Medellitin

The blogs are all a-twitter about California's (and other states ) recent push to ban the possession and sale of shark fin.  This is legislation designed to protect sharks against a practice called shark finning.  Shark finning is the process of harvesting the fin of the shark and discarding the still live shark back into the ocean, where it will either drown, starve or be consumed by other predators. You might think that killing all sharks is a good thing.  Much like one might think that killing all bees is a good thing.  And you might be right.  Of course, you would be betting against most of the credible scientific community.  Look out, I'm going to blind you with some  science : There are a number of reasons why sharks should be protected from senseless and wasteful killing through finning. First, sharks are apex predators in the marine food chain and, without a proportionate number of sharks, an ecological imbalance with potentially disastr...

Earlier this week, SousVide Supreme announced their entrance into the chamber vacuum space.   An OEM'd VacMaster VP112 , this tabletop chamber vacuum sold out within hours of the announcement. Assuming that this isn't the result of EAT, LLC doing an incredibly small first run of chamber vac's, I am surprised that their customers would rush to buy an $800 chamber vacuum to assist with a $400 water bath.  You'd think that people that had the budget for the chamber vac would have bought an immersion circulator instead of the SousVide Supreme. It is possible that once people start cooking sous vide they become more willing to invest.  Maybe I am also underestimating the number of professional kitchens using the SVS.  If that is the case, it makes me wonder if we will see a high end SousVide Supreme 1 .   Finally, I wonder if there was a lack of awareness around the VP112's existence.  It was on my list to research this product given its (relatively) affordabl...

The folks at SousVide Supreme just introduced a chamber vacuum to their product lineup.  Given the name of the chamber vac is the  SousVide Supreme VacMaster® VP112 chamber vacuum sealer  , it appears to be a SousVide Supreme branded version of the VacMaster VP112 (possibly the dumbest sentence I have written this month). The price point is $799 (Which is list price for the VP112), but a quick Google Search reveals prices as low as $650 , for the non branded VP112. ps: Will have more to say later. pps: Buyer beware at that 650$ link.  They have good ratings from Google, but I have never heard of them.

Is This The Future? I was reading about Shola's post about the possible impending  obsolescence of immersion circulators, when I read: One thing I will confidently say is that the domestic immersion circulator market will be NON-EXISTENT in 48 months or less and IF sous vide cooking makes it into mainstream domestic cooking, it will be in the form of steam/vapor ovens similar to combi technology. Products like sous-vide supreme or sous vide magic are silly novelties at best and the only thing keeping them from zero sales is the lack of an affordable home combi oven. I am not sure if he has the timing right, but I think that when low temperature cooking hits critical mass, there will be a shift away from immersion circulators/water baths and into something more like a combi oven or CVAP.  Here is what I find compelling: Elimination of plastic bags.  They are annoying and not green.  Not being green doesn't really bother me.  But, the consumer market is buyi...

Stands for, What The Fuck Is This: Tell me what this is.   First right answer gets 100 points and one dollar bill if I ever see you in person.

Here is the roundup of all the stuff I read that I wish I could write more about but can't cause my life is too busy. The Future Will Not Be Turkey Paste Extruded By A Printer Cooking Issue's tackles 3D food printing .  What isn't mentioned in the article is that they are continually asked whether or not 3D food printing is how all food will be made in the future.  The answer can be found in last week's Cooking Issues podcast , which if you don't listen to: shaaaaaaammmmeeee. Happy Birthday Bruno! Bruno Gaussault's birthday just passed last week (according to Facebook).  Bruno is widely considered one of the father's of sous vide cooking.  Somewhere, the father of this father of sous vide cooking is beaming.  At a consistent 62ºC. Never Trust Your Gut Brain Scientists are pushing forward their understanding of satiety .  Basically, the enteric nervous system, which is made up of 500,000,000 nerve cells helps regulate hunger.  This gut brain i...

On an earlier post about Sous Vide Octopus , erich wrote: Ok, I need some help here. Bought a whole octopus, thawed it, cleaned it, vacuum bagged it, and cooked it for 2 hours at 180F in my sous vide bath. The thing came out very rubbery. Basically the same consistency one would achieve pan frying it. Anything, I'm missing here? BTW, this is not first sous vide dish, but definitely the one that didn't come out at all. I responded with: My guess is that you needed to leave it in the water bath longer, but here are things that may be different between You and I: 1. Size of Octopus. I don't know how thick your Octopus was. Any guess on it's size? Even weight might be helpful. 2. Fresh vs. Frozen. Not saying I know for sure that mine wasn't frozen earlier, but I bought mine in non-frozen form at a fish monger. If yours was larger and colder to start with, it might take longer to get tender. Finally, another thing I do is occasionally squeeze the octopus th...