nathanm

How did it turn out? Is this an improvement?

The gastrovac is just a vacuum chamber. Vacuum frying means that the chamber is under reduced pressure. There is still oil in it, and the food is in contact with the oil. Normal atmospheric pressure at sea level is 1 Bar. Water boils at 100C / 212F. Frying in Denver is actually slightly reduced versus sea level. Frying on Mount Everest would definitely be reduced - pressure there is about 0.3 Bar (one third of normal). At 0.3 Bar water boils at 70C / 158F. A gastrovac could presumably do a lower vacuum - probably down to 0.1 bar or less - depends on the pump capacity. Pressure frying is the same thing but you pressurize the pot above 1 Bar. Most pressure cookers cook at about 2 bar pressure (i.e twice normal). Water boils at a much higher temperature at higher pressure. The only difference in frying at various pressures is that the lower the ambient pressure, the lower the temperature at which the water in the product will boil. So you could have oil at, say 158F instead of 350F and get a similar effect with respect to dehydration (a key thing for potato chips). However, the lower temperature will NOT brown the food the same way as the higher temp would due to malliard reaction or carmelization. Note that traditional confit, like duck confit is low temperature frying. The difference between "frying" duck confit in duck fat at 180F for 12 hours at 1 Bar versus doing it at 0.3 Bar at 180F is that the at the low temperature the duck would lose a lot more moisture - it would be above the boiling point. I don't think that this does much for the duck confit, but does have applications to potato chips.

My favorite method these days is sous vide, with pre-smoking. I have a smoker that works at low temperature, so what I do is smoke the steaks for a hour or two at an air temperature of 130F. The go into the smoker cold - straight from the fridge. I monitor the temperature of the center of the steak with a probe - it gets up to about 80 degrees during that time. I would stop the smoking if it got above 90F. Hickory and oak are my favorite woods, but apple and other hardwoods for smoking work well too. I then vacuum bag the steaks (no seasoning), and cook them sous vide for 2 hours at 125F. Strictly speaking, you don't need that much time - there are tables in the sous vide thread that tell you the minimum length of time. I go extra long to tenderize the meat a bit more. Finally, I will take the steaks out of the bags and sear them on a hot plancha (griddle) for a very short time to put a bit of a crust on the outside. The smoking already colors the outside, so it does not really need the sear, but to get a crust you need to do it. If the steak is thin, or has a bone, then I sear the edges with a blowtorch. If you don't want the smoke, the same method works well - just sous vide at 125F - this is on the rare side of medium rare. 122F would be really rare. 130F is very much medium rare, headed toward medium. Note that there is NO agreement on these temperatures various people call anything from 125F to 140F as "medium rare". If you have a tough steak, then the 10 hour treatment at 131F is the way to go. I have made brisket that is as tender as fillet mignon, but that takes 36 hours. Note that as a food saftey measure you should not do temps below 130F for more than 4 hours total (which is why I smoke for 2 hours then sous vide for 2 hours).

