Top Chef: Medium-rare lamb is 140F and soy sauce is the secret ingredient in perfect gravy
Jennifer and daughter Ingrid brought the lamb, I did the cooking, and Amy’s mom flew in from Vegas. Another Thursday night in Manhattan (Kansas).
What better occasion to try out alleged perfect gravy that scientists with the U.K. Royal Society of Chemistry have determined contains drippings from a roast on a bed of halved onions, carrots and celery and the left-over water from boiled cabbage.
Add salt, pepper and a sprinkling of flour to thicken and … a touch of soy sauce.
Dr John Emsley, a chemical scientist, says soy sauce should be used in place of traditional gravy browning because monosodium glutamate from the soy sauce brings out the meaty flavour.
A spokesman for the society said:
“Chemistry and cooking are basically the same thing. Both need to have the correct formula, equipment and procedures. Just think of Heston Blumenthal.”
Eww. Blumenthal makes me think norovirus and barf.
And I didn’t take pictures of Thursday’s dinner, but Top Chef on Wed. night also struggled with lamb, and none of the hot-shot chefs could agree on how to define medium-rare lamb.
Chef Kevin (left):
“We’re having temperature issues with the lamb. What I think of as medium-rare, is apparently what she thinks of as rare. I don’t know who’s right or wrong, I don’t know if there is anyone who is right or wrong.”
The judges knew:
“This was seared raw lamb that was horrible.”
“Severely underdone.”
“Center was like jello.”
“A little too bloody.”
The lamb shoulder roast we had last night was cooked to 140F. There’s even a chart on the Internet that says medium-rare lamb is 140F. I have no idea where the numbers on the chart came from, but it seems about right.
Genius chefs and judges: use a tip-sensitive digital thermometer and stick it in.
The gravy was delicious.
Hosea wins Top Chef season 5; I feel asleep
There was no way Tom Colicchio was going to let the brash Stefan take home the Top Chef honors; he made that apparent with the verbal dressing down of the Finn a few weeks ago.
Carla was all Carla and simply cooked herself out of any serious consideration.
That left Hosea as the champ. Steady, boring, even the food safety issues were minimal.
The most exciting part of the finale is that one of my favorite entertainment blogs, dlisted, picked up a picture I had created for a previous Carla post (below).
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Top Chef Super Bowl
The Super Bowl of football (at least in the U.S.) is Sunday so Top Chef on Wednesday decided to do a football-themed challenge that was probably taped 6 months ago.
The football metaphors used in the show were as corny as the ones in a recent press release -- USDA gives food safety advice to kick off your Super Bowl party – but at least USDA provided accurate cooking advice:
“Color is not a reliable indicator of safety -- internal temperature is. Use a food thermometer to be sure meat and poultry are safely cooked. Steaks should be cooked to 145 °F, ground beef should be cooked to 160 °F and all poultry should be cooked to 165 °F.”
On Top Chef, Jeff and his excessively complex meals were sent packing, although the always entertaining Fabio should have lost for overcooking venison.
Judge: The deer was already dead. You didn’t have to kill it again.
Fabio: It was still bleeding when I sliced it; it was beautifully pink.
Judge: That’s medium-rare?
Fabio: Yes
Use a thermometer, Fabio. It will make you a better cook.
Oh, and Carla (below) won, and proclaimed, “Hands up, whoa. Touchdown Carla”
Top Chefs don't use thermometers
Using a thermometer will make anyone a better cook – or even a better top chef. Thermometers remove the guesswork, and keep your family and friends safe.
But rarely is a thermometer found in the top chef kitchens. Last night, someone’s lamb looked raw and someone’s scallops were swimming, but the judges said they were perfectly cooked. How would they know? Sure, it’s a lot more fun to guess – and the new judge uses more pop culture references than I do – but I’d rather stick it in. And the cross-contamination was rampant in the kitchens last night.
Best line? When describing one of the chefs who always wants to prepare scallops, another said,
“For christsakes, all she does is scallops. It’s Top Chef, not Top Scallops.”
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Dipping Areas: The food on Top Chef sucked so bad no one got kicked off
PhD student Ben is cursing me. I know he’s just finished watching Top Chef. So did I. So he had to endure smug stock-fixer Martha Stewart, who is constantly touching her hair when cooking. And the pretentiousness of food porn that is Top Chef.
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But give credit when deserved. Two weeks ago some of the chefs served lamb and used a food thermometer – they just didn’t say anything about proper temp or whether the thermometer helped decide whether the lamb was done.
But this week, a refrigerator door was left open overnight and a bunch of pork and duck was sent to the trashbin after hours at room temp.
Said one aspiring top cheffie:
“I cannot serve meat that is not at a safe temperature. I could kill or make very sick everybody in the room.”
Oh, and 15 years before Top Chef showed up, Toronto comedy fabs, Kids in the Hall, were skewering the fascination with all things food porn.
Foo Fighters fans of Top Chef
Team Sexy Pants edged out Team Cougar on Top Chef tonight as the wannabe celebs made a Thanksgiving meal for the Foo Fighters and their entourage of 60.
Dave Grohl, right, said, “Did someone offend the smores guy cause I think he spit on mine.”
And the smores guy got booted.
Drummer Taylor said of one desert, “I don’t like pumpkin foam … No more barfaits.”
Unfortunately, both teams cooked turkey in microwaves, and no one used a digital, tip sensitive thermometer, or any kind of thermometer.
Keep it safe for Thanksgiving, and stick it in.
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Top Chef, E. coli and girls' hockey
This is what I hate about Top Chef.
