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I just made a recipe of brown beef stock using the pork variation. I accurately measured the amount of meat that went in (I used pork spare ribs as indicated) and the amount of the liquids. When all was said and done I had barely 2 c. of stock. This is the second time I've made either brown or pork stock and the yield has been less than half of what's indicated. Is this normal? How on earth are you supposed to get 4 c. of stock from only 3 3/4 c. of starting liquid? Neil

After reading and watching the "Dairy-Free Potato Puree" blog entry I've become really interested in using diastase. I've run into a small problem, however. I eat a gluten-free diet, as well as almost everyone I cook for. Diastatic malt powder, while thankfully easy to obtain, sadly seems to be an inherently gluten-filled product. Is there are a gluten-free source of diastase available? I was looking into pure diastase powder, thinking it might be similar to bromelain (safe to use and sold as a powder at vitamin stores). While I did find several sources, and it is listed as non-toxic and even food safe, provided MSDS sheets for diastase indicated that it should not be consumed. While this may mean simply not to eat it straight out of the bag, I'd be very grateful for some guidance. If pure diastase is unavailable and unusable is there another enzyme worth looking into for breaking down starches?

Hello! I'm presently travelling and will be staying at Lyon for a day ”” does anybody know about a shop that might carry modernist ingredients? My French is non-existent so the Google is not of much help to me. Thanks in advance! Anton

Since I'll be using a long water bath,Im wondering if I could go with a smaller brisket ( e.g. half of one of the big honkers I usually cook) ?

Tonight I cooked MC Special Sauce according to the recipe on MC@H. I turned out like green onion porridge. Maybe I should have only used the white/yellow parts of the leeks? Taste and texture are nothing like a sauce. Gotta say I was very disappointed with this! Especially since my pressure-caramelized ketchup didn't turn out really good either.

Tonight I made pressure caramellized ketchup and I have two problems with it. I tastes really much like onion. Weight/volume measurements don't seem to work. It says 6 g or 1,5 tsp. 6 grams was like 2/3 tablespoon. I guess onion powders can differ. The taste is really spicy and oniony. It was also too runny. I added some xantham gum and locust beam gum. Hopefully it won't become like jelly

Hey guys, I'm going down to NYC for my birthday in a few weeks and was wondering if anyone had any suggestions for where to eat. I was thinking about Momofuku Ko, but I've heard reservations are near impossible to get. I'm open to pretty much anything.

When I cook meat at low temps the meat seems to lose a lot of the moisture. A steak cooked at 56C for 3 hours is a bit dry, especially when compared to one which is cooked at 53C for the same period. This seems to be even more problematic when cooking for days. I once cooked brisket for 72 hours at 58C. The meat was very tough and chevy - basically unedible - and had lost lots of the moisture as well. I am wondering if I am doing something wrong. I have not succeeded to tenderize tough cuts at low temperatures, and they have not been very moist either. So far I've got best results with naturally tender cuts, or if I use tough cuts I just overcook them at 80C.

Recently, a curious reader wrote in to ask: How long in advance can I season and vacuum prep meat prior to water bath cooking? Specifically - beef filet purchased on Saturday, with intention of serving the following Thursday. Option 1: on Saturday, I salt it, vacuum seal it, and leave it in the fridget until Thursday. Then I drop it in the sous vide surpreme for an hour, sear and serve. This is the most convenient approach for me as a harried office worker trying to get dinner on the table weeknights, but I worry that the extended time with the salt will damage the texture of the meat. option 2: on Saturday, salt, vaccuum AND cook. Then put cooked meat in fridge until Thursday, when I warm it up a bit, sear then serve. This seems to be the commonly used option for advance prep, but the double-warming is extra effort. Option 3: vacuum seal the meat. Don't do the salt or prep until Thursday when I'm about to cook. Involves two rounds of vaccuming, not as convenient, but will this give the best overall finished product and be safest health-wise? Hope you can help, even though this is clearly a question from a household cook as opposed to a professional cook! What has worked best for you guys?

