nathanm

I agree with both of these points! The only thing that I don't know is what is the size of the market for these books - a market clearly exists. Obviously, there is a certain amount of vanity and ego involved. A chef like Adria could probably make more money with a chain of restaurants like say Roy Yamaguchi (the Roy's restaurants, originally from Hawaii0, or the Wolfgang Puck empire. But he chooses not to. Most high end chefs have the same trade off - they could make more money with a chain of semi-fast food places in airports and malls (like Wolfgang Puck Cafe). But some folks just want to target the high end, for reasons that are not totally economic. That said, high end restaurants (or pastry shops or bakeries) are financially viable, and to the extent that they are not they close. They couldn't be kept afloat with large losses. Similarly, I think these high books clearly have a vanity / ego / professional pride aspect to them. The chefs could probably make more money doing something else. But there is (I assert) a viable market where the books at least break even for the chef, and make some money for the publishers.

Thanks - I will try the humita version!

Actually, very few if any professional chefs set out to make money with their books. The majority of cookbooks (say the recent Michael Mina or Michel Richard books) probably are a net loss to the chef IF you took into account all the time that goes into them. TFLC is a rare blockbuster - but for every one like that there are many others that return modest amounts of money to the chef - which if you took the time into account would not be worth it. So, most cookbooks by a chef are about some sort of subsidy. However, there is a big difference between taking a bit of your time and actually going out of pocket by $300K to $1M. That is a VERY expensive hobby. Or very expensive advertising, or monument to ego. I don't believe that every European chef that writes a book like this is spending that kind of money. So, either the publisher is always operating at a loss - in which case they will stop. Or the chef is operating at a loss. There are SO MANY high end cookbooks that I don't believe they are all loss making to everybody. A better assumption is that the books at LEAST break even in terms of production cost (setting aside what the chef/author's time). Some may lose a bit. Some may make a profit. But you can't have them all be losers - people would stop making them. I believe that Europen chefs (and their publishers) expect to either break even or make a little money, by and large. Nothing else explains their behavior. I wish that I had market data to support this. Maybe somebody on eGullet does.... Basically it comes down to this. Which is more surprising: 1. There is a viable market for high end cookbooks. US publishers ignore it because they are stuck on the mindset of have a low end, price point conscious approach. Which is the way the US restaurant market used to be - it has changed to allow TFL or Per Se to exist, but the publishers mindset is lagging behind. 2. There no viable market for high end cookbooks. Most or all of the high end European cookbooks lose money on their production costs. For me, I find #1 more believable.

ElBulli books is an "imprint" or "label". They get a larger % of royalties and are responsible for their own graphic design. But these books are still distributed by conventional publishers. In the Ducasse case it is Flammarion. I do not belive that they would choose to spend $300K to $1M as a pure monument to ego. If it was only one guy, then perhaps...but there are LOTS of them. Bras has a high end book. Veyrat has several very high end books ($400), as do most of the top French chefs. Same with Spaniards - Arzak, Santimaria, Romero.... It is true that there were a set of older books on the 3-star French chefs published by Robert Laffont that were cheap - paper, few pictures etc. These are the ones with the white covers. But that went out many years ago. If you look at a list of European cookbooks from CHIPS or JB Prince you'll see this. Pastry and bread books are particularly that way. See the ice cream book by Angelo Corvetto, or any book by Pierre Herme, or Oriol Baluger, or Torreblanco, or.... the list is very long. There ARE cheap cookbooks on the European market - plenty of books on microwave meals, or using a bread machine etc. A few are by famous chefs doing mass market books for home chefs. Better paper for a private edition of TFLC isn't the point. While paper quality is a bit of an issue, it is a small one. The key point is content - TFLC doesn't have it.

