slkinsey

What the?!

Judith, my point is that Italy doesn't have a well-developed restaurant culture -- or perhaps I should say restaurant tradition of long standing -- compared to France. Due to the Revolution and other factors, France's restaurant culture was underway by the beginning of the 19th Century. In Italy, on the other hand, even by the Second World War there wasn't much more than the occasional roadside osteria -- and certainly there was no expectation among Italians that the food would be particularly good. Osterie were for people who didn't know anyone they could stay with in town. When restaurant culture began happening in Italy for real, post WW2, it catered largely to tourists and most hotel ristoranti served food that might be better described as "continental" than Italian. It's also worthy of note that many ristoranti at this time were owned and operated by Italians who had moved to America for a number of years, prospered, experienced America's well-developed Italian-American (and French) restaurant culture, and had now moved back home. Meanwhile, by 1950 French haute cuisine was already well past its first golden ages (Carême's work having come some 150 years before). So, at the very least, French haute cuisine has had a 150 year head start on the possibility of an equivalent Italian restaurant concept.

Interesting observation, Steven. But I wonder if Alain Ducasse is quite the appropriate frame of reference. The kind of cuisine presented at restaurants such as these has never struck me as "French food" so much as it strikes me as "haute restaurant food." It is, of course, noteworthy that the French more or less invented the restaurant in general and high-end restaurant cuisine in specific. But there's nothing about your meal that says "French" to me in the same way that, for example, Boeuf Bourguignon does. This is perhaps what leads to a lot of the conflict of opinions in this thread. France has a well-developed tradition and culture of restaurants, including the high-end. Indeed, most people would consider Alain Ducasse's food "French" despite the fact that it has not so much connection to the things everyday French people are eating. Italian restaurant culture, relative to French restaurant culture, is in its infancy. As recently as the 1950s, when my mother lived in Rome, restaurants in Italy were for foreigners for the most part, and didn't even particularly serve "Italian food." Even today, Italy is mostly a country of home cooking. There is only the beginning of an Italian restaurant tradition going in the same direction as French haute cuisine went long before -- which is to say, a direction that takes it away from its traditional everyday roots and further towards the infinite refinement and flights of fancy that are only available to highly skilled technicians with specialized equipment and near-bottomless resources. This new Italian "alta cucina," like French haute cuisine compared to traditional French cooking, only have a partial connection to actual Italian cooking. It's unclear to me how "high" Italian cuisine can go successfully before it losts a strong connection to Italian cooking and begins to simply evoke certain elements of Italian sensibility and ingredients. Perhaps this will trend in a direction so that it becomes more and more like French cooking, and perhaps the argument can be made that there is simply a "Western high cooking aesthetic" that ultimately doesn't do much more than evoke various national and local cooking traditions. If we want to call if "French" because they're the first ones who went in that direction... well, you get to the beach first, you get to plant your flag and name the place.

I noticed that Auber Instruments claims that a thermistor is a better choice than a thermocouple. I don't know enough to know if they are right, but their turnkey system uses a thermistor rather than a thermocouple. According to what I have read, it is extremely difficult to get a thermocouple with reliability/accuracy to less than 1 degree C. I'm guessing that's why Auber recommends a thermistor instead.

To be clear: I should say that there are certain instances where seasoned cast iron can be less sticky than a stainless cooking surface. But it's a far cry from "nonstick" anywhere near the same category as a PTFE-lined pan. On the scale of stickyness where dry improperly heated stainless is the most sticky and brand new PTFE is least sticky, seasoned cast iron is a lot closer to the sticky side of the scale.

WRT the use of onion skins in stock... all an onion skin is, is a desiccated layer of onion flesh. No reason not to use it in a stock, unless it's dirty.

Kerry, how large were these tenderloins? Assuming they're right around an inch thick, it takes just about an hour to get to 60C in a 61C water bath. If you're setting your bath to 60C, you might consider going longer -- say 2 hours. I say this simply because I haven't had anyone find 60C pork too pink, and I could go even more pink. Given the time/temp you're posting, I wonder if you even made it up to 60.

