Using a Pacojet

[BryanZ]

Sethro, what's the benefit of holding down the blue button again.  I read it somewhere, but I forget now.

Potatoes are cooking.

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It keeps the air release open, so that you can avoid excess over-run. Its only necessary for mixtures with high starch, pectin or stabilizer content, all which will increase over-run significantly. You might find that's the case with your potato flavor.

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What is excess over-run?

[Tri2Cook]

When too much air is incorporated and it goes fluffy (how's that for a technical description? ).

[jsmeeker]

Bryan,

Can you provide more detail on the actual bases? For example, if you wanted to make vanilla ice cream with it, is it as simple as making a regular, normal ice cream base that you would typically freeze in a convention ice cream machine, but instead you simply pour the base into the special container, then freeze it solid in a regular freezer?

[alanamoana]

Jeff, I'm not Bryan, but that's exactly what you'd do.

[BryanZ]

And in terms of sorbet bases it's even easier. You literally chop up some fruit, pour in some water or juice, then sweeten a bit with simple syrup. Of course, if I was getting more serious with this, I would be playing with the sugars to improve texture and service longevity (my home freezer is a bit too cold for service, so I need to let the frozen-overnight sorbets hang out on the counter for 15 min or so). I haven't yet tried to re-spin sorbet that's already been made.

Currently the grilled potato isn't freezing very hard. I kind of had to wing it because I didn't have yogurt, so I think there may be too much fat, preventing it from getting good and hard. I just finished up making a little of base for an olive oil ice cream that may have the same issue. We'll see.

[AvsKick21]

you can probably get glucose from ny cake and baking down on 22nd(?)

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I'm pretty sure they only have glucose syrup?

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If your still looking for it, you should be able to get dextrose powder from any nutrition/supplement store that caters to the bodybuilding crowd.

[edsel]

...

Here's the sorbet syrup I use for most paco recipes:

4000 g water

900 g glucose powder

300 g dextrose

300 g trimoline

1500 g sugar

24 g  sorbet stabilizer

Its not ideal for everything but a with a little trial and error its saved me a lot of time.

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Your formula calls for both glucose and dextrose. What's the difference between the two? Is one anhydrous and the other monohydrated?

Also, is the stabilizer needed for a Pacojet preparation?

[Sethro]

Your formula calls for both glucose and dextrose. What's the difference between the two? Is one anhydrous and the other monohydrated?

Also, is the stabilizer needed for a Pacojet preparation?

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Both are around 30% less sweet than sugar but dextrose has a much lower freezing point. Glucose performs a lot like dry milk in the way that it gives a richer more substantial mouth feel. So in short I'm using one for texture, one to depress the freezing point, and both to reign in the sweetness. I should qualify here that I am NOT a scientist food or otherwise, and this is just what I've found works through experimentation.

Stabilizer also affects texture pretty drastically by creating "gumminess", which in the right measure I really like. Its also pretty important if your service freezer is opening and closing all night. Ice crystals will develop even faster when sugar and dry mass is decreased, which is the case with a lot of paco recipes.

[Nathan Kurz]

Glad it's working for you Bryan!

I'm the lender of the Pacojet. I'm starting a small business selling sorbets and ice creams at farmers markets around the San Francisco Bay. We plan to use in-season local, organic fruits and vegetables to make the best possible frozen desserts, no holds barred. We had an extra Pacojet we wouldn't be using for a few weeks, and thought Bryan might be able to put it to good use. He hasn't been told about the mandatory summer internship program yet.

The company is "Scream Sorbet", and we are hoping to start small in February, expanding throughout the summer. Currently, we are scrambling for commercial kitchen space and trying to perfect a small number of flavors for our launch. We've been running pretty silent until now, but hope to have a web site with more information up in the next couple weeks. I'll post a thread when that happens, but until then, I can be contacted privately for more information.

Some stray responses to things brought up in this thread, with deference to those who have more Pacojet experience than I do:

Corn syrup is a form of glucose syrup, and can be used in its place. Depending on brand, you may have to adjust for the sweetness. Karo has a higher dextrose-equivalent than most glucose syrups. Glucose syrup (as defined by pastry chefs) is not a solution of dextrose in water, but made from partially hydrolyzed starch, and hence also has many larger sugars.

