Syzygies

On 10/14/2018 at 10:57 AM, tony b said:

I do fermented style sauces, ala Tabasco.

It's been a few years, but I've made many batches of fermented Tabasco-style hot sauce over the years.

Like many of us, I have a chamber vacuum machine. The signature uses of sous vide and freezer preservation easily justify a machine. Nevertheless, we should all take inspiration from those "what goes in a blender?" YouTube videos.

What goes in a chamber vacuum machine?

• A couple of sixty second sessions will hydrate any dough better than a long rest. This has an extraordinary effect on pasta dough.
• A quick refrigerator pickle such as a Mexican Cauliflower and Jalapeño Escabeche (Asada: The Art of Mexican-Style Grilling by Bricia Lopez and Javier Cabral has the best recipe I've seen) benefits from vacuum packing and a rest.
• Some people ferment chiles for hot sauce by vacuum packing the peppers with a starter, in a large pouch with room for the gases.

The challenge in fermenting chiles is getting white cloudy Kahm Yeast. While it isn't harmful, it's gross, and in my opinion it affects the flavor. The fermenting world is full of people who've never figured out how to avoid Kahm yeast, who consider worrying about it a silly concern. I usually don't get Kahm yeast, but I consider myself an abject failure of a human being when I do.

The hope is that removing oxygen by chamber vacuum sealing the chiles will prevent Kahm Yeast.

I also have an argon tank, for saving part bottles of wine, and I intend to experiment with displacing the air in a carboy, as an alternate approach.

I adjust pH to below the botulism threshold whatever I do, measuring with a professional pH meter. You can get banned from a fermentation forum by suggesting such a thing, but it brings me peace of mind.

Many botulism deaths are the result of ill-advised experiments that break with long understood tradition, such as Alaskan natives fermenting meats in a plastic pail rather than in the traditional sealskin. One should recognize that any novel approach to fermenting hot sauce poses similar questions.

11 hours ago, Rob.C said:

I assume there is a time value in meat, but I never knew there was an intrinsic value too. Damn there was a learning curve with options I didn't realize the curve was steeper with meat. Lol. I'm getting a great education on this site. I'm digging deeper and deeper

Rob, I'm sorry! My new meds are working, and I no longer fall down rabbit holes like this. 

The way to think about any problem like this is to get so much practice that one doesn't need to think at all.

10 hours ago, Firemonkey said:

Why not go the other direction?   Sous vide the brisket first, then put over a fire to build the bark and add smoke?   I do this sometimes over my fire pit, and it’s OMG good.   

There may be a divergence between appearance and reality, here.

In competition one starts meat cold, to maximize the smoke effect. There's a cutoff temperature after which a smoke ring won't form. And judges, who have their palates blown by competitors with coarse smoke handling, look for this ring.

There's a camp that finishes in the oven, perhaps after transport, because smoke no longer matters after the ring has formed. I see the error in this logic, but I don't know for a fact that smoke at later stages matters that much.

When I was commuting to NYC I'd smoke BBQ part way, chill it, vacuum pack it and freeze it, then friends would finish it any way that came to mind. In the oven? In a pot of beans? Choucroute?

I don't have experience flipping this order, but my intuition is that late smoking isn't as effective.

Um yes, I tried everything, back in the day. My first cooker was an offset firebox, then a POSK before graduating to a Dennis-grade KK.

I'm best known here for devising the cast iron "smoke pot" that came out of a related charcoal-making experiment.

People complain that cast iron isn't nonstick, yet Michelin chefs use stainless pans easily? It's skill.

Wood smoke can be seriously nasty. Barbecue using wood takes skill. More skill than anyone I know has, or perhaps I'm unusually finicky about how food should taste.

Ideally one has two fires, one to prepare embers, and another for actual cooking with fully developed embers. True wood fire experts use some green wood, but that's getting into Olympic-grade difficulty.

If you want to transfer embers into the KK, that have given up all nasty flavors already, you might be happy. Consider a large fire pit such as a Solo Stove, for preparing the embers.

I had a friend burned out of his apartment, lucky to be alive only because his 70's Advent speakers were hung using fishnet that burned through, making a loud crashing noise that overcame his inebriated coma. I was first back into his apartment with him, aghast at the horror of his lost LPs and .. the smell.

That's what cooking with wood tastes like, if you're not extraordinarily careful.

The P134H is $1,461 stateside. What model is yours?

Effeuno Pizza Oven P134H 509 + Biscotto Clay Stone

(Are you ok if my wife takes your name in vain, until she tastes the pizza?)

On 11/20/2022 at 1:09 AM, Poochie said:

I like everything you're saying about it except the "only runs on 220v part"

We put in 230v for our hybrid gas range / electric oven. The outlet work looks trivial; one pays for running appropriate wire and knowing how to add such a line to an already full junction box.

