Topic: Scaling spices and bulk cooking.

[mickyp]

That all makes total sense to me Livo, especially having enough heat to cook out the spices, also your chef threw in a few other points like chilli freshness, surface area of the vessel, points all born from experience. Personally for me i find cooking curries therapeutic and enjoyable, if I'm going to be cooking say four portions of a dish i will do them as a max of two at a time as i would be more in my comfort zone, i do not have the experience like your chef to scale up and have control of all those parameters and would hate to waste the ingredients by gettting it wrong.

[livo]

I want to be very comfortable with the process before I go making 3 big pots of curry, each using 4 or 5 kg of chicken or lamb. The last thing needed is to have AUD$200 in ingredients wasted because they are too spicey to eat. This is crucial to my upcoming event due to the target clientele involved. I will be doing reduced (but still bulk) trials of each dish to test this procedure. I'll use 8 portion tests and eat some myself, give some to family and freeze the remainder.

Big thanks to all for your input. I now feel quite comfortable with the job.

[Peripatetic Phil]

Chef K's formula is not  X 1.5  but X 1.6.  Double it and reduce by 20% equals X 1.6.

OK, so let's list the easy ratios first :

1 : 1
2 : 1.6
4 : 2.56
8 : 4.096

So by the time we reach an 8-portion serving, we are adding only half of the spices that we would add for a single portion.  I confess that that feels a little spice-light to me.  Do you think you might bounce the 8-portion figure off Chef K. when you get the opportunity and ask him if that is what he would expect ?

** Phil.

[littlechili]

Phil it

[livo]

I will try to see him again.

It appears to be normal practice to not include the first iteration Phil.  This doesn't prevent your point from becoming pertinent at the next iteration to 16.  With rounding it would be:
1 serve : 1 tsp
2 : 2
4 : 3
8 : 5

This is how I interpreted his answers anyway. There is a slight language barrier issue although his English is quite good.  It was quite busy where he was working, and I was in a hurry as well, so I didn't have the time to really press him.  He may have meant to only reduce the increment by 20 % or it is even possible that he misunderstood my question about every instance of doubling and just did the math in his head for the amount I asked about. He did think for a second or so before answering.

So that would be either (with rounding)
1 serve : 1 tsp
2 : 2
4 : 3.5
8 : 6.5

or
1 serve : 1 tsp
2 : 2
8 : 6.5
10 : 8

My initial interpretation of his answers though, was consistent with my discussion with Ian, although he did say to use a factor of between 1.5 and 1.8 depending on previously mentioned criteria.

I think it is important to remember LC's recommended method to be used for final adjustments.  If I was to make a batch for 32 or 40 serves at a conversion factor of X 1.5 and taste that it was OK, I'd leave it alone.  If it was clearly under-spiced I'd use his method of adjustment.

As I've said, this is new ground for me, having only done it once before and I cannot remember exactly what I did last time (4 years ago) although I'm positive I did use the 1.5 reduction factor because of my target consumption group.  I now wish I'd kept notes.

Posted at the same time as you LC. I think you are raising the most important point here.  Increasing portion quantities is not directly just multiplying anything by a number.  Increasing from 1 to 2 serves will be different to increasing from 10 to 20, and this will again be different to increasing from 100 to 200.  The chef must know how to make those adjustments.

[livo]

We need to remain aware of an important thing here.  It's not possible to just apply a number.  If you continue to apply a constant reducing factor in conversion, the point will come when the incremental quantity approaches zero,  Your point I think Phil.  When talking to Ian yesterday we discussed this exact point and his statement about it was that if you were to take that approach it would be like the Grains of Rice (Wheat) on a Chessboard problem but in reverse.   

This is a very good analogy and I don't think anybody is suggesting that a singular magic number is the answer, but the discussions would clearly indicate that direct linear conversion is not the right way to go.

