Inside the Wonderbag

When we think about innovation in food, we often think about expensive, high-tech gadgets that introduce novel ideas or technologies into our kitchens. The most innovative tools, however, are sometimes the ones that apply traditional techniques in a new way—and they can have the most extraordinary impact on lives. Some of the best ideas are those that solve critical problems.

The piece of equipment that we recently got our hands on falls into the last category. The Wonderbag is a heat-retention slow cooker we find exciting for both its applications in the kitchen and the tremendous effect it’s having on communities around the world. The idea for the cooker came to Sarah Collins, a native of South Africa, during a not-uncommon rolling power outage there. Inspired by memories of her grandmother’s slow-cooking techniques, she decided to continue cooking amid the outage by wrapping hot pots of food in blankets. It was a quick remedy for an immediate problem, but she quickly saw a more important application: power-free cooking could improve conditions in communities that rely on open fires to cook.

Wonder Bag_34786-Edit

Heat-retention cooking is a centuries-old technique that dates back to the middle ages. Food was brought to temperature in ceramic pots and then placed into a box or hole surrounded with an insulating material such as hay, feathers, or moss. The retained heat would continue cooking the food for several more hours, while reducing the resources needed to cook.

The Wonderbag uses the same principle, but is insulated with foam chips, repurposed from furniture factories, which allow it to retain warmth for hours without a heat source. Food is briefly parcooked (meat must be browned) and brought to temperature in a pot over heat; it is then placed in the Wonderbag to cook over the course of several hours. Because the Wonderbag cooks with heat retention, food must be put into the cooker at a higher temperature, so the cooking process continues as the temperature slowly falls. Like its traditional predecessors, the Wonderbag frees users from active cooking and reduces the amount of overall fuel required, making it an environmentally friendly tool.

The implications of powerless cooking are even greater for families living in parts of Africa where cooking is still primarily done over open flames. Women, who often do the cooking, must spend tremendous amounts of time monitoring open fires, and families must have enough firewood to maintain the blaze over long periods of time. Then there are the hazards: burns and smoke inhalation are incredibly common. Indeed, the statistics are staggering—an estimated four million people will die from smoke inhalation from these fires, and over half of those deaths will be children under the age of five.

Photo courtesy of Wonderbag
Photo courtesy of Wonderbag

The Wonderbag alleviates several constraints put on families and their environments. Freed from continually monitoring their food as it cooks, women are able to pursue other activities, spend more time with their children, and acquire new skills, while children spend less time gathering firewood, allowing them more time to attend school. Fewer trees need to be harvested for fuel, reducing carbon emissions and cutting water usage by half. And, without constant open fires, the number of cooking-related accidents drops.

It’s probably the only slow cooker in the world that can make duck confit and change lives.

Wonderbag Sous Vide

Preparing food sous vide is one of the hallmarks of Modernist cooking and is often associated with expensive equipment and intricate applications. Like heat-retention cooking, the idea of cooking food in packages is not new. Throughout culinary history, food has been wrapped in leaves, potted in fats, packed in salts, or sealed inside animal bladders before being cooked. The defining features of sous vide cooking is not packaging or vacuum sealing but rather the ultrafine temperature control that modern technology enables. Using sous vide, you can heat foods to precisely the temperature you want for precisely the amount of time you desire. There is no need to overcook or undercook parts of food to achieve the desired doneness at the center.

It’s a misconception that cooking sous vide has to be an expensive endeavor. Technology has become far more affordable within the past year alone. We’ve demonstrated how to employ the technique using nothing more than a digital thermometer, a pot, some zip-top bags, and a cooler or kitchen sink. Cooking sous vide is a far more approachable, utilitarian technique than most people give it credit for.

We couldn’t help but draw parallels between the thermal-retention of the Wonderbag and cooking sous vide. According to Wonderbag, cooking is simple. “It works in four easy steps: boil it, bag it, stand it, and serve it.” The Wonderbag is essentially a slow cooker—chicken on the bone takes at least two hours to cook; white meat takes at least an hour. Because it does not use direct heat, food will not burn or overcook. You can see why the description sounded remarkably familiar to us.

Wonder Bag_15-02-17_153646_M=C

Because of the similarities to sous vide, we were intrigued by the idea of using the Wonderbag as a portable, affordable water bath. Although it wouldn’t give us precise control over temperature, we were curious to see if we could recreate certain sous vide recipes with the Wonderbag.

