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Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking

modernistcuisine.com

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Re: Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking

#131

Post by diego_moita »

Agingcoder wrote: post #126
diego_moita wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's more science to food than just nutrition and health. Maybe. But nutrition and health is what should mater the most, if you don't want to end up with a country of overweight people. > does not exclude the technology from having a place in a kitchen Certainly. From fridges and washing machines to food processors and electric stoves technology is more than welcome to the kitchen. But is always a cost/value cal…

At least the Arab world has a very wide range of dishes which require a large amount of preparation or require a fair amount of cooking time, so I would disagree with the ‘little preparation’ and ‘straight to the table’ descriptions you’re using. I’m most familiar with the Lebanese side of things , but I understand it translates to Morocco ( eg tagine, pastilla ) as well. Now, this doesn’t invalidate your main point…

Read that "Modernist Cuisine" book. It is what we're talking about in this thread, as you probably didn't notice.

The tools and dishes you mention are way off-topic when compared to the chemistry lab on that book.

Re: Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking

#132

Post by lmm »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #88
jorvi wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plus, y'know, leaching plastic into your food is generally ill-advised. It won't matter much if you don't eat out all the time / don't do sous-vide at home, but otherwise, yeah.. best avoided. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3222987/ > Results: Almost all commercially available plastic products we sampled—independent of the type of resin, product, or retail source—leached chemicals having reliably detectable…

Or you could not worry about it, like most people do, and be just fine.

Or think they're fine, and then their attempts at having kids decades later take longer or fail completely, and they never connect the two. Hard to know which.

Re: Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking

#133

Post by lmm »

zabzonk wrote: post #69

Forget all this crap - just get yourself a pan and a knife an Elizabeth David's "French Provincial Cooking": https://www.amazon.co.uk/French-Provincial-Cooking-Elizabeth... And all her other books, if you can.

Read through the entirety of the sample trying to find the actual recipes, and looks like there aren't any. Nope.

Re: Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking

#134

Post by skyyler »

sleepybrett wrote: post #70
skyyler wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I were a beginner This book is not for beginners. It's not even for home cooks. Also, hilariously, there's a list of equipment provided in the version for home cooks. It's quite different from what you're suggesting to a beginner, because even the version of this book that is for home cooks is not for beginners.

I'd say it's not really for anyone

It's for Nathan Myhrvold

Re: Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking

#135

Post by linsomniac »

chongli wrote: post #124
linsomniac wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get that, I spent a long time obsessing over the $100 ThermaPen One, because the $15 ones I had were "good enough". But, I'll tell you, it's quite a nice luxury for someone who cooks all the time. It just has all the rough edges removed: it's super fast, the display rotates, it does auto on/off, and the support has been superb. In this situation, I had to return it twice over the last year because of what turned ou…

The CI predictive thermometer actually does one better than the time@temp method for food safety. It integrates the temperature with respect to time (a method it calls SafeCook) and it does so with its estimate of the core temperature (based on which of the 8 sensors shows the slowest responding temp curve). The previous comment about it being a cooking thermometer for nerds is bang on! I dunno how much it really hel…

Mine should be here in a week and a bit, so I'll have to try a brisket or something to put it through the paces.

Re: Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking

#136

Post by chongli »

linsomniac wrote: post #135
chongli wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The CI predictive thermometer actually does one better than the time@temp method for food safety. It integrates the temperature with respect to time (a method it calls SafeCook) and it does so with its estimate of the core temperature (based on which of the 8 sensors shows the slowest responding temp curve). The previous comment about it being a cooking thermometer for nerds is bang on! I dunno how much it really hel…

Mine should be here in a week and a bit, so I'll have to try a brisket or something to put it through the paces.

A word of caution for cooking tough meats like brisket: temperature doesn't tell the whole story. People online will talk about "the stall" but it doesn't actually exist. You'll find the temperature graph over time follows a logistic curve, something you would expect for any process that reaches an equilibrium.

