pbear

You just said the magic word: http://www.google.com/patents/US6209784

If this were my party, I'd start by cooking the lobster tails until just done, then plan on reheating to serve. I'd do stage one by putting all the tails in a large pot and bring it to about 170F. Drain, rinse and hold chilled for Step 2. Which would be to drop into a warming bath of say 140F and plate out as convenient to coordinate with the steaks.

My solution to the latter issue - and I'm sure I'm not the only one to think of this - is to cook the garlic, etc. before bagging. This works with seafood and poultry, as well as meat. For a marinade like that, I'd use a light saute, deglaze with a couple tbsp water and steam covered for several minutes. For something with onions, I'll generally simmer half an hour or so, not so much to eliminate off flavors as to create the texture I prefer in an onion-based sauce. Anyhoo, once done, I let the marinade or sauce cool before bagging. If convenient, it can be prepared a day or more in advance.

I imagine it also would make them easier to vacuum pack without crumbling.

The simple solution to this problem is to treat the cake and fruit separately. Indeed, in my understanding, that's the usual method with angel food cake. So, make the cake plain and prepare a coulis to spoon over each slice.

A quick Google search on the phrase suggests this is mistaken. Whether the "safe" side is right is disputed by some, but no one (AFAICT) says all that matters is whether the container survives.

Mike, expounding on cdh's comment, here's what the U.S. Copyright office says about recipes: The page then goes on to link an article on Copyright Basics which you might find interesting.

Different temps produce different textures. Especially for long cooks - what conventionally would be braises - preferences vary widely. Personally, I'm mostly using 60C/140F for those these days. In the past, I've used 65.5C/150F to good effect,, so 62C/144F doesn't seem unreasonable to me. OTOH, 50C/122F seems low for a holding temp, as it leaves lots of room for thermophilic spoilage but non-pathogenic bacteria. I'd use 55C/131F (not bullet-proof, but better). That's also the temp I generally use for short cooks, lower for seafood (albeit only product I'm confident doesn't need pasteurization and is parasite safe).

BTW, I should have mentioned that, while Nopa has the same owners, the menu is completely different, what I call American Bistro. In fact, it came first. Nopalito was an offshoot, inspired (the owners have explained) by meals the cooks would prepare for staff dinners.

The stuff already mentioned would take you much more than a week, so I'll just mention a few in the spirit of "if you're in the neighborhood." If you're on Clement in the Inner Richmond (where Kamei is located), don't miss Green Apple Books (mentioned above). Also,nearby is the New May Wah Market (the original, in Chinatown, has long since closed). To my mind it's the best all-around Asian market in the city. BTW, that area of Clement is also where you'll find Burma Superstar. If you go to BiRite (Mission district), Tartine Bakery is just a couple blocks away, so that's a twofer. Then, a few more blocks away is Rainbow, a really cool vegetarian health food store (employee owned). If you're at the Ferry Building (recommend highly), there are several interesting shops in addition to those already mentioned. Two standouts are Boccalone (Chris Cosentino's salume shop) and Delica (Japanese-style prepared foods). If you're at Cookin' (on Divisidero, near the Panhandle), another two interesting spots nearby are Falletti Foods and Nopalito (both a block away, on Broderick). Falletti's is a market, Nopalio is perhaps our best Mexican restaurant (good ones being surprisingly hard to find in this town). Another good restaurant nearby (same owners) is Nopa, on Divisidero (at Hayes). Finally, racking my brain for one gem not already on the list, what I've come up with is Polarica. As you can see from the website, their business is supplying unusual items (mostly meats) to restaurants. As someone in the trade, I bet you could score a walk though of the warehouse. (Ordinary customers just get the counter.) It's the one place I can think of which might give you a relationship, not just a bag of goodies, to take home.

As it happens, one of my favorite Korean markets is half-a-block from Japantown. It's called Woo Ri, on Fillmore just below Geary. No idea whether they have acorn liquor. It's a medium-to-small store and liquor is a special license. Worth dropping in on regardless, if you're in the neighborhood. Will give thought to other suggestions. In the meantime, please, SF ("Ess Eff"), not San Fran. ETA to correct spelling.

Also have never had this problem. Let's eliminate another issue. You're using the dough "blade," right, not the knife blade? I ask, in part, because I don't know whether the original Cuisinart even had that tool (got my first in the mid-80s).

An alternate solution would be to get a stand alone electric hot plate, e.g., this Waring unit. (You can find better ones, for more money, at restaurant supply stores.) Be sure to get one with a solid plate, not just a coil. Also handy, by the way, for deep frying outside, etc.