Great sauces and soups start with a great stock, or in some cases a richer form using roasted meat called a jus or glace de viande. Chicken stock and veal stock are probably the most commonly used versions, but stocks and jus can be made from any protein. Reduced forms like demi-glace or are important for some purposes, but mostly are oriented around making something more concentrated for storage. Thousands of cookbooks have a prefunctory recipe for stock, but it is usually neither very detailed, or very good. Average quality stock can still make for a great final dish if the disk not depend much on the stock for flavor. However, many dishes DO depend on the stock. There are plenty of variables in most recipes, and I'll briefly summarize them: - Some people like lots of vegetable flavors in a stock. This includes herbs (bouquet garni), or vegetables (onion, leek, leek greens, shallots, garlic, tomato paste). Others swear by the purity of having only meat proteins involved, figuring that they can add herbs and vegetables later on. - Light stocks are usually made of unroasted or browned protein. Dark stocks require roasting the meat extensively, sometimes to a very dark brown, prior to stock making. This is a matter of both personal preference and the intended usage. - Stocks are often made of scraps or cuttings as an economy measure. Which is fine if icost is what is most important to you. Some chefs however, argue that this is silly - if a recipe requires very best stock, why not use meat bought just for stock making? Labor cost may well exceed the cost of materials anyway. - Bones are traditionally an important part of stock making because they are a good source of both flavor and gelatin (which comes from collagen in joints and cartilidge However, meat is an important stock soure as well. So some chefs use meat largely, or exclusively. - If you use meat, you have the choice of cooking it to the point where it is still usable (i.e. removed and used for other dishes), or cooking it to the point where it is worthless for other purposes and has given it all to the stock. - How long should a stock cook? Typically a fish stock is 30 min, chicken stock is an hour or 2 and veal stock is 8-10 hours. However there are some huge exceptions to this in some recipes. Who is right? - Some people are deeply committed to skimming scum off the stock, believing that all is lost if you don't. Others laugh and say they'll skim at the end, or just strain the batch and forget it with no ill effect. - Some people swear by a low temperature, sub boiling simmer. Others (notably Heston Blumenthal) use a pressure cooker, which contradicts a lot of books that claim a PC is the ultimate no-no in stock making. That does not list all of the controversies - just some of them. Chefs in restaurants where I have worked or visited will invariably have a list of "never do this", and "always do that" - and many of them just plain contradict each other. I make stock all the time, and while I think it is decent, but I am not entirely satisfied. I use stock enough that I would like to get the ultimate stock making recipe for chicken, veal, beef and fish stock. I'd also like the richer "jus" variation which is more like the reduced and concentrated juices from a roast. As an example of all this, Alain Ducasse has fairly elaborate stock and jus recipes in his giant Grand Livre de Cuisine. However, while they sure look good in the photos (and tastes good at his restaurants), the recipes leave a lot to be desired. For Chicken Jus it has lines like "the desired doneness" without saying what it is. Other instructions are even more vague. I am sure Ducasse makes a mean stock and jus in his restaurant, but the book recipe does not do it justice. Ducasse follows the traditional (Escoffier) method of repeatedly moistening the meat with stock then reducing, then doing it again. This has the benefit of tradition, but is there really a point to the repeated moistening, and reduction? I'm not sure that I believe this from a scientific or rational stand point. In another recipe, Ducasse has a strange ingredient for his chicken stock - powdered chicken bullion! Not as a major component, but still, one wonders why he thinks he needs that. My guess is that stock making is such an old and basic part of kitchen practice that it may be more subject to the bounds of tradition. I wonder if the traditional stock and jus making recipes are really the optimal way to make great stock. I also think that stock making tends to get short shrift in cookbooks - it just isn't an exciting or sexy compared to a complicated main dish. An interesting clue for me is that the flavor of drippings in a roast pan seem to come mainly from juices that have not simply been reduced - they have been evaporated to a solid roasted brown sludge. I wonder if the best way to make a jus wouldn't be to "juice" the meat (either mechanically in a juicer or by simmering to make a conventional stock) then evaporating the whole thing to a solid and carefully roasting it to get the maliard reaction. The roasted sludge could then be rehydrated with water into a demi-glace, jus or stock. Is this the answer? I'm going to do some experiments, but in the mean time I'd be curious as your favorite recipes for the ULTIMATE stock and jus from fish, chicken, veal, beef.

I have never seen vacuum frying equipment for restaurant or kitchen use - it might exist, but if so it is pretty exotic. The only vacuum frying equipment I have heard of is for commercial food plants - such as potato chips Pressurized frying equipment is common - it is used for "broasting" - i.e. frying chicken under pressure. So this equipment is found in lots of kitchens - although usually just fast food places. There is also a manufacturer that makes a home pressure cooker that can do pressure frying.

Several years ago we did a blind taste test with people in my office, with Kopi Luwak, Jamacian Blue Mountain, Costa Rica Tarazu, Tanzania peaberry and several other high end coffees. The goal was to see what the ranking was. Tasting blind, I put Kopi Luwak #1, Jamaca Blue Mountain #2 in the blind taste test. Other people in the office had KL somewhere in the top 3 to 5. So, in this one small test, it really did come out on top. I bought from a reputable dealer, but I can't say for sure that it was real KL - how would you document such a thing? As to what phaelon56 says, yes it is good, and did top the others in a taste test, but it was not utterly mindblowing. I have always wondered if there isn't some Indonesian guy who started the the whole thing laughing his head off at rich foreigners paying $300 a pound for cat shit. As aside, the animal responsible for KL is the palm civet. This is the same animal that is thought to be responsible for harboring the SARS virus. Given the various steps in preparing coffee there probably is little risk, but it is interesting. When SARS came out and it was blamed on Chinese eating palm civets, friends asked me if I had tasted it (given that I am known for eating weird things). I was able to say "no, but I have drunk its excrement".

