slkinsey

If you cook shortly after you grind, it's not clear to me that there is a great deal to be gained by par-boiling the meat. I also have my doubts as to how much "sterilization" there is to be gained by doing this, since two minutes is probably insufficient time (15 minutes of boiling being the usual recommendation for killing most bacteria).

Douglas, what you are talking about, essentially, is grinding up the trimmings. If I had access to a custom-aged half of a beef for a few dollars a pound, I'd grind up the aged beef I didn't want for steaks or stewing/braising meat too! So, call it $15/burger? Would I pay that every day, or when feeding a crowd at a picnic? No. But once, to give it a shot? Hell yes. I'm not exactly in a position to buy dry aged beef by the side, so no trimmings for me: the only way I am ever going to get a dry-aged, prime, fresh-ground burger is if I make it myself from a normal steak cut. And I think it may be worth trying. Later. When the economy is better... I have a hard time paying $15 for a hamburger that a restaurant is cooking for me, and which typically includes fries, never mind paying $16.50 (adding $1.50 for bun, condiments, vegetables and possibly cheese) per person for a hamburger I'm making at home. No, if I'm paying $30+ for me and Mrs. slkinsey to have dry aged prime beef for dinner, it's going to be in the form of a steak. Would it be worth trying once for the sake of curiosity? Sure. But no matter how good it was, I can't imagine that becoming my standard burger.

First off, while you may be able to accurately free pour 5 ml (that's one teaspoon for those of you in the New World) in perfect conditions, I can virtually guarantee you can't accurately give repeatable 5 ml pours under pressure in real world conditions. As for the machine... let us suppose for a moment that it is possible to create a sanitary, affordable, reasonably-sized machine capable of mounting 300+ different bottles. While we're at it, let us suppose that the machine is also capable of adjusting for acidity levels of citrus, muddling herbs, etc. -- everything a bartender can do. It isn't possible, which makes this part of your argument moot, but let us suppose that it is. If it were possible for a machine to do everything that a bartender can do, then from the standpoint of what is in the customer's glass, there would perhaps be an infinitesimal improvement in quality and consistency. This would, however, remove the human interaction element that is as big part of the cocktail bar experience. And it would also make it prohibitively difficult for bartenders to create variations or new cocktails all' improviso. But it is a false argument to assert that jiggering and robotics are fundamentally similar. You want the creative element, sure, but you also want reproducibility. I may want an architect to design my gallery by inspiration, but I want the guys building it to use measuring tools. I am the first person to say that a bartender can create a great drink using the "little bit of this and a dash of that" freepouring method. But if he has no real idea how much of this and that he put in the glass, there is no way he will be able to make the same thing next time around -- much less help another bartender at the bar learn how to make it. And if I go into a bar wanting their Such-and-Such Cocktail, I want it to be the same as I had last time. I want it to be the one I like. I don't want that "just barely there" subtle hint of Chartreuse that your friend made me on a slow Wednesday night to hit me in the mouth when you make it on a busy Friday night because he poured 4 ml of Chartreuse and you poured 7 ml (both thinking it was 5). But, really... the bottom line is that I am not aware of very many freepouring cocktail lounges that do heavy business and serve a wide variety of complex cocktails a top quality. I'm sure a few exist (and even more assume they are) but the vast majority of which I am aware use jiggers.

Peter Luger actually uses chuck supplemented with trimmings.

The question is not whether it would be good to turn some dry aged ribeye meat into burgers. Of course that would be delicious. The question is whether you want to spend 30 bucks a pound for dry aged prime ribeye steaks and then toss them into the grinder rather than cooking them whole as steaks. To my thinking, it's a bit insane to grind up a whole dry aged prime ribeye for hamburgers. Scraps from trimming 50 dry aged prime ribeyes, on the other hand? I'm all over that. ETA: I would also suggest that there is a fundamental difference between eating a steak, seasoned simply with salt and pepper and cooked to order with a nicely maillardized crust, is fundamentally different from eating a burger, between two pieces of bread with various condiments and vegetables. One is the pure expression of the meat, where the quality and character of the primal (only) ingredient is not only the central thing, but the only thing. In the other treatment, much of what makes a great steak great is obscurred. It's like making a Sidecar with "Paradis" cognac. The Sidecar is worth plenty of respect, just as the hamburger, but it's still not a good use of zillion-dollar cognac.

The only non-insane way to have ground aged prime beef is to save enough scraps from trim. Which means that, unless you are a butcher or run a steakhouse, it's unlikely.

The flavor change in ground beef comes primarily from oxidation. This is not so when you age whole primal cuts. Needless to say, I don't think anyone wants to eat "21 day old dry cured ground beef."

I'll go down as another who doesn't think Dolin Rouge is particularly bitter. I tried some last night in a Martinez (1.5 each Hayman's Old Tom and Dolin Rouge, 1 tsp Luxardo Perla Dry, 1 dash Abbott's bitters). I found it very nice. Lighter flavored and less rich than Carpano Antica Formula, which allowed the Old Tom's character to come out nicely. I'll have to experiment more. My feeling, based on limited tasting, is that it won't necessarily stand in for Italian sweet vermouth in some of the more emphatically flavored cocktails, but will make an interesting substitution for dry vermouth in certain cocktails and will work interestingly in new concoctions.