Dextrose (which is called glucose by chemists but not by pastry chefs) can be purchased at most health food stores. Agar and pure fruit pectins can also be purchased here. The agar with added sugar works fine, but avoid the grocery store pectins with added acids.

Invert sugar (sold branded as Trimoline) can be made on the stovetop by boiling a simple syrup with some added lemon juice or citric acid. Honey has the same properties, if the taste isn't a problem.

Stabilizers are 'necessary' for a Pacojet in the same way that they are for any other ice cream. You can often work around this need if you can get away with a higher level of dissolved solids (Brix), or consume the result immediately.

Gelatin is a fine stabilizer, if you aren't worried about its animal origins. Agar creates a great sorbet texture, although the brands I've tried have a slightly cloying iodine taste. Citrus pectin works great for citrus fruits. Apple pectin has a distinct (but good) apple taste.

Selective use of the Blue Button during processing makes a big difference. Some things benefit from extra overrun (incorporated air), others don't. Experiment. But as a rule, things with apple pectin seem to do better with the Blue Button depressed.

A couple questions for the experimenters out there: has anyone played with using rennet or chymosin with dairy bases? Or with freeze concentration for milk or juices?

--nate

[jsmeeker]

This is pretty fascinating.

It seems like a good deal of this discussion on sugars, stablizers, etc. have a lot to do with who you are and how you will use the product. The way someone like Bryan would use it at home may different than the way restaurant would.

It seems like at home, you could simply "pacotize" enough for the people you want to serve, then return the canister to the deep freeze for another day. No worry about needing the "pacotized" ice cream or sorbet to hold for several hours during a dinner service where you jsut don't have time to pacotize to order.

[Sethro]

This is pretty fascinating.

It seems like a good deal of this discussion on sugars, stablizers, etc. have a lot to do with who you are and how you will use the product.  The way someone like Bryan would use it at home may different than the way restaurant would.

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That's true. It also depends on how you like your ice cream/sorbet. Initially I started all the futtzing around because I wanted all my ice creams to be eggless. This led to a whole period of experimentation to get that custard-y texture without a proper custard. The stabilizer in particular is very important to develop that unctuous mouth feel.

In terms of sorbet, I like the texture to be slightly sticky, like the ones you get in Little Italy (that get that stickiness from an excess of sugar and honey) without being cloying.

Some of it is a matter of practicality and some of it is a matter of taste.

[BryanZ]

Great points Sethro. While I may not like those attributes all the time, I know exactly what you're talking about. I'll try to pick up some.

So today we finished up the grilled potato and worked on some olive oil ice cream.

Grilled potato ice cream

Potatoes grilling over an open fire

Jack Frost was nipping at my nose, as this was done at about 2:30 am in the freezing cold. I had to literally pry the ice encrusted grill cover off the ol' Weber.

Pacotized

This was after the first time. As you can see it was completely powdery. Texture was really cool, though. Is this what happens when you refer to excess over-run? Is my freezer too cold? I held down the blue button for the most of the time. I pacotized a second time and all was good.

Served

Served with egg nog and a bit of maple syrup. The egg nog tip was thanks to twodogs. I didn't have time to make my own, so when I tried to "scramble" (per the suggestion) the stuff I picked up from Trader Joe's it obviously didn't happen. Probably not enough egg protein and already pasteurized. Still, I really liked this combination. Very much like breakfast on Christmas morning. I'm going to incorporate some bacon into it somehow.

Olive oil ice cream

Served

Topped with crushed cashews and a bit of sea salt. The texture of this was super whipped-like. Is this an example of excess over-run? Again, I kept the blue button depressed for most of the time. The flavor was pretty cool, but the texture was almost like eating super whipped butter. Nice in small quantities because it was deceptively light, but I don't think I could eat a full scoop of it.

I've got some unadulterated orange and carrot juices also freezing right now to see how easy this can really be. Is it really as simple as pouring in some juice, then letting it run? Stay tuned.

[Nathan Kurz]

Hey Bryan ---

Looks tasty. The powdery could be caused by being too cold, but most likely is caused by low dissolved solids (most commonly sugars). For potato, this is probably just the way it is. Nathan Myrvold has an old thread here where he talks about non-sweet 'sugars' you could add to try to avoid this. I'm planning to play with polydextrose for this purpose, but haven't yet.