Usually, when that happens the reason is that you don't have a very good vacuum in the bag, and the residual air has expanded when heated. If you have alcohol in the bag, then you can expect expansion when the alcohol boils, which is at 175F. If the bag isn't sealed properly then you typically don't get a big expansion, because the air just leaks out. If you push on the air in a leaky bag it will go out. A way to check if the seal is compromised is to submerge the bag in warm water and look for bubbles coming from the seal - like checking a inner tube for leaks. A way to check if it is expansion is to submerge the bag in ice water. This will cool everything and if the inflation goes down and the bag looks like it did when you sealed, then it shows that it is thermal expansion not a leak.

These mass market places are, in my opinion, good for coffee as an industry, and actually lead to better support for custom roasters and great baristas. A pyramid needs a base and Starbucks and other mass market expresso places are the base of the espresso pyramid - both in the US and many other parts of the world. Yes, they are not as high quality as the others, but they introduce people to drinking espresso and lattes. I don't think that the great small places would have anywhere near as much support (i.e. customers) to be able to do what they do without having that element of the industry present. The same thing is true in wine and fine restaurants - there is usually a pyramid with the mass market at the base. Each rung up toward higher quality is smaller, but it rests on the base. At the very top there are the very best places.

I am not sure that I agree that Italy always has great espresso. I have had espresso, capuccino and caffe latte all over Italy, and although there are some good places (Sant Eustacio in Rome, Tazza d'Oro in Rome, a good place in Florence...) But most of it is OK to average. For one thing the cost of espresso is regulated by the government! Hard to believe, but true. The cost of espresso or cappucino if you drink it standing at the bar is a government regulated commodity with a standard price everywhere - and not a very high price - like 80 Euro cents to 1 Euro. If you sit down at a table it can be very much more expensive because it is not regulated - like 4 to 5 Euros. Which is why most Italians stand at the bar. A number of Italians who are into quality food and wine have complained to me that the regulation means that there is huge incentive to use cheap beans in their blends. Perhaps this is not the case, but that is what I've been told. Italy does not appear to have the intense focus on custom roasting, special blends, special pours. Instead, most caffes serve standard products from big companies like Illy. There are exceptions - like Sant Eustacio and Tazza d'Oro, but those really are exceptions. Italy does not seem to have obsessed baristas modifying machines to add PID temperature control, sawing the bottoms off portafilters and so forth. I think all those innovations are driven by people in the US. I don't mean to slight any Italian innovators accidentally, but so far as I know the espresso quality movement from a technical stand point seems to be American (and within America, driven from the west coast, and within the west coast, from the Pacific Northwest, and within the Northwest from Seattle). Granted I live in Seattle, and that may not be a dominant point of view. At the very high end, for the really best espresso drinks, I think that Italy has a couple of places that I really like. But I suspect that there are more really fantastic espresso shops in Seattle than there are in all of Italy. There are certainly more in the US than Italy - I don't think it is even close.

I am leaning toward the Cimbali Junior grinders, given Malachi's recommendation and what I have read about them. I don't think any of these grinders are bad, and all will have some quirks.

Of course it is overkill, but my whole kitchen is overkill, so this fits in. Obsession with the best is like that. There are certainly cheaper and easier ways to ingest caffeine - but not better ways! The GS3 is an automatic machine, whereas the Synesso is manual - is that what you mean? I am not an expert barista, but I was trained by David Schomer. To me, the only difference between the manual and automatic is deciding when to stop the pour, and to me that is not that hard to judge. In particular, if you get the grind or tamping wrong, you may be able to compensate by stopping the pour (if it comes out too fast, for example). So, an automatic machine does not seem to me to be much of an advantage. Also, if I get a Synesso now I should have a lot of practice between now and the 6-9 months when the GS3 comes out. You have the great advantage of having a prototype NOW. If both machines were currently available, I think that I would go for the GS3 because I dont' have to separately install the pump, it looks smaller, and (I am guessing) would be $1000 (or so) cheaper.

