Rookie Joins the Pros

[adrianvm]

The scale I have (which looks identical to the one I referenced on amazon) is much smaller than 8" square.  It is about 5" x 3", 1/2" thick and folds up into a little box you could stash anywhere. But I only use it for measuring spices and hydrocolloids, not for general cooking.  It only goes to 100g max.  My general cooking scale is about the size of Lisa Shock's, though I keep it permanently on the counter because I use it every day.   But it measures in grams, not 0.01g.  A scale that measures 4500g in 0.01g sounds a little suspicious. 

 

I'm checking my copy of MC at Home, and the Pistachio Gelato recipes has the obvious differences from PB&J gelato, but also the sugar is increased for the pistachio recipe to 155g (3/4 cup), presumably because of the juice/water substitution.   Everything else is the same, with pistachio replacing peanut and water replacing the juice. 

[Tennessee Cowboy]

Thank you Adrian.  I've ordered a kitchen scale that goes from .01  g to 2000g.  That should be enough!   I have now received the Pistachio Paste called "Lov 'n Bake." fulfilled by King Arther Flour, btw, not nuts.com  Ingredients are Pistachios, sugar, canola oil, natural flavor, salt.  The panel says every 30 g has 8 g sugar and 110 calories from fat.  Since 1 gram of Canola Oil has 8.8 calories, 110 calories = 12.5 g of canola oil.  Soooo.  30 g of this mix has a most 9 g of pistachios, 8 g of sugar and 12.5 g of canola oil!  No mention of sugar in the advertisement.  I'm tempted to send it back.  

[Tennessee Cowboy]

On 5/9/2016 at 3:50 PM, Lisa Shock said:

"Sometimes, since ice cream is mostly just milk/cream, I add a little extract to boost flavors."  

I purchased some Pistachio extract from Savory Spice.  How much would you put into, say, 4 cups of milk or cream?  Would you put any into the Modernist Cuisine recipe, which is water and sugar, no dairy?

[mgaretz]

13 minutes ago, Tennessee Cowboy said:

Thank you Adrian.  I've ordered a kitchen scale that goes from .01  g to 2000g.  That should be enough!   I have now received the Pistachio Paste called "Lov 'n Bake." fulfilled by King Arther Flour, btw, not nuts.com  Ingredients are Pistachios, sugar, canola oil, natural flavor, salt.  The panel says every 30 g has 8 g sugar and 110 calories from fat.  Since 1 gram of Canola Oil has 8.8 calories, 110 calories = 12.5 g of canola oil.  Soooo.  30 g of this mix has a most 9 g of pistachios, 8 g of sugar and 12.5 g of canola oil!  No mention of sugar in the advertisement.  I'm tempted to send it back.  

 

You're forgetting to take into account the fat in the pistachios.  It can't have more weight of oil than pistachios as the ingredients should be listed in decreasing weight order.  That would mean canola oil would have to be the first ingredient. 

[JoNorvelleWalker]

3 hours ago, adrianvm said:

A scale that measures 4500g in 0.01g sounds a little suspicious. 

 

Hmm.  Not necessarily suspicious.  The scale I'd like, not exactly the scale I have:  Sartorius.

 

For the MC gelato recipe I've gotten good results only with Jif Natural peanut butter.  Every other nut butter I've tested is coarse and grainy on my tongue.  Even pistachio butter that costs enough to make me cry.

 

 

[Tennessee Cowboy]

Ok, so I have to make a decision.  I'm going to have enough paste to make 2, maybe 3 recipes.  Can't afford much more.  Do I go with the Pistachio butter and make the MC gelato, knowing it will be gritty and course?  Or do I make a low fat content ice cream (towards the gelato end of the spectrum)--maybe add a little Pistachio extract to boost the flavor?  Or junk the butter and make my own with a blender?  This is making my brain hurt.  Too many variables!

