Anonymous Modernist 5066

Are you cooling your pressure cooker by running cold water on it (or using some sort of quick-release/steam release)? If so, try letting the pressure come down on its own. I've found when doing Garlic Confit that if I tried to lower the pressure too fast, the sudden change of pressure in the pressure cooker caused the liquid in the mason pots to rush out (presumably because of a pressure difference between the insides of the pots vs the inside of the pressure cooker). Allowing pressure to come down naturally solved this problem for me.

I'm not a big fan of long sous-vide cook times for babybacks myself, I find it makes the meat a little too mushy. What it usually do for baby back is : - Trim (silverskin, extra fat) - Brine for 1-2h (simple salt(7%) sugar(3%) brine) (rinse them throughly after) - Dry rub - Smoke for 1-2h at low temp (could even be cold smoke) - Sous-vide for 6-8h at 170F. (at 6h the meat requires a little pull to come off the bone, at 8h it starts to fall off a lot more easily) - Finish on the grill at high temp with sauce. Or cool and refrigerate until you need them (i'll usually reheat for about 30-45mins in a 130F bath, but I suspect you could just reheat them on the grill just fine) Brine and smoke are optionnal, I just find brining keeps the meat a little moistier.

I noticed there's no meat grinder in the Modernist Gear Guide, so I was curious, what does everyone use? I'm using a Kitchenaid Attachment, and while it sort of does the job, I'm not entirelty please with it and I wondered if anyone had any recommandations. Thanks! Ben

I found a small distributor of cooking appliances on Montreal's South Shore, many of which are 'modernist' oriented. Company name is Testtek, I have nothing but nice things to say about them. Not sure how their prices compare though, can't say I've done that much shopping on things I bought from them, but they seemed competitive. http://www.testek.ca/en/ Apart from there, it's been all online purchases for me.

The term you want to search for is "caramel rulers". They're quite expensive and a little hard to find.

http://modernistcuisine.com/cooks/forum/sources-for-modernist-ingredients/sodium-citrate-versus-citric-acid/

Question to those having success with the recipe, are you following the one from Modernist Cuisine, or from Modernist Cuisine at Home?

Thanks for the tip aienn, I hadn't considered that. I do use a trivet (its a Kuhn Rikon, maybe 1cm high, if that). But I do blast the heat on my electric stove to get the pressure up. I'll definetly try another batch pressurizing with low heat and see what happens.

Turns out the problem I had there was cooling the pressure cooker by running cold water down its sides. Letting the pressure go down slowly fixed that particular problem (jars leaking out).