I am away from home, but as it so happens I have a copy of TFLC and also El Bulli 2003-2004 handy. So here are some stats. TFLC has 325 pages (but with very wide margins) uncoated paper No detailed technique photos showing a dish in progress No step-by-step photos 1 picture for every 2 pages (average) $50 retail cost ElBulli 2003 has 333 pages (with narrower margins) Heavyweight coated paper (like an art book) Many detailed technique photos Many step-by-step photos 2 pictures per page (average) No recipes CD ROM included (which contains the recipes) $175 retail (half of $350 2 volume set) So, if you compare them on production cost basis it isn't even close. ElBulli has 4X the number of pictures (I did averages by selecting 30 pages at random and counting.) It is about the same number of pages in a raw count - a much longer book because recipes eat up pages, and they have been pulled out. I am not a fan of the idea of putting the recipes on CD ROM - I would prefer to have them in print. The CD ROM is very useful - but I would like to have the recipes appear both places. However if you want to be fair about the comparison and add the recipes then the ElBulli book would be something like 500 pages (maybe more). TFLC is a nice cookbook. If you have a limited budget then it is appealing. The ironic thing is that TFL or Per Se are not "value for money" or price-point constrained restaurants. They are no-compromise, ultimate quality restaurants. But TFLC is NOT made to that philosophy. It is a "let's hit a price point" book. Perhaps a bit like Keller's brasserie style restaurant Bouchon. A lot of people would say that for half the price of Per Se or TFL you can get a meal that is 80% as good. That is probably true - there are lots of restaurants that are $125 (before wine) that are very good. To get they they make compromises. But that isn't what TK is about - he is about ultimate quality for $250. Except when he made the book. The other irony is that if you count on a per-page basis, ElBulli is probably the better value-for-money book - it is more expensive, but it gives you the CD ROM, the extra content and so forth. So it is not even like TFLC is better value for money - it is just cheaper and lower end. Don't get me wrong - I like TFLC, its a good book. But it isn't a book that hopes to compete with ElBulli. It isn't even in the same league. I happened to use ElBulli book because it is handy, but you don't need exotic cuisine. Compare the Paco Torreblanco (or other European) pastry books mentioned in this thread with a US-based pastry book and you'll see the same thing only even more so.

The chefs don't need to make money, but the publishers do. These books cost $200K to $1M in production costs quite apart from the author's text (photos, illustrations, layout, pre-press, book design). This is my guess, but is consistent with other estimates. Let's assume that the chef works for free, and their staff works for free (recipe testing, food cost for pictures etc.). Somebody - either the chef, or the publisher, still has to come up with the production costs. I can see chefs working for free, or perhaps even eating a portion of the production costs, but it seems hard to believe that they could afford to pay the entire upfront cost. Maybe Ducasse could afford it but there are SO MANY of these high end European books. So, I conclude that this European books are financially viable. More on TFLC in another post....

Sorry for three posts in a row, but I had three different thoughts. Does anybody have figures they can disclose for the following sales volumes: - Sales volume in the US of high end European cookbooks in the US (Ducasse, Adria....)? Note that these two are distributed offically in the US. - Sales volume for cookbooks by high end US chefs (TFLC, Boloud, Ripert, Richard...) - Worldwide sales of any specific high end European cookbooks? - How many eGullet members are there? I suspect that these numbers are either confidential, or more likely are not widely known outside the immediate circle of those involved, but perhaps somebody on eGullet knows. Here is what I know: Very few books have print runs less than 10,000 because it is not worth the set up to run presses for less than that. My impression is that most US cookbooks have a print run a bit higher than that at 20,000 to 30,000. My guestimate is that 10,000 copies is the minimum worldwide sales necessary to break even from a typical expensive (>$100) European cookbook. A book like Ducasse's Grand Livre must have a break even that is more like 30,000 due to its immense size (which drives up the cost of production).

