slkinsey

That makes no sense at all. Your body has a metabolic need for a certain number of calories per day. It will burn those calories. Any calories consumed in addition to that number will be stored as fat. What is so hard to understand about this? Now... look... it is certainly a fact that certain calories become available more quickly than others. If I take in 100 calories of glucose together with 100 calories of fat, it seems fairly certain that my body will use the 100 glucose calories faster than the 100 fat calories. But so what? I mean, let's say that your body burns 2,000 calories per day. Let us further say that you have already consumed 1,900 calories on a given day, at which point you eat 100 calories of glucose and 100 calories of protein. It is pretty much a given that the 100 glucose calories will be converted into metabolic energy faster than the 100 calories of protein. Therefore, the 100 protein calories would be the "extra" calories and would be stored as fat whereas the 100 glucose calories would be burnt up as the last part of your body's daily requirement. Do you see how nonsensical this is? It doesn't matter what order you ate the calories in, only that you ate too many. What matters is the sum total of the calories you took in that day. So, no, what the calories are made out does not make a difference as to whether of not one's body stores those calories. The only thing that makes a difference as to whether or not one's body stores extra calories is whether or not there are any extra calories to store. If there are extra calories, the body will store them. It really is that simple. To believe otherwise, you would have to believe that 2,000 calories of carbohydrates are somehow different from 2,000 calories of fat are somehow different from 2,000 calories of protein on a caloric basis. This is untrue on its face, despite the fact that people are making zillions of dollars telling people that one or more of them is weight loss magic while one or more of them is weight loss hell. Look... I'm not arguing that the food in which the calories are contained has no effect on health, or even that it has no effect on weight loss/gain. There are plenty of reasons why certain foods can be beneficial for weight loss, even though weight loss always inevitably comes down to a calorie deficit. What I am saying is that calorie for calorie there is no difference in terms of weight gain. Atkins and all those guys may say that their super magic method changes the metabolism and does blah blah blah... and maybe it does. But the fact is that, if you follow the Atkins diet and consume more calories than you burn over time, you will gain weight. It is not clear to me, and I have never seen it proven, that any of these special diets succeeds in fundamentally changing the human metabolism so that it burns significantly more calories on a daily basis.

No. This is a mistake. The body does not handle the calories any differently. It may handle some of the other stuff differently, but in terms of weight loss and weight gain, a calorie is a calorie is a calorie. People can argue whether or not it is fundamentally better for one's health to get most of one's calories from fat or carbohydrates or protein, but that is a completely different discussion. I don't think anyone would argue that the body will process 100 calories of fat differently from 100 calories of protein. They are two completely different things and the body will break them down into different things and use those end products for different things. But the 100 calories of metabolic energy are 100 calories of metabolic energy no matter what they are made of. If you take in too many calories of fat, you will gain just as much weight as you would from taking in the same amount of extra calories from carbohydrates. The one caveat to the above is that calories which are stored in a complex form may take more metabolic energy to break down into usable components than the equivalent number of calories in a simpler form. This is to say that it may take 5 calories of metabolic effort to process 100 calories of food X while it takes only 1 calorie of metabolic effort to process 100 calories of food Y. This equation may or may not favor fat (I am inclined to think not), but I imagine that any such effect is very slight.

There's plenty of food-production capacity. The fundamental issues of world hunger are incompetent government, poverty, and inadequate (sometimes intentionally so) distribution. Well... yes. But IMO the fundamental issue underlying it all is overpopulation. I mean, we certainly could plow under every spare patch of land, bulldoze the rainforests and whatnot to raise wheat, corn, etc. and feed the world. But there is some question, in my mind anyway, as to whether or not that is such a great idea. Personally, I think we're paying the price for that kind of thing too much already.

I have found that there is a significant difference in the moisture content just after one day of sitting in the fridge. And I leave mine in the liquid.

Actually this is not entirely true, research seems to indicate (at least the research that atkin's used to present) that the composition of your diet influences if you lose or gain weight. You can eat the same number of calories on an atkin's diet that you can on a high protein or high carb diet and you will lose more weight on the atkin's diet. I don't believe it. Show me the research. And I mean real research, not something done by a low carb diet clinic or quoted from an Atkins book.

The fundamental issue of world hunger is massive overpopulation, particularly in "starvation areas" of the world that are not and never will be able to sustain human populations approaching the size they do now. Only when this problem is tackled -- and I have little confidence that it will be any time soon -- will it be reasonable to speak of "solving the problem of world hunger."

