Jason Logsdon's Blog, page 52

Modernist Cooking Blog: Museum of Food and Drink Grand Opening

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.

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Modernist Cooking Blog: Detailed Review of the Nomiku Immersion Circulator

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.

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Modernist Cooking Blog: Brooklyn's Breuckelen Distillery Creates Unique Local Spirits

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.

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Modernist Cooking Blog: Museum of Food and Drink Opening Soon

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!).

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Modernist Cooking Blog: Sous Vide Machine Benchmark Tests

Check out all the sous vide machine benchmark information you've been curious about.

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.

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Modernist Cooking Blog: How long does it take a sous vide machine to heat up?

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.

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Modernist Cooking Blog: How to Keep Knives from Becoming Dull

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.

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Modernist Cooking Blog: Knife Sharpener Roundup

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.

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Modernist Cooking Blog: Fini Cutlery Knife Review

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.

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Modernist Cooking Blog: Locust Bean Gum Substitute - Ask Jason

In Modernist Cooking Made Easy: Getting Started the recipe for mango noodles (and other recipes) includes locust bean gum, but the Modernist Pantry kit I bought does not include it. How can I substitute it? The recipe asks for locust bean gum and agar. Can I use xanthan gum or carrageenan?

- Alejo

Hi Alejo, that's a good question. In general, agar gels are brittle (they fall apart) while locust bean gum adds elasticity (makes them chewier and stay together). For gels that are being shaped, especially the gel noodles, the elasticity is critical, otherwise they tend to fall apart. For things like cubes or softer gels, you don't have to have the locust bean gum, the gels will just be less chewy.

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