slkinsey

For people who are considering All-Clad (and are willing to pay those prices), consider the new M'Cook line by Mauviel. It's constucted in the same style as traditional heavy copper pots, but is a thermal core fully clad in stainless steel. I'm not sure of the composition of the thermal material or the thickness of the layers, but the whole piece is 2.6 mm thick. Good prices can be found at JB Prince. (Full disclosure: I am writing some material for the JB Prince web site.)

One non-professional bartender for 125 people? Yikes.

It depends on what you want to do with the saucepan.

Have I done a scientifically controlled experiment where I cooked identical food side-by-side? No. Does my personal experience in using cookware from both lines confirm my thinking? Yes.

I've had the Airbag! The ingredient list looks crazy, but it's quite good. :smile"

Phil's got some nice cocktails at D&C that use Baravia Arrack as the base spirit, if you can believe that. One that I tried, the "Arraquiri" (get it?) was more or less a Juniperotivo made with van Oosten instead of Junipero. It's interesting and approachable.

Yea. You shouldn't experience significant evaporation at that temperature and that volume of water. If you cover the top of the pot with foil or plastic wrap, you shouldn't lose more than 1 liter in 12 hours . This rate of evaporation should not be a problem, and you should be able to sleep through the night with no worries.

To the best of my knowledge it's a gin Old Fashioned sweetened with St. Germain (thus the name). Something like: 2 ounces of gin, 1/2 ounce of St. Germain and a dash of orange bitters stirred and strained onto big ice in a rocks glass and garnished with a grapefruit twist. Simple and delicious. It doesn't contain any lemon juice, although Kent's elderflower sour sounds pretty good too. I tend to find 1/2 ounce of St. Germain needs 3 ounces of gin to balance at my preferred level of sweetness for this kind of drink, so balancing 1/2 ounce of St. Germain with 1/2 ounce of lemon juice sounds like a pretty good idea.

Stretch a sheet of plastic wrap over the top of the pot. There will be a little open area over where the circulator goes in, but this is not a big deal. You can top-up the water by pouring into that same little open area. Questions: How large is your water bath? And what temperatures are you using?

The Fitty Fitty at Pegu is made with Tanqueray and Noilly Prat, as far as I know.

As discussed here, among other places, I just don't use enough olive oil to make it worth my while to buy any brand of lesser quality than Frantoia Barbera. At the amounts I'm using (less than a liter per month) the price difference between $19/liter Frantoia Barbera and some cheapo Costco olive oil isn't enough to make me buy anything other than the Barbera stuff, which I pour straight out of the bottle. If I were to buy a gallon tin of oilve oil, it would have been open too long by the time I finished it. As for the Red Breast... totally with you on that one. Already sent many an empty to the recycler. Been drinking it since 2004.

Prices for Plymouth seem to vary from region to region and city to city far more than other brands. The price of Plymouth Sloe differs by as much as $13 for a fifth depending on the city.

Unless you buy your olive oil in a container that is too large to be convenient for pouring (e.g., if you buy a one-gallon metal container of oil), you should simply use the bottle that the oil comes in and store the oil in a cool and dark space in between uses. Anything else will simply increase the oxidation of the oil, which is bad. Indeed, the simple act of pouring oil from one container into another will oxidize the oil.

Astor Wines and Spirits's web site currently lists a liter of Plymouth for $30 versus $27 for a liter of Tanqueray and $25 for a liter of Beefeater. This puts Plymouth right at the boundary price point between high quality "workhorse mixing gins" one is likely to use in lots of cocktails and boutique gins one is likely to use rarely in Martinis and a few cocktails designed to highlight their special qualities. For example, this is the same price point as Bombay Sapphire. This is a real shame, in my opinion. Plymouth's softness makes it a nice all-around mixing gin to use in applications where a lighter gin character is desired. But, when it's selling for the same price as Sapphire, I don't see using it in things like a gin sour, etc. In general, as the price has crept up over the last few years, I've found myself using it less and less frequently, and most of the time I use bottles I've received as swag rather than purchased myself. I'd use a lot more of it if it were $25 a liter instead of $30.

