The Secret to Perfect Chicken Wings

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Every member of the Modernist Cuisine team has their favorite parts of Modernist Cuisine at Home, but without a doubt, high up on everyone’s list was developing the chapter on chicken wings (and eating and eating the results). The final recipe results in a chicken wing that is both tender and juicy on the inside and crispy on the outside.

In this video for chow.com, Director of Applied Research, Scott Heimendinger, demonstrates just what goes into making the perfect wing. Try them at your next tailgate party—your friends will be impressed, and so will you. Click here for the recipe.

Win a Dorm Room Dinner Party

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Update: Due to popular demand, we’ve extended the entry deadline to October 26th!

Dorm-room living has never been synonymous with delicious, home-cooked food. When it comes to cooking in a dorm, it may be hard to imagine producing much more than a cup of ramen noodles and a toaster pastry. But armed with Modernist Cuisine at Home, we’ll show one lucky winner that a little cooking knowledge goes a long way, even in small spaces. Small appliances like microwaves, toaster ovens, hot plates, and, of course, sous vide machines are capable of producing delicious results when paired with the right recipes and techniques.

To prove that great cooking can happen anywhere, we’re partnering with Seattle Weekly to host a Modernist Cuisine Dorm Room Dinner Party contest. If you’re a college student in the greater Seattle area, you can enter to win a dinner party for yourself and eight of your friends. You’ll also win a copy of Modernist Cuisine at Home, a PolyScience Sous Vide Professional CREATIIVE Series immersion circulator, a PolyScience Smoking Gun, an iSi Whipping Siphon, and the opportunity to cook alongside Modernist Cuisine chefs. You can find full details on seattleweekly.com and read the contest rules here.

For those of you who are no longer students, know that you can experience your culinary youth again on better terms when Modernist Cuisine at Home comes out next month. We’ll show you how to elevate pizza, wings, hamburger, and many other classics. As for perfecting the proportion of spirits in “jungle juice,” you’ll have to ask a current student for that.

To Enter:

Create a video of a cooking show (starring you, of course) which shows why you need the Modernist Cuisine folks to help you throw a dinner party, and then upload it to YouTube with “mcvideocontest” as its tag.

The show should run no longer than two minutes, and must be filmed in your dorm room or kitchen-less residence. Your demonstration needs to include at least one of the following five ingredients: ramen noodles, Sriracha, coffee, peanut butter, or an energy drink. Once you’ve uploaded your video, e-mail mcvideocontest@seattleweekly.com with your name, age, school, area of study, and a brief description of your living space.

All entries must be received by 11:59 p.m. on Friday, October 26, 2012. The contest is open to individuals who are 18 or older and enrolled at University of Washington, Seattle University, Seattle Pacific University, Evergreen State College, or any other residential tertiary institution between Tacoma and Everett (the south and north, respectively), and North Bend and Seattle (the east and west, respectively). Entrants must be available for the dinner party between October 29th, 2012, and December 1st, 2012, and willing to have the experience filmed.

Most importantly, only students who do not have access to a working kitchen are eligible. If you live in an apartment or an apartment-style dorm suite, you can’t play. A hot plate, mini-fridge, or microwave is fine. A sink, stove, or centrifuge is not. If you’re unsure whether you qualify, send an e-mail to mcvideocontest@seattleweekly.com.

A panel of qualified judges will judge entries based on the following criteria: the most apt, original, and interesting video; creative demonstration of why you deserve to have the Modernist Cuisine chefs help you cook without a kitchen; unique presentation of video themes; overall quality of your video. Good luck!

NO PURCHASE NECESSARY TO ENTER OR WIN THIS CONTEST. Void where prohibited. Odds of winning depend on the number and quality of eligible entries received. Contest is subject to Official Rules. For more details, restrictions, and Official Rules, visit https://modernistcuisine.com/inyourplacecontestrules/. Contest is sponsored by The Cooking Lab, LLC, located at 3150 139th Ave SE, Ste 500, Bellevue, Washington 98005.