Here are a few more thoughts. Yes, the US market tends to focus exclusively on the trade books for home cooks. Yes, this is "simple economics" to a degree. The reason the European books are more expensive is that they target a different and smaller market. They need to charge more money both to support the high quality printing, and the huge upfront costs of those color plates and illustrations. All true. Yes, most US buyers just look at the pictures and are not serious cooks. That is probably true for most cookbook buyers everywhere. Europe has plenty of cookbooks that are published as trade books for home cooks! It is not that every European book is high end - not at all. There are books on quick home microwave cooking, or bread machines or what have you in every language and country in Europe. So, I agree with these points. But both of these observations miss a key point. Europeans seem to find a market for their books. That market must be international, to at least some degree, because each invidual European country is much smaller than the US. Why doesn't a great US based chef, like Thomas Keller, write a book with European production values? The clear indication is that it would sell and make money. I don't know how much money European chefs make on their books, but the publishers would not keep doing it over and over if it was loss making. The fact that there are so many, with new ones out every month suggests that it is a very viable market. First, I think that there are plenty of people in the US who would buy the book. I am a US citizen and I buy the books. OK, so I am not typical, but I am hardly the only one or CHIPS, Kitchen Arts & Letters and so forth wouldn't carry them. Besides the US, there must be an international market - the same market that the European chefs tap into. So, the question really is why does no US chef do this? It must be economically viable. It would also help their reputation. Keller puts world class cuisine on his customer's plates, why not have a world class book? One reason may be that US publishers don't recognize this phenomenon. They are trained to think of the trade book market, and only that. They are also trained to think only about the domestic US market, and not international distribution. Another reason may be the perception, by publishers and chefs, that they will make more money creating a trade book for home cooks. I the perception is out there, but I don't think it is correct. For one thing, it doesn't work! The vast majority of books by high end chefs (Boloud, Richard, Ripert to name three that have multiple cookbooks) are not huge money makers. As another person posted, they probably sell 20,000 to 30,000 books. Occaionally a book like TFLC will sell big volume, but that is very rare for a book from high end restaurants. Indeed most US chefs believe that their cookbooks are important mainly to help reputation, not as significant money makers.

Artisanbaker raises the question of which American chefs could create a great book and lists: Richard Boulud Keller Soltner Pepin Well, to that I would add (in no particular order) Gray Kunz Eric Ripert Nobu Matsuhisa Jean George Vongricten David Bouley Charlie Trotter Patrick O'Connell Most of these chefs are famous enough to have multiple restaurants, often internationally as well as domestically. That just covers the savory chefs. There are a whole set of pastry chefs as well! One could extend this list further of course, either by going to highly popular celebrity chefs (Mario Batali), or going to young up-and-coming chefs, or chefs from cities that are not as well known. Then there are the authors of professional cookbooks - like Wayne Glissen, and staff at CIA and so forth. So, we have about a dozen famous restaurant chefs, plus likely another dozen professional cookbook authors and pasty chefs. That is a couple dozen candidates, yet zero takers. So, supply of chefs/authors does not seem to be the weak link.

I recently traveled to Argentina and Chile, where I had some great empanadas. In addition to the meat filled empanadas there were also some that had a corn filling - whole corn kernels and I think some egg. They were great! Does anybody have a recipe like this?

Yes this is the whole point! TFLC and (I claim) all US based cookbooks on both savory cuisine and pastry are geared toward home chefs. They are dumbed down (lack advanced detail) relative to what the chef/author actually does in their professional kitchen, and they have production values scaled down to amateur trade book level. There are some US based culinary textbooks (Wayne Glissen's books, CIA textbook...) but these are the exceptions that prove the rule. Ducasse, by the way, has some books aimed at the home/amateur level also - his Spoon series of books, and several others. But his magnum opus is the professional level Grand Livre (in savory and dessert volumes). If Torreblanca was based in the US, the pattern would be that he'd write a book about home baking - which might be a good book, but would lack the professional details and production values that make it great (in my opinion). Indeed if you look at books by Jacques Torres and US based pastry chefs that's exactly what you see. How come no US based chefs seem to write high end, high quality professionally oriented books?