[livo]

It's getting late but I have some findings to post tomorrow along with photos. Short story is that today I turned 2.4 kg of raw chicken into 10 serves of chicken madras. I cooked a double serve for comparison, in the usual BIR method with full spices and then a bulk cook of 8 serves using reduced quantities of nearly everything except the chicken. Oil, Mixed Powder, chilli, base gravy and some other ingredients were all reduced in proportion to the amount of chicken per serve.  The double quantity took about 12 minutes to cook and the 8 serves took about 20 minutes. The dishes are so close to being the same that there is little to no chance of deciding which is which, other than the fact that i deliberately kept the bulk cook mild at wife's request so the kids can eat it. I could easily have made the two identical without using the full 8 tsp of chilli. 5 would have been enough.

2 tsp of Kashmiri chilli in 2 serves should have gone out to 4.5 tsp for 8 serves at X1.5 per double conversion. I only used 4 and it is fine. To a person eating either dish the difference is negligible.

It's  going to take 2 posts to put up the photos.  I'll list the ingredient quantities in the second half.

The first 4 photos show:
1) 2.4 kg of raw chicken chunks pre-cooked down to 2 kg.  Boiled for 15 minutes in water, 1 cup Latif's Base Gravy and a heaped TBSP of Curry Powder (Mother's Recipe Madras)
2) Double serving ingredients using CT's basic Chicken Madras video recipe. (400 g of the pre-cooked chicken)
3) Double serving of Chicken Madras cooked BIR style. Now gone.  Wife and my dinner. ;D
4) Bulk ingredients for 8 serves, reduced ingredient ratios and the remaining 1600 g of pre-cooked chicken.

[livo]

Pictures cont'd
5) Bulk ingredients all added to the pot and cooking.
6) Some sauce removed for reduction in the aluminium curry pan.  Spice adjustment possible here.
7) Chicken removed to prevent over-cooking.
8 ) The 2 and 8 serve dishes side by side.  (As stated I deliberately kept the 8 serve tray milder by actually using less spice than calculated. To be honest there was very little difference even after having done this.)

[livo]

The ingredient quantities.
I based the experiment / practice cook on Chewytikka's Chicken Madras video and the only thing different was the addition of a small squirt of Worcestershire Sauce.  The quantities were guessed from the video single serve but kept simple to allow for easy scaling to increased quantities.

Double serve. (exactly 2 X single serve). In order of addition to the pan and cooked in normal BIR method as per CT's video.

1 TBSP butter ghee
1 TBSP vegetable oil
1 TBSP garlic and ginger paste
¹/₂ cup dilute tomato puree
2 tsp mixed powder
2 tsp kashmiri chilli powder
1 tsp kasoori methi
Splash of Base Gravy
2 tsp lemon juice (added a squirt of W' sauce)
¹/₂ tsp salt
400 g pre-cooked chicken
¹/₂ TBSP coriander leaf and stem
400 ml Base Gravy (I used Latif's and diluted 3 : 1) I reduction cooked the dish considerably to suite Australian expectation.

8 serve bulk.  Bracketed number shows approximate conversion factor per iteration of double. Modified method as described above.

2 TBSP butter ghee ( X 1.5)
2 TBSP vegetable oil (x 1.5)
3 TBSP garlic and ginger paste (X 1.75)
1 ¹/₂ cup dilute tomato puree (X 1.75)
5 tsp mixed powder (X 1.6)
4 ¹/₂ tsp kashmiri chilli powder (X 1.5)
2 tsp kasoori methi (X 1.5)
¹/₂ cup base gravy
1 ¹/₂ TBSP lemon juice / W' sauce (X 1.5)
1 tsp salt (X 1.5)
1.6 kg pre-cooked chicken (direct linear scaling)
2 TBSP coriander (direct linear but to suite taste)
1 litre base gravy (X 1.6) Note: not diluted and this is in total including the half cup already added. It took a fair bit of reduction to get to the same as the double serve.

Note: As stated I reduced the quantity of Kashmiri chilli powder even further to only 4 tsp (possibly less) and there was minimal difference to the taste or heat level when compared to the full ration ingredient double serve dish.

Conclusion: Non linear scaling is necessary  Had I used linear scaling with the 8 serve quantity the spicing levels would have been too high..

[littlechili]

Now all the debates are concluded  ;D Comit big and get yourself practice a 50l pot and earn some money!