The Chemistry of the Barbecue “Stall”

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The “stall” is widely known among serious barbecuers. Well into cooking, the temperature of uncovered meat stops rising and may even fall slightly before it climbs again. Most barbecue experts say this stall occurs when connective tissue in the meat softens and fat starts to render, which does occur, but it doesn’t cause the stall.

The stall is quite real, but it is not due to softening collagen as the graph below shows. We cooked two briskets side-by-side in a convection oven, which mimicked the air temperature in a smoker, but was much more consistent and thus better suited for the experiment. We left one brisket uncovered (blue curve) and vacuum sealed the other (green curve). Sensors measured the core temperature of each brisket as well as the dry-bulb (black curve) and wet-bulb (red curve) air temperatures in the oven.

The stall clearly occurred in the uncovered brisket 2-4 hours into cooking as the wet-bulb temperature in the oven fell. The stall ended after about four hours because the surface of the brisket had dried out enough that it was above the wet-bulb temperature. The temperature of the vacuum-sealed brisket, in contrast, rose steadily to the oven’s set point in about three hours. Any effect due to collagen or fat rendering would occur in both briskets, but we see the stall only in the uncovered one.

Early in the cooking, the wet-bulb temperature rose as the uncovered brisket evaporated, increasing the relative oven humidity to about 72%. But the humidity then began to drop as evaporation could no longer keep pace with the air venting out of the oven. By the eight-hour mark, the humidity was below 50%, and the wet-bulb temperature was down almost 10 °C / 18 °F from its peak.

The core of the uncovered brisket stalled. In this test, we left the brisket dry, but if we had slathered it with sauce periodically as many barbecue chefs do, we could prolong the stall by keeping the surface wet.

Sous vide cooking is, in our opinion, by far the best way to achieve the perfect cooking rate necessary for great barbecue. We barbecued in two distinct steps: smoking to impart the smoke flavor, followed by sous vide cooking to achieve the optimum texture and done-ness.

Smoking before a long sous vide cooking step has the advantage of proteins remaining intact and able to react readily with smoke. Smoked food continues to change while being cooked sous vide: its pellicle darkens, the rind becomes firmer, and the smoky flavor mellows.

The alternative, of course, is to smoke the food after cooking it sous vide. This also works well, but a longer smoking time is required to develop a robust smoked flavor and appearance. This is because precooking denatures a large fraction of the proteins in a cut of meat or a piece of seafood, which leaves the flesh less reactive to the smoke.

Whichever approach you choose to take and you should try both ways to judge the differences yourself the remarkable texture that is the hallmark of sous vide cooking, and the consistency it brings to smoking, makes it the best way to smoke meats and seafood. Alternatively, you could substitute for the sous vide step a combi oven, CVap oven, or low-temperature steamer.

You can find our recipe for Smoked Dry-Rub Pork Ribs here.

–This post was adapted from Modernist Cuisine. Too see what others think of our pastrami, see the Steven Colbert clip below, and click here to read about what Steven Raichlen has to say on The Barbecue Bible.

The Colbert Report Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Nathan Myhrvold
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog Video Archive

MC Co-Author and Head Chef Maxime Bilet is Leaving The Cooking Lab

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BY MAX and NATHAN

Dear friends and fans of Modernist Cuisine,

It has been a long and amazingly fruitful 4 1/2 years here at The Cooking Lab. You’ll soon be seeing the release of our most recent project with Nathan, Modernist Cuisine at Home. I’m thrilled to share this new transmission of modern cooking with the passionate food world. I believe it will provide yet another shift in the perception of culinary education and the power of delicious food.

How incredibly fast time passes by. 3122 pages, 1927 recipes and over 230,000 photos later, Our projects have been gifted with more recognition and respect than we could ever have imagined. We’ve won the praise of some of our greatest culinary heroes: Thomas Keller, Jean-Georges Vongerichten, Heston Blumenthal, Grant Achatz, Ferran Adria, Charlie Trotter, Wylie Dufresne, David Kinch, Andoni Luis Aduriz, Marcus Samuelsson, and Alain Ducasse, among a very humbling list of culture changing icons. We’ve won Gourmand, IACP and James Beard Awards. We’ve built a community around the heart of the project; to embrace the many roles of food through a more precise and rigorous understanding of culinary art and science. I couldn’t be more proud of what we’ve accomplished.