As discussed in slkinsey's excellent article (linked by heidih in Post #2), the main difference among saucepans of the same volume will be surface area vs. depth. That is, most will be somewhat wide and shallow, though less so than saute pans, while others will be comparatively narrow and deep. This can have a significant effect on evaporation. Which is better depends on the application (and often it doesn't matter). Further, a narrow saucepan can be easier to use if one plans to employ an immersion blender, e.g., when making purees or the Modernist Cuisine at Home cheese sauce. This comes up often enough for me (maybe not so much for others) that I went to the trouble of tracking down a narrow 1-1/2 qt saucepan specifically for the purpose. Also, similar to Lisa Shock, I find a narrow saucepan (in my case, a 4 qt stainless) best for deep-frying. Ditto for blanching veggies.

That's it, in a nutshell. The basic idea is that consumers may have confidence in the safety of food products so manufactured. To go deeper will require a lot of reading. Wiki gives a good summary of HACCP generally.. For a more detailed and technical discussion, see this FDA webpage. As applied to the spice products mentioned in the OP, the Canadian regulators have two webpages: HACCP Generic Model for Spices and Food Safety Practices Guidance for Spice Manufacturers. Notice these pages don't tell us exactly what the manufacturers are doing. Rather, they describe principles and procedures to be used in developing HACCP plans. For implementation, we're dependent on the manufacturers themselves (who hire food scientists for the purpose) and oversight by the regulators.

I'm pretty sure we're using the same assumptions regarding the science. Where we differ, I think, is over expectation. So, yes, R-value will tell us how effective the insulation. It's a gradient. Say the inside temp of whatever is being insulated - whether a sous vide bath or a house - is X and the ambient temp is Y. How fast Y will "wick" heat from the box is a function of the heat coefficient of air. How fast X will pump heat into the insulation is a function of the heat coefficient of the medium inside the box. The important difference between a sous vide bath and a house is that water is much more efficient at transferring heat than air. That's why we're using it. Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Just as a sous vide bath efficiently heats the pouches, so too does it efficiently heat the insulation. Which is why I say I'm not surprised the insulated box gets warm on the outside. Relating back to the OP, what I think this means is that it's not realistic to expect a UPS to maintain a sous vide bath for long. For a flicker, sure. Even for several minutes. More than this, though, not so much.

Can't speak to the rest, but this isn't surprising. Insulation isn't magic and it's never 100% efficient. Eventually, heat from the water bath will saturate the insulation (figuratively, not literally) and warm the outside surface, where it then dissipates into the air. But the rate of transmission through an insulated container will be much less than that of an uninsulated one, which is what you're after. The easiest way to measure this would be to put a watt meter (available from any hardware store) on the input, i.e., the circulator.

I work in a service business (not restaurant) where tips are an important part of my income. I accept this cultural difference as part of the territory. To expect otherwise isn't realistic, IMHO. If you're any good, it all evens out in the end.

Well, yes, obviously I can do that. And will. But please confirm that you don't get any play when you pull on the propeller shaft.

Houston, we have a problem ... Have had my Anova for a few months and been happy with it, but don't use it often as I mostly do long cooks and prefer my other rigs for those. Recently, though, I decided to try low temp beans and for that used the Anova. First round, about a week ago went fine. Second round, today, I'm getting a whirring sound, like the propeller is hitting the skirt. After trying various things, the only one that worked was to remove the bottom. But this was odd as the propeller isn't touching it when at rest. Turns out, the shaft is pulling out when under load. Doing it manually, I get about 2 mm play. So, I'm curious whether others have play in the propeller shaft of their Anovas. By the way, no, I didn't do anything to the darned thing. No oopsies. Didn't even have the skirt off between the two rounds. But I'm not asking anyone to figure out how it happened. Just trying to figure out what.

Read again the link in the OP. FODMOPS

I tried the Caldwell starter but was disappointed. It may be that I got a bad batch. Or operator error. Hard to know. But I've had no trouble with kimchi or sauerkraut, so I'm inclined to blame the product. YMMV. As regards salt, bear in mind that the page you link is talking about natural fermentation. For quick cured pickles, whether using vinegar or lactic acid as I propose, salt is merely a seasoning. In this context, one may use as much or as little as suits one's palate.