The truth is rather complicated [1]. Most of the barbecue masters use temperature as a guideline but actual tests of tenderness as the final arbiter. They cook until the meat reaches a particular temperature and then begin checking for tenderness at regular intervals. The process can vary a lot even between two briskets of the same weight, purchased at the same time, due to individual differences between animals (the amount of connective tissues and collagenases present in the meat at cooking time).

Still, having the temperature information helps a lot, especially the surface and ambient temperatures provided by the CI probe. This can help you maintain the cooking temperature much more accurately to avoid excessive dryout.

[1] https://www.chefsteps.com/forum/posts/collagen-conversion-wh...

Re: Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking

#137

Post by vluft »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #80
mattmaroon wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still poach eggs in the shell in my Anova Precision Oven often. The 13 minute egg is pretty unbeatable. I think the decline in sous vide use in commercial kitchens is largely just because befuddled health regulators pushed everyone toward CVAPs, which do the same thing without the plastic. Now that I’ve got the APO, I cook nearly everything in it. I wish I could get a regular oven-sized version.

The APO is new to me. Looks interesting. Can it really “sous vide” a steak? Does it brown it too?

I have an APO as well, and use it extensively, but I'd note that a) they have never released an API as originally promised (and eventually scrubbed all mention of the promise) and b) as of August of last year, new purchases will be charged a subscription fee for using the mobile app, which is necessary for most of the things you'd get an APO for.

Re: Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking

#138

Post by vluft »

tptacek wrote: post #110
nortonham wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Circulator eggs never made a whole lot of sense, They make a great deal of sense in professional kitchens. If you're expecting to do hundreds of brunch covers, or a giant breakfast buffet, poaching eggs sous vide ahead of time is a game changer

How do you poach an egg sous vide? I know how to soft-boil them, of course.

13-14 minutes at 75C (in shell), shock in ice water, crack into a slotted spoon to drain runny white. I realize this is not technically poaching, but the result is effectively a poached egg, and that's what people are referring to (afaik) when they're referring to poached sous vide eggs.

Re: Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking

#139

Post by hellotheretoday »

agos wrote: post #116
hellotheretoday wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chefsteps has been in that direction for a very long time. I was in their community early on, like 2013 or so, and the content they put out then was truly excellent. A paywall was reasonable really; the classes were well researched and informative and I am sure their operation is quite expensive. But over time they became a bit less focused on interesting stuff and more focused on stuff that would play to social medi…

I think the turning point was Chris Young leaving, that really lowered the technical level of everything they published

Yeah. Grant and Nick worked on modernist cuisine but it’s become clear they were more of the chef side where Chris was more of the food science side.

Chris does have a youtube channel now that has some okay content but the best stuff is like a lot of the peak Chefsteps stuff: rehashed fat duck recipes. It’s a shame Heston blumenthal seems to have stopped making as much around 2014-15 because his books and tv content were truly excellent and most of the modern “haute cuisine” stuff goes right back to him. More recently it appears he had manic depression, was pushing himself far too hard, and finally got treatment. I hope he is doing well. His contributions to the culinary world are tremendous and imo under appreciated.

Re: Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking

#140

Post by linsomniac »

chongli wrote: post #136
linsomniac wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mine should be here in a week and a bit, so I'll have to try a brisket or something to put it through the paces.

A word of caution for cooking tough meats like brisket: temperature doesn't tell the whole story. People online will talk about "the stall" but it doesn't actually exist. You'll find the temperature graph over time follows a logistic curve, something you would expect for any process that reaches an equilibrium. The truth is rather complicated [1]. Most of the barbecue masters use temperature as a guideline but actual…

I agree with everything you say, but I'll say I've definitely observed "the stall" while cooking brisket (which I do rarely) and butt roast (much more frequently). By that I mean, seat of the pants, the temp is going up and up and up and then sits there for a few hours before starting to go up again.

I cook on a kamado, and generally don't have the fuel and patience for a brisket, so I just don't tend to do them. I prefer to just do the whole thing on the fire, but my ideal brisket would probably be ~12 hours in the kamado, then 12 (or more) hours in the oven. But for whatever reason, I just don't like doing that. "Feels like cheating" or whatever. So butt roast and turkey and prime rib are really my go-tos.

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