On 6/29/2022 at 3:17 PM, Duvel said:I fully subscribe to the description that the beans spend 30 sec at the peak temperature/peak pressure of the system, and that they are fully cooked to the liking of the individual consumer.
What I try to figure out is what is the actual cooking time. @Anna N: you’ve made an excellent point on comparing the results with a blanch. That is submerging the beans into boiling water and keeping them there for some time to cook, before (likely) shocking them and serving. Cooking time will most likely be longer.
@JoNorvelleWalker: my apologies - I have a very simplistic view on the world, and it based on thermodynamics: your cooking set-up will need to heat up. For me the best way to judge this is to know how much thermal mass has to be heated up before the cooking process starts. If your 4.5 kg Fissler heats up in just one minute to sustain a humid ~120oC cooking environment, I salute you on your heat source. I’d calculate also that time partially into the cooking time. If your Fissler is ok with shocking it under cold water to decrease the temperature rapudly and release the pressure within 10 sec I salute you and Fissler on a very sturdy piece of equipment. And I calculate that time into the cooking time as well.
With that ~ 90 sec overall cooking time and the translation from a >100 oC pressure cook environment to a regular blanch (with better heat transfer) I’d think the 3-4 min I give green beans will usually end them up with a very similar bite & texture, which - as you asked for “what this had to do with the price of beans” - is all I tried to figure out.
Many roads lead to Rome and I can now place your 30 sec beans into “my” cooking world. Thanks for that 🤗
I cast my mind back to my beloved thermodynamics professor Walter Kauzmann. Kauzmann was a nice guy and he gave me a passing grade. Anything to do with math or arithmetic is not my thing, which may explain much. Kauzmann once assigned us homework requiring solution of simultaneous equations. The problem could either be done by hand or by computer. But if by computer he required an impossibly long number of decimal places.
While I can scarcely add 1 and the square root of -3 together, I was known for a knack of making experiments work and of bending computers to my will. The difficulty was as a grad student I was allowed only 1 CPU second of computer time. I had to break my beautiful program, which solved the equations and graphed the results, down into parts and run them over several days.
Recently I found my printout with Kauzmann's note: "Worth waiting for even if two weeks late. I have kept a copy of your program."
Anyhow, I purchased some nice looking green beans. I put 160 grams of water in the Fissler, and 150 grams of beans in the steamer basket. I was wrong about 1 minute. From putting the Fissler on the heat to the first safety valve releasing was just under 2 minutes. After 30 seconds at pressure I quenched the pot under cold running water. 15 seconds after removing from the stove the Fissler lid was open. Timers traceable to NIST. Total elapsed time under heat was 2 minutes 45 seconds. I maintain that until the water was boiling the beans were experiencing little or no cooking, even if the pot were hot. Likewise once the pot was open and the beans could be picked up by hand.
Baked potato, Berkshire pork chop, and 30 second green beans not shown.
P.S. Why should a blanch in boiling water have better heat transfer than steam?
