Recent Modernist Blog Posts Page 9

Thanks for the question! There's a few different things going on here and I'll try to address them all.

First off, the boiling is usually done to kill "lactobacillus", a type of bacteria that actually thrives in the lower temperature range of sous vide cooking. This bacteria isn't harmful to you, it's actually the same kind that is used a lot when making cheese and yogurt. However, it does tend to smell bad, so your food can have a funky or "bad cheese" smell to it. It can also cause your bag to puff up which can affect the transfer of heat.

How to Sous Vide a Prime Rib Roast

This was from a recent ask Jason episode I did:

Dear Jason,
I have a five pound prime rib that I want to make. I've been using sous vide for a year and I love it. Modernist Cooking is my go-to site, but I'm confused. I see 134 degrees for no more than 10 hours here, and 125.6 degrees at 24-36 hours on another site that I don't trust as much. But that site shows edge-to-edge medium rare that they torch for crispness like I will. I wonder if it's too soft though. Please help? Pretty please?

With the holidays in full swing, I've been getting a lot of questions on the best way to cook prime rib. Everyone wants to impress their family at holiday dinners, and prime rib is a great way to do it...provided you cook it properly. My family and I almost always do prime rib for our Christmas dinner and now with sous vide it's incredibly easy and convenient to make.

Based on my research and experience at home, here's everything you need to know about sous viding prime rib for your next family dinner. If you are looking for more information about prime rib in general, or prefer a more traditional way to cook prime rib, I highly recommend reading the Serious Eats article discussing it.

Simple syrup is a sweet, easily dissolved liquid that is perfect for cocktails or sodas. It's usually around a 1:1 ratio of sugar and water. The water is heated enough for the sugar to melt, then the mixture is cooled. The simple syrup can then be used to sweeten drinks without any of the grittiness that can occur when using plain sugar.

There are many types of simple syrup, depending on what type of sugar you use and whether or not their are any spices or herbs used during the process.

The holidays are often a time of scrambling to find "more stuff" that people in your life will want. While we all love to get gifts, sometimes it's the handmade items that we can actually use that mean the most to us. There are many great food gift ideas that meet this criteria, but you can only stand to get so many fruit cakes each year!

As many of you know, I've had infusions on the brain this year, so I decided to make several infusions to give as gifts. I'm also helping my mother-in-law make infusions to give to all of her friends.

• Easy to make in large quantities
• Can tailor them to specific people
• Used over time, so they think of you often
• Most will last for several weeks, if not months
• Inexpensive compared to buying pre-made flavored oils and vinegars

When making the infusions, you can use any of the main infusing methods, including traditional infusions, sous vide infusions, whipping siphon infusions, or fat washing. Regardless of the method, or the types of infusions, the process is the same. Here are some step-by-step directions for giving infusions as gifts.

I recently finished my boook Modernist Cooking Made Easy: Infusions. While it was a really fun book to work on, I did end up with more infused alcohols, vinegars and oils than I knew what to do with! I gave a lot of them way to my friends and family, but one of the uses I enjoyed most was using them in cocktails. I thought I'd share some of what I've learned, some of which is also in the book.

I try to keep it simple when creating cocktails using infused spirits and usually turn to recipes that will showcase the infusion while subtly complementing it. I tend to stick to variations of traditional cocktails that are easy to tweak, letting the infusion shine.

Modernist equipment can be expensive! But every year around Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday there are great deals that can make the equipment much more affordable. I'll be updating this page with the latest deals, when they run, and how to get them. So whether you are looking for gifts for your friends and family or a little something for yourself, you'll be able to see it all here!

Did you know that I also have a Modernist Gift Guide? It's the perfect place to find gift ideas for all your friends and family.

I had the opportunity to attend the recent grand opening and ribbon cutting ceremony of the Museum of Food and Drink (MOFAD) in Brooklyn. The museum is the first of its kind and was celebrating the launch of its first permanent space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. It is housed in a 5,000 square foot warehouse that they hope to expand in several years. The museum consists of exhibits detailing the history and makeup of various cooking ingredients as well as several interactive exhibits.

The day started off with a presentation by several of the key members of the museum, including Founder Dave Arnold, Executive Director Peter Kim, several members of the Advisory and Culinary Boards such as Jessica Harris, Elizabeth Falkner and Bill Telepan. They talked about the uniqueness of the museum, the long road to get where it is, and the vision for the future.

