Bacon and Hams (1917): Our First Book Review

posted by Dave Arnold  

We are the “Tech N Stuff” blog.  Here is some “N Stuff.” 

I have many pig books.  Bacon and Hams, by George J. Nicholls, is one of my two favorites of all time (here is the other).  It is weird, witty and beautiful – and unavailable today. It was published in 1917 , with a second edition in 1924.  Google books hasn’t scanned it yet (Google take note!).  But don’t despair.  Below I will provide some of the book’s best stuff.  You’ll feel like you’ve read it.           

 Back in 2004 I was organizing an exhibition about American country hams –how great they are, how we should eat more of them, etc, etc.  I read every book on pigs or ham in the New York Public Library system.  Every single one (here is a 700K pdf of the show).  Nicholls’ “Bacon and Hams”  jumped out as something special –the frontispiece of the book had a spectacular fold-out.  At the time the book was written, fold-out anatomical charts were a popular feature in medical books.  Nicholls decided to do one of the pig.  Brilliant.  I’ve scanned it and converted it to a Flash animation for your enjoyment: 

Click the image above to go to an interactive Flash version of George J Nicholls' unparalleled fold-out pig. It is 700K but well worth the wait. All of the numbers in the foldout are labeled with Nicholls' original labels. Clicking "unfold" starts the animation.

Just after the frontispiece is this striking photo:        

Author George J. Nicholls as a side of bacon. What else do you need to know?

Wow. I immediately stopped what I was doing, went on www.bookfinder.com, and located a perfect copy for 20 dollars. Sadly, you will not find that deal today.    

Who was George J. Nicholls? I could find very little. According to the title page, George J. Nicholls C.C., F.R.C.I., F.G.I. was the director of the provisions company George Bowles, Nicholls & Co.; Trustee, Member of Council, Chairman of Finance Committee, and honorary Examiner to the Institute of Certified Grocers; Chairman of Committee of the London Provision Exchange; Past Chairman of the Wholesale Produce Merchants’ Association, London; Past-President of the National Federation of Produce Merchants; Member of Committee, Provision Section, London Chamber of Commerce. He also had three sons –only two of whom joined the family bacon business.  How could such an august personage leave such a small trace in history?        

“Bacon and Hams” could have  been merely a 104 page technical trade book;  in Nicholls’ hands it became a paean to the pig.  The book grew out of a series of lectures Nicholls gave on the ins and outs of the bacon biz.  It displays his love of curing pork, picking out swine, and learning how the industry worked across the world. It begins by quoting Professor Oxholm, court physician to the King of Denmark:       

There is no better breakfast than bacon, especially when cured and smoked, and cooked in the delicious English way… the ideal breakfast for the masses, adults as well as children, is a couple of rashers of fat bacon and a slice or two of crisp toast spread with bacon dripping.        

Nicholls continues:        

And, indeed, the very suggestion is appetizing and forms a fitting opening to this book of Bacon. All men have an interest in bacon, with the exception, perhaps, of the Jew and the vegetarian; and the man of little imagination, but of sound appetitive instincts, who had bacon and eggs for breakfast one morning, and varied monotony by ordering eggs and bacon the next, was more than justified by the almost unanimous vote of the community –the pig, with some assistance from the hen, is the true autocrat of the breakfast table!        

Well, he forgot Muslims; but otherwise I couldn’t agree more.   Here are some choice tidbits from the rest of the book:       

How to bone:       

Nicholls got his good buddy, Mr Alfred W. Childs, M. G. I. to contribute an appendix on the Boning of Fore-Hocks and Gammons.  It is nearly impenetrable but I still love it. It is the most scientifically phrased butcher’s manual I have ever seen.  It is written for a surgeon.  The diagrams are wonderful:       

                          

What is Bacon?    

When we say bacon we mean the cured belly of the pig.  Back in Nicholls’ day, a bacon was the cured whole side of the pig.   The favored way to  trim a bacon hog was called the Wiltshire Cut.  Here it is: 

Bacon was the cured full side of the pig, not just the belly. In England most famously made as the Wiltshire Cut. Here is how it was broken down.

Common Pigs of England (in 1917):       

Nicholls lists the most common pigs in England and for which locales they are best suited.  Some current heritage favorites are in there, like Tamworth and Berkshire. 

Five common pigs in early 20th century England (clockwise from top left, original captions): The Berkshire, for the south of England generally; The Middle White, for Lancashire and Cheshire; The Large White, for Yorkshire and northern counties; The Tamworth, for Leicestershire, Shropshire, and Warwickshire; The Large Black (center), for smallholders everywhere and particularly in Cornwall, Devon, and the west of England.

Just a Great Photo:                         

Beautiful. Yes, that is a side of bacon on his head.

Times Have Changed:                         

"Truckload of Danish pigs." That's what used to pass for a truckload.

Nicholls Tours the Armour Plant in the Chicago Stockyards:       

Nicholls gives a fantastic account of the Chicago stockyards, complete with pictures, just a couple of years after Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle came out.       

                          

He describes the killing floor of the factory, and the large hoist ironically dubbed “The Wheel of Fortune,” by the slaughterhouse workers:       

The sound animal has not long to wait for his turn, and is driven along a narrow passage untill he arrives at a great wooden wheel, described in jocular vein as the “wheel of fortune.” By means of this he is hoisted, after being shackled by a chain round the hind leg, to a bar down which he slides to the hog butcher, who expertly sticks him in the throat.          

