MartinH

Looking forward to this cook-off. In the past I've played with variations on traditional hash such as using cooked cauliflower instead of potato, using smoked fish instead of meat, or finishing with a few dashes of Worcestershire sauce for that acid enhancement. An amazingly versatile dish.

I use mine to make chicken wings: with no pre-heating, a completely unattended 25 minutes of cooking (for about 15 wings) produces well-browned, crispy-skinned wings fried in their own rendered chicken fat. It is the easiest and best way I've found to do wings. I've also tried other things. Browning or caramelizing onions in it omits all the stirring needed in a pan. I have used it to fry potatoes in beef fat (as I believe McDonalds originally used for their fries); though tastier than oils, large amounts of beef fat for deep frying are almost unobtainable. So, for me it is not the "low fat" angle, since in any case I like high fat food, but the convenience that makes it useful.

A couple of thoughts on hamburgering: A 1" thick patty would take about half an hour to come to 55C in the middle. A gas grill gives off quite a lot less heat than a charcoal grill (or a hot cast iron pan) - using a gas grill risks either underbrowing the surface or overcooking the innards. After frustrations with using my grill, I'm now a strong believer in the double attack strategy: flop the meat on the grill and simultaneously ignite a torch for some flamethrower action. (Applies not just to hamburgers of course.) I think the ziplok bag idea (rather than vacuum sealing) is so that the patty isn't compressed too much, but that depends too on not squishing the patty too much when you form it. I don't have Modernist Cuisine to hand, but I recall a hamburger recipe which went: SV, dip in liquid nitrogen to freeze the surface, deep fry in very hot oil to brown.

My experiments with SV ground beef were disappointing. The meat emerged with a pronounced "liverish" taste. I tried adding plenty of seasoning, but that did not do the trick.

Another way would be to make the goulash broth first (maybe using some meat trimmings browned) and then add some of the broth to your sous vide bag. I had absolutely no idea there were so many named variations on goulash!

From a couple of days ago, the Toronto Globe and Mail interviews Nathan. Here's a good bit:

This point needs underlining. It is probably why modernism has been so late in arriving in cuisine. (I fault academia for the lag: food scientists have had access to the technology and the research for a long time, but never put it together in a way useful to anyone outside of the big food companies.)

As well as for pizza, this metal plate technique ought to work for other flatbreads, such as Indian-style naan bread. AFAIK naan is cooked stuck to the wall of a very hot tandoor oven, so presumably it gets lots of heat by both radiation (from the other walls) and conduction (from its bit of the wall). I think it is generally agreed that naan can't be done properly in a domestic oven.

This makes no sense. The high conductivity of aluminum (and iron too) is what you need. It is why a pizza stone (lower conductivity) is inferior to a metal plate. You want the heat to be conducted into the pizza dough as quickly as possible. (And it will not lose its heat when you open the door because it is insulated by the air. (Just try heating an aluminum object to 500 degrees, then open the door, and touch the object. Think the temp will plummet and you won't get burned? Think again.)

A couple of questions regarding the design of the book. 1. What is the typeface. 2. How did you handle references (to scientific research or earlier books) without clogging up the text.

My experience gels (ahem!) with nickrey's. For instance, when I SV sausages, the juice will start gelling even before it gets into the fridge.

And it is #23 in Amazon.com's "Bestsellers in Cooking, Food & Wine". That's remarkable.

OK here's my question: What is microwaved beef jerky? And why do it? Also, is microwaving herbs as easy as it sounds?

Well, maybe you can. Here's a way: take a 64.5C SV egg, wash off the white, roll the yolk in breadcrumbs, and fry briefly. Crunchy exterior with that rich custardy interior.

It is because they contain different proteins, which coagulate at different temps. In a sous vide bath there won't be any temp difference between inside and outside. Perhaps expectations differ on what a "perfect egg" should be. Have a look at the photos on Douglas Baldwin's site. I like to think of a 148F/64.5C egg as something unique, not a better or easier way to do a soft-boiled egg (with its firm white and runny yolk, which is "perfect" in its own way when done right), but instead a separate kind of cooked egg, another egg-style alongside scrambled, poached etc.

I`m going to nominate Woolly Mammoth Tartare. Most of the dishes mentioned here (beer, bread, gruels of various kinds) are grain preparations and so only arose with farming. The oldest dishes must have been made by our hunter-gatherer ancestors. Perhaps pemmican qualifies as a `dish` and since it is made of meat and berries could be truly ancient.

One way I've used to make modernist devilled eggs is to use two sets of eggs: (1) cook one set to 64.5C, discard the loose whites and reserve the soft yolks, (2) cook the other set to 70-75C, reserve the firm (but not rubbery) whites and discard the too-firm yolks, (3) carefully put the reserved yolks from batch one into the reserved whites from batch two.

Maybe an app of this kind is a venture that Nathan's Intellectual Ventures could invest in? Nathan, if you are reading this, perhaps bundling the app with copies of Modernist Cuisine could be an option? Douglas, you point out that thermal diffusivity in food undergoing a phase-transition (frozen-to-thawed) is nonlinear. When I think nonlinear systems, I think of chaos, the weather, things like that. I'm supposing that the reason it is nonlinear is that a thawing substance is more complex than a steady-state piece of meat (or whatever) since it has lots of micro-regions in different states, all interacting with each other. But as it thaws, complexity reduces, it becomes homogenous, and thermal diffusivity gradually turns linear. Fascinating! Happy New Year to all sous viders!

It strikes me that a software app ought to be able to solve heat equations. Does anyone know if there are any software apps out there in the internet designed to do this?

I haven't cooked this kind of pre-prepped fowl before, but here's a couple of general responses. Mostly it's better with sous vide to cook different parts of the bird at different times/temps - so legs are better a bit hotter and longer than breasts. That's why most of the discussion is about cooking them separately. Thawing can indeed be skipped with sous vide. The reason: in sous vide outer parts will not overcook while inner parts stay frozen (as long as you cook it for enough time overall). For best times, check the tables upthread (and now more accessible via Chris Amirault's SV Index). No resting needed with SV. Browning the skin will be a challenge, since you cannot put it in a frying pan. I would think a blowtorch is the best option, since a broiler will probably not give an even browning. Skin areas further from the radiant heat are likely to remain unbrowned. Hope this is of some help.

Chris, would you care to share your sous vide chili recipe?

I enjoy being able to control the doneness level, especially to prevent them getting overdone and rubbery. But I like sauted shrimp too.

I once tried shrimp 60C for ~1 hour (a single layer in the bag) and they were not mushy. I think you should be OK.

Any tips on sous vide meatloaf? I ran a search in this thread and the topic doesn't seem to have arisen.

I don't put duck fat (or chicken fat) in the bag because the meat gives off juices and then those fats just get poured away at the end with the liquids. It seems like a waste of good fat. Not sure that using the fat "nearest" the product is best. Butter drizzled over meat is superb, but butter fat isn't "near" any meat. Duck fat is easier to render than other fats because it melts at a relatively low temperature. Put some fatty duck skin in a bag, SV at 70 to 80, and lots a delicious fat is released.