As Jackal10 has pointed out, there are several things going on with sous vide. The food is NOT cooked in a vaccum - it is at ambient atmospheric pressure. The vacuum packing in the bag simply ensures that there is less air trapped in the bag that might otherwise be there. There are several reasons to remove the air: - The bag would float if cooked in a water bath, and thus not cook evenly because the top portion would be out of the water. - Some food oxidizes (endive, artichoke) while cooking and that is lessened. - Reduces microbial growth during cooking. This is only relevant for very low temperatures (below 54C/130F). - Reduces both oxidation and microbial growth during cold storage after cooking. This was the original motivation for a lot of sous vide cooking - the idea was to prepare food centrally then reheat it for service at other locations, for example for airplane catering. Note that most meat, and many other products, are vacuum packed during storage for preservation regardless of whether they are cooked in the bag. - Sealing the bag has various advantages (keeping flavor in, keeping water and other things out) and while you could seal the bag without removing the air, the air will tend to expand upon being heated. The bag would stretch or expand like a ballon if sealed with air trapped inside. This makes floating worse if you use a water bath, and could pop the bag. - There are other methods of cooking that use hermetically sealed containers to retain moisture and flavor, but they are not very convienent. Roasting in a salt crust is one example. Roasting in a pan sealed with dough around the pan lid is another example. However they tend to do an imperfect job of sealing, and they are not very convenient. - Once you have the full set up of a very temperature stable cooking environment (like a water bath), and you hermetically seal the food (so it retains flavor, so it can't boil over, or dry out) then it is more convenient to cook things unattended for long periods of times. Cooking something for 36 hours on the stove, or in a conventional oven, is possible but would require a lot more hand holding. Sous vide is the easiest and most trouble free way to do really long cooking times. The flip side of these reasons is that you can in many cases achieve a very similar effect without using a bag, or without removing the air. One example is with a combi-oven which allows low temperature steaming. Another example is low temperature poaching in water, or in oil/fat (confit). This is certainly possible in many cases. As an example, there is a pseudo-sous vide approach where you put food in a non-vacuum sealed bag that has a one-way valve in it. The food is cooked in combi oven under steam - the trapped air in the bag expands and exits via the valve. When the product cools the result is a vacuum (not very high) in the bag. This is relevant if you don't want to use a vacuum packer, but want to store the food in the bag and reheat it later, so you want the improved preservation of having a mild vacuum. As Mallet points out, the temperature in sous vide is not related to the fact that the food is packed in a bag. Temperature works the same way, and you can cook at low temperature without the bag. However, it is easier on the chef to cook for a long period of time if you can hermetically seal the food (so it won't dry out etc). Sous vide as a cooking technique has evolved from being oriented mainly as a food preservation techinque for cook-and-hold, to a much broader set of things. The fact is that sous vide today mostly uses vacuum packing as a convienence. As Jack says, it is convienent to use a water bath for maintaining temperature accurately. If you don't want your food water logged, the vacuum bag helps you poach it without water contact. In other cases it is oxidation, or wanting to seal the bag that motivates it. While you can do many of these things without a vacuum bag, once you have the vacuum bagging machine and the water baths etc, then it is very convenient to use it for many purposes. Truly cooking in a vacuum is a very different thing than sous vide. As jsolomon points out, cooking in 50C water under vacuum is for most purposes the same as cooking in 50C water at another pressure so in that case there is no difference. However, there are some scenarios where cooking in a vacuum makes sense: - Marination is in general improved by being done in a vacuum. There are two reasons. The first is that trapped air is removed - there is air trapped in just about everything and degassing the food under marination tends to remove that trapped air. If there is liquid present in the degassing, it will tend to get sucked into the pores to replace the air bubbles as they are removed. In addition, it can help osmosis to change the ambient pressure. Vacuum marinators, and vacuum tumblers, are commercial equipment used extensively in meat processing to do marination in a vacuum. - A vacuum reduces the vapor pressure of water and other liquids, so you can dry or dehydrate things better in a vacuum that at ambient pressure. That either means you can dry them faster at the same temperature, or you can dry them at a lower temperature. Vacuum dessicators are common in laboratories. - Freeze drying is mentioned in the thread. This is a special case where you dehydrate at very low temperatures, using a high vacuum. It is only important in cases where you really need the low temperature while dehydrating, otherwise normal dehydration works. - Vacuum distillation lets you distill volitile fluids at a lower tempertaure than under ambient pressure. There are some chefs experimenting with each of these true vacuum cooking technques, but it is much less common than sous vide. Strickly speaking, vacuum cooking is totally different than sous vide, becaues sous vide is actually cooked at normal atmospheric pressure. The only time you have a vaccum in sous vide is in the packing machine, not during cooking.

Hmmm.... sounds very tempting. The internal pump is a real installation advantage. Nevertheless, I have been leaning towards the Synesso just because it is available now, and has been proven for a while in commercial settings... From what you said earlier, you don't think I could go wrong with a Synesso, right?