Testing

To determine if the Wonderbag could be used to cook food sous vide, we first needed to do some experiments to see how long the Wonderbag could keep our water within the required temperature range.

For the experiment, we outfitted our bag with a thermocouple to log data. As a control, he also logged data from a pressure cooker with the lid locked so water vapor couldn’t escape. Both the pressure cooker and the normal lidded pot he used in the Wonderbag contained 5.76 liters / 1½ gallons of water at a starting temperature of 97 °C / 207 °F.

The Wonderbag performed better than the control. According to the data, the bag retained a target temperature for 4–6 hours. After 10 hours, the water temperature fell to 65 °C / 149 °F. After 16 hours, the water temperature was still above 55 °C / 131 °F.

With these data, we were able to identify recipes that would work with the Wonderbag, but we determined that we would need to adjust our favorite temperatures and times to account for heat loss.

Duck Confit

To demonstrate its versatility, we used the Wonderbag to make duck confit, an adaptation of our Modernist Cuisine at Home Turkey Confit recipe. We recommend cooking duck legs to a core temperature of 60 °C / 140 °F. To account for heat loss incurred while food rests in the Wonderbag, we adjusted our recipe as follows.

We cured the duck in a 1:1 salt and sugar solution overnight to maximize tenderness and minimize the amount of seasoning needed once the duck was removed from the Wonderbag. The duck was put in a Le Creuset Dutch oven with enough duck fat to coat it, and the fat was heated to 97 °C / 207 °F. Once the fat reached our target temperature, the Dutch oven was placed inside the bag with a trivet underneath it to protect the fabric. Thermocouples were positioned in both the duck and the fat. When the duck reached the target core temperature of 60 °C / 140 °F, it was removed from the Wonderbag and allowed to cool completely.

Using the Wonderbag, our duck confit took between 5 and 6 hours to cook; this time will depend on the ratio of fat to duck and how often you check the temperature. Opening the bag allows heat to escape, so only check the temperature when you are close to service time. Food will not overcook or burn; the longer it cooks, the more tender it will become.

To finish, we recommend frying the duck legs in the rendered duck fat. We slowly heated the cooled duck and the fat until it began to sizzle and the skin became crispy. And, because we cured the duck overnight, there was no need to use additional seasoning. The results were incredibly delicious—tender and juicy legs nicely contrasted the crisp bits of rendered fat.

The Wonderbag works best with recipes that take under 6 hours to cook. You won’t be making 72-hour short ribs in this cooker, but tender proteins, such as steak, pork, lamb, and most poultry, will work well.

The versatility of the Wonderbag is exciting, but more so is the impact of this innovative tool. For every bag sold, one is donated to a family in Africa. The Wonderbag is more than just a tool— it’s an extraordinary example of how re-thinking food can change our world. We hope you will visit the Wonderbag site for more information about their foundation and for slow-cooking recommendations.

Photo courtesy of Wonderbag
Photo courtesy of Wonderbag

 

Cooking for Ferran Adrià: Reflecting on Inspiration and Innovation

There are always stories behind food, whether it’s a quintessentially Modernist dish, spheres and all, or a beloved recipe handed down over generations. Mistakes are made, learned from, and then ideas are refined through trial and error. You can taste the labor, the love, and the inspiration in sublime flavors and intriguing textures. In the same manner, thoughtful food creates memories. Flavors comfort and transport us with dishes that surprise and delight us.

Ferran EventTeam_X8A3862

There are many memories wrapped up in the experience of cooking for Ferran Adrià. Here are a few of the stories behind a handful of the fifty dishes we prepared that afternoon.

Rye Levain Noodles_Francisco_03133

Head Chef Francisco Migoya: Rye Levain Noodles

I own many of the elBulli books, and I’ve certainly tried many of the recipes. But the influence of elBulli goes beyond simply producing their recipes; their work changes your way of looking at food and what it can be. Cooking is about seeing the potential that lies beyond the obvious by looking at food from a different perspective.

The idea for the rye levain noodles came to me shortly before I joined the team. With our upcoming book on breads in mind, I was thinking about pasta, which traditionally doesn’t have yeast. I couldn’t find any recipes that added yeast to a pasta dough, which got me thinking: why are there no yeast-leavened pasta doughs? As commercial yeast has little flavor, it occurred to me, conceptually, that a levain would be more flavorful. And in the realm of levains, a rye levain would be even more flavorful.