If one ever does this (I was out of town or I would have hovered), mark the acceptable region with masking tape, and insist on seeing the work before letting the crew push the range back into place.

My electrician was good at what he does, but could have found a better job had he actually been able to read a manual page. He installed the outlet in the wrong spot, range won't push all the way in. On my to-do list to move the outlet a bit; I've been busy. Just back from Japan.

Try sous vide before chilling or freezing the steak? Cook in a water bath at target serving temperature (desired doneness) for longer than anyone says. Like four to six hours for a cheaper cut, full of flavor but of need of tenderness. Then with a really cold start, one cooks the outside to desired doneness. As long as the interior can be plausibly served, it will be both cooked just right and very tender. We mathematicians call this replacing an equality with an inequality. Rather than hitting a mark, you're just trying not to overshoot on the interior.

Even Dennis isn't trying to spend your money, he just wants you to be happy.  Yes, you don't need a Kamado stainless drip pan to fashion a heat deflector.

For many years I lined a plain terra cotta plant saucer (they come in large sizes) with heavy duty aluminum foil. The terra cotta cracked every few years, and i'd be out $20 for another one.

Once I bought the Kamado double bottom drip pan, I use it whenever I can. It makes an excellent heat deflector. If one's cook isn't overly salty, it protects the drippings from scorching. One doesn't necessarily plan to use the drippings, but cooking is improvisation, and anything remotely related to gravy needs brownings as a base.

We all have different ways to measure expense. If cleanup is a bigger deal than purchase price, then one might worry about cleaning the drip pans. A terra cotta saucer lined with foil is surely a breeze at cleanup time, and one could use the drippings. One I bought an electric pressure washer to prepare our deck for annual oiling, I look for any excuse to use it. Like Arnold's flame thrower in Commando, it might be overkill but it gets the job done. I'm already using it to clean the grates, at which point giving the drip pan a wipe then also pressure washing it is easy.

Yes, 24 hours for a 5 lb butt does seem a long time.

The pink (uncoated) butcher paper favored by Aaron Franklin for some cooks is something I'd consider here. One often wraps a butt in foil to rest in a cooler after cooking; the pink butcher paper somewhat breathes, so one can use it for the latter part of a cook with less detrimental effect than foil. This isn't a popular choice for butt, but 5 lbs is small.

Legends of Texas Barbecue Cookbook helped me to reject orthodox thinking, like taking 225 F as gospel. Pit masters do what they need to do. Aaron Franklin cooks everything at 275 F, that's the house temperature for cookers sharing various meats. Especially with a smaller butt, I'd try this.

One tells when a butt is done by touch, not temperature. When it yields, the bone threatens to wiggle out, the butt is done.

I'll just say it, conventional wisdom is an oxymoron. The standard advice for when a butt is done is misguided. The butt I've had at commercial restaurants in North Carolina was very weak. It wasn't Charlie Chaplin shoe leather, but it might as well have been stewed unraveled cotton rope. There's a point cooking any butt where it transitions from needing to be sliced, to "pulling". There's a later point where the meat strands become ropey. One wants to catch butt after the first transition, but before the second transition.

6 hours ago, Bruce Pearson said:

Sygzygies that looks like dried up oatmeal! Have fun cooking with it.

It may not look like much but smoked it has an amazing effect on my guests' appetites.

5 hours ago, Poochie said:

I bought it by mistake this morning, but it looks like good stuff.

I used to buy both Lazzari lump and Lazzari briquettes, again with a natural binder. I've moved on from both, but I don't have a prejudice against briquettes. Taste, convenience... They're certainly a quick way to get a pizza fire going.

I too have the JVR Vac100 and I love it. A generational advance over the chamber machine I had (and still have, other location).

Call them? At a minimum, understand why they don't offer a 230v model now, and their future plans. Which parts would need to be replaced? The innards look easily repaired, like a 1950's car.

The official cold smoker (which I own) and my smoke pot have the same goal in mind.

One best meditates on the difference between careful smoke and "chunks of wood on the fire" by getting stoned out of one's gourd on cannabis.

Actually, twice. Once rolling a joint, and once using a modern vaporizer.

Notice a difference? Same story.

On 1/29/2023 at 9:46 AM, PVPAUL said:

Would this cooking technique “slow poached in chicken stock”  work well with the Vermicular Musui?

Yes. Takes more stock than a vacuum pouch, but the stock gets better...

It recently dawned on me that the Vermicular Musui Kamado ("indoor K") is ideal for making Japanese dashi stock. One wants to bring kombu seaweed to a near simmer without boiling it, remove, then give the bonito flakes a controlled simmer in the same liquid. The Musui makes this easy.

I can get really good artisanal chickens at The Local Butcher Shop in Berkeley. Our favorite preparation is the signature Zuni Cafe Chicken, which would be amendable to this modified technique.