I have books like I am describing from Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Netherlands, Belgium.... pretty much anywhere in Europe. That is particularly true for pastry books, but it is also the case with savory cuisine. A pan European case in point is Heinz Beck, a chef who grew in Germany, but works at one of the top restaurants in Rome. He has a series of high books on Italian cuisine, available in German, Italian, English and probably a couple other languages. Culinary textbooks exist in all of the major countries. There is a pretty close correlation between I don't think that nationality of the chef, or where the chef works is the most the important part. There are some regional differences of course, but these are more about the cuisine itself rather than the production values that go into the book. France traditionally has the largest number of high end chefs (largest number of Michelin starred restaurants, for example), and thus the largest number of cookbooks by high end chefs. Spain is currently very hot because of Adria, Arzak, Santamaria, Roca, Baluger, Torreblanca and others who are part of the new Spanish cuisine, or the new Catlan cuisine or new Basque cuisine as many of them are in those regions. British cookbooks tend to be a bit more toward the US model. Heston Blumenthal, the leading British chef has published two books but one is a cookbook for children, and the other is a companion to a BBC TV series and thus neither is meant to be a high end review of his cuisine. There are many other fine chefs - Gordon Ramsay, the Roux brothers, Ramond Blanc, Marco Pierre White.... however their cookbooks generally do not meet the same high end standard. The UK also has celebrity chefs with a more populist approach analogous to Rachael Ray or Emeril - i.e. Jamie Oliver, Delia Smith etc. The main point here is that there seems to be a view on the part of the cookbook publishers (and also the chef/authors) that there is a market for books of this sort. The market is almost certainly a wordwide market. Most of the books that I am talking about appear in multiple languages - either in different versions, or they have multiple languages in the same book. US cookbook publishers by and large do not seem to have this view of the market - they seem to be focussed on low end US domestic trade book market only.

Yes, I was ordering Paco Torreblanco's books (both volumes) today and that was the immediate inspiration for the post. There are lots of fancy European pastry books that have no equivalent for US based chefs.

