheap vodka. I'm still waiting for the 1/4 size hotel pan to arrive.
But the ColdFest pan seems like an ideal marriage partner for the Anti-Griddle, as it fits very nicely over the entire surface, and it both insulates and chills the surrounding air. Once the hotel pan arrives, I'l post some info as to the minimum temperature reached, and how long it takes to get there.
But as a much more convenient, if admittedly more expensive solution than a brine ice bath for sous vide cook chill, I expect to make a lot of use of the combination.
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Of course, the most egregious error in the entire set is the claim that when cooking eggs, only temperature, and not time, is all that matters. That wasn't a typo, but a fundamental lack of understanding and experimentation...
Umm, I took that to mean that 10 hours at 130 F would simply not set the proteins like a minute at 170 F, for example. Obviously, if you have a dozen yolks blended together they won't set as fast as a single one.
So, am I wrong? Can an egg cooked at 120 - 130 for a day give the same result as a few minutes at 150?
See the "Culinary Biophysics: On the nature of the 6XC Egg," article by César Vega & Ruben Mercadé-Prieto. Google it, as I don't have the link available right now.
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I have the first printing, originally ordered June 25, 2010!
And I've now gone through a pad and a half of Post-It notes, updating the book with the errata for Volumes 1 - 5, and about to start on the KM. I only bothered to note the serious errors -- the grammatical and spelling errors would have taken two or perhaps three pads of notes.
I do a lot of technical writing myself, and it is easy to understand how these kinds of errors creep in, sometimes caused by spell checkers automatically "correcting" my dyslexic fingers -- "yoke" for "yolk," for example. However, it is much harder to understand why a decent editor or technical writer wouldn't have caught most of these before they went to press. Similarly, the stupid errors in conversion between Celsius and Fahrenheit, and the scaling percentages, certainly should have been caught. A college freshman could have done it.
I am seriously thinking about buying a second printing, just to clean up these mistakes, and trying to sell the first printing to a collector. Unfortunately, even that printing still doesn't contain a useful index to the Kitchen Manual -- you have to get it on-line. Sigh. Maybe in the third printing?
Of course, the most egregious error in the entire set is the claim that when cooking eggs, only temperature, and not time, is all that matters. That wasn't a typo, but a fundamental lack of understanding and experimentation, as we now know from the "Culinary Biophysics: On the nature of the 6XC Egg," article by César Vega & Ruben Mercadé-Prieto. That hasn't even made it onto the errata list yet, but it certainly should.
There is no question that the MC set is an awesome contribution, eclipsing Escoffier, Julia Child, and most others, and extending our knowledge into areas pioneered by Ferran Adria, Heston Blumenthal, and Grant Achatz. But cleaning up the errors is still a work in progress.
I gave up and ordered the second printing from Amazon. It was back-ordered for a few days, then shipped, leaving me nervously wondering whether it would be the first or second printing. Fortunately, it was the second. The UPS delivery lady said I had to stop buying such heavy kitchen things! Amazon initially charged me the list price of $639, but once the books became available again, they lowered the price to $461. I complained, and they promised to issue me a refund -- otherwise I was going to return the books and then buy them again!
I was able to sell the first printing to a worthy chef in Santa Fe for $400, which I thought was fair. Of course some people are offering them for prices near $2000 -- good luck!
There are still some of the non-typographical, factual errors that will probably survive until the second edition, if and when we ever see that. I can forgive that -- time marches on, and no one knows everything. But the first printing was simply egregious in terms of stupid spelling, grammatical, and conversion errors.
If you have one, buy the second printing, and sell or donate your first printing to a worthy cause.
Bob
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Joe Strybel of PolyScience sent me a note recently, saying that he had come across my post asking about a taller lid, but that no one had any recollection of such a request, and in any case they were not in a position to make a one-off lid just for me. So I re-sent him the note that I had originally sent on 7/19/11.
Since this thread was merged with the original one, no one seems to have read it, or has much interest. Too bad.
But just in case someone is lurking out there, if you also have an interest in a taller lid, I would send a note to PolyScience.
