slkinsey

I made the pork adobo again, this time with pork butt instead of pork belly (no pork belly to be had a the local market, not even for ready money). Still turned out delicious, if a bit less unctuous.

Each triglyceride has three fatty acids, not three free fatty acids. A free fatty acid is one that is not attached to a molecule. Different oils have a different free fatty acid content. When an oil reaches its smoke point, the triglycerides begin to break apart into glycerol and free fatty acids. An oil that already has lots of free fatty acids floating around in it has a lower smoke point than an oil that has fewer free fatty acids floating around in it. So, to make a comparison with made-up numbers, let's say we have Oil A containing 20% free fatty acids and Oil B containing 10% free fatty acids. If we combine these in equal parts, we will have Blended Oil AB containing 15% free fatty acids. Blended Oil AB should have a smoke point somewhere between the smoke points of Oil A and Oil B (although I imagine it's more complicated than simply splitting the temperature difference).

I think it's a combination of things. In some cases a person may just not care for a certain recipe. This happens in every cookbook. Not everyone likes everything. Or it may be that some people have a favorite recipe already. For example, MCAH has a recipe for a very garlicky pizza sauce that is pressure-cooked. My idea of pizza sauce is an uncooked mixture of coarsely crushed San Marzano tomatoes, salt and a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil. It's unlikely I will be won over by MCAH's version, but I might try it once to see what it's like. The result, however, is still probably going to be that I like my version better and am unlikely to do the MCAH recipe again. Or it may be that some people have a preferred technique and don't see any reason to change. I have a friend who has been low-simmering meat stocks overnight on the stove for 20 years. This works for him and he doesn't see any reason to change. Even if he tried pressure cooking a stock once, he is likely to say that he's not sure he would use that method again. Similar things might be said about many sous vide techniques. Someone who is happy with the results he gets cooking his steaks under the broiler may think that vacuum sealing his steak, cooking it sous vide and then searing the outside with a blowtorch is too complicated to be worth it. Or it may be -- and this is something I see a lot with recipes -- it may be that some people want the recipe to be something it isn't. The carrot soup is a good example. It is meant to be a rich soup, not something you would have a big bowl of every day for lunch. If you're worried about your fat intake, adjust the recipe. But you also can't complain if you don't like it that way. I wonder if the same thing may be true about the red wine glaze. Do we suppose it's really meant to taste strongly of red wine? I don't really think so. Cooking transforms red wine into something that doesn't have a particularly strong red wine flavor. Coq au vin also doesn't particularly taste of red wine, and yet we don't hear many complaints that "this coq au vin recipe doesn't taste all that much like red wine." All of these things strike me as okay and expected for any cookbook.

Whole butter is not a good fat to include in this discussion, because it includes water and milk solids, etc. There is nothing you can do to raise the temperature at which the milk solids will burn. This would be true of any fat that tends to "burn" at a certain temperature due to the carbonization of suspended solids, etc. These fats haven't really reached their "smoke point." The smoke point is when the fat molecules begin to break down into glycerol and free fatty acids (see: wikipedia article). Blending oils most likely has some effect on smoke point because it changes the amount of free fatty acids in the blended oil compared to either of the constituent oils by itself.

Think about it for a minute: Presumably having oil sitting on the surface of the meat isn't somehow going to "scare" water back inside the meat. So at the very most, the oil represents a kind of hydrophobic layer sitting on the surface of the meat? So, let's imagine this... the meat fibers are contracting and squeezing out water. This water makes it to the surface of the meat just like it normally would (the oil on the outside can't affect what's happening in the interior of the meat). Now we have a droplet of water that was squeezed out of the contracting meat fibers and it's sitting on the surface of the meat. Is the idea that the hydrophobic property of the oil will force this water back inside? Or that it will slow the rate at which water is exuded from the meat? Meanwhile, what is to prevent that water from simply sliding off the piece of meat and falling to the bottom of the cooking vessel? Or, for that matter, why wouldn't the droplet of water simply stay there on the surface of the meat just like it would if you coated the meat in an impermeable plastic membrane? In actuality, we know what happens, which is that plenty of water comes out of the meat. Having prepared sous vide duck leg confit both with and without oil in the bag, I can't say that I have noticed any difference whatsoever between the amounts of exuded liquid. Right. Thermal conductivity might make some minute amount of difference in ramp-up time to the target temperature, but I can't believe that this wouldn't be lost in the noise of the imprecise temperature control of the Food Lab experiments. Yes, I agree that it's probably more due to the mouthfeel coating of residual fat as well, although there may be other things that contributed to the result (I don't doubt that the water sample was dry compared to the oil sample). The impact of even a little extra fat is something that can't be discounted. For example, the Modernist Cuisine team found that it was impossible to distinguish the difference between duck legs cooked submerged in fat (i.e., confit) and steamed duck legs cooked to a similar extent and subsequently finished by brushing them with flavored fat. I have no idea, except that perhaps it's due to the radically shorter cooking times. 20 minutes at 250F is a much shorter time than 3 hours at 208F. And think about it: deep frying chicken can result in much juicier meat than long braising if it's done right.