Cite that Japan is hunting endangered whales? As far as I know, the only whale they hunt is the minke which is currently not listed as endangered. BBC News: Japanese whalers hunt humpbacks

Subject to revision by real data to the contrary, I assume that most of the sushi is eaten in Japan or by Japanese expatriates. Not to put too fine a point to it, but we are talking about a country and a culture that still continues to hunt and kill endangered whales under the guise of "research" (and continually applies diplomatic pressure to ease bans on commercial whaling and to expand the number and kind of whales they can kill for "scientific purposes") in order to satisfy demand for whale meat. Here is an interesting and thread-relevant quote from a piece by BBC News:

First of all, what are your stainless saute pan and skillet made of? If they're nothing more than thin stainless, there are going to be all kinds of hot spots and other things that I think contribute to sticking. I also suspect that not all stainless cooking surfaces are created equal, although I don't have any scientific evidence or reasoning to back that up -- just my experience that cheap stainless pans tend to be stickier than high quality pans consisting of a thermal layer of aluminum or copper with an internal lining of stainless steel. Now that I think about it, this may simply be due to the fact that the clad-design pans are able to hold more thermal energy and therefore are better at creating a "micro-layer" of steam between the food and the cooking surface. Technique-wise, properly preheating the pan is important, as is using a reasonable amount of fat for lubrication ("hot pan, cold oil" is a good rule of thumb any time). Other things such as respecting the power of the stove and the capacity of the pan and not over-crowding the pan also help to reduce sticking. All of these things are likely to be challenging when you have a pan made of stainless steel and nothing else, and may be impossible to fully overcome. This may be the primary thing that has produced stainless steel's reputation as a "sticky" cooking material -- it's not so much that a stainless cooking surface is sticky, but rather than stainless pans are sticky due to thermal properties. It may actually be cast iron's thermal advantages over stainless steel that lead to its (undeserved in my opinion) reputation of being non-stick. I have not noticed that any of the seasoned cast iron in my collection, most of which is inherited with 100+ years worth of seasoning, is any less sticky than my stainless lined heavy copper pans, for example. Anyway... assuming you have a stainless cooking surface bonded to decent thermal materials and are using good technique, a clean pan can make a big difference. As the recent owner of a dishwasher after some 20 years of exclusively hand washing, I can say that a dishwasher simply cannot clean a stainless steel pan as well as hand-scrubbing with Bar Keeper's Friend. Properly cleaned stainless steel is shiny and free of all visibly stains, residues and discolorations.

Rob, as to the rest time, I think you may be misreading the charts. On the chart for 54.4C, for example, a piece of meat that is 25 mm thick cooking in a 55C water bath will take 41 minutes and 29 seconds to come to the target temperature. The rest time is 56 seconds. The overshoot is minimal (but not zero) in a 55C water bath, but presumably what the chart is showing is that it would take 29 seconds for the piece of 25 mm meat to start losing temperature. If you're cooking with the water bath at your target temperature, this column isn't particularly meaningful to you. If you are cooking at a higher temperature water bath than your target temperature, this chart tells you how long you should let the meat rest so that the meat equilibrates at your target temperature.

Did some digging. Seems the "new label" Campari does not contain natural carmine. But one assumes it will take quite some time for the old stock to become scarce in this country.

"Seasoning" is nothing more than built up layers of polymerized fat. It is necessary to season cast iron because it is highly reactive (and also quite "sticky"), but you can season any cooking material if you want to take the trouble of building up the polymerized fat. Why you would want to is another question altogether. My experience is that reports as to seasoned cast iron's purported nonstick properties are vastly exaggerated. Cast iron is nonstick only so far as sufficient fat is used -- much the same as it is for clean (unseasoned) stainless steel. And, in my experience, clean stainless steel (very few people actually keep their stainless steel cooking surfaces as clean as they should) is actually less sticky than seasoned cast iron. There are plenty of reasons I don't recommend seasoning stainless steel. The main reason is that I don't think it offers any benefits above and beyond what are possible with truly clean stainless steel. Beyond that: If we're talking about a stock pot or saucepan, there are no potential benefits of seasoning. If we're talking about a regular thin stainless steel frypan, well they suck and there's no reason you'd want to use one. If we're talking about a stainless-lined copper or aluminum pan, leaving polymerized fat residues on the pan limits the temperatures at which the pan can be used (seasoning will burn above a certain temperature).

AFAIK, carmine is made from chochineal.