What's so unlikely about that? Certainly, an effective psychoactive drug -- a nutritional Prozac -- that limits the propensity to overeat is easy to imagine. That's a pipe dream. I don't see how a pill, if possible, could solve anything. It's not a pipe dream at all. There are already psychoactive drugs that have been shown to result in moderate weight loss due to reduced consumption of calories as a side effect. The mechanism for hunger and eating is largely regulated by the brain, nervous system and bloodstream. I see no reason whatsoever that a drug could not be developed that acted to suppress the mechanism in the brain that makes us want to (over) eat. In my experience, consistently eating beyond the point of satiety is often a significant part of the problem for people with weight issues. I know it is for me. This is something that could definitely be affected with drug treatment.

That's not my understanding of the basis of the Atkins diet. As I understand it, the Atkins diet is based on extreme restriction of carbohydrate intake in order to induce a state of ketosis. My understanding, based on conversations with several doctors in the extended family, of the way the Atkins diet really works is the same way every diet works: it gets you to eat less calories than you burn. Period. The trick of the Atkins diet, and the way it accomplishes this calorie reduction, is to eliminate allmost all carbohydrates. As it turns out, carbohydrates taste good and we tend to eat a whole lot of them. The range of foods that are completely devoid of carbohydrates is very limited, and many otherwise palatable foods are not all that tasty in their carb-free form. One reaches a point where it just becomes boring to fill up on steaks with no potatoes and hamburger patties without the bun night after night after night. So, inevitably what ends up happening is that the dieter ends up taking less calories than they burn. The result of this is weight loss. In case anyone missed it, the only proven diet for weight loss is... wait for it... to consume less calories than you burn. In other words, eat less and exercise more.

I actually think that fresh high-moisture mozzarella would be horrible in the amounts one finds on the typical NYC slice. For that style, I also would choose a lower moisture mozzarella. OTOH, I typically choose a different style of pizza alltogether. There just aren't all that many pizza places in the City that do it for me.

When a pizza recipe calls for "fresh" mozz, what should one use? Are there any places in your town that make mozzarella? Here in NYC we have Alleva and DiPaolo's, which make fresh fior di latte mozzarella and ricotta every day. This is amazing stuff, but lower in moisture than imported mozarella di bufala that has been soaking in liquid for several days. When I make pizza at home, I always use mozzarella from Alleva. But I also don't use all that much cheese. My typical pizza has maybe 50% or 60% cheese coverage at most. I agree that it doesn't make sense to use mozzarella di bufala on a pizza unless one is in a part of the world (i.e., Napoli) where it is fairly ubiquitous and reasonably priced (which is pobably no longer the case even in Napoli). You also have to have a really hot oven and a very thick stone on the oven floor to make it work with a wetter cheese.

It's not entirely clear to me that the whole "starvation mode" thing has ever been scientifically substantiated. It has always struck me as a hypothesis that some diet people came up with to explain why it is hard to lose weight and why rebound weight gain is so common after overly strict dieting. But I don't think there have ever been any studies showing that people on highly calorie-restricting diets somehow experience a profound metabolic change whereby their bodies burn fewer calories and absorb more. This page here has the best and most sound explanation for rebound weight gain I have seen, and no mention is made of any such metabolic change.

When I'm in Houston, I get Fee Brothers Orange Bitters at Spec's. They also sell Peychaud Bitters. If you want to contact Fee Brothers directly, see their web site. Fee Brothers also makes an "Old Fashioned Bitters" that is excellent and a great alternative to Angostura Bitters.

That is just about 150F, for those using the old scale. Matthew, what is your method for low temperature cooking? What parts of the chicken do you do this with? Do you crisp the skin, or do you go skinless?

I think the breakdown may be that Inventolux isn't really using a 135F water bath when he does this. When he says: and then says: I think he is basing his 135F instruction on his earlier assumption that water just below simmering is 135F. I, rather, would suggest that water just below simmering is closer to 190F, and that water "just below steeping" (if we should take Inventolux' word usage to indicate an even lower temperature than that) is right around 180F -- much below that and we start to enter the range of "tea that needs to be heated up" temperatures. Inventolux' statements above lead me to believe that he is not measuring the temperature of his water bath with a probe, as you did, but merely making the assumption that "just below simmering" equals 135F. Would you describe the water you measured at 135F as "just below simmering?" My guess is that his water bath is a lot closer to 180F or 190F. By the way, there is an interesting chapter in The Curious Cook: More Kitchen Science and Lore by Harold McGee about cooking meat below the boil. He includes timing charts for meats of various sizes in water baths of 200F and 180F. Of note are McGee's descriptions of "simmering" and "subsimmering" temperatures. He describes "simmering" as "a point just below the boil ... in the neighborhood of 200F." The temperature he chooses for "subsimmering" -- which is to say "just below a simmer" is 180F. According to McGee's timing charts, a 1.5 inch steak (which is around the same thickness as a large chicken breast tied up as Inventolux describes) in a 180F water bath will reach 150F in around 34 minutes. This is the "just done" temperature for chicken breast in my experience, and I do not think it is a coincidence that McGee's timing coincides exactly with the timing Inventolux gave you in his detailed instructions (35 minutes).

