Anonymous Modernist 3840

I have used second hand lab circulators for several years, just clean them well and use acid and base wash cycles i.e dairy cleaner and clean with a solvent like alcohol to be thorough. As long as the food is sealed in plastic i wouldn't worry. I was told by an engineer that it is exposure time multiplied by concentration that we should worry about, get the concentration low and the exposure time can increase. My circulators had mineral scale on them indicating water was the main solvent heated. I hope this helps.

I think MC could give desserts a very fresh and healthier perspective. How do we enjoy the most taste yet do without the gluten and sugar that is used as a filler so much of the time. It doesn't have to be the focus, but a chapter on creatively redefining desserts would be well received i would think.

Well done. I have friends who have built several of these and they are great. The souse vide is the most useful modernist device in my opinion.

I have seen this with tri tips. It could be the difference between where the animal is on the meat grade scale; choice, select etc... It could also be the way the animal died, stress, injury, pain. It could also be how the carcass was treated, how long it sits, if rigor mortis set in. You can see this in bratwurst or other sausages, if pink when uncooked it was ground up before rigor mortis set in, red darker colored sausage was ground after rigor mortis set in.

That should work. I have done the same over the kitchen gas stove by removing the metal grate and placing the wok right on the flame. Just keep turning the wok to get the sides seasoned. I recall reading somewhere other than MC that the best oil to use is flax seed oil, as it has 3 double bonds and it will react and bond with the metal better than any other oil. Aparently polyunsaturated oils make a better carbon steel bond than monounsaturated oils. I don't recall where I read it perhaps "on food and cooking" by McGee.

I smoked the pastrami using hickory smoke for 4 hours, and I used 2 charges of wood shavings in the electric smoker. I then placed them in vacuum bags with the boiled/skimmed/cooled brine and sealed them. I then placed them in the souse vide bath at 144 degrees F. This morning I looked in at them and the water had darkened and smelled smokey. I was worried that one of the bags had leaked, but when I held them up there were no leaks. I don't know what happened. Could there be a smoke byproduct that can leach through the plastic bag into the water? Very strange.

We are doing another modernist cuisine inspired event at Sector67 in Madison, WI this Saturday. We are doing the @72 hr pastrami and other fun things with transglutaminase, pressure cookers, microwaves, whipped cream siphons, etc... I was wondering if anyone has done other types of alcohol infusions using the whipped cream siphon technique. How does cinnamon taste when infused into vodka? Should I use whole sticks, or crush it first? Also, if we were to use nutmegs whole or broken up, whould there be any danger in extracting the alcohol soluble myristicin found in nutmeg? Perhaps it would be best to refrain from making an alcohol infusion using nutmeg? Does anyone have experience with this, or any other common spices that may have unexpected fractions extracted using alcohol and a siphon this way? Should we be cautious of this method with certain botanicals?

I am making this recipe right now as well, I am in day 2 of brining at present. I am making it for our 3rd food event at sector 67 in Madison, WI. I have to make enough for 30 or so people, so I am using larger cuts of meat, as the short ribs that I could find were small presliced packages. It looked like tritip roasts were well marbled yet large enough to feed a group. I used a fork to make holes for the brine to reach the insides quicker in one of the tritips, but left the second one alone. I also bought a spoon roast and am turning it into pastrami as well. I will brine for 4 days or more and then smoke and cook. The questions that I also have are: What kind of wood, I was thinking hickory or apple., and how long should I souse vide the tritip? I'm leaning toward 2 days at 144f , instead of 3 days, as it may turn out mushy and to give the meat an extra day to brine because they are larger cuts of meat. Does anyone think it is necessary to go to 3 days? Also, is it necessary to use 15g of instacure #1 as the guy at the sausage shop said it is generally enough for 11kilos of meat when they are processing. Is it overkill?

When we did our vacuum infused watermelon at sector67 it infused to the core of a 6 inch block of melon with dark pomegramite juice in just a few seconds. We haven't tried to do the same with pressure to see which works better, but it would be a good test that would visually show how well each method works. See pictures at: http://www.sector67.org/index.php

Try it under vacuum and see if extracting all the water and ethanol makes it work. Also think about N-zorbit, could you mix it with that and then compress it into a solid?

Has anyone attempted to use a vacuum chamber to dry the surface of meat in order to enhance the mailliard reaction? If so what equipment could a chef use, and would it be successful in getting a dryer surface than other quicker and easier methods? Would it be worth the trouble?

I think that it is worth checking out what a sous vide could do with vegetable textures. The textures that sous vide produce are different from what steaming and boiling can produce in my experience. Can vegetables be done rare, medium and well done? Also, it would be worth checking out using vacuum infusions of flavor into vegetables. It works for fruits, would it work for vegetables? Could basil flavor be infused into tomatoes while they are raw? Can tomatoes be carbonated, and would they be worth eating that way? Mushrooms are porous enough to infuse, but would need to be weighted down I would think. I think a vegetarian could have a lot of fun with modernist techniques. -C

We also made a lot of different types of carbonated fruits: pineapple, strawberries, blueberries, grapes, (all good), tiny bananas (so-so, didn't carbonate well), peaches (wow, very ripe and very good), pomegranite (carbonated well despite the thick skin, and tasted great), and the best of all kiwi fruit (amazing). We also had all the books out for people to look through, and they were a hit. We also cooked brussel sprouts in butter at 180 F, in the souse vide. We had 3 different souse vide baths going at one time, 2 of which were homemade setups. The sprouts were a hit btw. We plan on doing another food event again on April 13th, and will likely continue them regularly, as they are a bit hit.