Here it is: 

The "Wheel of Fortune," where pigs were killed at the Chicago Stockyards.

Finally,  an image of a then new-fangled hog-scraping machine: 

Scraping Machine: Made by J. Wendelbo-Madsen, this machine has a capacity of two hundred pigs per hour. On the left a pig is being lowered into the scalding tub; another is shown being drawn into the machine. In the center a pig is seen leaving the machine, and another lies ready for hoisting for the next operation, viz singeing. Note where the animal has been stuck in the operation of killing. (original caption)

Thanks for reading.  Tell me if you’d like to see more  reviews of obscure books.

Turkey Time 4: Thanksgiving Day

posted by Dave Arnold

I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving, and that your birds turned out well.

Here’s the conclusion to my turkey saga (read the rest here, here, and here):

To recap, I made a boneless bionic turkey with aluminum sprinkler-pipe leg bones and cooked it in duck fat and butter using a two step processs.  I chilled it and brought it to my in-laws’ house three hours north of the FCI.  All I had to do on Thanksgiving day was warm up the bird and crisp the skin.

Kitchen space  was scarce, so I did everything on the grill outside.

Preheating. I removed the grates from the grill and put a hotel pan with oil directly on the burners to heat up. I put the bird on a rack above the hotel pan and partially closed and tented the grill to pre-warm the bird.

I took the bird out of the fridge, removed most of the aluminum foil from its cavity, and let it come up to room temperature for an hour.  I turned the grill into a turkey-warmer/pour-over fryer by removing the cooking grates and putting a hotel pan with two gallons of oil directly on the burners.  On top of the hotel pan I put a rack to hold the turkey.  I put the turkey on the rack and closed the grill (as much as I could) to allow the turkey to warm up while the oil was heating.  I couldn’t close the lid without mangling the turkey, so I propped the grill open and tented the lid with aluminum foil.  The area where the turkey was sitting floated around 275 F –a good warming temperature. 

Fat ladling time-lapse. 2 minutes.

When the oil was piping hot (around 375 F) I started ladling the fat, two-fisted, all over the top of the bird.  It browned even faster than I thought it would.  The whole bird was crisped up in about 2 minutes.  Bonus: there were no spewing geysers of oil, no huge flames, no Thanksgiving-ruining clouds of choking smoke.

Closeup of fat ladling.

So far, so good.

Finished bird.

Once inside, I removed the bionic leg bones and the rest of the foil.  The bird didn’t collapse. Another win.

Bird on table with bionic legs removed. Looks normal.

The moment of truth:

White meat. Perfect.

Dark meat. Perfect.

I was happy with the results.  The family enjoyed the bird.  Super moist but not watery.  Tender.  The taste of the herbs, duckfat and butter came through.  Next year, I might increase the temperature a half a degree to make the breast meat look a little more conventional.  There were also a couple of blood vessels that didn’t lose their red color.  That didn’t bother me too much.

Folks around the dinner table kept asking me if it had been “worth it.”  

 ”Did you like it?” I asked.

 ”Yes.”

Then I guess it was worth it.

Thanksgiving Skoal

posted by Nastassia Lopez

(Hey, what is this Skål Project anyway?)

Thanksgiving is about pigging out with the relatives, so for this Skoal roll, we’re highlighting people that are in some way related to one another.

First up, two guys who look related:

Jean-Georges Vongerichten: World-renowned chef, author, and four-star restaurateur. Has restaurants in the US, UK, Shanghai and Hong Kong

Eamonn Bowles: President of Magnolia Pictures, a film company that specializes in independent films like Food Inc; passing resemblance to JG.

Two of our friends rocking blue:

Marcus Samuelsson: Ethiopian born Swede; chef and co-owner of Aquavit; friend of FCI.

Jeremiah Bullfrog. Miami's own. Chef to Rick Ro$$. Friend of the blog.

Related by marriage:

Aaron Sanchez: Executive Chef and owner of the restaurants Centrico and Paladar; freqent guest on Iron Chef; host of the Food Network show Chef vs. City.

Ife Mora: Wife of Aaron Sanchez; Lead vocalist for afro-punk band SwEEtie.

Related through romance and work:

Zac Palacchio and Jori Emde: he runs Fatty Crab, she designed Cabrito. Both host the show "Urban Foragers" on the Heritage Radio Network.

A sous-vide pioneer, and a supplier of all things sous-vide:

Bruno Goussalt: The "Sous-Pope" of sous vide cooking; Chief Scientist at Cuisine Solutions; trained chefs like Robuchon and Ducasse on sous-vide cooking.

Philip Preston: Senor circulator; President of Polyscience; creator of the Anti-griddle and the Smoking Gun; really cool science guy and friend of Cooking Issues.

Related to FCI:

Wendy Knight: PR afficionado; press wrangler for FCI; travel writer; lover of Vermont.

Alexandra Boardley: Wendy's right-hand gal; resident of the dirty Jerz; recently engaged (congrats!)

Related to Dave:

Ridge Carpenter: Sister-in-law of Dave Arnold; kick-ass designer; mother to Orson.

Turkey Time Part 3: How To Cook It

posted by Dave Arnold

Here is a recap of what we know about cooking turkeys:

1. The breast meat should be cooked to 64 or 65 degrees C.
2. The leg meat should be cooked no lower than 65 degrees C.
3. The longer you cook turkey meat, the worse it gets.
4. The turkey should be served whole.  We Americans want our turkeys to look like turkey.  No tube shaped birds (sorry Nils). No carved up pieces.
5. Don’t vacuum the whole turkey because the bones will make the meat unappetizingly pink.