With the completion of Modernist Cuisine at Home, this seems an appropriate time for me to move forward. As a team, we have accomplished everything, and beyond, what we set out to do with these comprehensive projects. Change is exhilarating and challenging, but this journey is all about the search for refining a meaningful vision of life. That can’t happen without accepting how important change is to that search. We are all responsible for our personal choices and I intend on taking this opportunity to explore the realm of possibilities that this fragile and precious life has to offer.

I have been the recipient of some profound lessons from some very patient teachers in this lifetime. I did just turn 30 after all and the most perceptible thing I have going for me is a pretty wild tangle of silvered hair standing atop my overstimulated brain. Wisdom indeed! …The road ahead is intrinsically connected to those lessons. Land IS food and needs to be protected. Food is our life-force and should be revered with far more consideration. Change begins in the mind and the heart but the mind cannot function without sustenance and the heart cannot grow without sharing the beauty of experience. I look forward to facing these challenges through my work with the culinary world. Every piece has its value, whether it’s high-end gastronomy, modern farming or ingenious solutions for basic nutrition.

I will always be part of this Modernist Cuisine family; a colorful mixture of open minded individuals, artists, scientists, knife wielding culinary crazies (chefs),engineers and people of the pen. I will miss the daily rituals with my team, “the routine of the unpredictable” as I like to think of it. I will remember the many discoveries that I’ve shared: the profound (centrifuged pea “butter”) and the absurd (tossing hot oil in a cut-in-half wok towards my face hurts!) and everything in between. I greatly look forward to witnessing their future successes.

Sam “The Man”, keep on cracking the whip and making the best gelato on earth. I am so proud of the leadership role you have grown into and embraced these past three years. Anj, don’t let those boys off the hook, you are the powerful “Lady of the House”, you have a beautiful palate and we’ll be sharing coffee honey in Kerala before long. Zhulander, continue to be resourceful and inventive. I can’t wait to see your full line of smoky pork product interpretations on supermarket shelves. Just promise me you won’t let anyone make you wear a costume. A-Ron, you have been a true example of what a young chef should aspire to. Keep your head down and stay true to the work ethic and passion you’ve demonstrated and you’ll be running your own show soon enough. Kimberly, you have an incredible vision for the future of food. I know you’ll find that perfect bridge between nutrition, taste and splendor. Mme. Krystanne, you keep that mighty engine running. You’re the coach from now on, but I hope you can let your smile shine sometimes too. Bruce, Carrie and Hatchess, thank you for being the remarkable guides of THE mission. Scott, Larissa and Ms. Lukach, good luck with the future of Modernist Cuisine and The Cooking Lab, I think they are in very good hands.

To the rest of The Cooking Lab team and for those who have already moved on, Smithy, Grant, Susan, Tracy, Christina, Biderman, Ben, Andy, Jameson and Melissa, your hard work has been so incredibly important to making this happen in the right way. Thank you. These projects could not have been possible without a tremendous amount of support and effort from many individuals.

Thank you to all of our friends at the lab who have worked alongside us since the beginning. Mike V., Ted, Nels, Laura, David N., David B., Chris L., Barcin, Zihong, Pablos, 3ric, Geoff, Ozgur, Sheing, Leo, Keith R. and all of the others, thank you for bearing with us during our learning phase. Thank you for meeting our obstacles with open minds and transforming our ideas into very real manifestations of art and education. Only at the lab could there be a day when a paleontologist fixes one of our ovens while a machinist with expertise in nuclear submarines cuts our microwave in half on a water jet.

I wouldn’t be where I am today without my external team of supporters and teachers, Kathryn and Gary, Lee, my parents, Mamie, John, Alina, Noelle, Katy, Stephanie, Albane and Marcus. Thank you for you guidance and love throughout this process.