Really? Please tell me where I said that 0.5C was necessary. If you read back, I think you will see that I said in mentioning prospective benchmarks for a PIDed crock pot with no circulator: "temperature accuracy within 0.25C and stability within 0.5C." To be even more clear: "accuracy within 0.25C" = really precise thermometer that actually reflects the temperature of the water bath, and "stability within 0.5C" = 1 degree C of variability. My position of 1 degree C was first stated here (before the statement as to stability of 0.5C you have latched on to) and further clarified here. I do not mean to contend that all applications are sensitive to 1 degree C, just that many of the most interesting ones are. In my experience I have been able to tell the difference in all the things I have listed to within 1 degree C when exploring the lower end of the "doneness scale." Which is to say that, while the difference between 53.5C beef and 54.5C beef can seem quite noticeable, the difference between 75C beef and 76C beef is not so noticeable. Discounting the fact that you are mischaracterizing my previous claims, as I explain above, it is of course possible to make something delicious with nothing more accurate than your finger as a temperature-measuring device. So what? I wasn't saying that you couldn't make something tasty with a less-accurate setup. In fact, one might be able to make salmon mi cuit with nothing more than a saucepan and luck. But that's not to say that it will turn out the same way the next time. I don't know what to tell you there. Back in 2005 Really Nice! seemed to be able to get his setup to maintain pretty good accuracy to within a little over 2 degrees C using a digital thermometer and an electric stove. I have to believe that a larger thermal mass (e.g., a large stockpot instead of a hotel pan) or an insulated container would hold temperature a lot better with more accuracy than that. I suppose it all depends on whether 1-2 degrees C of accuracy is worth 100 bucks to you -- especially considering that I think you should be able to achieve around 2.5 degrees C of accuracy using more "conventional" (and more or less free) means. So really it's a question of whether 1-2 degrees C of accuracy is worth it for the "set it and forget it" aspect. To me, there was enough to be gained in having 0.1C accuracy/stability that it was worth 400 bucks to me, but perhaps not enough to be gained in having 2 degrees C of accuracy that it would be worth 100 bucks to me largely for the convenience of set-and-forget. But, to each his or her own. I understand and appreciate that some people may have different priorities. I might think differently if I had only 100 bucks to spend and was more interested in long-term cooking applications than I was in temperature-sensitive applications both short- and long-term cooking.

A few things: 1. As I said before, if you are doing a small number of items (a similar number of things as you would be able to do in a non-circulating PIDed crock pot) you should not have to exercise "constant vigilance to maintain things within a few degrees" in a large stock pot. You should be able to get to just above your target temperature, throw in the fish or similarly thin cut of tender meat, adjust with cold water if need be, and the stock pot shouldn't lose too much temperature over the 20 minutes or so it would require for the protein to achieve the correct temperature. This is especially true if you follow nathanm's charts and use a water bath that is actually at a higher temperature than the target temperature of the protein (which technique I belive Juan Rocca endorses anyway). This should be true with any protein that needs to be cooked for, say, less than 30 minutes. 2. Tender things that are sensitive to within 1 degree C: - Fish (especially mi cuit) - Beef at the "lower ends of doneness" - Pork at the "lower ends of doneness" - "Just done" turkey and chicken white meat 3. Tough things that are sensitive to 1 degree C: - Similar to #2 above, if what you are going for is a result at the "lower ends of doneness" 4. Things that are not sensitive to 1 degree C: - Anything cooked above "medium," or if you don't care so much whether your 48 hour short ribs turn out "rare" or "medium rare." My experience is that when one is looking to explore the line between "still kind of raw" and "just cooked" temperature accuracy is extremely important. In some cases less than 1 degree C can make a discernable difference. Edited for clarity