[Tennessee Cowboy]

16 minutes ago, mgaretz said:

ou're forgetting to take into account the fat in the pistachios.  It can't have more weight of oil than pistachios as the ingredients should be listed in decreasing weight order.  That would mean canola oil would have to be the first ingredient. 

ooops.  thank you, mgaretz.  II went back and recalculated, assuming that the Pistachios had to be more than 8 grams and the canola oil less than 8.  I won't bore you with the math, but here has to be at least 15 g pistachios, 8 g of sugar, and no more than 7 g of canola oil to get to 30 grams with 110 calories from fat.  Apologies to the manufacturer.  BUT, this still doesn't match the advertisement, IMHOP

[Tennessee Cowboy]

51 minutes ago, mgaretz said:

I've ordered a kitchen scale that goes from .01  g to 2000g.

Oh, drat.  Looked again and I misread it.  I says .01 oz, but only .1 g.  I was moving too quickly.  Phooey.

[Lisa Shock]

Every company's extract is different. I would add it last, while your mix is cooling, one drop at a time. I think 2-3 drops per quart should be sufficient, but, it's really hard to tell.

[Lisa Shock]

About the scale, before I happened to find my current scale, I used two scales: a small pocket scale that went from 0.01g to 100g (cost under $10), and, a regular sized one that went from 0.1g to 3000g (cost about $12). So, it may be more cost efficient to have two scales. The small one is not very large. It also pays to search amazon and ebay multiple times, slightly altering the larger number, just to see what's out there. (1000, 1500, 2000, 2500, 3000, 3500, 4000, etc.) I see some 0.1g - 3000g scales for $25, while 0.1g - 5000g seem to average around $60. I also see some pocket scales measuring 0.01 -100g from $5 plus shipping. Honestly, for most of us, 3,000g is probably enough. If you are using more than that, you can just measure halves.

[adrianvm]

4 hours ago, Lisa Shock said:

About the scale, before I happened to find my current scale, I used two scales: a small pocket scale that went from 0.01g to 100g (cost under $10), and, a regular sized one that went from 0.1g to 3000g (cost about $12). So, it may be more cost efficient to have two scales. The small one is not very large. It also pays to search amazon and ebay multiple times, slightly altering the larger number, just to see what's out there. (1000, 1500, 2000, 2500, 3000, 3500, 4000, etc.) I see some 0.1g - 3000g scales for $25, while 0.1g - 5000g seem to average around $60. I also see some pocket scales measuring 0.01 -100g from $5 plus shipping. Honestly, for most of us, 3,000g is probably enough. If you are using more than that, you can just measure halves.

 

I have a scale that measures 3kg in 1g increments.  It cost $100, I believe, but is dishwasher safe.  I killed my previous scale trying to clean fish off the buttons, so I thought the extra expense of dishwasher safe made sense, and after about 10 years with the scale I feel it was worth it.   The thing to be aware of if you're buying cheap scales off ebay that ship from the far east is that precision (measuring in 0.1 g quantities) does not necessarily translate into accuracy.  It doesn't do much good to read 0.3g if the error is plus or minus a gram.  I personally would be reluctant to buy from such a source for this reason, and also dubious about a scale that has a huge range and a high precision.  That's why the pocket scale for 0.01g readings makes sense---it's actually plausible that they might be accurate.   A scale that measures to 4500g and is accurate to 0.01g has to be accurate to 2 parts per million, and you're just not going to get that accuracy for $45.  Or even for $450, I'd guess. 

 

Note that 3kg isn't actually enough in the kitchen on rare occasions, usually because my tare weight eats up too much capacity, e.g. if I put a pan on the scale and tare.  Yes, you can work around it by using more dishes, but that's annoying.  Nevertheless, I decided that this limitation would be worth tolerating to get a dishwasher safe scale. 

[adrianvm]

8 hours ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:

 

Hmm.  Not necessarily suspicious.  The scale I'd like, not exactly the scale I have:  Sartorius.

 

For the MC gelato recipe I've gotten good results only with Jif Natural peanut butter.  Every other nut butter I've tested is coarse and grainy on my tongue.  Even pistachio butter that costs enough to make me cry.

 

 

 

For $45, that is suspicious.  At Sartorius prices, not suspicious.  

 

I felt like I got a smooth texture frozen dessert with the various smooth pistachio pastes I used.   Not "pistachio butter," mind you, but the "pistachios paste."  The pistachio butters I've had have all been coarser than the pistachio pastes, and none would have produced a smooth textured gelato.  I also got smooth textured results with the hazelnut pastes.  It's been a year, but I believe these pistachio and hazelnut pastes were as smooth as or smoother than Jif, and I don't recall any sensation of grittiness at all in the MC gelato I made. 