Michael guessed it: Ridiculous rent hike. This is something that I have been seeing quite a bit on the 90th-to-110th Street stretch of Broadway. Businesses of long standing forced to vacate by greedy landlords, or buildings knocked down and replaced with new construction, which storefronts stand vacant for months or years due to a lack of tenants willing to pay the landlord's rate. I note that the old Oppenheimer space has been vacant for some six months...

Most bar mixing glasses are tall and narrow, thus not particularly good for swirling -- especially when you want them to be as full of ice as is practically possible.

So... you're reducing the amount of beef fat in your home grind, but then putting butter into your burger patties?

You could make the process easier (if a bit more messy) by transferring the roux to a thin stainless bowl then put it in ice water. That would shock the roux faster than leaving in the pan (even if the pan's material is highly conductive) and you could bring it closer to doneness without worrying as much about overcooking. Yea, you could. But I don't think it's generally recommended to be pouring something at that temperature (and with that ability to stick to the skin) from one vessel to another. In addition, depending on how dark you wanted to go, you could certainly go too dark in the time it would take to pour out the roux into the stainless steel bowl (which you are hopefully doing carefully enough so that none of it splashes on you). It's actually quite easy to just take your saucepan off the fire and stick it directly into the ice bath -- and it's probably the fastest way as well.

Right. That would be the "hope that some of the holdover heat will finish the browning" bit I wrote above. Does seem that the level of darkness would still be somewhat variable, and that there would be a learning curve to using this method as you figured out through trial and error exactly when you had to pull the pan off the heat for your own individual equipment, volume of roux and desired level of color. I note that you say, "haven't burned one in years" -- which suggests that you burned a few (and perhaps had a few batches come out too light) in the process of figuring out just when to pull the pan to the side so the browning was finished just how you wanted it by residual heat. Of course, once you do figure out the process, you're good to go.

I've had good results doing just this.So how long is it good in the fridge and how long in the freezer? As far as I can tell, forever, regardless of storage as long as it's cold. One thing that would be tricky in doing this is making sure that the roux doesn't burn. When preparing roux for typical use, when the roux achieves the proper level of darkness, you can more or less immediately stop any further browning by adding a (relatively) cold ingredient (usually the trinity vegetables). When making a dark roux that is meant to be saved, you don't have the ability to quickly cool the roux this way. Rather, you either have to go for a lighter roux and hope that some of the holdover heat will finish the browning, or you have to use a highly conductive pan and quickly put the base of the pan into an ice bath when you want to start the cooling (as one does with a dark caramel).

For edge-sealing machines, the mesh also acts as a channel for the last bit of air that would be difficult to evacuate otherwise.

Yes, anything you can do to reduce the temperature differential between the food and the water will help the water return to the boil faster. That said, there are certain circumstances where you would like for the vegetables to be cold (e.g., blanching tomatoes to remove the skin) because you want to mostly cook the outside and not the inside.

The roller cutters never work very well on any model. Better to flour the sheet of dough, roll it up and cut it to size with a sharp knife.

Right. If you're, say, blanching vegetables and the temperature of your water drops only 5-10 degrees, that's not such a big deal. The way the vegetables are cooking won't be all that different. If the temperature of the water drops by 50 degrees, you've got another situation on your hands. So you definitely want a large thermal mass (in the form of a body of water) relative to the thermal mass of the food you wish to cook. In this sense, it is no different from putting food into a frypan.

Is it not possible to make a big batch and freeze it? I would assume that something with that much fat content would be fairly easily scooped out of a frozen container.

Where having a large pot of water helps is in not breaking the boil in the first place (this is Keller's technique, which he describes as "large pot blanching").

"Frequently purchased together with 'Second Helpings of Roast Chicken by Simon Hopkinson'" I always wondered about those things.

In the context of home cooking, adding salt does not have much affect on boiling point. As a general rule of thumb, every time you add about 58 grams of salt to a liter of water, you raise the boiling point by one-half a degree Celsius. This means, for example, that if you have an 8 liter cooking vessel, you would need to add 928 grams of salt (almost a kilogram of salt!) to raise the boiling point up to 101C/214F.

Exactly. They hold a lot more pieces per linear foot, but this also makes it more of a hassle to get the things you want off of them. And they're short. So, the real choice is between a 2.5 foot long pot rack or a 9 foot long pot bar. If linear space is at a premium, I say go with a pot rack. If not, I say go with a pot bar.

Many places sell, for example, ground chuck at 20% fat, or ground sirloin at 10% fat, etc. I'm not aware of any markets selling preground short rib meat (which we found especially good) or brisket or things like that.

Then don't install a hanging rack. What I have is a simple length of black pipe held in O-rings that screw into a piece of threaded bar, which in turn screws into a ceiling plate which is attached to the ceiling studs with 1.5 inch wood screws. When it comes time to move out (not that anyone in NYC ever moves out of his apartment), all I would have to do is spread a little spackle over a dozen tiny screwholes. Long wood screws have plenty of grip, and I could probably do chin-ups on my bar. Once the bar is up, all that is needed are some S-hooks. I personally find the long, single hanging point arrangement better than the short, multiple hanging point arrangement of the typical pot rack. And my solution is probably a lot less expensive on a capacity basis.