So you have a formula. You have great ingredients. You have a digital scale1. You’ve measured everything. What next? Where’s the wand that turns these ungainly liquids and powders into magic? Every Ice cream process includes, at least, mixing, cooking, aging (in the fridge), and spinning (in an ice cream machine or some substitute). We’re going to expand on …
Standard Base All my other recipes derive from this. It’s version #32—a fair amount of experimenting precedes it. It makes ice cream that’s moderately rich (15% milk fat, but with only 2 yolks per liter). It’s smooth, has good body and a creamy melt, great flavor release, no discernible egg flavor, and a cleaner finish than bases that use …
The Problem If the great promise of sous-vide is precision, the great irony is that most of us pick our cooking times by guessing. A recipe that gives a fixed temperature and time constitutes a barely-educated guess. A graphic table that accounts for food thickness and starting temperature (like the ones on Douglas Baldwin’s site, or in the Modernist Cuisine …
A Glorious Marriage of Biology, Technology, Butchery, and Parsimony The silk-purse-from-sow’s-ear approach to sous-vide has been around a long time: cook a cheap, tough cut of meat long and low enough, and it turns buttery-soft, like an expensive cut. Not quite Dolce & Gabbana In this post I’m going to explore how far we can take the idea. …
