Guy MovingOn
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Posts posted by Guy MovingOn
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The Heston Blumenthal recipe involves heating a heavy cast iron pan on the highest hob setting for at least 30mins and then placing it inverted under the highest grill/broiler setting before sliding on the pizza.
Is the metal sheet significantly hotter than this method?
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Here's a pizza baked on 1/2" steel plate for 3 1/2 minutes. As far as coal oven style pizzas go (Patsy's, Lombardi's, Totonno's, John's) this is a pretty amazing offering, but again, in no way is this Neapolitan.
That looks pretty delicious!
How long was the steel plate heated for before sliding the pizza onto it?
To be honest, I am not sure that I would particularly want to eat a pizza significantly more charred than that.
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You should put the metal plate in first while you are preheating the oven. Then when it is up to temperature, with the grill/broiler on, slide in your dough.
That would be the best test. Then you can see if it makes your "charred" crust. Everything else is meaningless unless you try what was actually suggested in the recipe.
Specifically, the recipe says to wait half an hour, which will be, in most cases, a lot longer than the time it will take a home oven to tell you it's up to temperature. Domestic ovens are notorious liars.
lol ok, my point was that just putting the metal plate/sheet into the oven for 2 minutes is meaningless. So yeh, what you are saying is to wait even longer, which was what I meant to say
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2. I just preheated my oven until the bottom element turned red hot and then put a 1/4" steel plate with a cup covering the top on the top shelf. I left it there, with the bottom element on full blast for 2 minutes. After that time I measured the change in temp of the top of the plate. 5 degrees. In pizza terms, that's meaningless. Having an oven with the ability to have both top and bottom elements on at the same time has no bearing on whether or not 1/4" steel plate can produce a Neapolitan pizza.
You should put the metal plate in first while you are preheating the oven. Then when it is up to temperature, with the grill/broiler on, slide in your dough.
That would be the best test. Then you can see if it makes your "charred" crust. Everything else is meaningless unless you try what was actually suggested in the recipe.
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Yeah, I'm rather fond of my little label printer, it sees a lot of use in the kitchen. The one I have is similar to this one: it appears the actual model I have doesn't exist anymore.
Yeh it's pretty nifty! Thanks for the info!
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My order from Specialty Bottle arrived, and they are perfectly sized for everything except the Tapioca Maltodextrin (which is really light, so takes up a lot of space).
What did you use to print your labels? Looks smart
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I'm just going to ask again in case my question was accidentally missed, would it please be possible for Nathan to provide us with his macaron recipe?
Many thanks!
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Nathan, thank you for clearing this up. Since I have been and will continue to make confit a la sous vide, there would be no point in trying to "age" the meat. The only benefit of preparing confit in advance is simply the convenience factor. Therefore I no longer need to have any qualms about serving "fresh" confit. That's awesome!
By the way, any chance of that macaron recipe? Pretty please?!
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In which case there is no need to "mature" the duck confit in the fat over time?
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Nathan, I recall that one of the controversies of the book is the statement that steamed duck brushed with duck fat tastes the same as duck confit. People didn't believe this, but blind tasting showed that they couldn't tell which was which.
Many people also say that duck confit "matures" and improves over time by being stored in the duck fat. Do you think this is true?
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I have already pre-ordered Modernist Cuisine and cannot wait for its arrival!
Please could you share with me, via PM or here, your macaron recipe? It would really mean a lot to me!
Thanks!!!
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Nathan, if you do write a pastry book, please could you discover the perfect and foolproof macaron recipe and technique!
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Wow cool! Thanks Nathan! Coming from a 20something year old uni student/alchoholic party animal... YOU ROCK!!!
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Does the book mention anything about "planking"? It's a technique I have just heard of, I believe it involves using a piece of aged/infused wood as a cooking surface inside a steam oven...
Also, if this book took 3 years to complete, and if there is a pastry version in the pipeline, I wonder how long we would have to wait for that...
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Oh, and I read that it weighs 40lbs?? That's like 18kg?! Is this true??
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They'd better be! I guess I will be making my own tomato sauce by gelling the pectin in tomatoes, simmering the beans in a triple stock after gelatin clarification, toasting the bread in a PID controlled toaster before frying it in iberico ham fat.... etc
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Ok, I have just dedicated a large large portion of my university student loan on this book... looks like I will be reading this whilst eating beans on toast until I graduate!
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I made the deep fried pork belly confit. I have to say it was delicious! I imagine pork from a better source than the supermarket would be so much better still. I'm not sure if my deep frying technique was good enough, I would have hoped for the skin to be even crispier - that's probably a fault of my own.
I was going to serve it with some salad tossed in a simple vinaigrette of olive oil and balsamic vinegar, but it was late at night and we didn't have any salad. The Charcuterie book suggested serving it with a crusty loaf, so instead I made some toast, spread some duck fat on the toast, then added the cubes of deep fried porky goodness, and then drizzled on a sauce I had made with the cooking juices, plus some honey and mustard.
It was quite delicious, but as I say, my deep frying technique probably let it down, and the serving accompaniments could have been better
The pork was marinaded with lots of salt, pepper, thyme, cinnamon, garam masala, nutmeg, and white wine for 36 hours, then bagged with some duck fat, goose fat, and olive oil.
Intended to cook at 80C for 12-16 hours, but ended up being 18 hours.
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One thing that my new SVM has done is made me plan way in advance, it is Monday and I am thinking about Easter dinner already. I'm going to SV a boneless leg of lamb in an attempt to outdo my wife's family recipe. So what about it gang, want to help me out? I'm planning 55C for 24hr, give me some seasoning ideas...no need to worry about tradition (obviously).
