Topic: Why does this forum exist / Kris Dhillon / Gas Burner Discussion

[Spottymaldoon]

George:

Thanks for your kind reply, you are very correct - I see that I should qualify what I said.

I totally agree that you can reach any desired temperature with bog-standard equipment & below. But here is the big point: can this hob sustain itself for long enough to give satisfaction?

When you add a reasonable quantity of onions, meat, whatever; does this simply fizz for a few moments, only to collapse into a flaccid, quiescent mass - merely boiling instead of sizzling & smoking fiercely? Domestic hobs don't put out enough heat to 'keep it up' - hence you need something not far short of a commercial jet engine underneath to accomplish the task.

I suppose, otherwise, the only way this might work is to use very small quantities - for example the way Andy does, using 10 pieces of chicken - see his recent recipe posts.

I reckon this goes back to our physics days at school where we were taught the difference between heat and temperature!

Spotty

[Curry King]

I don't quite get what your saying regards using small amounts, surely unless you are cooking enough curry to last months the majority of us will always be making a single portion.   You mention 10 pieces of chicken as being an example of small, to me thats a regular curry and in the case of a vindaloo where potato would be added could be seen as over sized?

cK

[George]

I don't quite get what your saying regards using small amounts, surely unless you are cooking enough curry to last months the majority of us will always be making a single portion.   

I think Spotty is correct. I normally cook a single, take-away sized portion of curry which is the same size portion as my local BIR (which has an open plan kitchen). But when I add, say, 120ml of base sauce, my overall pan temperature will dip for several seconds before it recovers. I can see that the BIR kitchen have a 'furnace' under their pan, so the 'recovery' time will be much faster whenever they add each ingredient. Even when they are busy doing something else in the kitchen, the empty pans are left on full flame, even for 1-2 minutes, unattended. Yet they don't smoke or anything.

Regards
George

[Curry King]

But when I add, say, 120ml of base sauce, my overall pan temperature will dip for several seconds before it recovers. I can see that the BIR kitchen have a 'furnace' under their pan, so the 'recovery' time will be much faster whenever they add each ingredient.

I totally agree but spotty is saying that by using a small amount(10 pieces of chicken) you should overcome that problem?  That doesnt make any sense as thats the sort of quantity the majority of us use anyway, maybe if you used a single piece of chicken and a tiny amount of base you can offset the lack in temp but whats the point.

cK

[onion]

(2) TEMPERATURE has to be high. Higher than almost any household hob can manage (unless you make tiny quantities). High enough to extract those essential oils from the spices AND to impart a delicious 'singed' aroma to your curry! You curry ought to taste like a badly ventilated Indian restaurant smells!

I use one of these hi flame burners from Nisbets, it is fantastic, it is available in both propane and natural gas versions. It is very high power and pan recovery times are fast, great for Chinese as well.
I have adapted one of my kitchen cabinets so it fits level with the worktop.

[coolinshot]

But when I add, say, 120ml of base sauce, my overall pan temperature will dip for several seconds before it recovers.

Couldn't you pre-heat the base sauce before adding thus reducing average temperature loss?

[Spottymaldoon]

I don't quite get what your saying regards using small amounts, surely unless you are cooking enough curry to last months the majority of us will always be making a single portion.   You mention 10 pieces of chicken as being an example of small, to me thats a regular curry and in the case of a vindaloo where potato would be added could be seen as over sized?

Curry King - what I was really trying to say was that your burner must supply enough heat so that, after you've added some components, the temperature rises again sufficiently to restore 'sizzle' and not just 'bubble'.

Let me try to say that more scientifically! Imagine a mass of cold food just dumped into a very hot pan. Of course the temperature will drop at first. Heat from the burner will cause the temperature to rise again - at least to the boiling point of water ~100 deg. If the heating is uniform, the water content should boil off before there's a further temperature rise - but it's NOT uniform and if there is enough heat supplied, part of the mass will be boiling and the oily part especially will be at a higher temperature - hence the sizzle.

If there's not enough heat supplied you'll get that depressing bubbling. Reduce the 'mass' of the curry sufficiently and you'll reach a point where almost any burner can supply the needed sizzle! I don't know if that's ten bits of chicken or two.

Again, I don't presume to preach upon the subject of "BIR" curryology - but I am pretty comfortable with the physics and some of the chemistry.

[Curry King]

I totally agree with what you are saying and have already stated as much.  I was just picking up on the point you made that this effect might somehow be countered by using less food.  The example you gave for using less is actually what we would use anyway so if that was the case we would never be affected by said problem although this does not mean I disagree the problem exists.   


cK

[George]

Couldn't you pre-heat the base sauce before adding thus reducing average temperature loss?

Yes, that must help but perhaps the BIR's base sauce is warm also, so they still have an advantage with their high-powered burners. You'd also need to pre-heat all the ingredients.

My gut feel is that it must make sense to copy as much as possible of what a BIR kitchen does, just to minimise the margins for error. They use high-powered burners. We may not understand fully why but it must make sense to follow their lead if we want to emulate BIR style food.

Regards
George

[haldi]

it  makes sense to follow their lead if we want to emulate BIR style food.
Regards
George

Hi George
                I made friends with the staff of two takeaways
Last summer I must have sat through the cooking of at least 100 curries
What can I say, except that something magical happens on these big cookers
The most odd thing, is that although they always have their double cooking ring on high, nothing seems to burn
They sometimes heat the oil in a pan for a couple of minutes before adding anything.
If I do that at home, oil starts burning at the edge of the pan
In these takeaways they got curry aromas I can't achieve
I watched them prepare the curry gravy, and at one point there was this marvelous BIR smell.
The one that travels a quarter of a mile down the street (know the smell?)
I have duplicated (scaled down) everything they did but on a conventional cooker, it just doesn't happen the same.
Both these takeaways have closed now
Before they did I asked everything I could think of to get my curries better
Maybe it's just the heat from their cookers, but I just can't get the same results, unless I use a bought curry gravy
Actually that's not quite true
I occasionally and inexplicably, I get an unrepeatable brilliant result