Assuming you do not have any lamb fat lying around, I would think a cheap evoo would work nicely. Technique-wise, it's all the same.

This is especially interesting as I have never known a single Italian Italian to use this technique. Indeed, my mother tells a story of the exact opposite thing happening to her when she was living in Italy during the early 50s (i.e., one of the locals telling her that she should not be using a spoon).

Very, very, very cool of you to do this, Dave! And, of course, it is reassuring to see our predictions confirmed by your experiment. Other than making the confit technique possible with a much smaller amount of extra fat, I don't see how it offers much of an advantage over the regular way. Seems like more trouble really. And I would think that most people interested in making duck confit at home would be able to accumulate enough extra duck fat to make this technique superfluous with relatively little difficulty and a little forethought. I always cut out and render down the extra fat from poultry before roasting and save it in the freezer. My friends may think it's strange that I have 4 jars of fat in the freezer (goose, duck, chicken, bacon, lard) -- but maybe they're not real friends. I mean, I can always think of something to do with rendered animal fat. Anyway... getting back on track... The one advantage doing it in cryovac/FoodSaver it does seem to offer is that each duck leg would be in its own individual confit container you could just throw in the fridge. That would certainly make it easier than digging a leg out of a crock when you wanted to just have one. Doing it with plastic wrap doesn't seem worth it.

Like bourdain said on his recent episode in Bangkok - "Look at the cute fishy. Let's eat it!" I think we have come up with the motto of a true eGulleteer. Heh... it was a South Park quote. While the other kids are shocked that the "cute baby cows" are turned into veal, Cartman offers his own thoughts on the matter.

That would be Alaska. Everything I have ever read says that New England has the highest per capita ice cream consumption in the US.

Just to add another data point, I did the following calculation. My assumption was that the volume would not change at all (i.e., that the package would not bulge), which would not be the case in real practice. Before heating Volume 1: 1 liter Temperature 1: 277 kelvin (39F) Pressure 1: 1 atmosphere After heating Volume 2: 1 liter Temperature 2: 330 kelvin (134F) Calculated Pressure 2: 1.19 atmospheres As we can see, the pressure increased by 19%. For the calculations, I relied on The Combined Gas Law Calculator.

I guess you will have to either perform the exercise for yourself or wait to watch me do it. Inventolux, what I think people are having a problem with is that you are making a lot of claims that seem to fly in the face of science, and you refuse to offer any sound support whatsoever other than your own opinion and "you'll just have to wait to watch me do it." This kind of argument simply does not hold water.

I did it that way before I had the capability to cryovac. Didn't seem like rocket science to try doing it that way. I have also done it with heavy-duty ziplock bags with the air sucked out of them. What I think you don't quite understand is that the expanding of the plastic from the air does not necessarily mean that there is significant pressure being built up inside the plastic. Take this example: Put piece of chicken inside a balloon. Blow the balloon up with air. The balloon expands. Do you think that the chicken inside the inflated balloon is under significantly greater pressure than it was under previously? This is to say, do you thinkthe air pressure inside the balloon is significantly greater than the air pressure outside the balloon? Hint: Google for Boyle's Law.

This is where we're breaking down, I think. It doesn't make a "phase shift" from liquid to gas, it just looks like it did!! What's really happening is that extremely tiny (2-20 micron) water droplets are binding with molecules in the air creating a haze. It's not any more "steam" than that cloud floating overhead (weather permitting). Right. Sorry about that. Upon further thought, in this particular case it would be evaporation followed by condensation. It still strikes me, however, that "steam" is nothing more than water gas in a visible form. I gather that there can be other understandings of this word in various fields, but I can't find any general purpose scientific definition that makes a temperature greater than 100C necessary.

I have done this with a significantly warmer water bath (say 150F) and finished the breasts under the broiler to crisp the skin. Even then, the texture was a little mushy and undercooked-seeming for that kind of bird (have done chicken and also guinea fowl). Now, on the other hand, darker-fleshed poultry (squab, etc.) might be okay cooked to a lower temperature. Chicken? No thanks. One of McGee's books probably has the temperature for chicken protein.

It's not clear to me that your definition is necessarily a general-purpose scientific one. Especially given the following: The second part of your definition would seem to be contradicted by the first part when one considers the phenomenon of sublimation. Considering my "football example" above, the water on my scalp would be making a phase shift from a liquid to a gas state via sublimation. And the temperature of that steam would be <100C/212F.