I love port and redcurrant jelly with roast rack of lamb, and often used that jelly with extra port and stock to make a gravy. Perhaps it might not go so well inside the bag, but you could think of it as some sort of condiment.
Another tradition is minted lamb.
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Guy MovingOn,
The difference is in the context: Mr Goussalt is concerned with industrial sous vide cooking and we are interested in home and restaurant sous vide cooking. If you're trying to cool thousands of pounds (kilograms) of food, successively cooler baths makes a lot of sense. At our scale, it's much easier for us to drop the cooked food into an ice bath until the core's cold enough.
That multi-stage cooling improves juiciness hasn't been shown to my satisfaction. First, I'd only consider it when doing braises (i.e., at 70C/160F and higher). In the small scale experiment I did for myself a couple years ago, there was a small difference but it was within my expected error. I've never gotten around to doing a larger scale experiment to see if there is a statistically significant difference. Personally, I usually let my braised pork sit on the counter for about 15 minutes before placing them in my ice bath --- but this is mainly to cool the pouches enough so they're not painful to handle.
Edit: Typo
I believe that it is not only in industrial applications where he has recommended this process. He obviously consults to several restaurants, and I believe that it was earlier in this thread that lecture notes or photgraphs from these seminars were posted.
However, having reread this thread, I have come across posts from several people, including NathanM, who have stated that the three stage process should not be used.
I suppose then, that traditional confit is safe to store at room temperature indefinitely, but sous vide confit must be refrigerated?
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Thank you for the clarification on the cooling.
The process to which I was referring was Bruno Goussalt's multi stage cooling, which I read about in the NYTimes article Under Pressure (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/14/magazine/14CRYOVAC.html), when after having cooked the food en sous vide, it is then "cooled, successively, at room temperature, in cold water, then in ice water, before being reheated and served." I had read a discussion about this multi-stage cooling process earlier in this thread, and thought it was concluded that this method improves the juiciness of the protein.
Douglas could you please help my confusion! Btw, I am still going to pasteurise a chicken breast at 55C and report back to you! Sorry I haven't gotten round to doing it yet! I was a big fan of 57.5C chicken, but consider that to be almost as low a temperature as I would want!
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Just to note, the contents are being refrigerated, I just wanted to cool them down slower. I guess it would have taken a couple of hours for them to cool to room temperature. I know that traditional confit can be stored at room temperature - some people say indefinitely. Also I think my temp/time combo will put me on the safe side, I just wanted to double check!
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[Moderator note: The original Sous Vide: Recipes, Techniques & Equipment topic became too large for our servers to handle efficiently, so we've divided it up; the preceding part of this discussion is here: Sous Vide: Recipes, Techniques & Equipment (Part 6)]
I was confit-ing belly pork last night at 80C. Following the recipe I had cut up the belly pork into roughly 2.5cmx3cm chunks, brined for 36 hours, then dried and bagged with some fat.
I was intending to let them cook at 80C for anywhere between 12-16 hours. It was 18 hours when I realised that I hadn't taken them out of the bath yet. There is a lot of fluid from the bag. I presume it is the extra liquid taken on by the meat in the brine, plus some of its own juices.
I have read about a 3 stage cooling process to try to maximise juiciness of protein which has been cooked en sous vide. I believe that small chunks of meat (admittedly they were all in the same bag, but no more than 4cm thick at all) cooked at 80C for 18 hours should be relatively safe/sterile, so I have tried cooling them more slowly than I would normally with anything cooked at lower temperatures for shorter times.
Is this the best way to try to improve the juiciness of the meat, or is it a lost cause? Also, is it potentially dangerous? I would have thought that 80C for 18 hours is a very high temperature for a very long period of time, and that almost all bacteria would have been destroyed.
BTW, once the contents have cooled, I plan to deep fry them before serving.
Thanks for your opinions! -
I have found that sourcing of briskets makes a big difference. I cooked brisket from a few different sources before I found one that I really liked. Keep in mind that the "flat" section of a brisket is often not very juicy due to the marbling pattern. So, it can have a pretty dry mouthfeel even if it is a good quality piece of meat. If at 48 hours it was fork tender, try 36 and see how it is. Some briskets need a solid 48 hours at these temps to be tender, but the Wagyu brisket that I mentioned recently, was fork tender at 24 hours.
Yes you are quite right, I noticed too that the thinner end of the brisket was noticeably drier than the thicker end, which had more fat. Ironically, my gf and I were fighting over the fattiest parts of the brisket!
I have located what could be a reasonable butcher not too far from where I am, so once I get the chance I will take a look at what cuts they have. I really would like to try short ribs en sous vide, but I don't think they are a popular cut at all here in the UK.
I'm currently confit-ing pork belly. It will probably go for around 14 hours or so at 80C. It was brined with salt, pepper, clove, cinnamon, all spice, bay leaf, thyme, and dry white wine for 36 hours.
Since I don't have any rendered pork fat, and only half a jar of duck fat, I put a combination of duck fat, goose fat, and olive oil in the bag. Hopefully it will benefit from the combination of fats, and not suffer
After cooling I plan to store it for as long as I can resist (probably only a few days!) before deep frying it in the fat that was in the bag! Probably serve it with a salad, to try to make the dish somewhat less heart-stopping!
Modernist Ingredient Kits
in Kitchen Consumer
Posted
By the way, for those based in the UK, Cream Supplies sells a load of "modernist ingredient kits".
I got the Biozoon Pro Kit - Including 'Molecular Basics' by Heiko Antoniewicz. That one in particular is quite pricey because it includes the book, but at the time I bought it there werent many other references... I think the only other one available was Hydrocolloids on Khymos.org.