Can Science Improve Cooking? A blog post and video on Bill Gates’ blog thegatesnotes
"The pictures alone make the book a masterpiece. You can see how food changes as it cooks, and understand how different flavors come together to make something really great."
The Sous Vide Professional at Nathan Myhrvold's kitchen lab
Wilson Rothman from MSNBC produced this great segment about the connection of science and the kitchen. The video features the symbiosis of Chef Grant Achatz at Alinea Restaurant in Chicago and PolyScience Culinary Technology. It gives some insights into Chef Achatz’ approach, the PolyScience factory and Philip Preston’s kitchen laboratory. Below are some of the snapshots of the clip. If you have some patience for advertising clips you can see the video here.
Sous Vide Professional at Alinea Restaurant
The Anti-Griddle in action at Alinea kitchen
PolyScience factory in Niles, Illinois
Sous Vide Professionals are manufactured in sunny Niles, Illinois
Behind the scenes...
Philip Preston's garage is the place where the first Frankenstein versions of new cooking equipment are developed. Some fail, some make it...
The new PolyScience Sonicprep™
The probe of the Sonicprep™ applies 20,000 cycles of high-frequency ultrasonic waves per second to liquids.
Sonicprep™ emulsions are produced in less than 90 seconds and stable for days without any emulsifying agent
Homemade Calvados is infused with whisky barrel wood chips. The Sonicprep™ simulates 2 year barrel aging in 2 minutes
The Snowmachine... it can produce strawberry-flavored snow. It just doesn't do it fast enough yet for a restaurant.
The PolyScience Sous Vide™ Professional wins the 2010 International Design Award for Product Design. It received the Bronze award in the category Other Products. Click here to read more and to see the interesting variations of the design concept.
Elderflower Smoked Griddled Halloumi – by Chef Eddie Shepherd
300g Halloumi
Dried Elderflower
Heat a griddle pan to a medium high heat.
Slice the Halloumi into centimetre thick pieces. Cook the Halloumi for about a minute on each side (giving it a half turn while cooking each side to get a criss cross pattern if you like)
Once cooked set the Halloumi slices to one side to cool.
Trim the cooked Halloumi to even squares and place into a glass bowl.
Cover the bowl with cling film and smoke using the Polyscience Smoking Gun, loaded with dried elderflower, filling the covered bowl with smoke. Sit covered for around five minutes to allow the Halloumi to take on the flavour of the elderflower smoke.
Continue reading for the recipes of the Rhubarb Relish & Rhubarb Glass on Chef Eddie’s blog
We frequently get asked: What is the cost of electricity to run the Sous Vide Professional? So we performed some research and testing to find out for ourselves!
We used average costs of utilities in the USA as of September 2010 – electricity at $0.132 per kilowatt/hour and natural gas at $1.062 per therm.
There are two stages to the heat up/cook process when using the Sous Vide® Professional – initial heat up and holding (cooking). During the initial heat up, more power is consumed as the unit heats at full power to reach the desired temperature. The duration of this step can be greatly shortened by starting with hot water.
For our experiment, we started with cold tap water at 9°C (48.2°F). Cost of initial heat up: $0.15. Had we started with hot water, the cost and duration would be reduced by more than half.
We then vacuum sealed a 2lb beef tenderloin and allowed it to cook for two hours at 59°C (138.2°F). Cost of 2 hours of cooking at 59°C: $0.06. This makes our total electricity cost $0.21.
For more information about the cost benefits of sous vide, check out this post on our blog for a number of ways cooking sous vide can actually reduce costs of labor and raw materials. You might also find this case study by Chef Chris Windus interesting, where he discusses how sous vide has helped him to increase efficiency without compromising quality.
Many thanks to all participants and the organizers of the FENI Summit over the weekend! The PolyScience demonstrations seemed to have inspired a lot of chef instructors. Stay in touch with us and let us know how we can help your school to teach sous vide, compressing & infusions, cool-smoking, flash-freezing, low-temperature evaporation and more