Ferran Dinner_X8A2638

To make the pasta, I replaced some of the water and flour in a rye pasta recipe with a fully ripened rye levain. Getting the sour taste right was one of the most challenging things about the course. The lactic acid produced by lactobacillus in a levain preferment has a very characteristic taste and is what makes sourdoughs taste sour. If it doesn’t have the right degree of ripeness, the sour flavor will not come through, and the concept is lost. Timing the levain preferment just right is the key.

We served the rye pasta with sauerkraut beurre blanc and toasted nigella seeds. This dish preceded the pastrami dish (one of my favorites) because it ties into the Jewish-deli classic of pastrami and rye, with the rye in this instance being rye levain noodles.

Cooking for Ferran Adrià was an honor. It was nerve-racking at the same time, especially since I had joined the team as head chef just prior to his visit. It was my first dinner at the lab, so I saw it as a tremendous challenge with a responsibility to succeed. In the end, the team performed at a very high level—we had one of the smoothest services ever.

Onion Softserve_Francisco_02958

Research and Development Sous Chef Sam Fahey-Burke: Onion Soft Serve Ice Cream

It’s really impossible to measure the influence of elBulli on my work as a chef. The work that was done there pretty much established the Modernist movement, and I’ve spent my entire career cooking that type of food. If it hadn’t been for the work of Adrià and his team, I would still be a cook, but every day would have been completely different.

I’m always a little nervous right before a long tasting, and with 50 courses (and chef Adrià in attendance) I was probably a little more on edge than usual. But once we got into the service routine, the nervousness faded and I started to enjoy it. We normally serve our dishes in a traditional progression, but we switched it up for chef Adrià. We added courses we had never served before, including Onion Soft Serve, which kept us on our toes.

Ferran Dinner_X8A3045

The Onion Tart recipe in Volume 5 of Modernist Cuisine is one of my favorites. It’s a great example of fundamentally Modernist cooking—it’s the evolution of a technique, as opposed to a technique that exists for the sake of adding obscure gelling agents or emulsifiers to a dish.

A champion of the tart, I’m always trying to convince Nathan Myhrvold to serve different versions of it at our tastings, which is where the idea for Onion Soft Serve originated. Fortunately, Chef Migoya and I are both experienced ice-cream makers, so we succeeded on our first try. To get the texture right, we processed the ice cream in a Pacojet for about 10 minutes before serving time and then put the mixture in the freezer (in piping bags) on a frozen Baking Steel. To keep the dish cold for service, we gave the cones, handmade by head chef Migoya, a quick dip in liquid nitrogen before adding the ice cream.

The idea of onion-flavored ice cream might seem alarming to some, but it’s sweetened just like traditional ice cream. The onion purée creates more depth, adding an incredibly savory element to the base. And the crunchy cone adds a nice textural contrast to the ice cream. We’ve done this course at two lab dinners now, and each time the diners seemed to be taken by unexpected enjoyment.

Chicken Liver Binchotan_Johnny_02562

Research and Development Chef Johnny Zhu: Binchotan

When the first translation of the elBulli books came to the U.S., I was a young cook in New York. I remember at the time that it cost about $350, which was the most expensive cookbook I had ever heard of. I was still determined, however, to save up and get it. I remember finally getting my copy and rushing home on the subway, like I was smuggling some kind of treasure. When I opened the book, I was simply blown away. Everything I knew about food had been completely reimagined in those pages. It taught me that food is never static but always evolving.

The inspiration for the Chicken Liver Binchotan is trickery, a play on the theme of trompe l’oeil (culinary deception), a theme perfected at elBulli and a common element of Modernist cooking. The dish is served with points of toasted brioche on a binchotan grill; inside, the actual binchotan coals are charred just to the point of smoking. Coal-shaped chicken livers are then placed in front of the diners, who are still drawn to the hibachi grill in front of them. For just a moment, the diners think, “What is this, a spare piece of charcoal?” The illusion subsides quickly, but the aroma, aesthetic, and interplay of smoke and liver mimics the look of binchotan exactly, and, when diners dig into it, it spreads like butter.