I generally like the Food Lab articles, but sometimes they can be a bit short on the understanding of science. The idea that a piece of meat in a pot of 98C water will "cook faster" than a piece of meat in a pot of 98C fat strikes me as a misunderstanding of the underlying thermodynamics. Sure, the pot of water may contain more thermal energy than the pot of oil, but it doesn't necessarily follow that the water transfers more thermal energy into the piece of meat over the course of the cooking period compared to the oil. This would likely be true if the burner were turned off once the meat was introduced into the liquid, but since the burner is constantly transferring thermal energy into the liquid it shouldn't be a significant factor. And so on. I don't dispute his findings and results in the linked article at all, but I do question some of his conclusions and the reasoning behind them. I'm especially curious about the assertion that cooking in oil somehow encourages more water to stay inside the meat, an assertion I'd love to see scientifically tested. Anyway, my strong suspicion is that the differences came down more to evaporation and actual differences in the temperature of the cooking medium. The real way to test whether water or oil has a difference on "doneness" and liquid retention in meats would be to seal samples of meat together with water or oil, cook sous vide at 98C for identical periods of time, then measure the liquid loss and evaluate the differences in the meat. My guess is that there would be very little difference, which would not support the thermodynamic and hydrophobicity hypotheses. Regardless, pressure cooking works differently from "low and slow" cooking below the simmer. I've made plenty of pork dishes by pressure cooking in a limited amount of water, and they always came out tender and juicy.

Mine was all tender with no dryness. But also not too much squishy fattyness that can sometimes make pork belly too rich for some people. Really it was perfect. And the strong flavored vinegar sauce was the perfect foil for the richness of the pork belly. That said, I bet it would work pretty well with chunked up pork butt or another less fatty cut.

Pork belly adobo was a huge hit, to say the least. Mrs. slkinsey is already asking when we can have it again. Very easy to make. Scales great.

Making the pork belly adobo for dinner tonight. I wonder if it will be one of the "stars" of the new book. So far, I've already pressure-cooked the belly and strained the liquid. When dinnertime rolls around, I'll make some rice, reduce the liquid and glaze the belly pieces.

It depends on the kind of 00.

In my opinion, it's very difficult to accurately judge whether, say a carrot raw versus A steamed versus pressure cooked versus some other way will have more vitamins. Or, rather, it's possible to judge which version has more vitamins but this doesn't speak to the bioavailability of those vitamins. A cooked potato, for example, has much more bioavailability of its vitamins and other nutrients compared to a raw one, which is largely indigestible. Indeed, one of the reasons we cook vegetables is to make them more digestible and to make the nutrients more bioavailable. Think about primates that live on raw vegetables... what do they do all day? Eat and defecate. They have to eat massive quantities of food all day in order to metabolize enough nutrients to thrive. Meanwhile, of course, people in so-call first world countries do not exactly suffer from a deficiency in nutrition. Rather, we suffer from an abundance of nutrients in our diet.

I don't think it makes a huge difference, to be honest. You could also bring it up to temp, regulate the heat source to the desired "one jiggle every 30-60 seconds" level and then balance a couple of quarters on top of the jiggle weight. This is something like what I do when making stock in my "steampunk R2D2" All-American pressure canner, but I am able to refer to the pressure gauge when I do that.

Umm... care to explain a bit more? As I understand it, it works something like this: We understand that the boiling point of a liquid is dependent on the ambient pressure. This is why water boils at a lower temperature in Denver than it does in New Orleans -- because the atmospheric pressure is lower in Denver. In understanding this, it is helpful to understand what causes ambient pressure. At simple way to conceptualize atmospheric pressure is to think of it as the combined weight of all the air molecules above us, pushing down on us all the time. Because Denver is so much higher up than New Orleans, there are fewer air molecules above us in Denver than there are in New Orleans and therefore the ambient pressure is lower. How does this relate to boiling? When we add thermal energy to a liquid, we increase the movement of the molecules in that liquid. This movement can be quantified as "temperature." Eventually, the molecules in the liquid start to move so fast that their movement is stronger than the weight of the molecules in the air pushing down on them (aka the ambient pressure) and they break free of the liquid. This is when the liquid turns into a gas, which is what we call "boiling." So, one way to think of ambient pressure is that it is a kind of "weight" sitting on top of the liquid and holding the molecules down. When we increase the ambient pressure it is like adding a heavier weight on top of the molecules in the liquid. Now they need to be moving even faster (aka be at a higher temperature) in order to break free from the liquid and turn into a gas. How does this relate to a pressure cooker? A non-venting pressure cooker is a closed system. The first thing we do is put some liquid in there and apply thermal energy. This thermal energy causes the temperature to rise. It also causes the liquid to expand. The expansion of the liquid increases the ambient pressure inside of the pressure cooker. At some point we reach 100C. This would be the boiling point of water at "normal" atmospheric pressure, but ambient pressure inside the pressure cooker is already higher than that due to the expansion of the liquid so there is no boiling. If we continue to add thermal energy to the pressure cooker the temperature and the internal ambient pressure will continue to rise together, but the internal ambient pressure will always have a little head start and the liquid will never boil although it will be very close to the boiling point. In practicality, it seems likely that when we add an abundance of thermal energy to the base of the pan, there is some small amount of localized boiling until the pressure cooker reaches the target temperature/pressure and the heat source has been regulated. At this point, the pressure cooker should equilibrate just below the boiling point for the given internal pressure. This is one reason why a non-venting pressure cooker is preferred. Jiggle-weight pressure cookers at the target temperature periodically vent a little steam in little bursts. Every time that happens, the internal ambient pressure goes down a little bit and there is a tiny bit of boiling before the pressure builds up again and stops the boiling.