All of us on this site love cookbooks, and this particular forum is of course about that topic. At the risk of being controversal I want to pose a question -what is a reasonable price for a high end cookbook? Why are books by top European chefs so much more expensive than those by US based chefs? Implicit in this question is how many copies will people buy. To kick off the question here are some opening comments. I live in the US, and have some observations about the US market for cookbooks. Basically there are no "high end" cookbooks by US authors - where by high end I mean lavishly illustrated, no compromise books. What passes for the "high end" of the US market is primarily books like Thomas Keller's The French Laundry Cookbook (TFLC) - has a list price of $50. It is a convienent example, but surely not the only one. Now TFLC is a very nice cookbook, but if I compare it to European cookbooks by people who Keller might consider a peer, it does not come close in price or other factors (see below). The Ducasse Grand Livre de Cusine has a list price of $195. Ferran Adria's latest El Bulli 2003/2004 book has a list price of $350. Both Ducasse and Adria books are distributed in the US (and available on Amazon). Their street price may vary a bit, but list price is a good proxy for this discussion. In addition to these US distributed books, there are a whole host of other European cookbooks that are not distributed via conventional book stores (or Amazon) in the US and have to be bought either via a specialty store in the US (J.B. Prince, Kitchen Arts & Letters, CHIPS) or directly from Europe (I use de re Coquinaria in Spain.) These books tend to start at $100+ and many are $200+. Many are fairly slim volumes that are not as large and encyclopedic as Ducasse or Adria books. If you compare TFLC or other high end US cookbooks to these European books several things become clear. The US books are basically written for home use. They will often have lavish photos, so they can double as a coffee table book, but the text often has clear compromises in favor of home use. In some cases the books appear to be "dumbed down" - the real way the chef works is not written up and instead "simplified for home use". Meanwhile the European books (particularly Ducasse and Adria, but also others) seem to be mostly written for professionals. Passoniate amateurs can and do buy them and use them - but the books are done without compromise. That is true for the content (they don't pull punches or dumb down for the home). It is also true of the cost of just about everything. They also tend to be lavishly illustrated, and printed on high quality paper stock. In the publishing world this is an example of a well known distinction between "trade" books - sold primarily to individuals at home, and "professional" books. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that in the US all cookbooks - even those at the high end of the range are viewed as (and treated as) trade books. Culinary textbooks are an interesting case in point. They have lots of illustrations which are expensive (more on that below). They US versions tend to be about $80 to $100. That is typical of most college level textbooks. However, often there is a textbook version and then a parallel trade version that has much lower quality paper that is in the more traditional $50 range. The high price of these European books begs an interesting question - are they overpriced? I've seen postings on eGullet from people who think so. Of course it's everybodys right to have an opinion. However I wonder how much of this is due to being accustomed to (by comparison) cheap US cookbooks. A key issue what volume the book will sell. The cost of putting a high quality book together is considerable. Full color illustrations, charts and diagrams are expensive - usually about $1500 a page for really nice ones (less for simple diagrams or black and white sketches). Food photography is also expensive. So, a typical college textbook in say biology or another science has a budget of about $1 million for illustrations and writing. That is a higher level of quality than most cookbooks. However, I will make a stupid wild ass guess that a book like Ducasse Grand Livre, or the El Bulli books would easily cost $400K to $500K (and that may be low). Note that this does NOT count paying the chef/author - this is the out of pocket cost of producing the book and illustrations, and translators if needed. Of course each copy of the book also costs something to print - especially with lots of photos and high quality paper. The bookstore gets a profit, as does the publisher. Based on various estimates I think that most of these expensive cookbooks need to sell 8,000 to 10,000 copies to break even. That may be a bit high or low depending on the book - a thin book for $200 probably needs less than that. I have no idea what the sales volume is (in the US or worldwide) for books like this, but since people keep making them they can't all lose money, so the sales volume must be there to support it. Then again, Konneman, a German publisher that made the Culinaria series of expensively produced cookbooks did go bankrupt. Another way to look at this is that $200 or $300 is actually CHEAP for a cookbook. If you compare the book to the cost of dinner at Ducasse, or El Bulli, the book is the same price as dinner for ONE person (without wine.) Yet each of these books gives me a lot more lasting impact than one meal does. Indeed the cost of TFLC at $50 seems ridiculously low compared to the cost of dinner at TFL or Per Se. The new menu at Per Se is $250 per person, without wine. So it is odd that the book that contains Keller's culinary wisdom and recipes is only 20% the cost of a meal for one - i.e. about the cost of the tip! That just seems out of whack to me. It might be smart for Keller because he makes more money that way (see below), but from a fundamental value perspective, I think his wisdom is worth more than the tip on one meal for one person. Note that I am not arguing that Keller should charge more for the sake of it! His restaurants stand out as being temples of culinary perfection. I bet that he could make a cookbook that would also be an exercise in perfection - but that would require a lot more recipes, more pages, more illustrations, better paper...in short it would become a book with the production values that you find with Ducasse, Adria or other European books. That would not be possible at a $50 price point. I'm afraid that the US cookbook publishing system just won't create such a book. So we may never see the Grand Livre de Thomas Keller Note that I am just using Keller and TFLC as an example. The same could be said of books by Daniel Boloud, Eric Ripert, Jean George, Patrick Connell and many other top chefs working in the US. I think that the price point of TFLC is driven mainly by the perception that a US cookbook MUST be a trade book. Pricing it cheaper (by dumbing it down and controlling production costs) will result in much higher sales volume. The volume will more than increase as the price drops, so thus more profit is to be had from a $50 book than a $100 or $200 book. That is clearly the theory behind US based cookbooks. I am sure that for truly mass market cookbooks by Emeril or Rachael Ray, this is correct. Is it true for every chef and every book? If so, then why do the Europeans make very expensive (and very high quality) books? If they're wrong, then why do they keep doing it? If they are right then US publishers (and authors) may have overlooked a viable market niche of lower volume, and higher quality cookbooks that aim more toward professionals (and very serious amateurs). Anyway, that poses the question. I am very curious to see what eGulleters think about this, especially if somebody has more detailed facts and figures than I have presented here.

That is unlikely to work, because a lot of what you are trying to extract in a meat stock (gelatin from collagen, for example) takes time. You would undoubtedly get something from putting meat in your portafilter, but it would not be very much like stock. Probably water with a slight meat flavor. Espresso is extracted at typically 200F (I prefere 203F for most espresso blends) and 8.2 bar pressure. This combination is ideal for extracting coffee, and may work with some other things. How well it will work depends on the pressure/temperature and solubility. A critical factor with espresso is grinding the coffee fine enough that it can handle 8.2 bar pressure over a 25 second extraction time. That is the puck issue referred to above. It is unclear which other foods have a time/pressure/grind profile that would match coffee. If somebody finds a food substance other than coffee that works well in an espresso machine it would be very interesting. Extracting soy milk, or nut milks might be a candidate for example.