For the full story see our post here.

My turkey this year will be low-temperature cooked, cooled, and brought to my in-laws’ house for finishing off.  I divided the problem into two parts — cooking and finishing–and tried to find the best solution to each.

Problem 1: Cooking the Turkey

We needed to figure out a way to cook the whole turkey in 2-3 hours. Since turkeys are big, expensive and in short supply at the FCI,  I ran feasibility tests on chickens.

Idea 1: Flay the bird, cook it flat, and reassemble it around a skeleton. 

The bird cooked quickly and properly but the reassembly idea didn’t work at all.  It looked bad, and I got burned.

Trying to reassemble a cooked chicken doesn't work

Idea 2: Two-part cooking –the double-dippin’ chicken.

The inside of the thighs are the hardest part of a bird to cook.  The bird is thickest there, so it takes the longest to heat. Even worse, that part of the bird needs to cook to a higher temperature than the breast does.  We investigated a two-temperature, two-time cooking technique.   We set a circulator full of oil to 65 .5 degrees C and suspended a chicken in the oil so that just the legs would be cooked. After 1 hour we lowered the temperature of the oil to 64C and submerged the whole bird. The legs would be cooked longer than is ideal with this technique ( for a turkey the legs would cook for 3-4 hours) , but the texture of dark meat is less affected by long cooking times than the breast.

Double dippin chicken: A test to try and get the leg meat cooked longer and at a higher temperature than the breast we lowered the legs only into 65 degree oil. After 1 hour we lowered the rest of the bird in, lowered the temperature to 64 and cooked 40 minutes more. We then flash-fried the skin. The meat was still pink around the bone. Drat!

Surprisingly, when we cut the bird open the thigh meat was still pink. WTF? My guess is that the meat around the thigh doesn’t look right if it is cooked too slowly. Myoglobin is the pigment that makes meat pink.  Myogloblin keeps its red color if it is heated slowly. Low and gentle is good for texture, but not for color. We needed a more sophisticated technique that would cook the meat inside the thigh quickly.

Idea 3: The bionic chicken.

Concept: cook the bird from the inside-out.  Bone the bird, replace the leg bones with aluminum tubes, stuff the carcass with aluminum foil (heats quickly, maintains structure), and pump hot oil through the tubes to cook the inside of the thigh quickly.

The test: first, bone the bird.  We used a technique that avoids cutting the skin:  Starting at the butt end of the bird you carefully remove the bones by slowly turning the bird inside out.  Then you carefully remove the leg bones;  the wing bones are left in. It was our intern Ed’s last day (he graduated today) so we gave him the honor of performing the boning.

Ed with an inside-out test chicken.

Next, cut pieces of aluminum tubing to the same length as the leg and thigh bones.  We cut slits all along the tubes so they would act like sprinklers.  We made the knee joint by joining the tubes with rubber tubing.  We attached these bionic leg bones to the pump output of an immersion circulator.  Witness the legs being tested with water:

Testing our aluminum-tube bionic-leg hot-oir sprinkler cooking system with water

We stuffed the inside of the chicken with aluminum foil and threaded the aluminim tubes into the legs.  Then we trussed the bird — no one would suspect a thing.  We put the bird on a cooling rack over a lexan full of oil heated to 65 C with an immersion circulator.  We hooked up a second circulator and used it to pump hot oil through the leg tubes.  The extra oil poured out of the bird and back into the lexan.  After 20 minutes we lowered the temperature to 64C and dropped the bird into the oil. 40 minutes later we pulled it.

Cooking the bionic chicken: Take the fully boned chicken, stuff the cavity with aluminum foil, and put aluminum sprinkler-tubes where the leg bones used to be. Pump 65 degree oil through the legs for 20 minutes then turn down the oil to 64 and immerse chicken for 40 more minutes.

The bird held its shape even when we removed the foil.  It looked like a whole, untouched bird. The meat was perfect all the way through.  

The bionic chicken is perfectly cooked throughout.

We had our technique.

Problem 2 Finishing the Turkey:

Clearly, flash frying would be the best way to finish the turkey – but the turkey I have is too big to fry whole.  It won’t fit in a standard turkey fryer, and I don’t want a reputation for ruining Thanksgiving at both my in laws’ house AND my mom’s house.  So how about a torch?

The Problem with Torches:

Nils and I don’t like to finish meats with a torch.  They don’t taste right.  Two theories for this. 1: You can taste the fuel and 2: the heat from a torch is too high.  I figured out a solution to the first problem.

Torches don’t burn 100% of their propane.  Some years ago I did an art piece where I battled a mechanical fire-breathing dragon (don’t ask). The dragon was a large, kerosene powered flame-thrower of my creation.  I tested the flame several times, and I thought I could handle it, no problem.  But when I actually stood in front of the flame, something interesting happened.  All of the kerosene that was moving too fast to be burned efficiently hit  my shield, slowed down, and caught on fire, creating a huge fireball. I got burned pretty badly.

One of my old art pieces. Me as St. George. Here I learned that all the fuel in a torch-type fire doesn't get combusted. If you put something in front of a fire like this to slow down the fuel (like an idiot with a shield), more of the fuel ignites.

That was the last time my wife trusted me when I said xy or z idea if mine was “no problem.”  But that experience gave me an idea about the torch.  What if we put a piece of wire mesh between the torch and the bird? Maybe we could catch and combust the excess propane?