If the Waring Professional is the best one under $100, that begs the question of what is the best fryer period? True commercial fryers tend to be way too big for a home kitchen, irrespective of budget. Besides the physical size, they typically are meant for gallons of oil and huge batches. So unfortunately the commercial units are not very practical. Is there anything worthwhile above the Waring that is worth considering? Accuracy of the temperature is important. Heating capacity is important too, because once cold food goes into the oil you want the heater to bring the temperature back up and do so fairly quickly. However, you need a good thermostatic controller otherwise the temperature will overshoot. High quality tempertaure controllers are usually more than $100 by themselves, so I am a bit skeptical that the Waring has one. Nathan

Whatever you want to opine on! Favorites are fine. If there is one place that is so good you think it is the best, then say so. It is worth knowing what the best place is in a given city even if it isn't the best in the world because hey, if you're there you're there. Previous to reading your post I had no idea where to get a good espresso in Prague or Tel Aviv, and now I do. Not that I have ever been to either place but hey, might as well be ready...

I think that TDO is good, but have you tried Sant Eustace - it is only a few blocks away. The great debate in Rome is which is better, and both have their partisans..

A few days before this was posted I decided to try making biffins. I did not have the right kind of apple (Northern Beefing). So, I tried three varieties of apple - one Fuji, one Rome Beauty and one Granny Smith in a combi oven at 175F / 79C on convection with 20% humidity and baked them for 20 hours. The result was very interesting. All of the apples shrank a lot, and had lost considerable weight although they were still quite moist inside. Only a few drops of liquid was left on the pan under the apples, so the weight loss was primarily through evaporation. The Granny Smith was the softest. The texture of the apple was soft and creamy, almost like a creme brulee, but still more stiff than you would expect from apple sauce. It was not fully dehydrated at all, but did not run juice when cut. The flavor was good, but quite tart. The skin was medium thick. The skin was loose and had puffed away from the flesh as the flesh shrank. The Fuji on the other hand was still fairly hard - you could cut the flesh with a spoon, but only just. It was similar to the texture of a poached pear used in a dessert, but a bit harder. It was much sweeter than the GS and had good flavor. The skin was thin and papery, still adhering to the flesh. To my surprise the Rome Beauty was the best of the three. This is normally a cooking apple used for apple sauce, so I expected it to disintegrate, but it did not. The texture was intermediate between the Granny Smith and the Fuji - it was soft enough to cut with a spoon, but firmer than the GS. The skin was thick, tough and leathery - it had shrunk down with the flesh so it was highly wrinkled on the outside. I think that this is the soft, "custard like" texture that previous email referred to - a bit stiffer than a creme brulee, a bit softer than a poached pear. All of the apples tasted more concentrated than one would expect of normal cooked apples, so the dehydration seemed to work. So, I think that this is a good approximation to a Biffin. Access to the Northern Beefing apple variety would help of course, but it would appear that any Apple can be made biffin like. The Rome Beauty variety was by far the best of the three that I tried. I've never had a real Biffin so it is hard to say how close this is. I suspect that somebody in the relevant part of the UK still makes them - perhaps posting on eGullet would reveal a source. It is quite possible that at a higher temperature, or longer time, would change these results. I expect that the GS would get too soft at a higher temperature, but the Fuji would probably soften up eventually. It is entirely possible that higher temp and longer time would have made a more chewy apple chip like texture, but I was not even close to that with 20 hours @ 175F / 79C. As to the pressing with the iron plate - each of the apples was a bit compressable, particularly the GS and Rome. So one certainly could have pressed them to flatten them, and this may also have made them dehydrate faster

The other sites were very helpful. Do you know how many watts the GS3 is? Is it 110V or 220V? Is the pump contained inside the GS3? The Synesso pump is externally mounted, which is a bit of a pain for installation. Are the dimensions of the GS3 machine available - I did not see them on the other site. It looks smaller than the 1 group Synesso. It seems like it will be a tough choice between the Synesso and the GS3. One is probably a bit cheaper, but might not be out for 6 months. The other is available now... It is hard to say that I "need" it sooner because who "needs" a machine like this, but I do want to get one sooner. Thanks for the tip on the Cimbali Junior grinder.