Ferran Dinner_X8A3184

The Chicken Liver Binchotan recipe started with a sous vide version of chicken liver mousse. If you look at most recipes for chicken liver mousse, they are pretty vague. You’re supposed to cook chicken livers to what you think is medium rare and then purée them with aromatics and butter. But the livers can be easily undercooked or overcooked, so the texture can range from gloppy to gritty. When cooking the chicken livers sous vide, however, they are medium rare every time, and the texture is incredibly smooth. Such consistency is a testament to cooking sous vide.

Chef Migoya introduced us to silicone mold making and suggested that we try a few shapes. We tried shapes that we had lying around, one of which happened to be a Japanese binchotan charcoal. When we cast the chicken liver mousse into the molds, the effect was striking. The mousse captured every nook and cranny of the wood, resulting in a realistic imitation. To complete the effect, we dusted the mousse with edible dietary ash.

The evolution of this dish was so natural that all we had to do was pair the tasty mousse with toast points, but presenting the dish was tricky. Excited about the trompe l’oeil, we enthusiastically (and artistically) piled the binchotan grill with toast points; getting the binchotan grill onto the table and in front of chef Adrià without dumping the toast-topped grill in his lap was nerve-racking. Even he looked a bit nervous as we made our way over.

Cooking for Ferran Adrià was an incredible honor, being both exhilarating and terrifying at the same time. Preparing a meal for one of my idols is an experience I will never forget.

Caviar Service_Anjana__MG_2918

Research and Development Chef Anjana Shanker: Caviar Service

Cooking for the world’s greatest chef was a dream come true. It was an opportunity I had been hoping to have for a very long time. Ferran Adrià’s visit turned out to be incredibly humbling—when you meet him you realize that he is remarkable and simple at the same time.

Chef Adrià and the elBulli team played an important role in my culinary career, inspiring me to value creativity and to better understand the connection between food and science. Their work influenced how I approach deconstructing a dish—how I will transform all of its elements or modify its texture and taste so that it appears fully Modernist, while retaining the dish’s original essence.

Ferran Dinner_X8A3256

Our caviar service was inspired by a course at elBulli. The dish appeared to be a traditional pile of caviar—decadent, salty, and delicious. Even the first bite confirms its appearance: this is good caviar. The caviar, however, was actually mustard seeds.

It took me a great deal of work to perfect this recipe before chef Adrià’s visit. Caviar has a distinct flavor and texture, so developing the faux version was a scientific process. I researched, experimented, documented, and analyzed many variations of it, but the trickiest part was replicating the mouthfeel—getting the mustard to gently pop like caviar with each bite. We also had to figure out how to reproduce the buttery, oceanic, and delicate tastes that are reminiscent of traditional caviar.

We soaked yellow mustard seeds, pressure-cooked them with a neutral oil, and then centrifuged with the mixture with anchovies. Olive oil and squid ink were added to disguise the seeds. We then served the seeds on a blini to mimic traditional service.

Because Ferran Adrià’s work and research has been such an inspiration to me, it was a tremendous feeling when I read The New York Times’s coverage of his response to the dish. He declared it “Fantastico,” which is an incredible honor.

Cryo-Shucked Lobster_Aaron_02780

Research and Development Chef Aaron Verzosa: Cryoblanched Lobster

Cooking for chef Adrià was like painting to impress Picasso—why would you do that? You’re making food for a man who has seen it all, broken all the rules, and written the language that we at Modernist Cuisine have chosen as our industry dialect. In fact, it was slightly terrifying. Hours before the dinner, to my amazement, chef Adrià walked through the kitchen by himself, taking in the atmosphere. What was I doing when we first met? Making spheres, of course—a technique synonymous with his name.

Despite the anxiety and fear that accompanies such a moment, and after months of preparation, the dinner finally started. The first course went out, then the second, and finally the 50th. When you’re in the moment, it’s easy to be swept up in the details of each dish and the intensity of service. You hardly have a moment to realize that within 50 courses, the man, Adrià, had asked for seconds of many of our dishes.

Ferran Dinner_X8A3414

One of my courses was a spoonful of delicate, cryoblanched lobster. We dipped the lobster in liquid nitrogen for 10 seconds (not long enough to freeze the meat), and then submerged it in cold water. The temperature differential between the liquid nitrogen and water is enough to completely release the meat from the shell. Classically, to remove a lobster from its shell, you blanch it in boiling water, but the problem therein is that the lobster and its shell are then partially cooked. By cryoblanching we are able to cook an entire piece of claw or tail to an exact temperature; the pieces are cooked all the way through without overcooking the outer portion of meat. The Coconut Lobster Sauce, made from lobster shells, is also more intense because the flavor is never lost to the boiling water, an artifact of classic blanching.