 

8 hours ago, Tennessee Cowboy said:

Ok, so I have to make a decision.  I'm going to have enough paste to make 2, maybe 3 recipes.  Can't afford much more.  Do I go with the Pistachio butter and make the MC gelato, knowing it will be gritty and course?  Or do I make a low fat content ice cream (towards the gelato end of the spectrum)--maybe add a little Pistachio extract to boost the flavor?  Or junk the butter and make my own with a blender?  This is making my brain hurt.  Too many variables!

 

I'm not sure what you're asking here.  Are you asking what to do with the love'n bake pistachio paste that has the sugar mixed in?  I mean, you may as well try using it to make the MC recipe as a trial run.  See how it goes, whether you think it's gritty, etc.   Add the pistachio extract if you think it will help.  Sometimes those extracts have a funny flavor and make things worse. 

 

Regarding the composition of your paste, you neglected to note the protein, which is the key ingredient in determining the pistachio content, since none of the other ingredients contain protein.  The protein is 4g, then that means you have 20g of pistachios.   At 45% fat the pistachios contribute 9 g fat.  I believe this leaves 4g for canola oil.   And then we have 6g sugar to get things to add up.   (Note that pistachios are 7% sugar, so some of the sugar is from the nuts).  This means added sugar is only 6/30=20%, which is less than I recall being told by the manufacturer.  Maybe they have lower protein pistachios?  To use this product in the MC recipe you have to figure out what fraction is nuts, what fraction is oil, and what fraction is sugar so you can get the quantities right for the recipe. 

 

[Tennessee Cowboy]

I'm going to assume 25% sugar--close enough for our purposes.  I'm going to make one pint of gelato using love n bake and one using the more expensive paste that arrives tomorrow.  Then I'll make one pint each of ice cream, see which has the best pistachio taste, and order more from there.  I may also try another pint with your recommendation--put it in the blender.  Then I can see which has the best pistachio paste, and order more if needed.  I've got work ahead!

[Lisa Shock]

The $45 price was from 2009, also, the company making the scales was in bankruptcy liquidation, so, stock was at fire sale prices. Still, I recommend searching around for deals, they can still happen. Dyson sells factory refurbished items on ebay for half price, or less, sometimes. So does Olympus.

 

On the topic of the ice cream, one suggestion: for flavor contrast and to retain texture of a nut mix-in, if you were going to add some nuts for crunch, I'd roast nuts then make a pistachio 'bark' with a good dark chocolate. I'd chill the bark, then break it up and mix in at the end. This way, there is flavor contrast plus texture, nuts will remain crunchier.

 

BTW, I don't have a great online source, but, pistachios are grown in Arizona. We get some really plump, large nuts at the supermarket here. An entrepreneur planted trees at the beginning of the Iranian embargo in the late 1970s. Of course, they are not in season at the moment.

Edited May 12, 2016 by Lisa Shock (log)

[Tennessee Cowboy]

I just received my scale.  It is small, accurate only to .1 gram.  Am I going to need one that is accurate to .01 gram?

[Tennessee Cowboy]

For those interested in my Pistachio Ice Cream experiment, I have started a new forum on that topic.  You can find it at this link:  

Thanks to one of the veteran commentators for suggesting I start a new forum on this.

[Lisa Shock]

4 hours ago, Tennessee Cowboy said:

I just received my scale.  It is small, accurate only to .1 gram.  Am I going to need one that is accurate to .01 gram?

 

That depends on if you are going to be using some of the modernist ingredients, like xanthan gum, which need to be measured carefully and get used in small amounts.

[Tennessee Cowboy]

Rats.  Well, I do actually need to use such small amounts.  Sigh,  OK, I'll give this one to a friend and order the one you and others advised me to get!

[adrianvm]

You may wish to keep the scale you ordered for regular kitchen use at higher weights, especially if you do any baking.  You can get one of the inexpensive low capacity scales for measuring at 0.01g accuracy and use the scale you bought for other stuff.