Have you seen the AeroPress? it is a press-style coffee maker invented by the guy who created the Aerobie flying ring (like a frisbee, but just a ring). Here is information on it. It is like a French press, but it is straight through rather than pressing the grounds down then pouring out the top, you press straight through. I've had coffee made with it and it is very good - not the same as espresso at all of course, but for regular coffee brewing it is pretty good. It is plastic and appears to be tough.

So here is a potentially contentious question - which shops make the best espresso, capuccino, lattes and related drinks? Private homes don't count - this is about commercial establishments where anybody can buy a coffee. The very best is an elusive topic of course, and personal preference enters in at some point. However, I am sure that people have their own opinions, and even if we can't agree on the "very best" we ought to have a lot of overlap in the top 10 or 20. I live in Seattle, so there is plenty of coffee in the area. A friend playing with the GPS navigation system in my car turned on a feature that puts an icon on every coffee shop - well, there are so many in downtown Seattle that you can't see the streets on the map at all with that feature on - it is just a sea of coffee shop icons. I also travel a lot, and it is much harder to find great coffee elsewhere. Is there anyplace in New York City with incredible coffee? I don't dout that there is, but I don't know of it. Washington DC? Boston? There must be, but I have not found them yet. Apologies to anybody in those places - I am not trash talking your town, I'm just ignorant of where to go to find fanatical quality espresso drinks. I've never had truly great coffee at a restaurant - no matter how expensive the restaurant or how great the food is, they just don't put the effort into coffee. I'll start with my nominations: Vivace - Seattle Victrola - Seattle Sant Eustace - Rome

There is no way that something as thick as an intact breast from an 18 - 20 lb turkey could cook sous vide in 30 minutes. This has to be an error. Sous vide is a fine way to cook turkey - breast or thighs, but you need more time. Basically, I cook it like I would chicken, which is to cook it to 140F/60C core temp in a 142F/62C water bath or combi oven. Time using the tables, plus 20-30 minutes for food safety (this is based on the US FDA table for chicken and turkey referenced in an earlier post - claims of needing higher temperature are incorrect). To decrease the time, flatten or slice the turkey thinner, even into individual servings. Then it will cook faster.

Sugar is vital to butter cream frostings - whether made with Italian meringue or Swiss meringue, the sugar is what binds the egg whites in a stable configuration. It is vital for the texture, consistency and mouth feel. Sugar is the largest component by weight or volume in a buttecream frosting. Yes, it is dissolved (otherwise the buttercream would be grainy), but its contribution is vital. A soft, all dairy mix of butter, whipped cream, mascarpone etc will be spreadable, but won't have the buttercream like texture. The same is true for mashed potatoes - they can be spread in the mannerl of a frosting, and might look like a frosting, but won't really have the texture or feeof a frosting. Similarly, a thick mayonaise, or savory mousse could be spreadable, but it too has the problem that it won't really have a similar mouthfeel to frosting. These suggestions are all good, and I thank those that made them, but I am trying to get even closer to simulating traditional frosting. The best starting point is probably a zero-sugar or low-carb buttercream frosting recipe that is really trying to mimic the mouth feel of a traditional frosting. Presumably this means it would have some gelling or emulsifying agent that would stabilize whipped egg whites in a similar manner to sugar syrup in an Italian meringue. Yet at the same time wouldn't set too hard, so the texture is still soft.

Actually, yes, a meat cake was the plan. But once you have savory frosting there are a lot of things you could do with it.

I am interested in making a faux-frosting which is savory - i.e. not sweet at all. Ideally, I would like a texture similar to a butter cream frosting. However I would also accept other things which mimic a typical pastry frosting you might see on a cake. So, that would include ganache or even rolled marizpan. Sugar is, of course, a key ingredient in most traditional frostings. Low fat, low calorie and low carb frostings use other ingredients to achieve texture, and those are good places to look. However, I am not asking about a sweet tasting frosting, but rather an entirely savory frosting. Fat content is not a problem, so butter works. The natural thing to consider is some sort of gelling agent. Agar, gelatin and other gelling agents are used in frostings, but usually not as the main ingredient providing texture - usually they are there to act as a stabilizer.

Sous vide should not concentrate the salt any more than normal cooking, so you are probably just salting the confit too much. There is a duck confit thread on eGullet that has Paula Wolfert's recipe proportions for how much salt to use - try that. I'm not sure what the issue is with the artichokes. Obviously, if they have discolored before they go in the bag, that could be a problem. Once in the bag, you'll need some fluid around them - try adding several tablespoons of oil as you would with confit.