Thank you to our readers. The people who have made Modernist Cuisine this successful are spread far and wide, across the vastest spectrum of backgrounds and geography. Without an audience of loyal people willing to invest in our books and look beyond the perceived value of food and culinary education, none of this would have been worth the effort that was put into it. You’ve been an essential key to shifting that paradigm.

Finally and above all else, I am forever grateful to Nathan. You are the very reason I’m able to share all of these memories, individual connections and future hopes. You’ve given me such an incredible combination of creative insights, resources and freedom. Thank you for giving all of us this unique possibility and trusting my ability to lead this team. Thank you for the opportunity to collaborate on this tremendous body of creative work and for all that I have been part of during my tenure under the wing of your greater vision. Thank you for your camaraderie. I will continue to grow and share from everything I have learned from you.

For the next month I will continue with my role at The Cooking Lab and try to contribute a few last worthy pieces to this eternal puzzle. We will be cooking at Charlie Trotter’s anniversary dinner on August 17th and my last official day will be September 1st, the day we perform at Bumbershoot. I hope to see you there.

À très bientôt,

Maxime

About five years ago, after work had begun in earnest on my first cookbook, I reached a critical decision. It was clear that if I didn’t hire some more people to help me with it, I would never get it done. So I decided to start hiring a team that could help me expand the outline I had written into a complete book: Modernist Cuisine. Without that team, the project simply would not have been possible.

Of the many people who joined the Modernist Cuisine team, none made more of an impact than Maxime Bilet. Max became head chef for the project, and he threw himself into the work. He not only served as head chef but also touched almost every other part of the project. Modernist Cuisine and our forthcoming book Modernist Cuisine at Home were both group efforts, and without the skill Max showed in guiding recipe development and helping establish our distinctive visual style, the books would not have been nearly as successful.

Max was our go-to guy for culinary experiments. Hundreds of times over the past five years, an idea would come to me, like vacuum-distilling milk, or rendering fat in a pressure cooker with baking soda and my next move was always the same: contact Max. He took these crazy ideas in stride and worked with the team to try them out. Some turned out to be as silly as they sounded, but others worked or at least inspired new ideas that worked.

Once Modernist Cuisine was off to the printer, we started hosting dinners at our research kitchen for chefs and food writers. Over the course of the next year or so, many of our culinary heroes including Thomas Keller, David Chang, David Kinch, Wolfgang Puck, Pierre Hermé, Andoni Anduriz, Charlie Trotter, among many others came our lab to enjoy 25- to 30-course tasting menus alongside food critics, such as Jeffrey Steingarten and Corby Kummer, and legendary gourmands like Tim and Nina Zagat. It was of course a huge honor to serve such dignitaries, but it also gave us a taste of what it must feel like when the Michelin inspectors arrive on the night your restaurant opens.

I’ll never forget the first such dinner. As the guests were seated and the waiters brought our first dish, Max and I looked at each other, and I said, “Oh my God, what have we done?” It suddenly struck me that we were facing, together, a moment of judgment. Either we would show them that we can actually cook food that tastes as good as it looks in the photographs we have published, or we were about to make complete fools of ourselves. Max looked at me and swallowed hard. “It’ll be OK,” he said, but I could tell that he was just as daunted by the situation as I was.

In the end, Max was right; the food was even better than OK. Since then, I’ve been proud to cook many times alongside Max and the rest of our talented culinary team at The Cooking Lab. And I am proud, too, of our latest accomplishment together, a new book that makes it easy for home cooks to experience first-hand the amazing results that a Modernist approach to cooking unlocks.

You can’t work with other people without facing the fact that eventually they need to pursue their own dreams. Indeed, I myself was able to create the Modernist Cuisine enterprise only because, a number of years ago, I decided to retire from Microsoft. So, as much as I hate to see Max go, I know that it is the right move for him, and I along with everybody else at The Cooking Lab wish him the best of luck.