I don't know if it's strictly-speaking true that the liquid in a non-venting pressure cooker doesn't ever boil. It certainly sounds like there is some minor boiling as it comes up to pressure. However, once it is maintaining at pressure, there should be no boiling. For this we refer to Boyle's Law.

Some people just don't entertain, or know how to entertain, or have a home or equipment for entertaining.

Really? According to Dave Arnold and Cooking Issues: Do read on, however, as it get much more wonky. It's worthy of note that the Modernist Cuisine guys don't seem to agree. I also have a hard time understanding how the aroma could be better on one but the flavor better on the other, since flavor is mostly aroma anyway.

pep. makes a good point. Pressure cooking solves a lot of problems. Clarity is always great right out of the pot, for example. And, of course, the stock cooks in a much shorter period of time, with overall better flavor extraction. I also second Edward J's recommendation to use a rubber racking tube. This works especially well if you have used a pressure cooker, because the stock will be very well stratified with fat on the top, muck on the bottom and a big layer of clear stock in the middle. Siphoning out the stock means minimal disturbance of the muck layer (you can put the tip of the tube into a brand new and boiled stainless of copper scrubber for even more protection against particulates).

You really do need to use N2O. CO2 will not give the results you want.

I've had group cooking parties where we planned a multicourse dinner and each couple was responsible for a course of the dinner. But this involved some communication among the people in the group (e.g., so that there weren't two salmon courses in a row or so that someone didn't follow a course of braised short ribs with poached turbot), and of course all were highly proficient cooks. Most of the time, "potluck" equates to a cavalcade of reheated casseroles and "covered dishes" with all the texture cooked out of them, plus some wan salads and a few church/trailer icons like "three bean salad" and jello monstrosities. Occasionally one person will bring something that is both delicious and works well within the constraints of the potluck environment, in which case it will disappear immediately. No thanks.

I recently cracked open my K5SS that must be 15+ years old at this point. The planetary was choking on even tangerine-sized balls of dough, and I figured I must have cracked some teeth of the nylon sacrifice gear. So I picked up a replacement worm gear for around 5 bucks, and some KitchenAid spec grease. It was easy to open except getting the planetary off of the drive shaft which was made difficult because it turns out I had sheared off the pin fixing the planetary to the drive shaft at some point. Got it all the way open in short order after that. Everything on the "gears side" was easy to identify and eminently self-serviceable. Once I cleaned out most of the old grease (I replaced it with the new grease) and got a good look at the nylon worm gear, it was clear that nothing was wrong with it. The entire problem was the sheared drive shaft pin. Two-dollar part. Everything north of the planetary is now reassembled and I am awaiting the new pin.

No, I don't think it's inferior. If anything, I think it represented an attempt to improve the product by reverting it.

Martin Doudoroff and I did a comparative tasting of the new Suze, Salers Aperitif and Avèze. They are all delicious in their own way, although quite different from one another. Salers has the most straightforward flavor -- consisting of not much more than alcohol, gentian and sugar -- and also the strongest gentian flavor. Avèze, to my palate, has some slight honey notes and is the sweetest with the thickest mouthfeel. It had the least prominent gentian flavor. Suze was somewhere in the middle, having some orange notes lacking in the other two and being generally more complex than Salers. We tried them alone and also in cocktails. Our initial impressions were that we would chose Suze if we were going to sip it neat, on the rocks or with seltzer, but that Salers makes significantly better cocktails.

I tasted all the white gentian imports available (Suze, Avèze, Salers) and our conclusion was that Suze was probably best for sipping or mixing with seltzer, but that Salers worked better in cocktails, having a more straightforward and present gentian profile. My "Haus Alpenz White Negroni" consists of Hayman's Royal Dock gin, Cocchi Aperitivo Americano and Salers Aperitif in 3:2:1 ratio.

Wow. How does it look once cooked?

Better than Bouillon brings practically no gelatin to the table and doesn't taste all that great to begin with. So you have to factor that in to your comparison. Meanwhile, as others have pointed out, chicken stock can be effectively free if you buy chicken on the bone, debone it yourself and save the meaty bones (along with all the trim and scraps) in the freezer until you have enough saved up to make a batch of stock. If you have the freezer space, there really is no reason to buy any of the ingredients specifically to make chicken stock. You should be able to make it all from scraps, reserved meaty raw bones, vegetable trimmings, etc.