Make a separate beef broth / jus. There are many recipes

Here are some comments. In all cases you want to bring the core temperature to somewhere between 120F/49C and 130F/54.4C (your personal choice), ideally holding it there for a while (up to 24 hours) to allow the collagen to break down. I am usually a fan of searing last, but with roast beef you are better off searing first. The reason is food safety - low temp cooking for a long time can allow bacteria to grow. Any bacterial or viral contamination will be on the exterior of the roast. So searing enormously reduces or eliminates food saftey risk. Either the outside in a hot pan with oil on the stove, or in the oven at 500F/260C but not for too long. Let it cool until you can handle it, then do one of the following. Roast beef works very well sous vide, but you need a large vacuum packer. It might be possible in a edge seal machine like Foodsaver, depending on the size of the roast. Put the seared roast in the bag, seal it (with some aromatics like pepper if you would like). To cook it sous vide, use low temp - 130F/54.4C or even 125F/52C. It will take a LONG time, like overnight, but that is part of the point. In a combi-oven there are two approaches. The simple one is to use the low-temp or overnight roasting program - most combi ovens have one. This will sear the outside at 500F, then cool down the chamber and steam at 130F or so until the interior is at whatever temp you want, then it will hold it at that temp for up to 24 hours. Or, do the same thing manually - sear first, take the roast out and cool down the oven. Put it in steam mode at 130F/54.4C and steam away until the core hits the desired temp. You can then turn the temp down to the desired temp and hold it there. In a conventional oven this is a bit more complicated. Many home and even professional ovens will not hold a low temperature very well. So first experiment you should do is calibrate your oven - use a digital thermometer with a remote probe and see how low your oven can go and remain more or less steady. Don't pay much attention to the setting on the oven dial, which is apt to be inaccurate - instead adjust the oven as low as it will go and see what temperature it is. The second complication is that an uncovered roast will undergo evaporative cooling - basically, as the roast sits in dry hot air, moisture will evaporate from the surface . This will keep the surface of the roast COOLER than the oven temperature. It's the same reason that sweat cools you down. So, you usually need to have oven temp up to 150F in order to get the surface temp to be 130F. You can check this with a digital thermometer. Then roast at that temperature. This also drys out the meat. Its not too bad, but would be better to avoid it. A better way to do is what I call "near sous vide". Put the seared roast into a roasting bag, and seal it. Roasting bags can take the heat, and the twist tie seals reasonably well - not as well as sous vide vacuum packer, but good enough for a roast. Sealing the bag around the roast keeps the evaporation down. In that case you can avoid the evaporation. That way you can cook at 130F or below directly (assuming your oven can go that low). An alternative to a low oven is to put the roast in the roasting bag, and put it in a crock pot or slow cooker on low. Once again you need to operate it for a while and test with a digital thermometer to see what the temperature really is. Most slow cookers on low will be 150F/66C to 160F/71C, but it varies a lot. Put a couple inches of water in the bottom of the pan, and keep the twist tie end of the bag out of the water. Put the cover to keep the heat in. Once again, cook monitoring the core temperature with a digital thermometer.

Like everybody else, I think this was a great idea and it is a very cool thread. Here are a couple comments. I have never understood why electric ranges don't have temperature controls like this - it is pretty simple for a manufacturer to do this. There is really no excuse. Many induction ranges, or induction hot plates have a temperature control mode, but they usually miss the point and have the temperature sensor built into the surface of the hot plate. This is better than nothing, but is inferior to Pielle's approach of having a temperature probe in the pot. Even if the bottom of your pot is exactly at a set temperature, it does not guarantee the same temperature for the contents of the pot - different size pots will have different amounts of heat loss. Several laboratory hot plates do have temperature probes similar to Pielle's set up. They also have one additional advantage - they have integrated magnetic stirrers. The one possible problem with Pielle's approach versus a water bath is that there is a benefit in having the water undergo forced circulation, because that prevents dead spots . Stirring is also a good idea with thicker fluids - i.e. if you wanted to simmer spagetti sauce unattended. One way to integrate stirring with Pielle's range top would be to use a laboratory overhead stirrer. These are motors with a propeller like stirring end - a bit like the malted milk stirrers used at a soda fountain, but you can make them very slow to very fast. You can get them on eBay. One of these would keep the pot stirred while it cooks. With respect to the thermocouple problem, there are many sources of competely impervious thermocouples, or other temperature sensors, for example ThermoWorks you can get them encased in teflon, glass or other things.