Propane torches create off-flavors. To stop that I fired the torch through a chinois. No more torch taste.

It worked! Propane taste gone.  I was so happy I ordered a square of super high-temp nichrome wire mesh and a 500,000 btu roofing torch.

500,000 btu's of roofing-torch action. Awesome but not family friendly.

 But……….

Torch finished skin. Not so bueno. Spotty and not crispy.

Propane taste isn’t the only problem with torches.  The finish is spotty and, as my intern Fabulous pointed out, “The skin isn’t crispy.”  I opened my mouth to give a counter-argument and he just repeated “not crispy.”  Point taken.  Plus, I don’t think the family would have appreciated the roofing torch.

Winning Technique: Pourover Frying:

Ladling hot oil over the skin for several minutes worked great.  That’s what I’ll do. Simple.

Pouring hot oil over the cooked meat made for crispy skin and didn't overcook the meat the way we thought it would.

Bionic Turkey:

We boned out the turkey and created the bionic leg bones.

Bionic Turkey: two pieces of aluminum tubing are cut to the same length as the leg and thigh bones. Cuts are made in in the tubes so they act like sprinklers. They are joined at the "knee" with a length of rubber tubing.

We salted the inside of the bird,stuffed it with herbs and aluminum foil, and installed the bionic legs.

Raw bionic turkey

We filled a pot with duck fat and butter and heated it up to 66 degrees C.  We put the bird on a cooling rack over the pot, hooked up the legs, and turned on the pump.

Bionic turkey on a draining rack over 3 gallons of duck fat and butter

The bird was too big so grease went everywhere.  We MacGyvered it up.

The turkey was too big for the rack. Fat was leaking everywhere. We improvised.

After an hour we lowered the circulators to 65 and dropped the bird into the oil for 1.5 hours.

The turkey out of the fat. Ready for Thanksgiving.

Then I threw the bird in the blast chiller for half an hour, packed it in ice, put it in a gym bag and caught a train to Connecticut.  I’ll tell you how it turned out after the big day.

Turkey Time Part 2: Buying the Turkey

posted by Dave Arnold

Last Saturday I made my pilgrimage to Manhattan Live Poultry to get this year’s turkey.  I was extremely happy with the quality of last year’s bird, and I like picking out the animal – I can be sure the bird is healthy and the slaughtering is humane.  The guys aren’t rough with the birds.  Other than the smell, visiting is a pleasant experience.  Unfortunately, it is becoming more and more difficult to buy live poultry in New York.  Not that many years ago, live poultry places dotted  the island of Manhattan.  Now there are only two, and both of them are way uptown. Sad.

One of the last live poultry joints on the island of Manhattan. What's the world coming to?

Upon entering MLP I expected to see what I saw last year–standard-breed turkeys and the giant black “wild style” turkeys running around together.  To my horror they only had the standard breed this year. It was too late to make other arrangements. You should wait two days to cook the bird after it is killed to make sure it goes through rigor mortis — I needed to cook the bird Monday or Tuesday, so it was now or never.

Only standard-breed turkeys this year.

I am a bit of a knot connoisseur.  This year I noted that the live poultry folks use their own special knot when they weigh live birds.  The knot has to go on fast, come off fast, and leave the bird unharmed.  The worker holds the birds by the legs, puts the rope between the legs, quickly wraps the rope around the legs two times, and then passes the rope under and between the legs.  The weight of the bird keeps the knot tight.  The birds remain calm, though they tend to spread out their wings.

How to weigh live poultry. They use a special knot that goes on instantly, comes of instantly, and doesn't hurt the bird. It takes advantage of the structure of bird legs. Twice around the legs, then through and up.

I picked out the biggest turkey they  had.  A mere 25 pounds.  Ridiculously small compared to last year, but a fine bird nonetheless.

My turkey. Only 25 pounds.

They killed it, bled it, scalded it, and plucked it for me in 7 minutes flat.

I rushed the bird back to the FCI and threw it in the blast chiller to cool it down.

My turkey back at the FCI. I also bought 2 pigeons.

Next: the cooking.

Pressure-Cooked Stocks: We Got Schooled.

posted by Dave Arnold

For years Nils and I have maintained that pressure cooking stocks and broths is the way to go. We’ve always said that the high temperature in a pressure cooker gives better extraction and meatier flavors than normal cooking. Turns out we were wrong. Sort of.

Conventional stock vs pressure-cooked. Who wins?

While I hate being wrong, this particular error taught us a lot – including:

• All pressure cookers aren’t created equal. The cooker you use affects flavor.
• Pressure cooking can be used to modify conventionally cooked stocks.
• Not all stock ingredients react the same way in the pressure cooker.

So what’s going on? Here is our journey:

I was planning to write a post on the superiority of pressure cooked stock. As a formality, I set up a blind taste test between conventional and pressure-cooked stocks. I had no doubt the pressure cooker would win. I chose white chicken stock because it is simple, doesn’t cook as long as veal, and has fewer variables than a brown stock. We weighed out two identical amounts of chicken, mirepoix, herbs, and water and pressure-cooked one for 45 minutes and let the other one simmer on the stove for 2 hours. We strained both stocks and weighed what was left. The conventional stock had reduced more than the pressure-cooked stock (by 10 percent) so I added enough water to it to equal the volume of the pressure cooked stock. Some of the interns had a problem with this step but it is the only way to compare two stocks properly.

Two batches of identical ingredients

We tasted both stocks blind.

