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Mellow, the robotic sous-chef

cookmellow.com

101–110 of 166 posts

Re: Mellow, the robotic sous-chef

#101
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, there's a question I'm going to sneak away from. I shouldn't have hinted, sorry for being a tease, but it's just not ready for show-and-tell yet :)

Fair enough. For the interim what do you and Mellow recommend customers use for a "temperature-safe bag" (per instructions on your website)?

On food-safe bags; we can't make a better recommendation than what the manufacturers make themselves. Personally, I've used ziploc when I've been able to afford it.

Re: Mellow, the robotic sous-chef

#102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey Alex, I'd encourage you to! Can I help in any way? (Mellow's designer)

Thanks! I'll just try to be patient though :) Good luck with the product :D

Thank you. I'm already lucky, look at this page :D

Re: Mellow, the robotic sous-chef

#103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You also have to do it very quickly due to anaerobic pathogens like Clostridium botulinum and Listeria monocytogenes. I don't think it's possible for something that fits comfortably in a kitchen and runs on a 120v line.

What if you flushed the container with cold water? Seems easy enough to rig it to a cold water line and have a hose going into the sink to dump the hot water.

I don't think cold water out of a tap is cold enough. I don't know the exact times, but it's generally recommended to use enough ice in ice water that it won't totally melt before the food gets below 40F. But you could do some sort of chilled reservoir. Then you're doubling the size though.

Re: Mellow, the robotic sous-chef

#104

I've been debating trying to make a sous vide machine that can chill and uses a smartphone/tablet for control for two years. I ultimately decided it just wasn't worth it because the only application I could think of for the chilling was egg poaching, and even sous vide I prefer to gradient poach rather than equilibrium. (75C for 12 mins gets a firmer white with a runny yolk than I could at equilibrium). But I can't w…

Hey matt, I knew other smart people out there had the same idea, great to meet you. Mellow comes out of the frustrations of having the knowledge and equipment to cook great food, and never using it because of lack of energy. We started with the problem and ended up with this technology. Feel free to reach out to ze@fnvlabs.com, or even preorder a unit and join the gang. (shameless)

I will reach out! I really can't wait to see what sort of uses you come up with. Every now and then I get annoyed by a 36 hour cook, because I'm rarely awake 12 hours before dinner time. But I'm sure you guys will come up with better uses for the cooling than that even.

Re: Mellow, the robotic sous-chef

#105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You also have to do it very quickly due to anaerobic pathogens like Clostridium botulinum and Listeria monocytogenes. I don't think it's possible for something that fits comfortably in a kitchen and runs on a 120v line.

Too true! The most we can do is auto-retrograde starches and cool baths that are cooking at 60C upwards down to 54C to a sort of "holding temperature". Very fun to play with.

That's kind of neat that you can drop it down to a lower holding temp. I hadn't thought of that. I'd be curious to hear how different foods hold up in that case.

Re: Mellow, the robotic sous-chef

#106
post #39
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Longer consistent cook times allow you to pasteurize at lower temperatures, so you can serve chicken at a lower temperature than you would in a conventional oven. (I'm not saying you'd want to do that; I don't like pink chicken.) Chicken is unfortunately one of the less effective things to cook this way. At the times/temps I'm comfortable with, breasts get mushy. Legs, on the other hand, "pink out"; the proteins…

Thanks! I think most people equate "medium rare chicken" with food poisoning, so it was interesting to see that used in the video. Never knew that you could actually cook it safely that way.

Living in Japan it's much more acceptable to eat pink or even raw chicken here. I will vouch for it being much easier to cook a nice juicy (and tastier) piece of chicken when you don't need to worry about under cooking it.

Re: Mellow, the robotic sous-chef

#107
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It specifically says in the FAQ that it can't do cook-chill. I was debating trying to work on one that could awhile back but man is it hard to get that kinda cooling power economically, at least given my cursory exploration. Also, I've never done duck confit sous vide. Maybe I'll try that next. I made some the good old fashioned way a couple months ago and wow.

Low-temp water baths are like duck confit dispensing machines. In particular, you can get by with much, much less fat. I'm not sure I understand the utility of being able to throw all the ingredients for my dishes into a water bath days ahead of time, since I need to bag the ingredients anyways; why not just keep them in the fridge and dunk them the morning of the cook? Also: it's a little misleading? to suggest that…

I will say that poaching eggs sous vide in the morning is a pain in the ass if you wake up hungry. I end up heating the water on my stove and dumping it in just so it doesn't take an hour, and then it's slower (albeit better and more fool proof) than traditional poaching. I found out the hard way that trying to cook a girl breakfast to impress her doesn't work, no matter how awesome your marinara and poached eggs with salsa verde are, if it takes a freaking hour and a half. That's why I decided that if I built a unit, it would just have a timer. I'd wake up to the water heated, then put the eggs in. The actual poaching is as fast as you can get everything else ready anyway.

Also I am a night owl and often not awake 12 hours before dinner time, so it'd be good in that case.

I was thinking about it for professional use though. Not having to start a 12 hour cook at 7 am for that night's service might be a big win for restaurants. Also I think they'd benefit from better controls, especially if they had a bank of them. Chefs I talked to were encouraging, but realized I probably don't have time to make a product out of it.

Also duck fat is half the fun! After you pull the legs out you get to make yummy stuff with it. I rendered my own and it was actually very cheap.

Re: Mellow, the robotic sous-chef

#108
This looks really cool!

I've been interested in getting into sous-vide for a while, but I'm not sure where to start. Could anyone point me to some introductory resources? (websites, maybe cookbooks?)

I'm interested in learning the difference between different equipment setups, and also understanding what works well for sous-vide and what doesn't.

Re: Mellow, the robotic sous-chef

#109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if you flushed the container with cold water? Seems easy enough to rig it to a cold water line and have a hose going into the sink to dump the hot water.

I don't think cold water out of a tap is cold enough. I don't know the exact times, but it's generally recommended to use enough ice in ice water that it won't totally melt before the food gets below 40F. But you could do some sort of chilled reservoir. Then you're doubling the size though.

I figured it wasn't cold enough. The idea would be to dump the latent heat in the water. So at least you start from room temperature water and chill it from there. I'm guessing this still wouldn't get cold fast enough, but I don't know how fast "fast enough" is.

Re: Mellow, the robotic sous-chef

#110
post #65

Already posted yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7622369 Edit: I always love when people get offended by facts.

When a story hasn't yet gotten significant attention, a small number of reposts (2 or 3) is ok. Otherwise, many more good stories would get lost to randomness and churn.

Yes. And some times you guys merge them and the original submitter gets the credit. And some times you just kill the dupes. I was just pointing out that previous thread like so many people do every day here. I wasn't being a dick about it. No need to flog me for it. But what ever. HN has its finicky moments.
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