"Power Boil" Burners

We bought a nice, one-year-old stove off of Craigslist, and this weekend we hooked it up in the new house. This stove, like other modern stoves, has a “power boil” burner with more flame and a “precise simmer” burner with less. This drives me bonkers. Why not just make all the burners go from the lowest temperature of precise simmer to the highest temperature of power boil? Why force me to put stocks on my back right burner and stir-fries in the front?

It reminds me of the famous dialog between Nigel Tufnel and Marty DiBergi in This Is Spinal Tap:

Nigel Tufnel: The numbers all go to eleven. Look, right across the board, eleven, eleven, eleven and...
Marty DiBergi: Oh, I see. And most amps go up to ten?
Nigel Tufnel: Exactly.
Marty DiBergi: Does that mean it's louder? Is it any louder?
Nigel Tufnel: Well, it's one louder, isn't it? It's not ten. You see, most blokes, you know, will be playing at ten. You're on ten here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you're on ten on your guitar. Where can you go from there? Where?
Marty DiBergi: I don't know.
Nigel Tufnel: Nowhere. Exactly. What we do is, if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do?
Marty DiBergi: Put it up to eleven.
Nigel Tufnel: Eleven. Exactly. One louder.
Marty DiBergi: Why don't you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder?
Nigel Tufnel: [pause] These go to eleven.

My friend meriko mentioned that they probably just have different sizes of pipes running into the burners, which prompts the question: Can I hack those pipes to install new, bigger ones to all the burners? I’m already planning to make a pizza oven by removing the lock that kicks in for the self-cleaning mode. Maybe I could swap in new pipes as well. Anyone know how to do that without blowing up the house?

Want: Dough-Nu-Matic Doughnut Maker

I like Krispy Kreme’s glazed doughnuts, but mostly because I like watching the massive machine that makes them. Shaped dough moves along a conveyor belt through a proofing chamber, an oven and then a seemingly solid sheet of white glaze. Eaten right off The Machine, Krispy Kremes are at their apex. The fat hasn’t quite congealed, the glaze hasn’t quite hardened, and the entire pastry has an almost liquid feel.

Our new house isn’t big enough for a Krispy Kreme machine — too bad, we could sell them out of our garage or something — but maybe I can find room for the Dough-Nu-Matic, a $130 device that churns out piping hot doughnuts.

via boing boing Gadgets

Tomorrow's Cooking Tricks Today

Popular Science has a fascinating slideshow of high-tech kitchen gadgets. From sous vide cooking to instant smoke flavoring, this gallery made me want to fill out my Christmas list early.

via Boing Boing Gadgets

Self-Tending BBQ

Tired of tending your barbecue for hours and hours and hours? Maybe you should build a self-tending model like the one that Nathan Moore submitted to the Popular Mechanics do-it-yourself rally. It doesn't look too difficult, given the interview and the drawing. If I ever upgrade to a wood-fired smoker, I'm tempted to build one of these. Or recruit a friend who knows something about mechanics.

As a side note, look at how Moore refers to barbecue as a synonym for slow cooking. Not fast cooking on a grill: That's called grilling. Grilling. Barbecue. Grilling. Barbecue. (Pilotless Drone.) These are two vastly different cooking styles. It's not a barbecue when there's a grill; it's a cookout. (My co-workers once changed the name of our company's "barbecue" to cookout, just to avoid hearing me rant about this topic. I call that a victory.)

My Favorite Digital Thermometer

I ran into Marc the other night, and we started talking about digital thermometers. He doesn't like his, and I burst with enthusiasm for mine. Since more of you may be curious about it, let me point you to the Thermapen. It has a wide range of temperatures, and its probe sits right at the point of the thin tip. I use it for everything from meat to ice cream to caramel.

The Glace-A-Tron 6000

Photo by Melissa Schneider.

Our new ice cream maker has an official model number, the Cuisinart ICE-50BC. But I started calling it the Glace-A-Tron 6000 after I unwrapped the hulking, stainless-steel appliance, a birthday present from my mom. I first played with this semi-industrial ice cream machine at meriko's house, where we made two ice creams on Thanksgiving morning; she in turn bought it based on David's recommendation.

The Glace-A-Tron 6000 features an internal refrigerator unit that cools the quart-sized container in situ. You don't need ice or rock salt. You don't need freezer space to pre-chill your bucket. You don't need 24 hours to refreeze the bucket between batches of ice cream and sorbet. The next time we have a dinner party, I plan to make a Frozen Trio dessert of some form, just because I can.

Photo by Melissa Schneider.

The Glace-A-Tron 6000 is not the frozen dessert's answer to a bread machine, a one-button start-and-forget factory. You must still assemble the ice cream base on the stove top. You must still freeze the ice cream after you remove it from the Glace-A-Tron. Do you need to cool the base before you place it into the cold embrace of the Glace-A-Tron? I don't know. Melissa, bless her heart, has urged me to experiment. A lot. I might put sorbet into the refrigerator before churning it; the transition from very cold to frozen produces smaller crystals, and thus a smoother texture, than when you move from room temperature to frozen. But I made salted caramel ice cream—a near-repeat of the version that meriko and I assembled—by pouring 185° custard into the Glace-A-Tron, and it came out very well, though it took just over an hour to freeze to the right consistency. Perhaps the fatty custard staves off large ice crystals?

I have eyed these machines before, but I have told myself that I don't make enough ice cream to justify the cost. This is the wrong argument. Once you have a Glace-A-Tron, which is cheaper than similar machines, you start making enough ice cream to warrant the expense, because all you need is a whim and a bit of time on a weeknight evening. Melissa and I each have lists of flavors to try. (Melissa's includes pistachio and mint chip. Mine, butternut squash sorbet and olive oil ice cream.)

That freezer space for the ice cream bucket? I think we'll be filling it up soon—with actual ice cream.