The aroma of the pressure cooked stock was clearly superior. The color was deeper as well (because of this all future tests were done actually blind –with our eyes closed). Unfortunately the conventional stock tasted better. It had a stronger chicken flavor and was better balanced overall.

I was distraught. We tasted again. Same result.

I had the interns make another batch of stock. Same result.

Then we decided to test each individual ingredient separately. We did side by side tests of chicken only, celery only, and onion only (the carrot got 86’ed by accident). The conventional chicken won. Loss. The celeries were both good, just different. The pressure-cooked one tasted more like celery tea and the conventional one tasted more like soup. Testers almost all preferred the conventional celery. Loss again. The pressure-cooked onion clearly won –thank god. Pressure cooked onion had a big, round, sweet flavor. Conventional onion was useless. Win.

The win with the onion broth wasn’t enough to keep Nils and I from being pretty depressed. I lost sleep over the matter. I had one more test up my sleeve.

I took 4 liters of conventional chicken stock from the restaurant and pressure-cooked half while the other half simmered on the stove. This time, I didn’t use the school’s pressure cooker, I used my own. When I compared the two stocks side by side the pressure cooked one was far browner. I hadn’t thought the pressure cooker would change the color of a pre-made stock. When we tasted them the pressure-cooker won! Finally.

I then ran the same test with the school’s pressure cooker and the pressure cooker lost. WTF?

Turns out all pressure cookers aren’t the same. All pressure cookers reach similar temperatures –approximately 250 F (120 C) at 15psi; but the way they regulate pressure is different. The pressure cooker at the school, made by Iwatani, uses what’s called a jiggler to regulate pressure. A weighted jiggle-top sits on top of a tube.  The steam pressure builds up in the tube until it is strong enough to lift up the jiggler and let the excess steam escape.  The valve makes a continuous chu-chu-chu-chu sound as it operates. You want to adjust the heat so it doesn’t chu-chu too fast, but steam is always going to escape. There is no other way to know whether the pot is hot enough. Theoretically, the pressure gauge on the lid should allow you to cook just below the point where the jiggler lets steam out, but in practice the gauge doesn’t work properly.

Iwatani's top. I liked the idea of the gauge but it doesn't work. The steam release valve on the left is nice (it should be standing up when you are cooking). I don't like the jiggler. On the bottom side, however, there is a screen filter to protect the valve which is a nice touch.

Another common pressure regulator on inexpensive pressure cookers uses a rotating switch that allows you to set the pressure at 15 psi, 5 psi, or to release the steam pressure entirely.  This type of regulator also requires escaping steam to indicate proper pressure.

Fagor style pressure cooker. My problem with this style of cooker (other than it allows steam to escape) is that the pressure valve gets clogged easily and is difficult to clean.

My pressure-cooker, made by Kuhn Rikon, uses a different type of regulator.  It has a spring valve that moves up and down; it both regulates and indicates pressure. When the valve stem rises enough to see the first red ring you have 5 psi.  When you see the second red ring you have 15 psi. No steam escapes. If you heat the pot too much it lets steam escape to tell you to turn the flame down.  Once you comply it goes silent again. Nice.

Kuhn Rikon's top.

I have known for a long time that less liquid evaporates in my pressure cooker than in the other types.  This becomes especially apparent when you are cooking for several hours as we sometimes do (for softening spices, etc).  I hadn’t thought that the escaping steam would affect taste as well, but I should have - it makes sense.

We ran one more test. Conventional for 1.5 hours vs. the school’s pressure cooker for 45 minutes vs. my pressure cooker for 45 minutes vs. the school’s pressure cooker for 20 minutes (in case we had just been cooking too long and blasting the flavor away).

Dueling pressure cookers: Iwatani front, Kuhn Rikon back.

The results:

My pressure cooker won, followed by the conventional cooking;  both of the school’s pressure cookers scored lower. I feel a lot better.

But we still need more tests. And more will come.

PS: Many cooks have an intutitive feeling that pressure cooking stocks is a bad idea.  Their reasoning isn’t related to the previous discussion and isn’t born-out by our tests. Here are the reasons they usually give (and my responses):

1. Pressure cooking will make the stock cloudy. That is incorrect. The boiling in a pressure cooker is no more violent than in a pot, so stocks don’t get any cloudier. We have done many side-by sides to prove this.
2. Pressure cooking extracts bitter components. No one has detected bitterness in pressure cooked stock we’ve made.
3. Not being able to skim the stock will introduce off-flavors. We have not noticed this in any of our tests.

Holiday Cocktail Course

El Baja Panties: Our newest home-friendly cocktail in 1970's era holiday style.

The alcohol has been flowing in the lab. The rotovap is working again, master bartender/mixologist/friend Tony Conigliaro is in town, and today we abused ourselves by tasting all of the horribly old liquor in Dave’s liquor cabinet. What we’re hinting at is:

********ANOTHER SHAMELESS PLUG FOR OUR CLASS*************

Wednesday, December 2nd, from 6:30pm-8:30pm Dave and Nils will be giving a holiday cocktail course at the French Culinary Institute. Whether you spin a dreidel, light a kinara, or love Jesus, our Swedish Glögg, hot buttered rum, and cocktails flamed with a Red Hot Poker will complement every politically correct holiday party. You’ll see techniques like rotary evaporation, carbonation, and vacuum infusion, and learn tricks to maximize cocktail taste and texture.

Plus, it’s a great excuse to get hammered before 8pm. Buy tickets here. Check out some of our cool cocktails here, here and here.