Edward, I can think of lots of reasons people who don't want to spend money on a circulator might still be interested in exploring sous vide. What I have a hard time figuring out is why someone would want to go the time, trouble and expense of PIDing a crock pot when it seems like there are solutions involving less time, trouble and expense that should be within the tolerance of several degrees C. Again... if you're going to cook two portions of fish or something like that for 20-30 minutes, a nice large stockpot (useful for many other things!) and a thermometer should suffice. The thermal mass is large enough that the temperature shouldn't decrease very much if you simply turn the burner off after chucking in a few salmon steaks. At worst, you might have to check back once and boost the temperature. As nathanm pointed out, if your tolerances are within only a few degrees, it's unlikely you can do things like salmon mi cuit with any reliability anyway. If you have any long-term cooking you want to do and you're happy with tolerances within three or four degrees C, then there are ways this can be done without using a PID. Heck, you can even use ziplock bags if you want to (although this compromise also removes certain advantages available to users of vacuum sealers). I, personally, would argue that the most striking and unique things that can be done using this technology are dependent on temperature accuracy and stability within at least 0.5C. So, while I agree with the basic premise that some of the aspects of sous vide cooking can be achieved without a precision circulator, I write to point out that there are a lot of very interesting things that will very likely be unavailable any other way (unless you have a precision steam oven, etc.). And the implication I get from a lot of these "sous vide on the cheap" discussions is that people think they'll be able to do all or almost all of what you can do with a lab circulator and a large vessel using a crock pot and a PID. That doesn't seem like it will be the case. You can do some of the same things. When I became interested in exploring sous vide cooking, and did not have a precision circulator, I simply explored the other options I outlined above. Especially for the short-term cooking of fish and tender meats, it is not particularly burdensome to do it on the stove. When I determined that it was something that interested me enough to explore the full range of possiblilities, I stepped up to the plate and poached a reconditioned Lauda off of an auction site. To me, it doesn't make sense to spend 1/3 the money on a crock pot and PID controller for something that only gets me half of the cool stuff I want to do. On the other hand, I'm not the kind of guy who solders things for fun. If someone can come up with a cheap, accurate and stable PIDed hotplate with some kind of insertable circulating pump (I'm not sure an aquarium bubbler would suffice, but surely there is something out there), I'd be all for it.

But that's the rub! Assuming the circulation issue is dealt with. There are plenty of less-expensive applications that might work asuming the circulation issue is dealt with. I'm talking about when the circulation issue isn't dealt with and one is relying upon convection. I thought that was pretty clear from what I wrote above, but my apologies if it was not. I didn't say stability within 0.25C. I said accuracy within 0.25C and stability within 0.5C. Since there are many applications -- and many of the most interesting applications -- that have tolerances within 1 degree C, this seems like a reasonable requirement and not arbitrary at all. As for 0.25 variability within the bath, perhaps this is being a little too precise. But, if our tolerances are accuracy within 0.25C, stability within 0.5 and no more than 0.25 variability in the bath, it's still possible that one part of the bath could be a full degree warmer than another part of the bath. 1 degree C certainly has a notable effect on many sous vide applications.

E: Think about the way a crock pot heats. Now think about the volume of water we're talking about in a crock pot. As it so happens, I have a couple of them myself. The largest crock pot available on crock-pot.com is 6.5 quarts. That's only 1.625 gallons, 375 cubic inches. Now, this is probably plenty of room if you're cooking 4 lamb chops or a few fish fillets. But what about cooking, say, six double-cut pork chops? I trust you don't think this is an exorbitant amount of food to cook at one time. Those pork chops will take up around 130 cubic inches. So now you have only 245 cubic inches of volume in your slow cooker available for water -- less than one gallon. That strikes me as too little so reasonably and accurately maintain an even temperature throughout the crock pot to, say, +/- 1C (and, yes, in many applications a single degree C can make a difference) and I think it's likely that the food would come quite close to the ceramic lining that is heating the water. Do you think that the ceramic at the bottom of the pot won't be warmer than the water at the top of the pot? Especially if there are several bags of food in between? As for temperature swings, keep in mind that, even after the PID establishes and maintains the temperature evenly when there is nothing in the pot but water, there will be an immediate disequilibrium once the food is introduced to the water bath. If there is a relatively small volume of water relative to the food (which there often would be in a crock pot) how well is the PID controller going to respond to that? As for doing "testing" on this method. . . unfortunately there's nothing I have seen here yet that suggests that the people seeking to do such evaluations are interested in taking the time, trouble and (especially) expense of doing any meaningful testing. What are they going to do -- drop 20 lamb chops into a PIDed crock pot with a temperature probe sticking into each one? Most of what I have seen are things along the lines of "I measured the water and, after 2 hours it stayed between 130 and 134." That doesn't mean much to me. So.. absent of any such testing, I am likely to trust the evaluations of the scientists who use this equipment. And, as nathanm brought up, water baths that do not have a circulator are not considered accurate for work requiring temperature precision. For short-time sous vide cooking of small amounts of food, such as a couple of fish fillets or relatively thin pieces of meat, it strikes me that anyone who is interested in saving a lot of money is well served with a large stock pot, a stove and a fast-acting thermometer. Why go to all the time and expense to PID a crock pot for this, right? For long-term cooking when temperature precision is important (e.g., 48 hour medium-rare beef short ribs) it's not clear that a PIDed crock pot can offer enough precision and stability throughout the water bath, except perhaps in the case where one would like to cook two short ribs in the very middle of the crock pot. Again, I would question whether it's worth going to this kind of trouble and expense to be able to cook 2 short ribs at a time. If you pack the largest crock pot with short ribs and there's maybe 1/2 or 1/3 gallon of water for temperature regulation with no circulation, I can't believe there wouldn't be problems. For long-term cooking where temperature precision is less important (e.g., sous vide "confit"), it would probably work just fine. Now... you throw in a circulator, and that's a different story. But, you know... why fantasize about all the great things you can do by PIDing a crock pot and chuckle about how you won't have to pay 400 bucks for a circulator on eBay? Make one. Test it thoroughly. Come back and post the results. Personally, if I were going to do such a thing, I'd be looking at minimum requirements of temperature accuracy within 0.25C and stability within 0.5C with less than 0.25C variability within the bath, all when there is enough food in the bath to make dinner for 8. Those strike me as reasonable specifications for anyone who wants to do sous vide cooking enough to invest in such a thing.