Harder in to find great birds in New York City.

I've been twice to Yakitori Kono, and that's the best chicken I've ever had. He spent six months searching before contracting with a Pennsylvania farmer; here's a video of his operation:

How Chef Atsushi Kono Makes Chicken Skewers From Wings to Testicles — Smoke Point

Westermann clearly has a few gallons of stock simmering when he needs it. I sometimes do, but this is an ideal application of sous vide: Thaw one freezer packet of stock, and vacuum pack it with the bird, then cook in a water bath as indicated. The stock gets better, same effect on the bird as a bath in a huge stock pot.

Yes!

I own one in each kitchen. It's pretty simple: We cook anything in it that makes sense to cook in an enameled cast iron Dutch Oven, and where feedback (constant temperature rather than constant energy flow) makes sense.

Once one gets the point of an autopilot in the kitchen, it's hard to romanticize fiddling by hand inside. I'd much rather fiddle by hand outside. It's called fire.

1 hour ago, jeffshoaf said:

• "Unami" - this one isn't too bad but it's way overused

Sweet!

Cooking with EVOO reduces stress.

7 hours ago, tekobo said:

Do you have a recommended blade and saw combination for cutting meat that thin?  I could freeze the meat beforehand if that would make it easier. 

There are multiple brands of this style:

Klein Tools 12 in. Hack Saw with Aluminum Handle

The point is that one can adjust the tension, and achieve higher tension than with more basic models.

There are similarly many brands of "good" blades. I'd go as fine-toothed as I dared, keeping in mind the theory that coarser blades clear more easily. I'm just not convinced that's enough of a factor.

Freezing works, but makes for much more work. If you can figure a way to squish the meat against a vertical plane, you might make quick work of raw meat?

What we both really want is a Berkel (bone the meat first!)

Berkel 300M-STD 12" Prosciutto Meat Slicer

We just don't have that kind of stupid money. Some restaurants buy these partly because they do work really well, partly because they can set the ambience for the entire restaurant.

I own a Vermicular Musui-kamado in both kitchens. We have beans soaking now, ready to start soon. I always make nixtamal in the VK. Many stews, such as lion's head meatballs...

A good analogy is adaptive cruise control for cars. Some people can't imagine why one would want such a thing, even some people who own cars so equipped. We're so used to, um, what do you call it? driving, that we become inured to the annoyance workload of manually guiding a car. We probably think of commercial pilots as flying the plane, when they're primarily system managers who can step in to fly as needed.

Fiddling with the heat while cooking is the same idea. Some of us use barbecue controllers and can leave for errands after starting a cook. Others watch their KK get up to cruising altitude, marveling over how easily one can manually control a KK. And there goes an hour.

My point is that as a good cook one isn't really conscious of the time sink that fiddling with temperatures represents. The energy needs of a dish evolve as the dish cooks. Providing a set flow of energy is fundamentally different from maintaining a set temperature; the latter adapts as the dish cooks.

I choose the VK whenever I want autopilot.

As a rule, I don't feel comfortable with any technology till I stop thinking of it as special. Cookbooks are for dinner parties? Um no, we like to eat well on Tuesday nights. A sous vide water bath and chamber vacuum is for Michelin skyscraper food? Um no, it's a more reliable way to tenderize and cook steak, or lamb shanks, or... Of course when I want excitement I finish over fire.

On 1/5/2023 at 5:42 AM, tekobo said:

I was not looking forward to it but got all of these cut and sawn in just over 20 minutes.  Hurrah!

It has taken me most of my life to truly appreciate this, but there isn't a saw tool category sold without a "better" version ignored by people who think all saws are the same, and there isn't a saw tool sold that doesn't benefit from a very careful choice of aftermarket blade.

While my wife insists for environmental reasons that we ride out the OEM tires on new cars, a careful aftermarket choice is always an upgrade, whether one wants performance, a quiet ride, or simply making it less likely to die in the rain. One should similarly think of the blade that comes with any saw as like the "starter" toner cartridge in a new printer. Conventional advice is tuned for average needs, for people working in haste on a budget. I generally replace track saw blades and such with a blade that makes the smoothest cut I can tolerate teasing out, working slower than a production shop.

My favorite example is a jigsaw. I owned a cheap hand-me-down that convinced me the category was crap, jigsaws are just small reciprocating saws with a reference plane, good only for demolition. Then I bought a decent Dewalt jigsaw, and started playing with blades. Often one does want a stiff, wide blade, but for scrolling, this blade can do finished curved work that would make Michelangelo happy:

BU2DCS-2 Dual Cut - Wood Cutting Jig Saw Blade

As for cutting frozen meat with a hacksaw, the best mainstream hacksaws have excellent tension control, and can be strung with the force of a piano string. I keep one of the best blades I could find just for cooking.