******We now return you to our regularly scheduled programming*******

Dave’s Effort to Stop Ruining Thanksgiving

posted by Nastassia Lopez

Dave and his turkey.

Every family has their own Thanksgiving tradition. Mine has an annual football game. Nils leaves the country. Dave tries to find the best way to cook a whole turkey for his family.

So far, Dave’s track record has been pretty tragic. The first year, he ruined Thanksgiving by deep frying it on the back lawn at his mom’s house. He burned a patch of grass with spewing hot oil sending one pissed-off stepfather into his bedroom-lights out and all- for a good part of the night.

Two years later, against better judgement, Dave packed up the deep fryer and brought it to his mom’s yet again. He fried it on the patio this time but spilled oil on the flagstone. You know the rest.

Thanksgiving ruined twice.

The deep-fried birds were good, but not worth the familial drama. Perhaps low-temperature cooking would do the trick.  Last year, Dave ran some low-temperature tests on a turkey he stole from FCI’s annual “Happy Thanksgiving Employee Turkey Giveaway” to determine the bird’s optimum cooking temperature.

Breast, leg and thigh at different times/temps.

The breast meat was best when circulated at 64 C but the leg meat was no good.  It actually tasted OK but looked raw.  Try getting your family to eat raw looking turkey. The leg meat tasted good  at 65 C, which is lucky because by 66 C the breast was bad (dry and stringy).  Dave decided to cook his bird at 65 C.

El pollo vivo.

So Dave went uptown to one of the last remaining pollo vivo shops in Manhattan and bought a live turkey. The choice was between a huge (35 lb) wild turkey, or a regular (read: punier) domestic turkey. Guess which one made it home?

The big guy makes it home.

He gave the bird one day to rest and pass through rigor mortis. Then he had to figure out how to cook it. Vacuum bagging was not an option because bird bones are mostly hollow and filled with a red marrow that, when vacuumed, is sucked out of the bone and into the meat, making it look uncooked (And no matter how much you tell people it’s cooked, they won’t believe you).

Double circulators and a turkey hiding in duck fat and oil.

Instead, he filled a stock pot with duck fat and butter, and  jammed the cavity with herbs. He then used two circulators set at 65 C. A hose was attached to one of the circulator’s spouts and pushed into the cavity of the bird so that hot fat was not only circulated  on the outside of the bird, but also injected into the center. It was circulated for two hours, chilled in a blast freezer, and then packed it up to his mom’s house where it was finished off in an oven (obviously a deep fryer was out of the question. Fool me twice…).

The results were good.   The only complaint he had was that the  inside of the thighs (where the joint attaches to the torso) were too pink and needed more time, so he sliced that meat and finished it in a pan for 20 seconds.

Dave has resolved to do a better job this year.   On Friday we set up a more sophisticated test.  We separated thighs, breasts and legs and cooked them at different times and temperatures as follows:

The optimum breast was cooked at 64 C for one hour.  65 C for an hour was also good, and 66 C for an hour was pushing it, but better than any of the breasts circulated for four hours.

The thigh cooked for an hour at 65 C  was delicious, but for regular people, might be a little undercooked.  All of the four-hour thighs got worse, drier and stringier as the temperature went up.

The leg was perfect at 65 C for an hour where the one cooked for four hours at 65C was horribly dry.

This Thanksgiving, Dave plans on circulating his turkey in the duck fat and oil again (and he’ll be able to finish it off in a deep fryer because  he’ll be at the in-laws’).  The real struggle is trying to find a way to cook the whole 35 lb turkey for an hour if the breast is best at 64 C, and the thigh/leg is best at 65-66 C.  Again, the most important thing is that we serve the whole bird while keeping all of the body parts intact. Because nothing ruins Thanksgiving (or is more un-American) than a table set with an already-carved bird.

McGee Days Two and Three: Steak, Fish, Burgers and Love

posted by Nastassia Lopez

Dave, Nils and Harold.

The cool thing about this job is that I get to sit in on the demos that Dave and Nils teach, eat delicious things, laugh a good majority of the time, and learn a hell of a lot about food tech. The second day with McGee was all about heat, the third day we learned new techniques and messed with flavors. There were a lot of awesome demos, but I’m going to highlight some of the cooler nuggets of info that I found interesting and applicable to the things I like to eat/cook.

Flipping Your Meat

First up: cooking steak at home to acheive optimum deliciousness. McGee shared how he cooked four different virtual steaks on his computer (his computer cooks steaks; our printer prints scallop shuttles).  The computer compared the effects of steak flipping intervals (6 min., 3 min., 15 sec., and 60 sec.) on cooking time and each steaks’ relative “doneness.”  Dave recreated the experiment for the class (flipping two different steaks—one every 5 seconds, the other, just once).  The frequent flipping of the steak ensures that the meat cooks more evenly, which makes sense; but counterintuitively, the one that is flipped more will also be done 30% faster than one that is flipped once or twice.   

 

This technique works well because neither side has enough time to absorb too much heat when it’s on the fire, nor does it lose too much heat when it’s facing away. You also get less of a “well-doneness” layer on the outside of the steak (indicated by the red line in our electronic steaks) and a more even, gradual spread of “doneness” throughout.

Steak on the left flipped one time in 15 minutes. Steak on the right flipped every 15 seconds.

