The New Face of Modernistcuisine.com

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If you’ve logged on to modernistcuisine.com recently, you probably noticed some changes, which include our new bread project and a few personnel additions to the Modernist Cuisine team. We’ve been working hard to improve our website in order to satisfy our main goal: to make it more user-friendly, while providing an experience that truly reflects everything we love about Modernist Cuisine: gorgeous photography, solid design features, and useful information. You’ll also find new content—tour the volumes of Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking, explore the anatomy of a Modernist Cuisine at Home recipe, or strike up a conversation with Nathan about Modernist cooking.

What is yet to come?

We’re still in the first phase of construction, but you can expect even more content in the coming months. Many of you have expressed concern about our full-text search: we know this is a valuable resource, especially when it comes to working through Modernist Cuisine. We are working to create a more user-friendly experience so that it is easier to find information and navigate through the volumes. You can expect an updated, comprehensive gear guide, as well as recipes developed exclusively for the site.

What about the forum?

When we sat down to begin mapping out the new site, one of our biggest questions was, “What do we do with our forum?” As many of our readers noted, our forum had become plagued with spam, making it difficult to use and for the Modernist Cuisine team to respond. We want to provide our forum members with a space that will foster learning and conversations about Modernist recipes, techniques, and ingredients, so, after putting considerable thought into it, we determined there is no better home for these discussions than our good friend, eGullet. Their site is a tremendous resource for both professional chefs and home cooks who have an interest in Modernist cooking. In fact, the origins of Modernist Cuisine can be traced to the infamous eGullet thread about cooking sous vide that was started by Nathan. That discussion was the inspiration for Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking.

Here’s what you need to know about the transition:

  • All content from the modernistcuisine.com forums has been directly integrated into the eGullet forums. You’ll be able to search eGullet for any topics posted on our site; all imported content has been tagged as “Modernist Cuisine Forums,” so it’s easy to find. Our team will now be weighing in on topics and answering questions through eGullet.
  • Your privacy is important to us, which is why we anonymized every post imported to eGullet. No personally identifiable information was transferred, and no IP addresses or related information were retained. Read eGullet’s privacy statement here.
  • It will be easy to continue your discussions in the forum’s new home, but that choice is entirely yours. To facilitate the transition, eGullet created easily activated dummy accounts for each member of the Modernist Cuisine forum. If you decide to create an eGullet account, every post you make on the modernistcuisine.com forum will appear with your new username.

To activate your account on eGullet, send an e-mail to feedback@egullet.org using the account you registered with Modernist Cuisine. Please include the username you wish to use, or, if you are already an eGullet member and would like your accounts merged, let us know in the e-mail.

We hope you take some time to explore and enjoy the new modernistcuisine.com.

The Art and Science of Bread

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We are frequently asked what our next big project will be, and for almost a year we’ve alluded to “having something in the works.” In actuality, our culinary team has been working overtime baking and learning about bread. From crust to crumb, we are excited to finally reveal that our next book will be entirely devoted to the art and science of bread.

Why bread? Because it’s so ubiquitous that we now have vast, daunting selections of breads to choose from at most grocery chains. Many of us have started taking the bread course for granted when dining out. But bread shouldn’t be an afterthought on the table or simply a building block for sandwiches—breaking open a good loaf of bread, fresh from the oven, is an experience that can evoke nostalgia for years to follow. For many of us, however, baking bread at home is intimidating and shrouded in mystery. Unlike cooking, most breads are made by varying the amounts of four simple ingredients: flour, water, salt, and, of course, yeast. Yet the simplicity of these ingredients is complicated by the intricate science of the bread-baking process and by the fact that bakers must contend with an ingredient that is alive and sensitive to its environment.

With thousands of years of wisdom that inform techniques still used today, the art of baking bread is steeped in tradition. As such, we are researching bread’s rich past and studying the science therein. We have been fortunate to meet a number of talented bakers and chefs who are sharing their expertise and knowledge with us, and we remain on the lookout for new experts and resources.

This project comes with another exciting announcement as we welcome to our team Francisco Migoya as head chef and Peter Reinhart as assignments editor. We are incredibly lucky to have recruited two individuals whose contributions to pastry and baking have already set the bar high.

Team_Francisco Migoya_MG_1805

Under the leadership of head chef Migoya, our bread program has blossomed in a relatively short time. His passion has led him to push the boundaries of pastry arts in savory, pastry, viennoiserie, and bread. Chef Migoya pairs sublime flavors with Modernist techniques to create exquisite, avant-garde pastries and chocolates that are almost too stunning to eat. Having worked as executive pastry chef at The French Laundry, and most recently as a professor at The Culinary Institute of America, his work has earned him recognition as one of the top pastry chefs in the country by both the Huffington Post and Dessert Professional, and he has been imparted Medal of Master Artisan Pastry Chef by Gremi de Pastisseria de Barcelona. Chef Migoya has authored three pastry books, winning a 2014 award for The Elements of Dessert from International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP).

Peter Reinhart Photo Credit Ron Manville

One of the leading authorities on bread, Peter Reinhart will lend his extensive expertise to this project. As a full-time chef on assignment at Johnson & Wales University, Peter teaches courses on baking and the juncture of food and culture. A best-selling author of nine books, his approachable methodologies and techniques have been embraced by home bakers and earned him numerous awards, including Book of the Year (2002) for The Bread Baker’s Apprentice from both IACP and the James Beard Foundation. Additionally, he won James Beard Foundation awards for Peter Reinhart’s Whole Grain Breads (2008) and Crust and Crumb (1997), with a nomination for Peter Reinhart’s Artisan Breads Every Day. His newest book, Bread Revolution, will be released in the fall of 2014.

Our hope for this project is that, by revealing the history, science, and techniques of baking bread, we will create an in-depth multivolume set of books that will be useful and accessible to amateur home bakers, passionate bread enthusiasts, restaurants, and small-scale bakeries alike. But because we are in the beginning stages of this book, we do not know how many volumes it will be or when it will go on sale. There is a lot for us to decide, but we will stay true to the approaches used for Modernist Cuisine, so readers can expect the same level of rigor and detail in our writing, illustrations, and photography as we attempt to showcase bread in a new light.

If you have a burning question about this project, or would like to contribute your expertise, we would love to hear from you. Please contact breadcontributions@modernistcuisine.com.

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Celebrating Steven Shaw

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The best meals are shared, creating a sense of community. These experiences bring people together to exchange ideas, pose questions, debate passionately, laugh loudly, create memories, and relish in eating good food. Steven Shaw did all of these things as well—his work embodied the spirit of his subject matter.

The culinary world lost an innovative voice on Tuesday. I’m shocked and deeply saddened to lose Steven, who has been a great friend to me and to the entire culinary world.

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Steven genuinely enjoyed good food, whether it was a pizza, a particularly delicious deli sandwich, or a provocative Modernist creation at a high-end restaurant. His voracious appetite for both food and writing drove him to leave a successful legal career to become a food blogger, long before that title existed and certainly before anyone was actually getting paid for it. He was an evocative, intelligent author and critic who had a gift for inspiring people to explore, debate, and eat. His early, enthusiastic newsletters transformed into his blog, which evolved into eGullet; the community he created is a true reflection of his passion. His decisions in how to shape and moderate the disparate voices into a managed conversation made eGullet into a forum where chefs, home cooks, and just about anybody else openly shared their knowledge. He was a trailblazer, centralizing our conversations and democratizing our discourse by moving it to an online agora.

In many ways, the inspiration for Modernist Cuisine was born on those forums. In 2004, I started exploring and explaining sous vide cuisine on eGullet. Almost immediately, I was contacted by FatGuy, and, in addition to the public posts, we started to e-mail each other directly. As a result of the experience, I was determined to write a book on sous vide. Steven was a tremendously positive influence on the development of both Modernist Cuisine and Modernist Cuisine at Home. He was a sounding-board throughout the writing process, providing thoughtful feedback on early manuscripts. I and the rest of the Modernist Cuisine team owe a great deal to him for all of his help and guidance.

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I was also incredibly fortunate to be able to call him a friend. He was smart, doggedly rational, and had a famously acerbic sense of humor—he was a genuinely good guy and a truly amazing person to share a meal with. I have many wonderful memories that were made while sitting across the table from him. I was privileged to dine with Steven in the last weeks at elBulli. Our group comprised chefs and hard-core eaters, but six hours and fifty-two courses after the beginning of the night, we reached our limits. Yet, when the last plate finally arrived, Steven turned to me and said in an incredulous voice, “Is that it?” It was all the rest of us could do to contain our laughter.

Steven has left a lasting legacy. He taught thousands of people how to really love food and his work will live on in the community he built. eGullet is a gift that he created for everyone—especially for me. He will be sincerely missed and lovingly remembered as a legend. He gave so much, but it ended far too soon. If I could say one last thing to him, I would say, “Hey Steve, is that it?”

The Science Behind Non-Newtonian Noodles

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Modernist cooking isn’t just reserved for state-of-the-art kitchens and labs, for culinary ingenuity is found in many surprising places. Street vendors in particular are among the most innovative and resourceful cooks out there. They often combine humble ingredients with science to create extraordinary dishes, often paired with entertaining finesse to stop hungry locals and travelers in their tracks.

For instance, the vendor in this video is preparing fei chang fen, a tasty specialty of Chengdu, in Sichuan province, China. He uses a marvelously simple, yet clever way of making noodles by grabbing handfuls of batter from a large pot and dropping it into a colander, allowing the batter to drain through the holes. The batter at the bottom of the colander flows freely, but the mixture at the top appears much thicker—thick enough, in fact, for the vendor to forcefully slap the surface without submerging his hand. The process repeats as he casually looks around, until the vendor shears off the batter into individual strands of noodles, which he then drops into boiling broth to cook.

Traditionally, elastic fei chang fen noodles are made of sweet-potato starch reserved in a steaming-hot broth with pig intestines. The resulting noodle soup is then garnished with bean sprouts, scallions, peanuts, chili oil, and vinegar.

It is the unique preparation, however, by which the street vendor creates his noodles that caught our attention. By combining starch and liquid, he creates a non-Newtonian fluid: a liquid that does not flow with constant viscosity but with a viscosity that changes in response to shear forces, which are forces that push in opposite directions along two distinct parallel lines. Simply put, non-Newtonian fluids can behave as both a liquid and solid. When you apply shear forces to non-Newtonian fluids, you’re met with resistance—try punching such mixtures, and you might come away with a bruise or two. In contrast, Newtonian fluids (like water) have a relatively constant viscosity, despite shear forces and flow rates, which allow them to flow in predictable ways.

We encounter non-Newtonian fluids every day, a classic example of which is Ketchup, which stubbornly stays in the bottle and acts solid, even if the bottle is inverted. If you shake the bottle, the flow starts and then picks up speed as shear forces reduce the viscosity. Often the result is that too much ketchup dumps on the plate.

There’s no need to shake a bottle of water when you want to fill a cup. When you pour water, you can easily anticipate the trajectory and flow of the fluid; splashes are just a function of the pourer’s clumsiness.

Despite the ubiquity of non-Newtonian fluids, scientists have only recently begun to understand the mechanisms of how they flow.

Researchers at the University of Chicago have uncovered just how the molecules of non‑Newtonian fluids behave. By using high-speed videography and force sensors on mixtures of cornstarch and water (commonly known as Oobleck with an etymology tracing to the pen of Dr. Seuss), the research team observed the so-called “snowplow” effect: when a mixture is compressed, the molecules pack together to create a solid surface.

The snowplow effect partly explains how the noodles in the video can be picked up like a block one second and then flow freely the next. When the vendor smacks the batter in the video (likely done to distribute the batter or for a bit of dramatic flair), the molecules directly under his hand compress into a hard mass that is unable to exit the colander, momentarily exhibiting properties of a solid, just like the packed snow that builds up in front of a snowplow.

But when the vendor lets the batter rest in the colander, the molecules relax, and the mixture flows again. The vendor then shears off the dough into individual strands of noodles, which fall into the boiling broth below and cook. Although scientists now understand how molecules become “jammed” into a solid, they are still trying to understand how molecules relax to take on characteristics of a liquid.

To observe these unique (and often entertaining) properties of non-Newtonian fluids, try creating your own Oobleck by mixing one cup of cornstarch with one-half cup of water. And the next time you find yourself wandering through a market, take a second look at the cooking techniques of street vendors because you might be witnessing a complex scientific process!

Non Newtonian Noodle_X8A5060 2

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter to find upcoming posts about street vendor science.

The Delicious Science of Guinness

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Guinness isn’t just tasty — the company has a long history of technical and scientific innovation.

Guinness draft beer is famous for both its taste and its velvety, foamy head. The creamy foam of dry stouts is notably different from the bitter, more carbonated foam of other beers because of the addition of nitrogen. In fact, kegs that dispense stouts are pressurized with nitrogen, which has a low solubility in liquids and works to displace carbon dioxide (CO2), imparting a unique head with a pleasant mouthfeel.

The bubbles of other beers, as in lagers, form as dissolved CO2 comes out of solution slowly. But this doesn’t translate well to canned beers. So, in the late 1980s, Guinness developed an answer: a special can pressurized not just with 2 but also nitrogen. Cans — and, more recently, bottles — of Guinness contain a floating plastic container called a widget, which releases additional nitrogen when the container is opened. This sophisticated combination has been very successful in mimicking draft Guinness.

In 2006, Guinness introduced another option: the Surger, an ultrasonic device that sits under a pint glass and sends out a pulse of ultrasound to create cavitation, which drives bubbles out of solution.

We cut open a Guinness Bottle to examine how the widget works its magic.

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– Adapted from Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking

A Super Bowl Snackdown

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Super Bowl fever is in full swing this week, and here in Seattle we’re feeling extra excited this year. Game day isn’t just a celebration of American football; it’s an ode to the United States’ adoration of snack food. In fact, the only day that precedes Super Bowl Sunday in super snacking is Thanksgiving. Crispy, crunchy, melty, creamy, skewered, fried, baked, pressure-cooked, and even infused—we love them all. To help you celebrate, we’ve pulled together some of our favorite recipes that will bring a Modernist twist to your game-day parties.

First Half:

Pressure-Cooked Carnitas

Pressure-Cooked Chicharrón

Modernist Seven-Layer Dip

Melty Queso Dip

Starch-Infused Fries

Cheese puffs

Half-time Show:

Lamb Skewers with Mint Yogurt

Crispy Chicken Wings, Korean Style

Neapolitan Pizza Dough with Classic Pizza Sauce

Silky Smooth Macaroni and Cheese

Cooking Meat Sous Vide in a Cooler

Smoked Dry Rub Ribs

Second Half:

Frozen Fruit Rolls

Mind-Blowing Microwaved Cake

Pistachio Gelato

P.B. & J. Gelato

 

For precision cooking fire up the… cooler?

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BY W. WAYT GIBBS
Associated Press

When you head off to the shore, the woods, or a tailgate party at the stadium, you don’t have to settle for preservative-filled hot dogs or overcooked burgers.

Live a little, and take along a few inch-thick strip steaks, or maybe some fresh salmon or chicken fillets. Rest easy, because cooking the meat to perfection will be a snap. And the best tool for the job is the very container you’ll use to carry the food: a big, insulated ice chest. You’ll also want to pack a digital thermometer — and a blowtorch, if you have one.

When relaxing outdoors, we’re in no hurry. But cooking over the intense heat of a fire or grill is unforgiving; time things wrong by just a minute or two, and the window of opportunity for a perfectly medium-rare steak or a just-done salmon fillet will have closed.

As long as you have plenty of water and a way to heat it, however, you have a better alternative: transform that insulated cooler from an improvised fridge into an improvised hot water bath for cooking your food. Then you can cook your meat the way high-end chefs do, or sous vide, as they say in the restaurant world.

Convert a Cooler into a Water Bath

I realize that this idea strikes some people as funky, but it’s simple. Here’s how it works. You fill the cooler with hot water. You place your meat in a sealed plastic bag. Add the bagged meat to the cooler, then walk away. The hot water slowly, evenly, perfectly cooks the meat to your desired doneness.

First, a few guidelines. The cooler and meat should be warmed to room temperature before you start. To maintain the temperature during cooking, plan on using about 8 quarts of water per steak or fillet, and dump in water that is a good 15° F warmer than the final temperature you want the center of the meat to achieve. The recipe below lists final target temperatures for several good options.

During the entire cooking time, the food stays safely sealed in plastic bags, which lock in the cooking juices and keep out the water and anything that might be living on the walls of the ice chest.

Cook Steak Sous Vide in a Cooler

Though the meat will take longer to cook in the bath than it would on the grill, that gives you time to hang out with friends and family. And as long as you don’t use water that is too hot, it is almost impossible to overcook the food. Just make sure, for safety’s sake, that you use whole cuts (no ground meat, such as hamburger or sausage) and that the food gets eaten within four hours of putting it into the water.

No matter how hot the water is, it won’t sear the meat. That’s where the blowtorch comes in. Torches fueled by MAP or propylene gas burn more cleanly than those that run on butane or propane. Sweep the tip of the flame across the surface of the meat in quick, even strokes until an appetizing brown crust forms. The interior will still be done to perfection, virtually edge to edge. Season with some flaky salt and melted butter, and you’ll completely forget that you’re roughing it.

Sous Steak

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COOKING MEAT SOUS VIDE IN A COOLER

If you have time to brine the salmon in advance, you can refrigerate it for 3 to 5 hours in a mixture of 4 1/4 cups water, 4 1/2 tablespoons salt and 2 1/2 tablespoons sugar.

Start to finish: 1/2 to 1 1/2 hours (varies depending on thickness and variety of meat)

Servings:

Two 1.1-pound (500 grams) beef strip steaks

OR

2.2 pounds (1 kilogram) boneless chicken breast

OR

2.2 pounds (1 kilogram) fillets of salmon, halibut or black cod

1 1/2 tablespoons cooking oil

2 tablespoons butter

Flaked sea salt

Drain and wipe down a large, insulated cooler, then let it come to room temperature. Bring the meat to room temperature as well.

Select a target final temperature for the meat.

For beef strip or rib-eye steak — 144 F for medium, 133 F for medium-rare, 129 F for rare

For beef filet — 144 F for medium, 127 F for medium-rare, 122 for rare

For chicken breast — 140 F for medium, and hold at this temperature for at least 20 minutes to pasteurize

Salmon fillet — 113 F for rare, 126 F for firm

Once you select your target final temperature, add 15 F to that. This is the temperature to which you must heat your water. For example, to cook a beef strip steak medium rare (133 F), the water should be heated to 15 F above that, or 148 F. Heat 8 quarts of water per piece of meat to the temperature you calculated, dump it into the cooler, and close the lid tightly.

Wash your hands well with soap. Place each steak, breast or fillet in an individual zip-close plastic bag. Add about 1 tablespoon of cooking oil to each bag.

It is important to remove as much air as possible from each bag so that it does not float and the water can transmit heat to every part of the food. Before sealing the bags, open the cooler. One at a time, hold each bag by its open end and slowly lower it into the water until the water level is just below the seal. The water will push the air out of the bag. Seal the bag tightly. The sealed bag should sink. Repeat with the remaining bags of food. Space the food in the bottom of the cooler so that water can circulate easily around each bag.

Close the cooler lid firmly, and cook until the meat warms to the target temperature. Expect inch-thick steaks to reach medium-rare in 50 to 60 minutes; salmon fillets of that thickness may take only 20 minutes. Chicken breast may reach 140 F in 30 to 40 minutes, but must be held at that temperature or higher for at least 20 minutes more in order to pasteurize them.

Remove the meat from the bags and place it on a rack or baking sheet. If you want to sear the surface of the meat, sweep the flame of a blowtorch over each side in a series of quick, even passes, or place it on a very hot grill until browned.

Season generously with salt and serve immediately.

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Photo credit: Melissa Lehuta/ Modernist Cuisine, LLC

Improve that red wine with just a push of a button

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BY W. WAYT GIBBS
Associated Press

Something about fine wine invites mystique, ritual—and more than a little pretension.

If you have ever ordered an old and expensive bottle of red from a master sommelier, you may have seen the ostentatious production that goes into decanting the stuff. The wine steward rolls out a gueridon (a little table) on which the bottle is cradled gently in a cloth-lined basket. A lit candle flickers nearby. The sommelier tips the neck of the bottle over the candle while pouring the wine with the delicacy of a surgeon into a broad-bottomed decanter so as not to disturb the sediment that has fallen out of the wine during years of aging and character development.

Thus aerated, the wine is then allowed to “breathe” for a while before it is served. Oenophiles—even those back in Roman times—have observed that wine of many vintages and varieties improves perceptibly when aerated for as little as a few minutes or for as long as a day. Oenologists have debated the chemistry that might account for this shift in flavor. Do the tannins change in ways that soften their distinctive flavors? Or does aeration simply allow stinky sulfides enough time to evaporate away?

Whatever the science behind it, the traditional ritual makes for a fine show. But when you’re at home pouring wine for yourself or guests, you can save time and generate entertainment of a different kind by taking a shortcut: dump the bottle in a blender, and frappe it into a froth. (Sediment is less common in wines today than it used to be, but if you are concerned about that, pour the wine very slowly into the blender, and stop before you get to the last couple ounces.)

Less than a minute of hyperdecanting, as we at The Cooking Lab have taken to calling this modern method, exposes the wine to as much air as it would see in an hour or more of traditional decanting, and does so far more uniformly. Wine aficionados may recoil in fear that such a violent treatment will “break” the wine, but the proof is in the tasting.

In carefully controlled, double-blind taste tests conducted at our lab, we presented 14 experienced wine tasters—seven sommeliers, three vintners, two oenologists and two wine writers—with unlabeled samples of hyperdecanted wine. The tasters also received samples taken from the same bottles but decanted the old-fashioned way. The order of presentation was varied from one trial to the next.

When we asked them which samples they preferred, only two of the 14 judges were able to distinguish a difference repeatedly, and both of those tasters consistently preferred the wine that had gone through the blender.

So the next time you uncork a well-muscled syrah or even a rambunctious riesling for your connoisseur friends, bring a blender to the table, and have a camera ready. The foam will subside within seconds. But you’ll cherish that memory of the look on their faces for the rest of your days.

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Photo credit: Ryan Matthew Smith/ Modernist Cuisine, LLC

Gift Guide 2013: Gifts for Modernist Cooks

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Whether you’re purchasing one of our books for a loved one or buying gifts for someone who has already added one of our volumes to their personal library, this year we devoted our gift guide to items that pair perfectly with Modernist Cuisine and Modernist Cuisine at Home. From stocking stuffers to larger gear, we have you covered. We even selected a few ingredients to help you launch your own journey into Modernist cooking.

Modernist Cuisine

Water Bath: This year, give the gift of sous vide. We suggested gifting sous vide setups in previous years with good reason: a water bath is an essential tool for many of the recipes we created for Modernist Cuisine and Modernist Cuisine at Home. While there are ways to improvise, this is the best tool for regularly cooking sous vide or for any cooking task requiring precise temperature control. Water baths are also the perfect way to heat up holiday leftovers. The SousVide Supreme ($329 and up) is sufficient for most home uses, but the PolyScience Sous Vide Professional immersion circulator (Creative series, $399), paired with a polycarbonate tank ($33 for a 10 L tank), provides more uniform heat distribution.

Cook the lamb sous vide for 3 hours.

Blowtorch: From caramelizing crème brûlée to searing sous vide meat, there are many practical (and impractical) reasons to keep a blowtorch handy in the kitchen. A blowtorch is an inexpensive gift (we like the Bernzomatic TS4000 Trigger Start Torch, $34) that’s great for recipes that call for high temperatures unattainable in conventional ovens. It’s also an impressive tool to pull out during holiday gatherings and dinner parties.

Modernist Cuisine™ Gel Noodle and Spherification Kits: 130 pages of Modernist Cuisine are devoted to the science of gels because creating gels is a fundamental technique of Modernist (and even conventional) cooking. The Gel Noodle and Spherification kit ($40 and $50) are a fantastic introduction to the art of creating these magical treats in your kitchen. Each kit comes with some essential tools to get you started as well as enough ingredients to create 20 batches of gelled noodles or spheres. And the kits just happen to be stocking size.

Spherification-WT-2

Borosilicate Flasks and Beakers: Flasks and beakers aren’t necessarily a Modernist must, but these lab tools are incredibly handy to have in the kitchen. If you need to measure volume, beakers and flasks are highly accurate and have greater heat resistance than conventional Pyrex. Plus they double as a very nerd-chic container for cocktails. This SEOH 5-pack of beakers ($14) is a great starter set, but there are many, many options available online.

Modernist Cuisine at Home

Digital Scale: Begin applying more precision to your measurements with a reliable, digital gram scale. These scales are easy to find at cooking stores, and basic models are inexpensive. You should really own two: a general-purpose scale that accurately measures weights from one to 1,000 grams and an even more precise scale accurate to a tenth or hundredth of a gram. A 0.1 g scale is a must-have for measuring hydrocolloid thickening and gelling agents. We recommend the Digital Bench Scale ($49) for extra-large batches and the Extreme‑Precision Digital Ingredient Scale ($27) for its compact portability.

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Thermometer: The pockets of chef jackets have one thing in common: thermometers—and for good reason. Thermometers are indispensable kitchen tools. Small changes in temperature can make all the difference in cooking, so thermometers are essential. A good digital thermometer can even take the place of a fancy sous vide cooker. Our favorite is the Taylor Professional Thermocouple Thermometer ($78), which is extremely accurate and allows you to measure food temperatures in both water baths and ovens. Even an inexpensive instant-read thermometer will give you excellent range and speed, and it’s useful for almost any application.

The Modernist Cuisine™ Special Edition Baking Steel: Andris Lagsdin, a pizza enthusiast who works at a family-owned steel company, was inspired to produce Baking Steels after reading Modernist Cuisine. We worked with Andris to develop the Modernist Cuisine edition, a preseasoned, shatterproof ⅜ in thick steel plate. Based on our own research, we designed it to be an optimal combination of performance and usability. It’s the perfect tool to help create any of the pizzas from Chapter 18 of Modernist Cuisine at Home, and it’s easy to use: simply slide it into a conventional oven for perfect pizzas or place it on top of a burner to use as a griddle. You can even use it as an anti-griddle to make ice cream.

steel 20 degree on white with pizza

Sodium Citrate: If your loved one is a cheese lover, a packet of sodium citrate ($7 for 50 g, $15 for 400 g) is an inexpensive, world-changing gift. Essentially the combination of salt and citric acid from citrus fruits, a tiny bit yields silky smooth Mac and Cheese or wonderfully melty cheese for dips and sandwiches. Appearing in over 20 cheese-based recipes in Modernist Cuisine at Home, sodium citrate is a staple ingredient.

Mac and cheese variations

Cooking Under Pressure: Pressure Caramelized Sweet Potato Soup

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Just in time for winter, we decided to develop a new seasonal variation of one of our Modernist Cuisine traditions: Pressure Caramelized Sweet Potato Soup. The recipe for this magical soup incorporates black peppercorns to give it a nice zip, and hints of sweet onion and Makrud leaves complement the caramelized sweet potato stock.

 

Sweet Potato Soup_X8A1261

 

The charm of this soup is twofold: the elevated temperature of pressure-cooking coupled with an alkaline environment ensure that caramelization reactions will flourish.

Vegetables are made up of cells with strong walls that soften at higher temperatures than the cells in meat do. Vegetables are composed mostly of water, however, and their temperature normally won’t exceed the boiling point of water (100˚C/212˚F) until they are dried out. Vegetables in a fully pressurized cooker don’t dry out as they quickly become tender under higher temperatures (120˚C/250˚F). And because the air is sealed in, you don’t need to add much water, so juices are extracted without becoming diluted.

Add to this a pinch of baking soda to bring the soup to a more alkaline pH of about 7.5 and you have ideal conditions for Maillard reactions to commence. The result is a gorgeously colored soup that is the concentrated essence of caramelized sweet potato.

 

Sweet Potato Soup_134639_M=C

 

We like to finish our soup with purple sweet potato confit, roasted chestnuts, and toasted marshmallows. The purple sweet potatoes add a brilliant dash of color, and toasted marshmallows add a touch of tradition and whimsy. This soup is the perfect way to begin special dinners this holiday season.

Pressure-Caramelized Sweet Potato Soup