The concept behind this technique evolved from a method I learned in Paris. We would put the lobsters in the freezer from 45 minutes to one hour, then place it into the fridge for about an hour or two—the result was similar to cryoblanching. In Paris, we didn’t have liquid nitrogen, so, when I came back to Modernist Cuisine, it was the first thing I tried. Getting the timing right was difficult. If you keep the meat submerged in liquid nitrogen too long, it freezes. If you defrost the meat too quickly, the texture is compromised—the result is mushy lobster. Aside from producing incredible results, liquid nitrogen drastically reduces prep time—hours can be shaved down to minutes.

Being able to serve Ferran Adrià a dish that was born out of my own culinary explorations was amazing. Through the momentous challenge of preparing and executing our most ambitious meal to date, to see chef Adrià eat our food with curiosity, intrigue, and a childlike delight was undoubtedly the single greatest moment in my career.

ElBulli and the concept of elBulli Taller have probably influenced me in more ways than I realize. It was certainly the first establishment that got me interested in Modernist cooking. I suppose then that it was the reason I was so enamored of the possibility of joining the Modernist Cuisine team. But more so than any one technique, the philosophy and mindset of elBulli—to be ever dedicated to curiosity, innovation, and purity of flavor—is what has truly influenced me as a chef.

Al Pastore_Francisco and Sam_Francisco_MG_3194

Director of Applied Research Scott Heimendinger: Laser-Etched Tortilla

The Virgin Mary has made hundreds of appearances on toast, grilled-cheese sandwiches, and quesadillas. Far fewer people, however, have witnessed the visage of legendary Spanish chef Ferran Adrià on the surface of their tortilla.

As part of the epic, 50-course tasting, we decided to have some fun with the presentation of our Milagro al Pastor. Before the course arrived, servers littered the tabletop with English- and Spanish-language newspaper articles touting miraculous appearances of the Virgin Mary in various griddled foods. As our guests curiously pored through the flyers, the dish arrived: alternating layers of pork and beef, laminated and cut into perfect cubes, which sat atop an avocado purée embroidered with dots of fiery red achiote sauce. The dish was a richly flavored and technically exquisite interpretation of tacos al pastor, but it was also the setup for the punchline that followed. Head chef Francisco Migoya rounded the table inauspiciously, offering corn tortillas to accompany the course. When chef Adrià pulled a warm tortilla from the top of the stack, he was more than a little surprised to see that his own face adorned the surface.

How did we create this eBay-worthy tortilla? In the days leading up to the dinner, we worked to perfect the technique of transferring black-and-white images onto the surface of tortillas using a laser engraver in our machine shop. Although designed for cutting and etching plastic, wood, and thin metals, the engraver happens to be remarkably useful for toasting the faces of unwitting guests onto flat foods. You might remember the time we etched Jimmy Kimmel’s face onto an omelet for Nathan’s appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live. This time we had much more control of the joke, including the rather elaborate setup leading to the final unveiling.

Ferran Event_X8A3103

Why, you might ask, go to all this trouble? The dish would have been just as delicious in the absence of Adrià’s face. The joke demonstrates one of the hallmarks of Modernist cooking—the desire to extend the dining experience beyond our five senses—in this case, to include humor. Many Modernist chefs, including honoree Ferran Adrià, punctuate their tasting menus with moments of levity: welcome reminders, amidst a marathon meal, that the point is to enjoy yourself.

Making humor part of the menu is a gamble in the same way you might wrestle with using a joke to begin a speech. Will the joke fall flat? Is this as funny as we think it is? We anxiously held our breath before the reveal. When chef Adrià recognized his likeness on that corn tortilla, he heartily laughed out loud, smiling ear-to-ear with genuine exuberance. He even tucked an extra tortilla into his notepad to show his brother, Albert, who is opening a Mexican restaurant later this year.

It was one of many incredible moments that night. We’re thrilled that our joke paid off and honored to have shared it with a chef whom we so admire. Only time will tell if laser-etched faces will be the next big trend in Modernist cooking, but, for now, we’ll keep inspecting our tortillas for signs from above.

Ferran Dinner_X8A3836

Read more about how chef Adrià and experiences at elBuilli inspired Nathan and the idea behind Modernist Cuisine.