When the steaks were “done” we ensured they were cooked to the same internal temperature  by putting them in ziplock bags and circulating them for 30 minutes in 56 degree water.  The class tasted. The ones that were flipped more frequently were more consistently even throughout, with a nice well-done crust on the outside.  The ones flipped only once had a larger proportion of overcooked parts and didn’t even have a better crust—surprising.

Ike Jime Taste Tests

1. just ike jime; 2. western style; 3. anesthetized with clove oil and ike jime

On day one of the class, fish were killed with three different methods to determine the effects of slaughtering on taste and texture:

1. Western Killing: allow to suffocate in air for 30 minutes and whack over the head.

2. Ike-Jime (spinal chord destruction): sever the spinal chord, shove a needle up the spine and bleed out.

3. Anesthesia plus Ike Jime: knock the fish out with clove oil and then do ike-jime (for the full blow-by-blow see  post here).

On days two and three we blind tasted the fish that were killed on day one both raw and cooked.  Dave and Nils were a tad worried about the demo because they had never done ike jime on blackfish, and weren’t sure how long rigor mortis would last.  Most fish shouldn’t be eaten super fresh—you should let them go through rigor mortis.  Different fish go through rigor at different rates so different fish should be stored for different amounts of time before you eat them.   Sure enough, on day two of the class, 20 hours after the fish were killed, they were still in different states of rigor mortis.  The results were going to be weird.

The Western fish was favored by the class in the first raw tasting. It had more of that familiar “fishy” flavor, the pink, unbled color we’re used to, and the texture was good.   The fish that had been ike jimed without clove oil (after an unsuccessful escape from the demo table) was tough, overly-crunchy and had minimal flavor.  The fish that had been anesthesized and then ike jimed was fresh tasting, but had the least pleasant texture. Nils and Dave were dejected. A western-killed fish had never-ever won a taste test before.  The house favorite—ike plus anesthesia, came in last! We hoped that it was just too early to sample the ike jimed and anesthetized blackfish because they were still in rigor. The un-bled Western head-bashed fish was at its prime. Rigor had set in earlier so his muscles softened and became limper faster than his other ike jimed buddies.

For the cooked tasting Dave and Nils cooked the three fish in a circulator at 57 C  for 25 minutes, and no one liked one more than the other.  The class could not make out a real discernible difference between the three.  Nils commented that the Ike Jime and anesthetized fish seized up significantly when they were cooking. Again a disappointment for Dave and Nils.  We hoped to be vindicated on day three.

The third day we ran the same blind tests again 44 hours after the fish had been killed.  The Western fish was still fishy, but lost the fresh flavor from the day before and turned a bit mealy. The ike jimed fish were both firm, but the one that had been anesthetized had more flavor and held the texture much better. WIN!

The real flavor difference came out in the cooked test.  There was no comparison between the Western style and the Ike Jimed.  The Western had become mushy and soft.  The just Ike Jimed fish was good, but the texture was still tough. The anesthesized/Ike Jime fish had good flavor and the texture was firm but nice.  For blackfish, we decided that it needed to rest a little longer than the fluke and sea bass to allow rigor to set in.  We also realized (yet again) that sedating the fish with clove oil and then performing Ike Jime simply makes it taste better. WIN! Dave and Nils were pretty happy.

Ike Jime and clove oil: 1. Western head bashing: 0.  

Distillation, Rotary Evaporation and Apples

Dave distilling the bourbon in the rotary evaporator.

When McGee was talking about distillation we pulled out the rotary evaporator cause its the only way we distill.  Yes, we finally have the rotary evaporator up and running again! (After spending more than $500 in parts we lost at Star Chefs.)  Rotary evaporation is a specialized form of distillation that works gently at low temperatures to preserve flavors.  Read about it here. Dave used it to re-distill bourbon.  When you re-distill bourbon you keep its aroma and flavor but get rid of all the harsh non-volatile oak compounds.  We love those compounds normally, but they would have messed with the cocktail that Dave and Nils were planning to make.

They had juiced and clarified a case of their favorite apples, Ashmead’s Kernel.  Ashmead’s Kernel and re-distilled bourbon is a match made in heaven. You have the crisp and tart flavors of the apple, mixed with the goodness of the bourbon, without the throaty oak. Dave talks about the apple and the drink here. I think it was the most interesting cocktail of the class (and there were many). On day 2 Dave and Nils had made some kick-ass cocktails with two other cool varieties of apples that we love: Wickson and Honeycrisp.  Both were clarified, mixed with gin and slushed out with liquid nitrogen.  Same cocktail, different apples, very different flavors. I hate gin, but I could probably pound those cocktails all night.

Although rotary evaporation is fairly new, McGee pointed out that distillation goes back to 3500 BC. For those of you who don’t have a rotary evaporator at home, try doing it the old-school way.  Cover a pot of your favorite alcohol, bring it to a boil, and collect the beads of condensation that drip off on the inside of  your lid. Easy as 123 and you become a felon (distillation is illegal).  I did it at home with popcorn and water.  The stuff that dripped off the lid tasted a lot like popcorn.  Cool, easy, AND legal.

Corked Wine and Plastic Wrap

Corked wine is any wine that has been contaminated with TCA (2,4,6-Trichloroanisole). This molecule is found in some corks and can be transferred from cork to bottle, making your wine smell like wet dog, moldy towels, or wet cardboard.  Here’s a good trick before you dump the whole bottle:  Pour the wine into bowl or carafe, ball up some plastic wrap, and let it sit for a few minutes.  The TCA molecule is chemically similar to the polyethylene in the plastic wrap, and sticks to the plastic.

