btbyrd

In many cases, steaming actually takes more time to cook food to a target temperature than boiling does.

It's now called the Polyscience Sous Vide Toolbox. Host's note: the topic title has been edited to show both the original and the new name in order to assist with future searches, with thanks to btbyrd for the update.

Spring is here: Slagel Family Farm lamb loin chops with ramp chimichurri over sautéed morel mushrooms; baby white and purple (balsamic glazed) carrots; asparagus with 63C egg yolk and Maldon salt.

I like the idea of this, but it seems bulky for storage (and my freezer is tight as it is). I'm going to roll my own by freezing water in vacuum bags and seeing how that works out.

Shrimp and grits. Proliferation of superfluous adjectives:Anson Mills organic, field ripened, sweet native heirloom blue corn grits; wild caught tiger shrimp confit sous vide in bacon fat; Father's country bacon lardon; D'Artagnan pasture raised, heritage pork andouille sausage sautéed with the cajun trinity and mushrooms; spicy shrimp gravy.

Thanks for sharing this! It plays fine for me using VPN with AdBlock disabled. While searching for more information on this show, I came across Heston's Dinner In Space which also aired recently:

I haven't tried the recipe, so I can't say... but it looks to be pretty good! I've been relying on the ChefSteps and Modernist Cuisine batter recipes as of late. My favorite is the ChefSteps recipe for batter that's aerated in a whipping siphon. It's light and lacy and doesn't require the addition of beer or vodka. I don't drink vodka and don't buy the sort of beer you'd typically use in a batter, so that recipe has been a blessing. Let us know how the Serious Eats recipe works out!

Ah, I misunderstood your timeline! Sorry that the lemon/water soak didn't take care of the issue for you. It's a shame to have to throw things out, but sometimes that's all you can do. Hope things work better for the sole!

They make good products. One of my favorites is their porcini mushroom powder which is an excellent addition to soups, stews, and risotto (and as part of a rub for grilled meats). The particle size on that powder is better than I can get from buying mushrooms and blending them myself. Their spray-dried cheese powders are also good and are great for topping for popcorn or homemade potato chips. I haven't used the dehydrated butter, but I imagine it'd be good for that purpose too. I've also purchased whole spices from them and have been pleased with the quality/price ratio. Most, if not all, of their products are available on Amazon, where you can check out reviews. Give them a try!

It's easier to avoid clumping if you start by dry-blending cornstarch with flour, as the flour gets between the starch particles and helps them stay separate. You'll also have a different texture in the final fried batter. Corn starch absorbs more oil than what flour does, so the final product may be greasier than it otherwise would be.

I never buy fish that I don't cook or process the same day. Letting it hang out in your fridge for several days and relying on sniff tests isn't conducive to either safety or deliciousness.

I use Epicurean cutting boards which are made of wood fiber compressed with resin. They're durable, kind to your knives, and can go in the dishwasher. All the benefits of plastic without being plastic. I hate plastic.

I just hope that with Chris gone, they'll stop saying that they have the recipe for "The Very Best _________".

Air fryers are lies.

Glad you made it! Isn't it nice that ramen broth freezes so well? Chang and Momofuku actually have (at least) 2 ramen recipes floating around. The classic one printed in the cookbook is pork based and begins with Benton's bacon dashi. Their newer, "2.0 Recipe" is primarily chicken based and doesn't start with bacon dashi. Rather, it adds Benton's bacon fat at the end (and uses it in the tare). It also calls for grinding the shiitakes into a powder instead of soaking them and using them whole, as in the "1.0" recipe.

A wheat noodle that has been treated with an alkaline salt such as kansui. If you can't find kansui, Harold McGee discovered that if you cook baking soda in the oven for an hour, it becomes much more alkaline and can be used as a substitute for kansui. This is the basis of, for example, the noodle recipe in David Chang's Momofuku cookbook. But even Momo don't make their own; they get it from Sun Noodle. I also think that the pre-fried instant nramen oodles are perfectly acceptable substitutes. By and large, however, their seasoning packets are terrible. (There are notable exceptions, however.) There's no shame in using them with quality broth and high quality toppings.

I didn't know that. In English language markets -- at least the ones I've been in -- I've never seen what I considered to be real dried ramen. I've seen some that weren't alkaline noodles as well as some gluten free rice flour "ramen" which I don't consider ramen either. Good to know that there's a real product out there.

Here's a nice video from Eater about Sun Noodle, the main US manufacturer of fresh ramen. They also work with noodle/ramen shops to make custom noodles to chef's specifications.

Ramen are specific type of noodle that's characteristically made with wheat flour and an additional alkaline ingredient. This alkalinity gives ramen its characteristic yellow color (which is also often added) as well as a toothsome, firmer texture. There are fresh and instant varieties available. The former are hard to find unless you live near a major Asian market, but they freeze well so I always stock up. Instant ramen are fresh noodles that have been precooked and dehydrated via deep frying. Because of the frying, these noodles also contain a lot of fat.

