The Lab Equipment
Cooking at home is nothing more than a series of simple chemistry experiments that we conduct in our home lab. We just happen to call our home chemistry lab a kitchen! We use heat, mechanical energy, and chemicals to transform raw ingredients into food that is palatable and (hopefully) healthy. Here’s some equipment that you might want in your lab to help along the chemistry experiments:
Thermal Circulator – The thermal circulator with an immersion bath is a precision pump and heater (see www.polyscience.com) that brings water to within 0.09F of a desired temperature. The idea is to place meat or vegetables in a vacuum-sealed bag, and then conduct the entire cooking process at very specific temperatures, often at exactly the desired final temperature. For example, if I want a piece of beef cooked to exactly 135F throughout, I vacuum seal the meat and immerse in a bath of water held at exactly 135F by the Thermal Circulator! The result is meat cooked perfectly throughout its entire cross-section, with no portion of the meat being overcooked. The technique also works for vegetables, eggs, fish, and even specialty items like foie gras.
Anti Griddle – A way cool item (also from polyscience) that I first came across in an article on Grant Achatz at Alinea, and then saw again on a Next Iron Chef episode. The idea is that instead of using heat to cook, why not use very cold temperatures to change the physical state of food? The top of this griddle cools down to MINUS 30F! It can be used to create a wide variety of unusual textures and flavors – for example, a chocolate dessert that is frozen solid on the outside but remains hot on the inside! Or purees and sauces can be frozen into thin, edible solids to create new dishes.
Smoking Gun – An amazing little tool (again, from polyscience!) that generates smoke from a small amount of dry chips of wood or other material, much like a pipe working in reverse. The idea is to immerse food in smoke without changing the temperature of the food being smoked. For example, you could bubble the smoke from some pine needles through gin to create a whole new martini! Of course, college kids might have a different use for it …
Multi-Mode Ovens – These are really neat ovens that can cook items FIFTEEN times faster than traditional ovens or microwaves. One of the most popular ovens (www.turbochef.com) uses four different types of technology in one oven. First, air impingement cooking is provided with a high speed fan that generates super-heated air at speeds up to 60 mph! Then, there is an infrared (IR) heating element that provides traditional cooking temperatures and browning like a regular oven. Add to this dual microwaves that provide even cooking temperatures from the inside out! Finally, there is a specialized catalytic converter that removes grease and odors from the high velocity air streams so that the food doesn’t develop unintended flavors. The whole thing is computer controlled, with each cooking mode applied at specific times during the cooking process in order to get the desired results for the product being cooked. Basically, it has to be programmed to cook each type of food. You can get one for $10K. I want one.
Induction Cook-tops – Use magnets for heat? That’s the theory behind induction cook-tops, which use rotating magnets to induce an electric field in steel cookware. The electric field generates heat and can quickly heat a pan to very high temperatures. For example, it’s easy to hit 15,000BTU with an induction cook-top on a 120V circuit, while most of the large burners on home stoves are somewhere between half and two-thirds of that number. And the beautiful part of induction cook-tops is that only the pan gets hot. The cooking surface itself does not generate any heat! Hard to believe, huh? The only catch – you have to use steel pans. Aluminum and ceramics won’t work. Personally, I want one for my wok (www.cooktek.com) …
– Chris