Anonymous Modernist 10

Jmwb said:

Robert Jueneman said: I've done the triple-cooked Heston Blumenthal pommes pont-nuef, and served them with his mushroom ketchupwith great success. However,the recent update from Maxine Billet is going to inspire me to try some of the other variations, including brining the potatoes before sealing them, and the starch infusion process. A couple of comments, however. 1. MC suggest par-boiling the fries for 20 minutes. I find that despite being at 7000 ft, that is too long, the Russet potatoes I use fall apart too easily. I've reduced the time to 15 minutes. 2. Vacuum cooling and drying sometimes makes my chamber vacuum go into an error condition, because it can't reach the 99% level when the fries are still moist. I've had to reduce the vacuum percentage to 95% for the first couple of cycles. 3. For reasons that I don't understand, there isn't an electric deep fryer on the market that will go above 202C/395F. I recently bought the Krups Professional, which does an admirable job of filtering out the grease smell with the charcoal filter, but it doesn't get quite hot enough. However, getting out a Le Crueset pan and doing it on the stove top without a thermometer is just too much of a pain, so I end up cooking them a little longer on the second fry step. 4. I'm presently using Crisco vegetable oil rather than the peanut oil I used to use. I filter the oil after each use, using a paint filter from the hardware store with a cheesecloth-like gauze filter at the bottom to get with of any residue. A coffee filter was just too slow. Now a question/challenge for the MC staff: Dow Chemical, in their Product Selection Guide for METHOCEL Food Gums (http://msdssearch.dow.com/PublishedLiteratureDOWCOM/dh_04f6/0901b803804f6660.pdf?filepath=/194-00001.pdf&fromPage=GetDoc), page 8, recommends METHOCEL A15 FG or E19 FG at a 0.5-2.5% use level for "French Fry Dipping Solutions." The benefits are said to be that Thermal gelation reduces batter blowoff (whatever that might be), and extends the life of cooking oils; and freeze/thaw stability helps prevent batters from cracking and loosening on frozen foods. Has anyone tried methylcellulose for such an application (I haven't)? Would it only be useful when making frozen french fries for commercial use? How about when making the starch-infused fries? It appears from the cartoons above the text on that page that it should be useful for "Krispy Fries" and also fried shrimp. Bob It prevents oil absorption, forming a membrane around the fries. One of the benefits with batter is that it will set the batter right away.

kdavin said: Try adding a couple of tablespoons of cream, slowly, while whisking. You could also drain the fat and slowly drizzle in butter on the stove top. Another option might be to use egg yolk as an emulsifier.

Joe Lipinski said: Hi Joe, Yes, you really can. There is a downside though. It will be more bitter, especially if you are making a softer tofu.

janine said: Hi Janine, Your best bet is to use extracts and essential oils. Bubblegum has many flavors in it, the most prominent of which is banana (this often surprised people). There are other fruity flavors and vanilla in there as well.

malmeiers said: For the most part, these are used in spherification. If you go to our recipe finder, and select "spherify" as the technique, you should get quite a few recipe that use these. Other than that, besides the xanthan gum, there isn't a great deal of use for these. You can make really set gels with them, but that uses the same principles as spherification, only flat, of course. There are some scientific papers out there about using some of these for brining. Alginate is used as a thickener in Listerine strips. We have a somewhat similar recipe in MC for lemon strips. Calcium chloride is often used in making tofu.

izzard said: For 48 hours, we recommend a temperature of 65 °C. Sorry, I couldn't get back to you sooner. Did you try it? How did it turn out?

Srynerson said: Yes, and yes. The soap will turn out much whiter, more like classic American soap. P.S. sorry I wasn't able to answer until after Halloween. Did you try it?

Try looking at professional-grade models. You might have to go to a professional kitchen store to find one, and it might not even be legal. As for PIDs, that's what we do...but I can't actually endorse doing this because we work in a lab where we have scientists, engineers, and machinists who can help us if anything goes wrong. Let us know how it turns out though!

I can think of three different ways of trying this. One is the way you suggested. You will want to use tapioca starch because the cell structure is different than cornstarch. Or, you could dehydrate the pumpkin down to a powder and then rehydrate it with water and tapioca. Third, you could puree the pumpkin and use that plus pumpkin juice instead of meat and water and follow the prawn cracker recipe in MC.

You don't want to make your surface tension too thick. Andoni Aduriz has done a lot of experimentation with this.