We didn’t have any corked wine, so test this, McGee poured some Pernod into two different containers (Pernod and other anise flavored alcohols have flavor compounds chemically similar to TCA).  He put some balled up some plastic wrap in one, waited, and passed both containers around the class.  The Pernod with the plastic wrap had lost most of its TCA-like aroma compounds.

Gymnemic Acid and Miraculan

The third morning started off with a real kick to the mouth.  We tricked everyone’s tastebuds with gymnemic acid (the substance itself tastes like licking the bottom of a rabbit cage; don’t ask us how we know this) and miraculin. Gymnemic is a sweetness killer, miraculin makes sour things taste sweet.  We disgusted everyone first, and then we ruined everyone’s tooth enamel with limes.  Check out Dave’s write-up here.

Delicious Hamburgers

For the past few weeks we’ve been working long and hard to find the way to make the most delicious burgers on the planet.  We’ve almost got it. With a combination of reduced beef jus, butter, a circulator and a deep fryer, we’re almost ready to reveal our secret recipe for the best damn burgers in the city. But you’ll just have to wait .

How to Make Everything Taste Bad in a Very Instructive Way and How To Eat 20 Limes

posted by Dave Arnold

In the 1880’s western scientists figured out that chewing the leaves of the tropical Indian plant gymnema sylvestre completely obliterates your ability to taste sweet.  It was known in India long before then — they called it gurmar, “sugar destroyer.”

Gymnema Sylvestre capsules and low-quality varietal grape juice

The active ingredients in the plant are gymnemic acids.  They don’t mask sweetness – they actually block the ability of sweet receptors to sense sweet compounds, including artificial sweeteners like splenda and saccharine.  Gymnemic acid makes sugar taste like sand, fruit taste like an acid bomb, and dessert chocolate taste like baking chocolate.  You have to taste it to believe it.  We first used gymnemic acid in a demo with Harold McGee three years ago, and we’ve been demo’ing it ever since.  The results  are as unpleasant as they are instructive, a rare opportunity to knock out one of your tastes while leaving the rest intact. You can experience how sweetness interacts with acid, salt, umami, and bitter in common foods that we take for granted. I understand a lot more about fruit, ice cream, and Coca Cola  now that I’ve tried them on gymnemic acid. 

One possible real-world application of sweet destruction is figuring out how foods will taste after they ferment. Fermentation gets rid of sugar.  Although fermentation produces many flavors unrelated to sugar loss, I think gymnemic acid could provide useful insight into the acid/bitter balance in juices and ciders BEFORE they ferment.  I don’t know of anyone doing this. I tested my hypothesis at the most recent Harold McGee class by including  Ashmead’s Kernel apple (which is sometimes used in cider) and pinot noir and cabernet sauvignon grape juice in our tasting. Unfortunately our grape juice was not of high enough quality to really get a feel for what the varietals taste like without sugar. The apple slice compared well with my memory of Ashmead’s Kernel cider. Qualified success.

Would you ever use this stuff in cooking? Hell no. It tastes terrible and the effects last a long time (like half an hour).  Should everyone try it once? Hell yes. Here’s how:

First, buy yourself some Gymnema Sylvestre.  It’s pretty easy to get — it is used in Ayurvedic and homeopathic medicine to control blood sugar and appetite. Ours, a green powder loaded into vegetarian gel capsules, comes from Tattva’s herbs.  We break each capsule and divide the powder into two servings –more than enough.  Next, arrange yourself a tasting plate –here is ours:

Gymnemic acid tasting plate: Top row: strawberries and blueberries, gymnema sylvestre powder, bad pinot-noir juice; Middle row: Ashmead's kernel apple, honey, bad cabernet juice; Bottom row: brown and white sugar, bread (palate cleanser), 60% chocolate, marshmallows, and pecan cookies.

Taste some of the stuff before you take the gymnemic acid.  Get a feel for the acidity of the fruit, the taste of the chocolate, etc.  Now put the gymnema powder on your tongue.  I’m not going to lie to you, it is unpleasant.  Just do it.  You’re shooting for enlightenment.  Keep the stuff on your tongue and swirl it around your mouth.  Don’t swallow it right away.  Did I mention it tastes bad? Stop complaining.  Try to keep that stuff in your mouth as long as you can.  It takes about a minute for the effect to kick in. Afterwards, take a small sip of water and chew some bread to cleanse your palate.  Start tasting stuff. Don’t worry, the effect will eventually wear off; but don’t do it on your way to a 4 star restaurant. Most people start getting their sweet back in about 20 minutes, and are fully back within an hour.

On the Fun Side:

No one is having Gymnemic acid parties – it’s interesting, but I can’t say  it’s fun. Miraculin, on the other hand…

 Miraculin makes sour things taste sweet, while still remaining sour — it causes your sweet receptors to respond to acid. It comes from the miracle fruit, from the West African plant Synsepalum dulcificum.  It is truly cool stuff.  The best I’ve ever had is the freeze-dried kind that we were given as a gift by our buddy Katsuya Fukushima.  Unfortunately it’s hard to get.  You can buy the fruit fresh or forzen, but it’s expensive and goes bad quickly.  The stuff I get now is called Miracle Frooties. I buy it on eBay from LadyKingel. She gives some of the profit to charity and ships instantly.  Whenever I do miraculin I get stupid and eat twenty limes. 

 In case you were wondering, gymnemic acid ruins miraculin too. 

Lemons, limes, vinegar, and a compressed miracle berry tab.