This is a detailed review of the Nomiku, an inexpensive immersion circulator initially funded by an extremely successful Kickstarter campaign in 2012. This circulator, attached to a suitable container, will provide an excellent water bath for sous vide cooking. If you are interested in getting involved with sous vide cooking, this review will give you all of the information you need to determine if the Nomiku is the right immersion circulator for your needs.

Since reviewing the leading Inexpensive Immersion Circulators several years ago, I have recently been able to do some additional hands-on testing with the Nomiku. At the time of this writing there were 187 customer reviews on Amazon for the Nomiku with a rating of 3.6. This compares to a rating of 4.5 (381 reviews) for the Anova Precision Cooker, 4.7 (549 reviews) for the Anova One and 4.6 (95 reviews) for the Sansaire Immersion Circulator.

This past weekend my wife and I got to tour the Breuckelen Distillery in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. We were part of a small group that Brad Estabrooke showed around the distillery thanks to Open House New York.

The distillery is located in a warehouse district sandwiched between the water and the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. While the exterior isn't much to look at, it took my wife and I a few tries to find the door amid all the industrial building, the owners are proud of their place in Brooklyn. Not only naming the distillery after Brooklyn but also their current line of whiskey is called "77 Whiskey" after the street address, 77 19th Street, and all the distilling and aging take place in Brooklyn.

While the outside of the distillery isn't picturesque, once you step inside you know it's a serious operation. A huge still, mixer, and tanks dominate the room, with shrink-wrapped barrels stacked on pallets next to sacks of grain. Over the next hour Brad showed us around the place and explained what role everything played in the process of turning water and wheat into whiskey. We even got to sample freshly distilled whiskey straight out of the still and smell the difference between the head, tails, and heart of the current batch.

One of the benefits of moving to Brooklyn is all the exciting food events that occur in the city. An event I'm really excited for is the opening of the Museum of Food and Drink (MOFAD), a new addition to the food and museum scene here. The museum has been at events before but they are moving into their first permanent space of around 5,000 square feet in Williamsburg.

The museum is opening at the end of October and promises to be a pretty awesome place. From hosting food and science speakers, as well as chefs doing demo, in addition to their interactive exhibits there should be a rotating selection of cool things to do (and eat!).

With the wide range of sous vide machines available there are definitely differences in performance. Here is our look at how all the various machines respond to a specific set of tests.

As I have performed detailed reviews on numerous sous vide machines I thought it would be informative to have some objective information regarding their performance. So I decided to define a benchmark that I could put each sous vide machine through and gather some useful information regarding its performance.

The primary purpose of a sous vide machine is to keep the water bath at an accurate and consistent temperature during the cooking period, whether that's minutes, hours or days. However, there are occasions when the temperature of the water bath needs to be increased significantly - one of those is during startup.

This post will address the question of how long this startup time normally takes. First, I will describe the various factors which impact the length of this startup time. Then I will introduce the Sous Vide Machine Benchmark I have developed and summarize the startup time information I have measured.

Using sharp knives is both safer and easier than using dull ones. There are various way to ensure your knives stay sharp, including using knife sharpeners on them. However, the best way to prevent them from becoming dull in the first place.

Knives will also start to dull through everyday use, but that doesn't mean you should abuse them. There are several ways people prematurely dull their knifes such as:

• Storing knives in a drawer
• Putting knives in the dishwasher
• Not using a honing steel
• Using improper cutting boards such as glass
• Never having them sharpened

You can learn more about these reasons and how to avoid them in this article that discusses 5 common mistakes that leads to dull knives.

There are many reasons to keep your knives sharp. Not only is cutting with sharp knives much easier, it's also much safer because you are using less force. You can keep your knives sharp in various ways but getting a home sharpener is a great way to keep them finely honed.

There is a wide range of knife sharpeners available to the home cook. Here are some of the better rated ones on Amazon.

About a week ago I mentioned in a tweet that I was lucky enough to get my hands on an early version of a Fini Cutlery Knife to test out. Now that I've had more time to use it I wanted to write a full review.

Fini Cutlery is one of the new breed of knife companies that instead of just tweaking the appearance of knives are reassessing the entire knife from tip to heel. I have seen several knives do this lately, including the NextGen San Sebastian ergonomic knife I reviewed, and they all attack this problem in a different way.

Fini Cutlery takes the novel approach of removing most of the handle, resulting in a better "chef balanced" knife. Or as they like to say "Less handle. More control."

The whole Fini premise depends on cooks who hold their knife "properly", in the traditional chef's style pinch or blade grip. In case you are unfamiliar with this style, Fini explains it in their video or you can check out this Serious Eats article on it.