Sweet. It certainly does look like it roasts dark enough just fine for my style of espresso. Perhaps when they say "dark roasting" they're talking about people who like that Starbuck's style, almost-black, oily roast? This style has always tasted over-roasted to me, but to each his own I suppose. Anyway, from what you're showing I don't have too many misgivings about its espresso-roasting worthiness.

Here is a good reference guide to various roasting levels: http://www.sweetmarias.com/roasting-VisualGuideV2.html

Huh. That certainly seems dark enough for a Northern Italy style espresso roast.

There has already been quite a bit of discussion about the possible use of PID and other kinds of temperature-controlled Crock-Pots in the main sous vide thread. The general consensus was that an actual Crock Pot is probably too small for any meaningful temperature equalization throughout the water bath. This is especially true due to the way slow cookers work: by heating a large, thick ceramic insert that lines the entire inside of the slow cooker. It's hard to believe that there won't be significant overshooting of temperature due to this design, and it also seems likely that there will be dead spots, etc. unless the PIDed crock pot is loaded very lightly. Since a big part of what makes sous vide cooking so interesting is the effects one can create with very precise temperature control, especially at lower temperatures, it seems to me that a PIDed crock pot would be a lot of trouble and expense for not so much payoff. You could do some things, but certainly couldn't explore anywhere near the full range of this technique. If one is interested in doing non-circulating PID-controlled water bath, I would suggest that a very large stock pot on top of a PIDed heating plate would provide the best performance and the most bang for the buck, since both the heating plate and the stock pot could be used in the more traditional way as well. Here's a post from the main sous vide thread that touches on some of these issues: I agree with the above quotes quite strongly. Baths without circulation pumps do work, but they are prone to temperature stratification, and even worse, dead space between food items. One way to get a non-circulating pump is take a crock pot, rice cooker or hot-plate with a pot and add thermostatic control (PID or On-Off) such as Ranco, or the new sous vide conversion unit that was briefly posted to this thread, then disappeared. However, there are also laboratory water baths that lack a circulating pump - the most common brand is Precision (but other brands make them). They are a bit cheaper than a circulating pump water bath. They are sometimes called "utility water baths". In a lab they are NOT used for precise temperture control. If you have one bag of product is the middle of a large crock-pot or non-pumped lab water bath it is probably going to be OK. This is particularly true if you are cooking at 170F or above because at those tempertatures there is substantial convection in the water (i.e. what we normally call simmering). But if you are cooking at lower temp (rare beef, barely cooked salmon) or if you put a bunch of bags in at the same time the circulation can be a BIG help. If you are working in a restaurant, or you cook in quantity, then a circulating water bath is cheaper than a non-circulating one when you consider how much more you can load it. It may look big but you can't really pack it as full as you could with a circulator. If on the other hand you are experimenting at home, are on a budget, or are doing just one or two bags at at a time, then a modified crock pot / rice cooker or non-circulating water bath may work out just fine.

Perhaps with a companion sign saying "learn it, know it, live it"?

What makes you think this isn't the case with veal? Is it the case that butchers in most of America receive their veal completely pre-broken down and there are no bones to remove? If so, that's really sad.