A while ago, someone wrote in to ask: I own your very interesting set of books. Please advise who makes the vaccuum covers for the hotel gastronom type containers you show for storing berries under vacuum. They do not appear to be made by fooodsaver whose machine is shown on the opposite page.

On Cooking with ”˜Modernist Cuisine‚’ on eGul­let, there are tips related to curing, and what happens to the meat if it's been over-cured.

On the Cooking with Modernist Cuisine on eGul­let, there are some tips on how to get the gummy consistency and texture right. The timing as to when to mix, stir, emulsify, etc. is addressed in detail.

I tried making this the other day. I don't have a vacuum sealer, so I just used a ziplock bag. While I tried to get most of the air out of it, the bag shifted in the refrigerator, and all of the liquid that was sucked out of the fish fell into the opposite corner of where the fish was. As the corner with the liquid was actually hanging down, I was afraid that some of the cure had dripped down, and therefore, there was not enough cure on my salmon any more. As Maxime Bilet said on eGullet, you don't cook the salmon or anything after it's cured, and since it looks completely raw, I sort of freaked out and tossed it. This was my first time curing fish, so maybe it could have been fine, but better safe than sorry. By the way, people will give you really weird looks if you accidentally tell them that you are planning on making "salmon-cured grapefruit." Even if they are chefs who worked on MC, though perhaps this was because when discussing what to do with leftover cheese water I had jokingly suggested ice cubes...yeah, I don't WHAT they must think of me.

On the Cooking with 'Modernist Cuisine' on eGullet, there has been some confusion as to whether or not you are supposed to drain the mustard seeds before putting them in the food processor. You are, in fact, supposed to drain them, and we've added this to our errata page. Some eGulleters, however, ended up liking the taste of the added vinegar, though they agreed it made the mustard too thin. Have any of you tried this yet? Did you leave the vinegar in or drain the seeds?

I have wondered about this subject for quite some time: why not use baking soda to increase the maillard reaction when browning a sous vide steak for example? Is there a reason why not to do so?

Thanks to a discussion on eGullet, we noticed that some of the steps are incorrect in this recipe. We also noted this on the errata page, but for the record, the correction is as follows: steps two and three should be replaced with "Combine in blender with cooked corn, and puree until smooth." In step eight, "Bake in 130 °C / 265 °F oven to core temperature of 88 °C / 190 °F" should read "Bake in 175 °C / 350 °F oven for 10 min, and then reduce oven temperature to 130 °C / 265 °F and bake to core temperature of 88 °C / 190 °F, about 20 min."

Some people have had awesome results with this, and some people...not so much. On eGullet, Maxime Bilet gave some tips, such as making sure that the carrots are cored and the butter is melted first.

Has anyone tried dehydrating in their oven? Over on eGullet, Maxime Bilet mentioned that you should calibrate it first, because you need a really, really low temperature: "The most important thing is to calculate just how low your oven really goes (and not just how low it says it goes). You don‚’t want your oven to get above 80 °C / 176 °F to 90 °C / 194 °F." Has anyone been able to get their oven to go this low?

I make short pastry at college a lot but the problem is my hands go to warm, cold water doesn't work ether, i've even just tried using my finger tips and again my pastry keeps over working because my hands are too warm, i don't know what to do because my lecturer only wants us to use our hands just because it works for her, she has colder hands than other people and we all vary in body temperatures, me i run a little more hot especially when walking up and down the kitchen.I need some better ways of rubbing the margerine and lard into the flour without touching it as much, there is a robo cook but i doubt she will let us use it, probably come up with some other excuse as to why not just so we will do it her way, no offense to her i mean she's nice it's just like a lot of people these days she can't see past the fact what works for her doesn't work for all people, rather annoying really. So any other ways i can do it? and we don't have ice in the kitchens ether. Reference material:http://www.akkus-adapter.com/fujitsu-squ-809-f01.html

A couple months ago on eGullet, coauthor Maxime Bilet responded to a question about the best recipes for putting a thermomix to use. He suggested eggs or bases like ice cream or custard bases. Anybody have one? If you don't, anybody have a recipe they really wished they had a thermomix for?