Edible and palatable are not the same thing. Edible means "can be used as food." It has no connotations as to whether the food tastes good. Palatable means "agreeable to taste." Diverse cultures (not to mention individuals within a given culture) differ as to what is considered palatable. As with all things, this is a function of both nature and nurture.

If they price Plymouth significantly over stalwarts such as Tanqueray and Beefeater, they will effectively kill the brand in the United States.

You must not wash the dishes in your house. Why would I want to dirty another pot, when I can do everything in the roasting pan and just have one pan to clean? My roasting pans get plenty of use and I'm an advocate of buying a good one. My point is that a heavy gauge stainless steel roasting pan to the tune of around 33 bucks (such as this one) will work just fine for deglazing, etc. so long as you don't plan on simmering a starch-thickened gravy in there for 20 minutes. Meanwhile, with the extra $47 to $87 you'll save over the pans Tim suggests (not to mention $167 saved versus an All-Clad roaster) can be used on a really nice saucepan. If the deglazing or whatever is going to be short duration, there is no difference between how these pans will perform. If the liquid is going to be reduced, manipulated, etc. as the sauce as made -- yea, I'll dirty another pan. It takes about three seconds to clean a saucepan that's been used to make a sauce (or less, if you toss it in the dishwasher). Meanwhile, you get a whole lot more functionality out of your money. (Fixed formatting)

Yes. Having a roasting pan with advanced thermal properties for the stovetop, because there's no need to deglaze and reduce in the roasting pan. I'd think the money would be better spend on a cheap roasting pan and a really good saucepan. Just deglaze and then pour the fond into the saucepan for further reduction, keeping warm, mounting, whatever (this has the added advantage of freeing up considerable stovetop real estate). Meanwhile, the saucepan has many other uses, so you get much more bang for your buck.

Better yet is something like this: http://www.amazon.com/RSVP-Classic-Ice-Cracker/dp/B000684HYQ Or, if you like vintage, one of these: http://www.mildreds-antiques.com/images/red_tap_ice_200.jpg

This is the standard technique for making "cracked" ice, which is what I always use for stirred drinks. For crushed ice drinks and shaved ice drinks such as the swizzle or julep, one really needs an ice crusher (electric models are easily found on eBay). Here's what I said back in 2007 in this thread:

Doesn't Beacon have a long tradition of doing interesting and unusual things? I think of the beefsteak dinners, etc?

Sure, it's possible to use other processes to convert starch to sugar. This is most often done, as you observe, by heating (pinas are treated in a smiliar way for making tequila). And, indeed, one uses cooked pumpkin for making pumpkin beer. But this is not "malting." Rather, it's a process commonly referred to as "baking." But... don't take my word for it.

malting is just the transformation of starch to something fermentable. I'm sorry, but this is incorrect. Malting has a very specific meaning, and yours is not it. Malting means the partial germination (to produce amylase enzymes) and drying (to stop the sprouting process) of grains. Converting starch to sugar is not the same as malting. For example, American six-row barley, when malted, has a very high amount of amylase enzymes. These are the enzymes that are produced as part of germination, and their job is to convert the starch in the seed's endosperm into sugars that the plant will use to sprout. This is why "malting" involves partial germination: to produce those enzymes. Anyway... American six-row barley malt has such a high amount of enzymes that it is enough to convert other starches into sugar beyond just those in the barley grain's endosperm. So, you can make a mash with American six-row barley and throw in some corn (Miller) or rice (Budweiser), and there will be enough enzymes from the barley to convert the starches in the corn or rice into fermentable sugars. This is not "malting" the corn or rice, this is "mashing" the unmalted corn or rice. If you germinate and dry the corn kernels, then you have "malted" corn. Pumpkin, being a gourd and not a grain, can not be malted.

I would say that there is more than convincing "proof" (to the extent one can prove a negative) that neither the use of raw aluminum cookware nor PTFE-coated cookware creates any meaningful health risk.

Just as a point of clarity: "Malt" is a grain that has been germinated and then dried. There is no possibility of there being such a thing as "malted pumpkin." To the best of my knowledge, pumpkin beers are not made by mashing the pumpkin in with the grains. Rather, cooked pumpkin and spices are added to the wort during the boiling stage of the process. Once the wort is cooled, the pumpkin debris is held out along with the other trub, yeast is pitched and the beer is brewed as normal.