The quality range I've experiences with hacksaws is every bit as wide as the quality range I've experienced with jigsaws. Anyone, be sure you're experiencing top-of-the-market quality for your chosen tool, before investing time, space, and money on a more complex tool you might not need.

Glad to see all this hot sauce fermenting!

To be clear, I never claimed that Kahm yeast is dangerous. No one should be afraid of Kahm yeast, nor should they discard a batch where it appears. I claimed that I can taste the difference, and I prefer ferments where there is no visible Kahm yeast.

This could be a coincidence: No Kahm yeast could be a side effect of the technique that lead to my best ferments, not a determining cause. Still, I've tossed too many ferments of cabbage and such, recognizing I can do better buying at the farmers market, to shake this association.

On 10/29/2018 at 7:46 PM, tony b said:

Don't sweat the mold, it's just part of the process, just scrape it off when you notice it, no worries about being Johnny on the spot with it. 

I've been making fermented Louisiana-style hot sauce regularly since 2005. I have some controversial views:

Botulism is unlikely but possible. Most cases are people who don't know what they're doing, but think they do. For example, there are many cases in Alaska after fermenting in seal skins was replaced by fermenting in plastic Home Depot pails. C. botulinum cannot grow below a pH of 4.6, which can be achieved with mere tablespoons of vinegar in a large batch. This inhibits anxiety but not the fermentation process. I own a pH meter and typically bring my pH down to 4.2. Needless to say, this is heresy on fermentation forums.

I have nearly always managed to avoid mold through scrupulous technique, and I don't like the taste as well when there is mold. I'd bet half my retirement savings that when there's visible mold on top, a sample from the bottom will be completely infested when viewed under a microscope. Scrupulous technique here means a sterile carboy with the chiles just submerged in brine, and a beer-making airlock as a one-way valve to ensure the gas in the carboy ends up mostly CO2. I have an argon tank for preserving wine, and I've considered using it to flush my carboy at the start, for the initial stretch before CO2 from fermentation flushes the carboy.

I've been meaning to try a new technique I read somewhere, also guaranteed to remove unwanted oxygen and well-suited to arbitrarily small batch sizes: Vacuum pack the chiles with salt and a bit of fermentation starter, such as live kimchi liquid. Use a very large bag, as it will fill with CO2 from the fermentation.

These suggestions go hand-in-hand: The hacks who chased me away from fermentation forums are going to be fine, as long as they know and use exactly the techniques their ancestors used in eastern Europe. Any idea that achieves an unheard-of modern efficiency at ridding the oxygen implicated in mold is an idea that C. botulinum may thank us profusely for having. So test the pH.

FOGO Super Premium Lump Charcoal (35lbs)

Quote

Designed specifically for low and slow cooking this was the first large-piece-only lump charcoal. Every hand-picked piece of lump charcoal in the bag is over 4 inches long. And, like all FOGO lump charcoal, it’s made from a special blend of Inga wood so it will impart that award winning FOGO flavor to everything you cook!

Two birds with one stone here, breaking advice from both Dennis and Fogo.

Dennis describes the issue. A primary use of our KK these days is high temperature baking (bread, pizza, Focaccia di Recco). Dennis let me buy a gas burner; he figures I know what I'm doing. The solution is to use a very large charcoal such as the above Fogo. Yes, all surfaces light, but the surface-area-to-volume ratio makes for a nice window to bake at pizza temperatures before the fuel exhausts itself.

With more typical charcoal the fire burns too hot and fast, as Dennis explains. He's right; ask me how I know!

So my eight year old VacMaster VP115 can still be coaxed to do an excellent job. The "gas shocks" no longer hold up the lid without help, and the ribbon switch gets confused after the jolt of releasing the vacuum, and starts a new cycle.

Anyone who can remove and keep track of twenty screws can repair this thing by swapping parts, assuming one can get the parts. That is no longer the case. I'll probably take it apart again and bend the ribbon switch so it's further from critical, but the "gas shocks" are apparently custom.

I could live with this, or give it to a friend until I retire and give him its replacement. From the above discussion, I'm most tempted by the JVR:

JVR Vac100 – Chamber Vacuum Sealer

I figure my amortized cost of the VP115 was $86 per year, which I more than saved because 4 mil chamber vacuum sealer bags cost less than FoodSaver bags or substitutes.

There are two credible reasons to prefer an external clamp machine: They take less space, and using a continuous roll one can seal lengthy foods such as fish that don't fit in a chamber.

In grad school a friend explained how the second time he ingested psilocybin he had to fight a profound gag reaction. My dog struggled similarly when we took her to the vet. In transition to a chamber machine, I felt a revulsion beyond my conscious control to finding textured FoodSaver bags in the chest freezer. Discard or repack. The difference with a chamber machine isn't intellectual, it's visceral.