The whipped texture of the olive oil is closer to the symptoms of excess overrun. Overrun is a desired thing to some extent, and what constitutes excess is just a matter of taste. Using the blue button pretty much kills the overrun, though, so if you did it with the button down it's probably not that high on overrun.

Often while testing I do single portions with the button up and down to compare before spinning the whole cylinder. My impression is that in the absence of stabilizers you aren't going benefit too much from holding down the button except for fruits that are naturally very high in pectin and mixes that are very high in fat.

The straight juices are worth trying, but probably would benefit from some added sugar. It's hard to say exactly how much without measuring with a refractometer, but something around 200g of sugar per L for the orange juice would be about right (50g per cup). You'll want less sugar added for the carrot, since the juice is higher Brix and less acidic. Carrot by itself is a bit plain, but we thought Carrot Ginger was pretty tasty.

If you have excess cashews left over from the garnish and have some maple syrup, Maple Cashew comes out pretty nice. It's a very good vegan base. Something like 1 cup whole cashews, 1/2 cup maple syrup, and 1 cup of water is about right. The Pacojet homogenizes the nuts so well that it comes out so superbly creamy that it's hard to believe it's non-dairy.

(spelling)

Edited December 20, 2007 by Nathan Kurz (log)

[twodogs]

Bryan,

for the grilled potato ice cream you need the skins on as the charred skins give incredible flavor and its unique color. They also cook a bit faster if the potatoes are cut into wedges...also more surface area for the grilled flavor.

as for scrambled eggnog, a bit of methocel sgA150 in the eggnog helps the scrambling process. also then you get a nice hot-cold thing going on.

keep up the good work.

[BryanZ]

Skins. Damn. Well it's tasty all the same. When I served some to my father, he's like, hmm, this tastes like potato, so the flavor is definitely on. He also agreed with the whole Christmas morning vibe with the egg nog and syrup. Unfortunately all my MC is at school. I may still play with the scrambled egg nog idea because I like it.

Nathan, the maple cashew sounds really cool. I'll work on that now. It's the holiday season so we have cashews from gift baskets and such like whoa.

[Sethro]

Oh I had a lot of fun with the Paco last Christmas!

Roasted chestnuts, caramel and milk work well.

So do chunks of toasted gingerbread soaked in coffee and condensed milk.

Wish I still had one.

Edited December 20, 2007 by Sethro (log)

[Teppy]

Just got one, it's awesome, but I've noticed a problem that may tend to come up a lot: How do you deal with mixes containing ingredients that float or sink? For instance, I tried to do a potato chip ice cream, and the chips floated in the milk base, so the top of the beaker had far too high a concentration of chips.

A similar problem occurred with "birthday cake" ice cream - the cake chunks sank, so that the first servings had very little cake taste, and the bottom had way too much cake (and sugar.)

Any tricks for situations like these?

Any other cool Pacojet tricks?

[formula400]

paco it twice.

[Teppy]

For doing the whole canister that would work, but portion-by-portion, not so well.

One idea I had was to make hollow cylinders of cocoa butter and fill those with whatever flavoring ingredient I'm using - potato chips, cake, etc. Stand those up on-end in the liquid base and then freeze the whole thing.

[pastrygirl]

Freeze it partially in a flat layer, then mix it as you pack it into the canister.

Or, paco the base then mix in your additions as you scoop.

Edited November 24, 2008 by pastrygirl (log)

[formula400]

paco it twice like i said, the 1 time will mix most of it, then the 2nd will mix it completely, and then freeze,and after paco it bit by bit and everything is sorted, its what we do with our basil/mint/ coriander sorbets.

[sygyzy]

Hi, sorry for digging this up but I did not want to start a new topic.

Question: Is it possible to use a Pacojet, particularly the beaker aspect, in a home environment? Can a home freezer get cold enough to freeze them properly?

[gilius]

Hi,

I have possible a chance to buy a used Pacojet for a good price, the only drawback is there is only one beaker included. Since I'm a foodie with restricted budget, and only going to use it for home use I can only get a few beakers. I have seen some using 1 pint deli cups to freeze in, and then transfer over to the stainless beaker for processing. But I live in Sweden and need to have som idea of were I can get 1 pint deli cups, so please help me.

Link to Kris Harvy's article on StarChef

BR

/gilius