We held another Modernist inspired Science and Food Event at Sector 67 in Madison, WI this weekend. This time we had about 25 people and a lot more help, and it went very well. We made a lot of different hot wings. The regular sous vide wings from MAH were good, but could have been cooked a little longer as they didn't fall apart as easily as baked wings, but they crisped up well, the korean hot wings were AMAZING! We also used the torching technique from MC to sear sous vide lamb chops: WOW! The 3 creme anglaise recipes were: vanilla bean, orange zest with basil, and starbucks mocha powder, which we mixed in a kitchen aid with liquid nitrogen to make ice cream. The mocha was the best of all, but we used 40 g of mocha powder and it was very rich. We loved the mac and cheese recipe, to which we added lobster, that disappeared fast! Some members cold brewed coffee, others vacuum infused cherry juice into watermelon (too watery a juice was used) and that didn't work as well as expected. The whipping siphons got much use in infusing lemon grass and lemon zest into vodka (good) and coffee into whiskey (very good). The modernist merangue recipe scared me as it said to put the cooked egg white and sugar mix into the 1L siphon hot and then infuse it with 4 charges of nitrogen, but our engineer said that stainless steel was strong enough to handle the pressure. It came out very messily, so we put it in a water bath to cool and thicken up, and then it came out thicker after that. (It was good torched) Also, it worked well in the laser cutter, which incidentally we used to cut minced garlic as well. I will update you all in a bit with more of what we did. -C

Trey, could one make colored gel noodles that would be one color in the broth and a noticably different shade out of the broth and still taste palatable? I just ordered a spherification kit from modernist pantry, and their site says sodium alginate only gels between pH 4-10. Would you end up making a lutfisk like alkaline noodle in an acid broth? Or how about just making a gel noodle with the color indicator in it, but vary the pH as you extrude it, so it looked like a multicolor skein of yarn in the bowl? Just a few brainstorming ideas.

I can see noodles with the pH sensitive pigment in a clear broth of acid or basic nature. Where the noodles are above the surface they are a different color than where are below the surface.

MC talks about ageing meats and fruits souse vide, and you can make fermented dairy i.e. yogurt with the souse vide. Has anyone tried to speed the ageing of cheese with the souse vide? Can it be done? I would like to take some quality cheddar and speed age one half and then serve both at a party and let people compare the two. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

Judy, I have the pictures from our food event with the burgers, check it out. There are also video links. -Chris http://www.sector67.org/blog/2012/cooking-with-science-day/

We finally got pictures of our food event from early december on the Sector 67 site. It has some great pictures and video of our event. Check it out, and stay tuned for our next one on Feb 16th. http://www.sector67.org/blog/2012/cooking-with-science-day/

Other members of our maker group made laser cut gingerbread houses. Here is the link with pictures: http://www.sector67.org/blog/2012/sector67-laser-cut-gingerbread-houses/ Here is another link with another picture: http://hackaday.com/2012/12/17/more-details-about-laser-cut-gingerbread-houses/ And now WIRED Magazine has linked to it: http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2012/12/laser-cut-gingerbread-house

Other members of our maker group made laser cut gingerbread houses. Here is the link with pictures: http://www.sector67.org/blog/2012/sector67-laser-cut-gingerbread-houses/ Here is another link with another picture: http://hackaday.com/2012/12/17/more-details-about-laser-cut-gingerbread-houses/ And now WIRED Magazine has linked to it: http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2012/12/laser-cut-gingerbread-house

We hosted a modernist food event for the members of Sector67 a maker/hacker space in Madison,WI last weekend and it was a great success. I will share more about it along with links to pictures shortly. We made 40 hamburgers in the "perfect hamburger" style with the souse vide and liquid nitrogen, and the deep fryer. We made creme anglaise souse vide (YUM!), and liquid N2 ice cream from souse vide base custard. We did souse vide whole racks of ribs cooked at 175 F for 16 hrs ( a bit too tender, fell apart trying to flip them). We finished them with sauce on the modified charcoal weber grill with the added circular metal reflector/ heat concentrator that MC describes, and did that work well, wow! Other members had home made souse vide cookers cooking salmon, as well as long cooked condensed milk in the souse vide that turned into something like caramel with the texture of flan (a bit weird). One member infused Pom blueberry/pomegranite juice into watermelon chunks using a vacuum chamber. He submerged the chunks then pulled a heavy vacuum and then released the vacuum, this forced the dark juice deep into the fruit, it was dark purple and really good. Also, in the fruit area we also filled a cooler with various fruit and a chunk of dry ice and let it sit overnight, it was amazing! My favorites are blueberries, raspberries and pineapple. But the cuties (tangerines) were great, as were blackberries. I didn't think that the grapes or bananas were as good, but maybe it was just lack of carbonation. We have a follow up even scheduled for February 17th. I will tell more when we get the pictures up on the Sector67 website. But think about doing one of these, we had a great time.-Chris

At our food event we used the laser cutter to etch/toast images into bread slices. It created an interesting 3D effect.

At our food event we used the laser cutter to etch/toast images into bread slices. It created an interesting 3D effect.

I forgot to mention that the trick of cooking the burgers in ziplock bags worked very well.