When it comes to eliminations, the hosts all look like they have to pass a huge stool as the camera goes for pregnantly pregnant pauses.
The dramatic music. The looks. And then, Collect Your Knives. Bye-bye.
Heidi Klum on Project Runway is so much more Germanically efficient. You have been eliminated. Get out.
Every time I watch one of those shows I’m reminded of coaching rep or travel team girls hockey back in Canada. Imagine, you’ve got 40 little kids vying for 20 spots on a hockey team, and you call them into the dressing room, one-by-one, with the coaches there, cameras rolling, dramatic music, the knowing stares, and then, you tell a 10-year-old, your risotto, or your skating, sucked, go home.
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I asked Amy if she wanted to blog weekly about the food safety mistakes that occur on Top Chef as I attempted to feign interest in the show. She looked at me like I had just been cut from the family. After all, she’s pretty pregnant (that’s a double entendre, one of those fancy words I learned to use in my school).
That’s OK. Others are already spoofing the show.
Last night's season premiere of "Top Chef" may be the only episode you see all year!
Production on Bravo's popular reality cooking show has been shut down by the New York City Department of Public Health after an E. coli outbreak was traced to the "Top Chef" kitchen.
"It seems that some of our more eager contestants may have cut a few corners in the 'Make a meal out of raw meat in 8 minutes' quickfire challenge," said co-host and head judge Tom Colicchio. "In hindsight, we probably should have more thoroughly checked their work before letting them serve it at a Brooklyn street fair."
By the evening after Bravo finished shooting at the street fair, local officials reported that 24 attendees who sampled "Top Chef" contestants' food had been hospitalized and three were dead. The next morning, health inspectors raided the "Top Chef" kitchen just as co-host Padma Lakshmi was explaining that guest judge Rocco Dispirito had been delayed at his weekly plastic surgery session.
"All I have to say is that anyone convicted of spreading E. coli will likely find themselves in danger of elimination at our next judges' table," Lakshmi said when asked for comment.
Top Chef tailgating
Ryan learned on Top Chef last night that California-style tailgating doesn't play too well in the heartland -- or at least, Chicago..jpg)
Accurately measuring whether food is safe or not is also not high on the Top Chef to-do list. Sure, the Australian dude (or New Zealand, the show refers to him interchangeably, which will equally please the Aussies and Kiwis) was chastised for being unsanitary -- cross contamination and double dipping -- but use a tip-sensitive digital thermometer to ensure safety and quality. Sick it in.Check out our youtube video of tailgaters at Kansas State's last home game - against Missouri -- back in Nov. 2007.
It's undercooked... or is it?
Almost two weeks ago Top Chef’s cheftestant Sara M. was sent home after two consecutive undercooked dishes. Admittedly, her halibut in the Quickfire challenge was raw in the middle, but she didn’t agree that she served raw chicken at the French Culinary Institute. She told the judges, “I sliced the chicken myself, and I checked every single one,” and to her colleagues she insisted, “That chicken was not $#%-in raw, cause I cut every single one.” Still, Judge Gail Simmons said her chicken was pink, and as the night went on, her chicken became raw in the retelling.
Does the chicken in this picture look cooked to you? Color is a lousy indicator of the doneness of chicken. The pictured chicken comes from Pete Snyder, meat thermometer guru, and has been cooked to the required 165 F. Sara would have had a stronger case, had her flavors not been off, by using a meat thermometer and having hard evidence to back up her dish. Cutting the chicken and visually checking the internal temperature is not a proven food safety method.Just yesterday the National Pork Board reportedly began their case for lowering the recommended cooking temperatures for pork from the currently approved 160F. Board member Steve Larsen said, "We've conducted an initial retail study and risk assessment, and the science of safety is definitely there to support the lowering." How would you know your pork is a few degrees off from optimal taste and safe cooking temperature just by looking at it? Ask pork superstar cheftestant Howie. He won once with perfectly cooked lamb chops that were verified with a thermometer.
Restaurant Wars
In last night’s episode of Bravo's Top Chef, the winning team used a meat thermometer. While this is a rarity within the celebrity chef circle, at least based on what we see in the final cut, it’s the second time I’ve seen one used on Top Chef this season (both times the chefs became winners, and both times they were cooking lamb). Last night Quatre’s sous-chef Howie wielded the same sort of digital tip-sensitive thermometer that we use at home. He had the unsliced chops, on their side, and inserted the thermometer into the middle of the meat. (Of course, this week the cheftestants also had head judge Chef Tom Colicchio watching them in the kitchen.) While Howie’s former nemesis, Joey, called his chops, “Typical Howie, undercooked!” the judges said they were cooked beautifully and perfectly. They had ordered their chops rare. For those of you interested in trying this at home, there is no simple answer for finding the correct temperature of perfect-rare and safe lamb chops. Some recipe sites I consulted recommended a temperature of 125 F-130 degrees for medium rare. However, according to USDA for beef, veal and lamb (steaks, roasts and chops), medium rare is at 145 °F and medium is 160 °F.
Hormel proposes the following:
“Traditional guidelines state that lamb cooked very rare, rare, medium rare, or medium should have an internal temperature ranging between 115ºF to 145°F. With increased concern over bacteria that may be present in the internal portions of lamb, it is now recommended that whole lamb cuts be cooked to a final internal temperature (after resting) of not less than 145°F.”
While Howie may have hit the right temperature to please the judges, no one knows what his magic thermometer reading actually was. Still, I’m glad to see a thermometer once again on the show, used correctly (i.e inserted into the thickest portion of the meat), and this time for more than a second.