They work together well. The Parmesan is a high source of glutamate, so it makes for good dashi. Kombu is more of a background note. If anything, the mushrooms were too assertive, making the stock earthier and browner than the clean, parmy broth it was before. No, you sacrifice a pound of Benton's to the broth. I've tried to salvage it in several, but all the smoke and flavor has been given up to the pot. Which is a good thing. The idea is to use bacon (a smokey, salty, cured protein packed with umami) as a substitute for katsuobushi (a smokey, salty, cured protein packed with umami) in the traditional dashi recipe. Bacon dashi is pretty genius. So you build up the broth with kombu, Benton's, and dried shitake mushrooms, strain, poach a whole chicken in the broth for an hour, remove (and pick for another purpose), add five pounds of roasted pork bones (and aromatics) and simmer for a long time. So the broth requires roughly 10 pounds of meat altogether, and you lose almost all of it (except for the chicken) to the broth. You actually need more, because the tare seasoning that Chang uses for this recipe is made by roasting a chicken carcass with some sake, mirin, and soy sauce (so you get a chicken-infused soy sauce). The good news is that the yield is pretty high (8 servings) and it freezes well. So I make it in batches, have a ramen night, and then freeze the rest so I always have broth on hand. The fresh Sun Noodle ramen actually freezes quite well too.

I also make the Momofuku cookbook's ramen broth with some frequency. You can tell it's ramen day at my house because I have pork bones coming out of my ears. And, of course, there's a whole chicken and a pound of Benton's bacon involved in the broth too (along with kombu and shiitake). Their recipe has apparently changed significantly, but the classic was a classic for a reason. To shorten the process, I usually pressure cook everything instead of doing the long stovetop simmer (and add carrots and green onions at the very end after the pressure has been released). It takes on a lot more gelatin that way, but it saves me six to ten hours. I usually garnish with pork shoulder and some seared slices of SV pork belly, but I also really like pork cheek as well:

This is an "Italian Ramen" dish I made a few months ago. Parmesan dashi broth, lardo Iberico de bellota, smoked pork belly, peas, carrot, 63C yolk. The noodles were fresh from Sun Noodle. The idea was that with the parmesan broth, egg yolk, pork belly, and black pepper, it would eat somewhere between a bowl of ramen and something like carbonara. It was good. I wanted to use guanciale instead of the pork bacon, but the only stuff I could find on short order (from Niman Ranch) was simply too salty to eat. But you get the concept. The broth was: Water - 200% Parm rinds - 100% Kombu - 1% Dried Porcini - .5% Seasoned with salt and a bit of Red Boat. I wanted to use garum / colatura but didn't have any on hand. I cooked the water and parm rinds in a circulator at 80C for four hours, strained, and chilled it. You get a small amount of parm fat from this procedure, but I couldn't really find a good application for it. It sort of has a grainy buttery texture at room temperature. I just mixed it with salt and ate it on bread. The chilled broth was then brought to a simmer with kombu and porcini, taken off the heat, and left to steep for an hour. Good flavor, but too much mushroom. I'm going to cut it in half next time, but still have another 2 servings in the freezer.

I've only used it for tasks where evenness isn't an extremely high priority, but the whole thing heats up if I place it over two gas burners. From what I can tell with my IR thermometer, there are definite hot spots, so delicate foods like eggs wouldn't cook very evenly. But if you know where the hotter and cooler zones are, you can move things around to suit your purposes. I got my steel about four months before their newer griddle model came out. I wish I'd known, because it would be nice to have a grease trap around the edges for things like hamburgers and bacon. Oh well. I can always put the steel on my grill if I want to use it like that. I haven't tried the pizza steel with induction yet, but that's on my list of things to do. I suspect that my two gas burners will get more of it hotter than a single-burner induction hob will.

I've started using it as a stovetop griddle and searing surface (for things that don't drip, like pancakes or searing large pieces of meat). It's working well and maintaining its slick surface. I used it last night for grilled cheese. It will probably get more use as a plancha than a pizza steel.

I don't see how you can justify the expense unless you're running a bar program or are a Michelin quality kitchen (or you're Nathan Myhrvold). In either case, the fuge seems to be more useful to a general audience. Clarification and separation by density are handier processes than distillation under vacuum. That said, I did have some delicious grenadine at Booker and Dax which had been made by rotovapping fresh pomegranate juice. (Apparently juicing pomegranates is not a fun task.) It was intensely flavorful, clean, and bright. I'm not sure what, exactly, they did, but it was amazing. That said, they didn't have anything on the menu that had been rotovapped, while most of the cocktails featured something that had been clarified in a centrifuge. It was nice being at a place where they have both behind the bar. It's also super baller to chill your glasses with liquid nitrogen. But I digress...