Sincerely,

Nathan

Tested.com Visits The Cooking Lab

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As you may recall, we first met up with the guys from Myth Busters’s tested.com at our event at The Exploratorium in San Francisco. More recently they came up to The Cooking Lab to grill us (no pun intended) on everything from vacuum-concentrated bourbon to cutaway photos.

First up, Max takes Will on a tour of the lab (above). Then, a bit hungry after the tour, Max and Will compose freeze-dried elote and pea stew.

Ready for the main course! Sam, Johnny, and Max create a lunch of cryofried steak, ultrasonic fries, and cherry salad.

Only at The Cooking Lab would we serve quail eggs for dessert. And boy is Will in for a surprise!

Meanwhile, Scott explains the magic behind our cutaway photos to Norman.

BONUS:

Scott kidnaps the Tested team and feeds them pizza!

Looking Back at the Modernist Cuisine Feast

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Amazing! That’s all I can keep repeating to myself after witnessing the result of our collaboration with Tom Douglas’s team and some very generous friends on June 21, 2012.

There were 40 guests, 30 courses, four brilliant guest chefs, and a team of 20 cooks, servers, and presenters. As a result, we raised more than $27,000 to be distributed among the organizations represented that evening.

Four years ago, the Modernist Cuisine team set out to write a document that captured the science of cooking so that chefs and home cooks could have a better understanding of one of the most fundamental acts of human existence: transforming food into something healthy, delicious, and beautiful. The project took on a much larger scope over the years, however, and we have had an overwhelmingly positive and open-minded response to Modernist Cuisine since it was published in March 2011.

The heart of the project was founded on the desire to enrich culinary education, eliminate boundaries, embrace interdisciplinary study, and demonstrate immense creativity.

Throughout the years, we have depended on some of the most talented chefs, scientists, farmers, community leaders, and artists to create a more complete, empowered experience of food.

There are currently two large and opposing movements in food in America. One is the detachment between food and cooking, wherein whole foods are replaced with inferior alternatives, a very real public health concern. The second is the movement toward organic, sustainable, and dynamic modern cooking, which is often inaccessible to most of the population.

A determined community of food organizations and social advocates has shown that bringing healthier, fresher foods to a larger proportion of the population is possible. Many incredible individuals and organizations are demonstrating the power of education as a means for change, including Alice Waters, FareStart, the Hunger Intervention Program, Community Kitchens, Teen Feed,  Hopelink, Chefs Collaborative, Chefs Move to Schools, and more.

This past June, with the tremendous support of many individuals and organizations, we created a feast for the ages with the purpose of honoring these organizations and promoting awareness. Modernist Cuisine along with Tom Douglas’s team joined forces with chefs Bill Yosses of the White House, Jason Franey of Canlis, Jason Wilson of Crush, Matt Costello of the Inn at Langley, and Flynn McGarry of his up-and-coming Los Angeles pop-up.

The crowd featured 26 people who purchased tickets via an eBay auction. Special guests at the dinner were representatives of the organizations being celebrated: Katelyn Stickel from Teen Feed, Kate Murphy and Linda Berger from the Hunger Intervention Program, Dan Johnson from Farestart, Julia Martin-Lombardi from McCarver Elementary, and Kristina Kenck from Hopelink. All of them were able to address the dinners, tell their story, and share their ideas for meaningful change.

My sincere thanks go to our good friend Tom Douglas, as well as to Katie Okumura, and Alex Montgomery, all of who made this event possible.

Thank you to my amazing culinary team, Sam Fahey-Burke, Anjana Shanker, Johnny Zhu, Kimberly Schaub, Andy Nhan, Ben Hulsey, Scott Heimendinger, and Nick Gavin; our mixologists Jon Christiansen and Jonathan Biderman; our service managers Christina Miller, Maria Banchero, and Stephen Miller; and all of the dedicated stagers and volunteers that volunteered their time.

Thank you to the operational mastermind, Krystanne Kasey who helped make sure every detail was accounted for; to Tyson Stole and Rina Jordan for their beautiful photography; and to Paul Rucker for his brilliant cello improvisations during the evening.