Rather than using a chamber vacuum sealer, we use a siphon. Since meat isn't porous, it won't work in a vacuum chamber, as it's a physical, rather than chemical change. A siphon, however, will force the brine into the meat.

yesterday, someone wrote in to us to ask: I am a little confused by volume 6. On page 6-68 the table Best Bets for Cooking Tender Meats Sous Vide suggests 58C as the suggested target temperature. Later though on page 6-86 in the table Best Bets for Cooking Tough Cuts beef hangar steak is listed with a target temperature of 50C. Is this an error or am I just not getting something. I have a hangar steak I butchered and I'd like to see what this cut is like done sous vide with a quick char after. Should I be using 50 or 58C? For hangar steak, short ribs, and many other cuts of meat, a variety of time/temperature combinations can produce great results, but each will have a unique texture. If you're after a result similar to traditional slow-braised hangar steak, use the lower temperature recommended in the table Best Bets for Tough Cuts, and hold it at that temperature for a couple hours. But if you'd rather have more of a grilled or pan-fried texture to the steak, cook it to the higher temperature given in the Best Bets for Tender Cuts table, and pull the steak out of the bath as soon as the core temperature reaches the target value.

PZ said: We don't really do that, except for pastrami, and other cured meats. Long cooking with spices often loses their sutleties over time. I'm also not certain how adding the rub before smoking will affect the texture. But it's a worthy pursuit!

No, use agar (same amount as you would the gellan). This is the only appropriate substitute for gellan to achieve the desired texture. If you wanted to do a cold version of the foam, you could also use gelatin (160 Bloom).

coz said: Yes, you could certainly do that. You might want to consider using more rosemary, thyme, and garlic though.

Chefzilla said: Methylcellulose has two functions in batter: 1. We like to siphon our batter. Methylcellulose is a good stabilzer/agent in foams, which is important because when we aerate batter, the coding is actually much lighter and delicate. 2. It gels upon heating providing structure to the batter beyond the egg/starch componants that typically give batter its body. We have noticed in some tests, not done on batters but on fried chips, that have been coated with a methethylcellulose slurry that thet will absorb less oil. This MAY be because the porous vacules or air pockets have been filled with that gel, which forms a barrier to oil absorbtion. Does that answer your question? What else are you interested in?

If you have cured, fully vacuum-sealed, and cooked the duck to the proper time & temperature, it should be fully pasteurized. So, in principle, it should keep for a couple of months. In our confit, it is especially important that it is properly vacuum-sealed. Usually, when confit is cooked in fat, the fat is what prevents the air from getting into the meat, but with our method, it is the vacuum seal that does this.

ChefWhit said: The most important thing when using the aquarium bubble is viscosity. That's what is most needed to maintain large bubbles. If you have enough viscosity, it will work. The same formula from the book will work with any flavorful liquid. Really, you can use it for anything, though if the liquid is less viscous, it might take longer and the bubbles will be smaller.

Glenn House said: Hi Glenn, Here are a few tips for keeping frying oil once you've used it. Filter out all of the solids. They will flavor the oil and turn it rancid more quickly. Because oils will oxidize in light, wrap your container in aluminum foil. A hermetic seal is best. If you have a vacuum sealer, use it! If your vacuum sealer doesn't seal liquids, freeze the oil and then seal it. The colder the oil is, the longer it will keep. This is why some people prefer to keep their oils in the fridge. If all else fails, smell it! Sometimes your nose is the best judge.

LFMichaud is right. Everything, even when cooked, has amino acids in it, so the potential for the Maillard reaction is still there. Just make sure that you don't overdo it. Heating under the broiler or with a blowtorch can quickly dry meat out, which is a shame after all that nice slow cooking!

lsbrodsky said: Hi Larry, First, congratulations. This is a tricky one, and I'm impressed that you decided to give it a try! Was the mix hot? Because you are working with carrageenan, you want to make sure that the broth is cold. Even at room temperature it won't disperse properly. That said, it is a pretty stable foam to begin with, so yes, you could try it without the carrageenan, but you would want to leave the xanthan in. Make sure that you don't work the potato puree. You should use a tamis or at least a ricer to make the puree so it is smooth without being overworked. When you fold the cream and broth in during step 8, make sure you are doing just that--folding it in. Don't use a hand blender. Good luck!

The polyethylene is layered in the middle, forming a composite, so it never actually touches your food. At the temperatures we use to cook food sous vide, it won't leach out. We cover this more fully in our sous vide chapter.

You should be fine. We don't recommend holding it at a greater temperature than the 50 °C range, though. That could cause the siphon to over-pressurize.

Jonathan said: