Anybody doing molecular gastronomy?

[Mike Nolan]

I've been thinking of delving into molecular gastronomy. Has anyone here experimented with it?

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[Italiancook]

Not I. My knowledge of molecular gastronomy is so limited that I had to seek a definition on the Internet. What is your goal in exploring this, Mike? A new avenue of knowledge? Something else?

[Mike Nolan]

Molecular gastronomy is about exploring the limits of food properties and appearances. Let's face it, there's only so many ways to cook a steak before you're just repeating yourself.

[BevM]

I also had to google the term as I am not familiar with it or the process. I will be interested to know how the processes effect the taste of the food. The pictures show some interesting dishes. I will be following this thread with much curiosity!

[Mike Nolan]

Possibly the two most frequently televised techniques in molecular gastronomy are spherification and foams, the latter especially having been overused on multiple cooking reality shows.

Many techniques involve chemicals, but some involve new cooking tools.

The tool I'd love to play around with is an anti-griddle, which has a constant 30 below zero (F) surface that you can make ices on, but since they cost about $1500, that doesn't seem likely to be in my kitchen at any point.

Immersion circulation heaters have gotten very reasonably priced, though, one model of the Anova was selling for under $100 on Black Friday. (Kenji Lopez-Alt says you can do some sous vide cooking using a beer cooler, which costs even less.)

One technique I do NOT expect to play with is using liquid nitrogen, if mis-handled you can hurt yourself badly or cause major damage in your kitchen.

[aaronatthedoublef]

The closest I've come to molecular gastronomy was sitting in meetings with Nathan Myhryold.

[Italiancook]

What is the purpose of an immersion circulation heater, Mike?

[Mike Nolan]

An immersion circulation heater is used for sous vide cooking.

In some ways it's similar to a convection oven, but much more efficient because water conducts heat better than air. Because the water is always circulating it produces a constant heat at the specified temperature everywhere in the pot, as opposed to having a pot on a stove where the temperature at the bottom is going to be much warmer than at the top.

Fish and chicken are the most frequently mentioned proteins in sous vice cooking, but you can cook nearly anything this way.

For example, if you want a steak cooked to 135 degrees, you just put it in a boiling bag, set the immersion heater to 135 and when you're done it is a uniform 135 degrees throughout, which means it's the same degree of redness from edge to edge.

If you want a seared outside or grill marks on the outside, a minute or two in a pan or on the grill will finish it off.

By contract, when you cook a steak in a pan or on the grill, by the time the center gets to 135 degrees the outside is probably at 170 or higher.

Restaurants often use sous vide techniques to par-cook foods to save time later on and ensure consistent results.

Something I learned about cooking potatoes from Harold McGee's book On Food and Cooking is that if you cook them at 130-140 degrees for about 20 minutes then raise the temperature to finish cooking them, they'll stay firm even after they're fully cooked and diced. This makes for a nicer potato salad. In essence this is a sous vide technique.

• This reply was modified 8 years ago by Mike Nolan.

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