Lastly, thank you to Nathan Myhrvold for giving our team time to collaborate with these wonderful folks and make this dream a reality.

With so much at stake in the food industry today, it was a moment of validation for so many individuals who push for pronounced and resolute change. If you can find the time, please go through the links below to read about what these different organizations are doing to educate our children and feed the less fortunate. They should be celebrated, protected, and supported with all of the resources we can offer.

Sincerely,

Maxime

Resources:

http://www.teenfeed.org/

http://www.hope-link.org/

http://castingsorg.wordpress.com/

http://edibleschoolyard.org/program/mccarver-elementary-school-and-hilltop-garden-explorer-program

http://www.hungerintervention.org/

http://www.farestart.org/

http://www.chefsmovetoschools.org/

http://edibleschoolyard.org/

http://www.jamieoliver.com/foundation/

http://new.worldcentralkitchen.org/

http://www.letsmove.gov/

For a Great Summer Feast, Cook Ahead, and Bring Extra Fat

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Holding time is the key to pasteurization and safe eating.

Summer feasting can be great fun, but it poses a number of challenges for the cook. You may find yourself in an unfamiliar kitchen or even cooking at a park, on the beach, at a campsite in the woods, or in a friend’s backyard. The grill at hand may lack some of the features of your own, and you may have to share it with other cooks. Cookouts often involve making lots of portions and feeding impatient children.

The best way to ensure fast, delicious results despite all these hurdles is to prep and precook your food at home so that all you have to do at your destination is to warm it up and put on the final touches.

Cook chicken, steak, and other proteins sous vide before you leave the house. Allow the bags of food to cool while still sealed, and then pack them into your cooler with ice. To reheat the food, simply unbag it onto a hot grill and sear it quickly. (Our new book, Modernist Cuisine at Home, also reveals some tricks for improvising sous vide setups while tailgating or picnicking.)

Precooking the food sous vide is convenient, and it shortens the wait for those kiddies. More important, the precision of temperature that sous vide cooking offers allows you to safely cook every portion safely and to exactly the degree of doneness you want. Never again will you have to serve rubbery chicken or tough steak just to be certain it is safe to eat.

Eating Safely in the Great Outdoors

The key to safety is knowing how long to cook at a given temperature to achieve full pasteurization. If you are cooking chicken breasts, for example, you can heat them to a core temperature of as little as 55 °C / 131 °F. Once the center of the thickest part hits that target temperature, hold the chicken at that temperature for 40 minutes to pasteurize the meat. That temperature is not as high as many people are used to, and some prefer their chicken closer to medium-well than medium-rare. That’s easy to accommodate: just choose a higher cooking temperature. The greater the core temperature, the shorter the pasteurization time; see the table for some suggested holding times for chicken breasts and thighs.

Whenever you cook food sous vide in advance, it is crucial to chill it soon after cooking and to keep it chilled until you reheat and serve it. The food should never spend more than four hours total in the “danger zone” of 4 °C to 60 °C / 40 °F to 140 °F. So bring plenty of ice if you are going on a long car ride, or if you won’t be grilling for a while. And don’t forget to bring a bottle of hand sanitizer along; even pasteurized food can become unsafe if you touch it with dirty hands.

Capture That Grilled Goodness

Generations of grillers have been trained to fear flare-ups, but that is misplaced. Certainly you don’t want flames charring your food, but most of the flavor from grilling actually comes from fat drippings, which ignite into flames and then travel back to the food as smoke. If you are quickly reheating precooked food, slow-cooking over coals in tin foil packets, or grilling veggies or other low-fat foods, it’s hard to capture much of this characteristic grilled flavor. An easy work-around is to season your meat and veggies with pressure-rendered fat. You can find a recipe at the bottom of the page.

Pressure-rendered chicken fat adds flavor as it drips into your heat source and rises back up as smoke.