It's always dificult to troubleshoot something like this at a distance, but I'm inclined to one of two theories: the calibration of the Anova is off (an issue flagged by dcarch) or something went wrong in the handling of the meat before it was bagged (mentioned by several posters). FWIW, I've been doing SV/LT long cooks for many years without having run into spoilage or off odors even once. Something went wrong here, obviously, but it's unusual. Unlike others, I don't think the rolling of the brisket was the problem. Yes, obviously this meant that a likely contaminated surface was furthest from the water bath, but the roll would have had to be extraordinarily thick for this to matter. Even then, my limited experience with very thick cuts (a couple of hams monitored with a probe thermometer) was that while it took them six hours to come to temp, it also took a couple hours before the core temp budged from full chill. Nor do I think the temp was too low. See Baldwin. Importantly, six hours to pasteurize isn't the same thng as six hours in the danger zone. Again, see Baldwin. IOW, whatever was the problem here, it was neither the temp nor the time.

Lighter, yes, but not smaller. And not lighter if you factor in the weight of the circulator. The point is that when folks speak of the Anova being easier to store, they're generally leaving the box out of the equation. More importantly, one of my reasons for preferring the SVS is that it's better suited to leaving out, i.e., not stored. As I said earlier, an appliance ready at hand is more likely to be used. And the object of the exercise, of course, is to use the darned thing, not just to have it. Again, I'm not saying the SVS is the right answer for everyone. Nor am I knocking the Anova (I have one and like it).

Basically, this is a hybrid of the two traditional types of pickles. To my surprise, after a great deal of research, it’s new as far as I can tell. In any event, I came up with it independently. Here’s the story. Several years ago, when developing my recipe for kimchi, I read a lot about natural fermentation. From which I learned the object is to produce lactic acid with the ubiquitous bacterium lactobaccillus plantarum. Meanwhile, I had long ago decided I prefer naturally fermented pickles (e.g., Bubbies) to those cured with vinegar (e.g., Clausen’s). What would happen, I wondered, if I prepared traditionally vinegar-cured pickles with lactic acid directly? At the time, though, I couldn’t find a source. Later, when looking for ingredients for Modernist Cuisine at Home, I happened upon Modernist Pantry and noticed they have the elusive lactic acid in powder form. After numerous trials, I worked out a recipe. It marries the convenience and flexibility of quick curing with the less obtrusive flavor profile of lactic acid. The result isn’t as complex as a natural ferment, but it’s a heck of a lot easier, more reliable and more versatile. The method works with pretty much anything that anyone pickles with vinegar, including cucumbers, beets, mushrooms, turnips, cauliflower, onions, asparagus, green beans, eggs, apples, etc. For convenience and ease of refrigerator storage, I built my recipe around 1 litre canning jars. (Quarts also can be used, of course.) How much main ingredient will fit depends on how closely it packs after prepping, but 1‑1/2 lb is typical. If appropriate, blanch or otherwise cook so as to be tender but not soft. If appropriate, cut into bite-size pieces. For the brine, combine 2 c water, 2 tbsp kosher salt (18 g) and 2 tsp lactic acid powder (6 g). For sweet pickles, e.g., Bread & Butter, I reduce the salt to 2 tsp and increase the lactic acid to 1 tbsp. Notably, according to my electronic pH meter, the 2 tsp lactic acid brine has a starting pH of about 3.2; once it equilibrates with the main ingredient, the pH rises to about 3.8; the recommended level is 4.0 (or less), which is well below the 4.6 needed to inhibit botulism. Flavorings may be added as desired, including garlic, dill, chile, spices, herbs and/or sugar. As with the main ingredient, the flavor profile of just about any vinegar-cured pickle can be adapted for the lactic acid brine. A few practical points. I like to sequester the flavorings in a bouquet garni bag. It’s not necessary, but makes for cleaner pickles. Also, I find infusing the brine works better than cold packing. Bring to a boil, add bag with flavorings and let cool covered. Put bag in bottom of the jar, add main ingredient and pour brine over. Most main ingredients float, so I insert a pickling spacer to submerge them. My favorite spacer is an inverted lid for a stainless steel dredge shaker, available from restaurant supply stores and online (e.g., here and here), as it happens to be exactly the right diameter (70 mm) to fit inside a wide mouth canning jar. An inverted plastic storage cap for regular size jars also works, though it’s a bit too wide (not easy to get in and out of the jar), solid rather than perforated (no brine above the top layer), and, well, plastic. Finally, curing takes at least a few days, but a week works better. Like most quick-cured pickles, texture and flavor generally suffer if held more than a month. Anyhoo, having learned a great deal from the forum, I thought I’d drop this in as my little contribution.