The misinformation about food saftey is enormous. One direction is exaggerating the requiments, yielding dried out food. However, in some cases the commonly used guidelines are dangerously wrong in the other direction becaues they don't emphasize time-at-temperature. I am writing a lot about this in the cookbook I am working on.

Once out of the bag, sous vide food is similar to food cooked any other way. It will go bad (of course!) and how it takes depends on the food, how cold it is kept etc. Storage in the bag is under anaerobic conditions, so in that case you must keep very cold, and only for a few days.

Yes, of course you are right..... high boiling point means it would evaporate less. The only issue is wehther the mess is a problem - anything which doesn't evaporate also won't dry. Cooking oil is another option. I'd rather just keep a lid on my water bath and just use water. Incidentally, make sure that you drain and replace the water regularly. It can get funky from bits of food that dissolve in the water - often from the outside of the bag, or from the top of the bag above the seal.

I was at Murky Coffee in Arlington, VA (across the river from Wash DC) today, and was recently at their Capitol Hill (Wash DC) location. It is the best I have had in DC. They have a Synesso at the Arlington location. It is not what you'd get at Vivace or Victrola in Seattle, but it is pretty good considering it is the East Coast....

I totally agree! I went to 9th street a couple weeks ago and have been too busy to post since then. The coffee is good, and they have a good attitude about coffee quality but as you say it does not translate into high and mighty attitude elsewhere. In my last trip to NYC I couldn't make it to Greenpoint or Williamsburg so I couldn't try those places.

There are three main issues with using a water bath medium other than water to get higher temperature. The first is that you need bags that will take the heat. Most heat-sealable vacuum bags will NOT take that kind of heat, and tend to get soft around 100C. There are vacuum bags available that will take typical autoclave temperatures (121C / 250F). I am not aware of any vacuum sealing bags that go above that. However, as soon as you go above the boiling point of water, you have a second problem, which is that the bags explode! The reason is that water in the bag (water is the largest ingredient of meat, vegetables and so forth) will boil and the steam pressure will inflate, then burst, the bag. This can be fixed two ways. One is to use a pressure cooker (PC), in which case you don't need a special fluid - just use water. The water does NOT need to cover the bag - steam in the PC will be enough. Best approach is to put some water in the bottom of the PC, then put in the bags. Often a PC will come with a rack for stacking things internally. Note that this does not use a water bath. However, a PC with an accurate spring mechanism or weight will tend to keep reasonably accurate temperature. There are laboratory autoclaves that could be used this way to get a very accurate PC, but that is probably overkill for all but the most specialized application. Once you are this high temperature the precision is less important anyway. If you REALLY want to use glycol or oil in your water bath you could hang food in bags that are open at the top rather than sealing them. This requires a way to hang the bags and keep them from falling over. All of that said, it is unclear why you need to go above 90C for sous vide. There are things that a PC is good for, but you can just use a PC directly, rather than with sous vide bags. The main thrust of sous vide is doing two things: - Precision cooking where you cook at low temperature (at or close to the final core temperature) - Convienence of having the material bagged for easy handling, clean up, and storage prior to reheating. High temperature baths defeat the low temp precision cooking aspect. I guess if you really wanted the convienence factor then pressure cooking sous vide would be worthwhile.... but after trying it I tend to just use the PC directly without the bags.

In my experience, ping pong balls float, and golf balls sink (which is why golf courses have water traps). So, ping pong balls are much better for this application. This method works reasonably well, but I think that a cover works even better