You can use pressure-rendered fat when cooking on gas or charcoal grills, grill pans, or even in tinfoil packets. Just remove the food from the sous vide bag and brush it generously with the fat. Grill meats first, typically for about one minute per side. Then add vegetables and fruit as desired. Leave fruits, such as peaches or pineapple, on the heat long enough that the sugars in them caramelize. Remember, don’t panick when you see small flames flare-up and lick at the food: you want the smoke they generate to carry its flavor onto the food. But do keep a spray bottle on hand in case the flames get too high.

Leave Only Your Footprints…

Remember to never leave a grill, fire, or coals unattended. Spread the coals out and cover them with sand if necessary before leaving. Gather up all the plastic bags and other waste from your meal, and take it with you.

Vote for MCAH Prints!

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We’ve taken the photos, tested the recipes, written the text, and shipped our files off to the printer. But there’s one element of Modernist Cuisine at Home we can’t do without you: we need your help selecting images for the four 8 x 10 prints we will be including with MCAH!

To vote, post one of the photos below to the social media site of your choice by clicking the button. You can vote as many times as you’d like, but remember we’re only going to include four prints in the end!

Voting will conclude at 12 p.m. Pacific Time on Friday, June 22, 2012.

Voting has closed. The winners are:

Levitating Ice Cream
Tossed Salad
Camembert on Brioche
Pizza Composite

Thank you to everyone who voted!

 

 

Corn

[vote image_url=”https://modernistcuisine.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/MCAH_GRITS_Opener_NPM_CH_104125_8x10crop.jpg”]

Nathan Myhrvold and Melissa Lehuta / Modernist Cuisine LLC. Copyright 2012 Modernist Cuisine LLC.

Tossed Salad

[vote image_url=”https://modernistcuisine.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/MCAH_COLD_Compose_Salad-Blow-Up-Cutaway-Final.jpg”]

Chris Hoover / Modernist Cuisine LLC. Copyright 2012 Modernist Cuisine LLC.

Pressure Cooker Cutaway

[vote image_url=”https://modernistcuisine.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/MCAH_CGear_PressureCookerCutawayV1.jpg”]

Tyson Stole / Modernist Cuisine LLC. Copyright 2012 Modernist Cuisine LLC.

Steel Oats Risotto with Snails

[vote image_url=”https://modernistcuisine.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/MCAH_RIS_Variations_Steel_MG_8082.jpg”]

Melissa Lehuta / Modernist Cuisine LLC. Copyright 2012 Modernist Cuisine LLC.

Levitating Ice Cream

[vote image_url=”https://modernistcuisine.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/MCAH_SWEET_Pistachio_IceCream-StackShortVersionREV.jpg”]

Tyson Stole / Modernist Cuisine LLC. Copyright 2012 Modernist Cuisine LLC.

Salmon

[vote image_url=”https://modernistcuisine.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/MCAH_SALM_Opener_NPM_130708.jpg”]

Nathan Myhrvold / Modernist Cuisine LLC. Copyright 2012 Modernist Cuisine LLC.

Barley Risotto with Wild Mushrooms

[vote image_url=”https://modernistcuisine.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/MCAH_RIS_Variation_Barley_MG_8037.jpg”]

Melissa Lehuta / Modernist Cuisine LLC. Copyright 2012 Modernist Cuisine LLC.

Cabbage

[vote image_url=”https://modernistcuisine.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/MCAH_ING_Cover_133934_MB_R8_S4.jpg”]

Nathan Myhrvold / Modernist Cuisine LLC. Copyright 2012 Modernist Cuisine LLC.

Rye Noodles

[vote image_url=”https://modernistcuisine.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/MCAH_NOOD_DressedNoodle_Rye_MG_3202.jpg”]

Melissa Lehuta / Modernist Cuisine LLC. Copyright 2012 Modernist Cuisine LLC.

Pizza Composite

[vote image_url=”https://modernistcuisine.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/MCAH_PIZZA_Pizza-Toppings-Final.535×300.jpg”]

Chris Hoover / Modernist Cuisine LLC. Copyright 2012 Modernist Cuisine LLC.