Because PolyScience already sells the Cambro tanks for use with their sous vide kit, I checked the Cambro web site and found a ColdFest pan that is just the right size -- 10 1/4" x 12 3/4" x 6", made of high-impact ABS material and filled with a non-toxi gel. The product number is 26CF, at http://cool.cambro.com/ColdFest_Storage.ashx. Cambro sells it for keeping food cold without ice -- you freeze the pan, and then fill it with pre-chilled product, and it will stay cold for eight hours. So freezing it and then inverting it would make a very effective insulating cover. I've ordered one from www.webstaurantstore.com, along with a 1/4 size stainless steel hotel pan to hold the chilled vodka. Voila -- instant ice bath for sous vidd cook-chill!
When it arrives, I'll let people know how well it works.
Bob
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Lightobject makes an inexpensive dual temperature PID controller for only $38.50. It's available on Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=sous+vide+contoller&x=0&y=0
Another $3.95 for a thermocouple, plus $8.50 for a 20 amp solid state relay, plus $15.50 for a 100C DC water pump that is FDA approved to circulate the water. Add a Marshaltown 742g Bucket Water heater for $39.99, and maybe a Cambro tank, and you’ve got a pretty nice DIY sous vide machine for not much more than $100. Of course it won't be pretty, and you are pretty much on your own in figuring out how to program a PID controller. But the circulating pump should minimize the overshoot problems that a conventional PID controller in a non-circulating bath has to cope with.
I have to believe that AllClad and others are beginning to eye this market as well. It really isn't all that hard.
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Interesting that it's not retort-pouch compatible: anyone know why not?
Chris, I just came across your post, and see that no one has responded to it.
There are basically two problems with a retort pouch. The first is that such pouches don't have the waffle construction that is necessary to allow the air to escape, and for that reason they cannot be used on the outside of a chamber vacuum, or with an edge sealer. (I recently bought some 8" x 18" pouches used for whole fish filets. It wouldn't fit inside my Minipack MVS31X without doubling it over, or trimming it.)
Now, the Sous Vide Supreme machine isn't an edge sealer, so that shouldn't be a problem. But the other problem is that retort pouches are about 7mm thick, and typically have a gold-colored metallic foil to different them from bags intended for use at lower temperatures. For that reason, it takes a lot more heat, or a longer time, to get a good seal.
In my case, Doug at Doug Care Equipment recommended that I increase the seal time on my machine from the normal 2.5 seconds up to the full 4 seconds when using a retort pouch.
The first time I tried it, I was trying to seal a beef tongue with 500 ml of water, which really stretched the limits of my machine. I must have gotten some water on the seal area, because it didn't seal at all. So I wiped it dry and tried it again, and this time the seal held. (I had forgotten that I had some 10" x 13" 3 mil boilable bags, which was why I was using the retort pouch. I didn't really need to, since I wasn't going to be canning the meat.)
So although I don't have the Sous Vide Supreme/Vacmaster sealer, and haven't read the instruction manual, I suspect that it doesn't have a way to increase the seal time, or else the seal bar doesn't get hot enough to seal a retort pouch.
One other thing to consider is that the Vacmaster uses a dry pump, whereas the Minipack and Henkle units use an oil pump. There are pros and cons -- the dry pump is less likely to have a problem if a fluid starts boiling within the chamber as a result of pulling too hard a vacuum, but on the other hand, I suspect it will wear out more quickly than an oil pump.
I'm very happy with my unit, but it WAS expensive.
Bob
Methocel
in Cooking
Posted
That was the most useful post in this entire thread, which has grown somewhat stale.
But I'm not trying to make hot ice cream, I'm trying to fine a consommé, such as the oxtail consommé shown in Modernist Cuisine, p. 2-376. It calls for SGA 150, but I presently only have some F50. So the question is whether I can substitute the F50 for the SGA.
It seems to me that if I heat the broth to above the gelling point, either form ought to work, although the higher viscosity of the SGA might be beneficial.
I guess if it doesn't work, I might end up with a consommé of less than perfect clarity, but I won't kill anyone.
Bob