Who has tried this? I've tried it twice and both times I've ended up mojito jelly, not spheres. I even have the benefit of being able to ask coauthor Maxime Bilet for tips...only to have him finally tell me it must have been some user error. I should have taken pictures, but, well, I was kind of embarrassed! I promise that next time I try them--and there will be a next time!--I'll take pics and post them here no matter the outcome. If you did finally get spheres, I envy you. But, I am also curious to know how you served them. As Max noted on eGullet a couple months ago, they don't actually serve them in a cocktail glass at the cooking lab. The photo of the sphere in the glass in the book is purely to demonstrate the fizziness. So, how did you give them to your guests?

A lot of people want to know how long this will keep. Coauthor Maxime Bilet answered this on eGullet a while back: "We can‚’t give you an exact time as we have not tested it ourselves. We do expect though that you will experience some syneresis, or ‚“weeping,” just as you do with any condiment kept in your fridge." He also suggests using a little xanthan gum to help this. Has anyone been keeping some stored in the back of their fridge? What's the result?

A while back, someone wrote in to ask us: "The section of vacuum filtering for essences/consommes I'm very intrigued by, but being charged by the L of water I use, the faucet aspirator although inexpensive may overall end up costing more due to the amount of water I use. So I've been looking and there are kit's being sold with the Buchner funnel, flask and all of the vacuum hoses and other accoutrements but they attach to a hand-held pump. Unfortunately it doesn't give an idea of the PSI it's able to achieve or anything really and I was just wondering if you had any experience using these." Anyone have any recommendations?

One reader wrote to us to ask: "I tried the kerala curry sauce (6-224). I tried to be as accurate as possible. Nonetheless I feel it didn't end the way it was supposed to be. 1. The recipe calls for curry leaves. I had dry ones. As I was pouring them I felt there were too many (5 grams!), then I thought, maybe they meant fresh curry leaves! Is that correct? 2. Second, my "sauce" ended like a curry paste. THere was no way I could "simmer" this for 45 minutes. In an attempt to recover what was clearly a failure, I added 200 g more of coconut milk and that seem to have averted a total failure. I checked egullet and somebody seem to have had the same problem: http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?/topic/136959-cooking-with-modernist-cuisine/page__st__840 scroll to find the posting by anna: So it just seemed possible this morning to attempt an MC recipe and I chose the Goan Curry Sauce (page 224 of KM). [...] The last step in making the sauce is "Simmer for 45 minutes". At this stage of the recipe, and I followed it very closely, one ends up with a very small amount of "sludge"... So it seems that there might be a "bug" in these recipes, or the variability in the ingredients is not making them work for some of us. ----- Thanks again, for all the hard work, daniel german" From coauthor Maxime Bilet, and Anjana Shankar of the kitchen team, I received the following advice: 1. Yes, the curry leaves are supposed to be fresh. You can buy them at Indian or Asian grocery stores (personally, when I made the Masala curry, I bought mine at Uwajimaya in Seattle. Though I just tossed in the called for amount, I might have been better off chopping them up). 2. Thickness of sauce can depend on a variety of things, such as the actual heat of your range (even on low) and the width of your pan. How finely you chop the shallots called for in the recipe can also be a factor. While the goan sauce does indeed have an error in it (as noted on the errata page) in the amount of water, the amount of coconut milk called for in this recipe is correct. That doesn't mean that you can't use more, of course, especially if you are trying to balance out working with a particularly fickle stove, for instance. Has anyone else found this recipe to be too thick?

Has anyone had any experience with Sigma Aldrich? One reader wrote in to ask: "I want to purchase the xanthan gum and other ingredients and the easiest supplier I can find (based in India) is Sigma Aldrich. Their products are for tissue culture use. What is the difference between lab grade and food industry grade gums (including other gelling agents like alginate or carrageenan). Is it safe to use sigma aldrich products in food?"