Camembert on Brioche

[vote image_url=”https://modernistcuisine.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/MCAH_MAC_Camembert-on-Brioche_Blow_up.jpg”]

Chris Hoover / Modernist Cuisine LLC. Copyright 2012 Modernist Cuisine LLC.

Enoki Mushrooms

[vote image_url=”https://modernistcuisine.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/MCAH_EndPage_Full_Front_Cover_VQ6B5894.jpg”]

Ryan Matthew Smith / Modernist Cuisine LLC. Copyright 2012 Modernist Cuisine LLC.

Raspberries

[vote image_url=”https://modernistcuisine.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/MCAH_COLD_Opener_Raspberry.jpg”]

Chris Hoover / Modernist Cuisine LLC. Copyright 2012 Modernist Cuisine LLC.

Egg Yolks

[vote image_url=”https://modernistcuisine.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/MCAH_EGGS_Opener_V2_MG_4859.jpg”]

Chris Hoover / Modernist Cuisine LLC. Copyright 2012 Modernist Cuisine LLC.

Introducing Modernist Cuisine at Home

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When it comes to cooking techniques, the classics are well covered. But the latest and greatest techniques, developed by the most innovative chefs in the world, were largely undocumented until we and Chris Young, along with the rest of our team, published Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking in 2011. At six volumes and 2,438 pages, it wasn’t an ordinary cookbook. Many people were skeptical that it would interest a wide audience.

As it turned out, Modernist Cuisine sold out of its first printing within weeks; it is now in its fourth printing. The book has been translated into French, German, and Spanish. It has been reviewed in thousands of news articles. Long discussion threads about the book on the eGullet Internet forum have been viewed more than 300,000 times.

We often get the question “Isn’t this book only for professionals?” The answer is no; we wrote and designed Modernist Cuisine for anybody who is passionate and curious about cooking. As hundreds of blogs and forum postings show, many amateurs have embraced the book. Of the 1,800 or so recipes in it, probably half could be made in any home kitchen. That number rises to perhaps two-thirds or three-quarters for those willing to buy some new equipment (for cooking sous vide, for example).

The remaining recipes are indeed challenging— even for professionals. We felt that many food enthusiasts would like to be on the front lines of culinary innovation and get a chance to understand the state of the art, even if they couldn’t execute every recipe. At the same time, we realized that we had the right team and resources to bring the Modernist cuisine revolution to an even wider audience of home cooks by developing less complex recipes that require less expensive equipment. The result is this book, Modernist Cuisine at Home (in-stores October 8, 2012).

Although we kept Modernist Cuisine in the title, this new book is not a condensed version of its predecessor. If you want to learn about food safety, microbiology, the history of foie gras cultivation, or hundreds of other topics, Modernist Cuisine is still the book to turn to.

This book focuses on cooking equipment, techniques, and recipes. Part One details tools, ingredients, and cooking gear that we think are worth having. Equipment once available only to professional chefs or scientists is now being manufactured for the home kitchen; we encourage you to try it. But we also show you how to get by without fancy appliances, such as how to cook fish sous vide in your kitchen sink and how to cook steak in a picnic cooler.

Part Two contains 406 recipes, all of which are new. In some cases, we took popular Modernist Cuisine recipes— Caramelized Carrot Soup (see page 178), Mac and Cheese (see page 310), and Striped Mushroom Omelet (see page 148)—and developed simpler versions. In general, the food is less formal; you’ll find recipes for Crispy Skinless Chicken Wings (see page 254) and Grilled Cheese Sandwiches (see page 318).

What’s the same as Modernist Cuisine is our focus on quality in both the information in the book and in the way it is presented. You’ll find stunning cutaways of equipment, step-by-step photos for most recipes, and ingredients measured in grams (because every serious cook should have a scale). We use the same high-quality paper, printing, and binding that we did for Modernist Cuisine. The kitchen manual is again printed on washable, waterproof paper. We hope that in following the vision we set out to accomplish with our first book, we have created a great experience for home chefs who want an introduction to Modernist cuisine.

Pre-order now to get the book delivered on October 8, 2012

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