In my opinion, the best chicken is chicken sous-vide. Each bite is tender and succulent in a way I never thought chicken could possibly be. It's kind of changed everything for me. Even the appearance of the meat is different, instead of stringy and tough, a fork can simply cut through the meat. It's enough to make anyone convert.

So for the past few weeks I've been proselytizing about the powers of sous-vide, a process where you vacuum-seal food (that's where it gets its name, as sous-vide French for "under vacuum") in a plastic bag and cook it at a very specific temperature in water. The temperature should idealy be the exact temperature you want the food to be when it is done. The result is a piece of meat that has retained the maximum amount of its juices, while still being done. It's an astonishing technique, but all my rambling has done miraculously little to convince anyone. Trying to explain what sous-vide is and can do to someone who has never tasted the results is a losing proposition. Either it elicits complete incomprehension and glazed eyes ("food cooked in a plastic bag?") or straight contempt hidden as back-to-basics food evangalism ("I actually prefer cooking the old fashioned way, thank you very much."), even if he or she has never tasted the results. Well, let me try again....

I first sampled this chicken a few weeks ago. SousVide Supreme was having an event in Chicago where world famous chef Heston Blumenthal cooked an array of proteins and vegetables using the new product. Vacuum-sealing food is easy, but finding an accurate way of cooking it in water is not. Expensive restaurants use thermal immersion circulators that can cost well over a thousand dollars, and also look more like something a Mad Sciencetist would use to cook dinner.  

As advertised, the SousVide Supreme is the first machine built specifically for home use. It certainly looks better. It is sleek and gray and about the size of a bread maker. It's also relatively more affordable, (introductory price of $399). Though it's much smaller than a restaurant unit, Heston claimed it was just as accurate as the more expenisve machines. He seemed smitten. He talked empahtically about how this machine would change home cooking, and that it was the most important kitchen innovation in the last thirty years. 

To say the food that came out of the machine tasted good, is something of an understatement. I ate flawless scrambled eggs that had the texture of a fine custard, a steak that was perfectly medium-rare from edge to edge, and a few bites of the tenderest, juiciest, most perfectly cooked chicken I'd ever witnessed.

I dreamt of that chicken for weeks. See, I've done a lot of crazy experiments with chicken over the years on this site. To date, I've roasted a chicken using roughly 10 different methods, all in the search of that elusive perfect bird. That's included all kinds of combinations of low heat, medium heat, extreme heat, and even one where I cooked it in a crockpot for six hours. All of these experiments were done in the hope of creating a bird that was moist and delicious with gloriously browned skin. But here was my answer. Or at least I thought.

As the event went on I sat back and smiled, happy from the food, and pleased to listen to one of the most acclaimed chefs on the planet talk about this new gadget. My only question was whether it was the man or the machine. Obviously the machine had a hand in what happened, but I had also just tasted food served by Heston Blumenthal. Of course it would be delicious.

After the event I requested a demo unit of the SousVide Supreme to see if I could replicate the results at home. 

The box arrived in the mail a few weeks later along with a little Reynolds Handi Vac and plastic bags. I only had 9 days to experiment before I had to send it back, so my first experiment had to be chicken. I looked in vein for a true sous-vide chicken recipe, but it was really hard to find. Finally, I just decided to follow the recipe given in the instruction manual. It said to cook a chicken breast at 146 degrees for 1 to 2 hours.

I bought a bone-less, skin-on chicken breast and vacuum-sealed it. Then I filled the machine with water, set the temperature to the suggested 146 degrees, and when water was ready, I dropped the bag in. I decided to wait the full two hours, for my first experiment I wanted to make sure it was cooked. Like cooking something in a slow cooker, there is nothing to do. I watched TV, cleaned up a little, and took a nap.

When I unsealed the bag and placed the chicken on a plate, it looked like one of the most unappealing sights you can imagine. Pale chicken, jellied around its edges, and with a texture that felt like it was still raw. But a temperature probe confirmed that it was done and a small cut proved that the flesh was perfectly white throughout. 

One of the issues with cooking something sous-vide is that you can never brown food. To do so, you have to sear it afterwards in a skillet. So I dried off the breast with some paper towels, seasoned it with salt and pepper, and then sautéed it in a little oil just to color the skin.

I didn't quite get the even browning I was looking for, and the flesh wasn't quite as fork tender as the one I sampled at the event, but that was just a bit of nitpicking. After just one try with the machine, I was eating the best bites of chicken I'd ever cooked for myself. It is astonishing, espeically so when you consider how simple it is to use. I didn't do anything to the chicken. I didn't brine it or stuff it full of butter. I didn't even season it with salt before I put it in the bag. All I did was sprinkle with salt and pepper before I sauteed it. That's it.

I figure the cooking temperatures presented in the booklet that comes with the machine are higher than those that Heston used. And looking around, I've found temperatures that hover much closer to 140 degrees than the 146 that I used. That may help. I'm off to try a few more experiments before my time with the SousVide Supreme is done.

(Full Disclosure: I recieved a free test unit from SousVide Supreme, which I'll regrettably to have send back soon. I didn't receive any money for the review.)

Bon Appétit  has put together another collection of their favorite holiday dishes, and we're honored to be involved again this year. Last time we showcased our scrumptious holiday coffee cake, but this year is a sweeter affair. It's also happens to be less of a genteel showcase of the amazing blogger talent. This is a Bake-Off, and there will be a winner. We need your votes!

We couldn't think of any better representation of the holidays than cinnamon rolls. They are such an indulgence that can only seem justified by the jovial season. Unfortunately, we didn't actually have a recipe. We're not much of bakers, and we usually just rely on our families to feed the cinnamon rolls to us. That led Blake to spend a hurried weekend combining Northern European cooking techniques with his fond Midwestern memories of cinnamon rolls, all in the search for a brand new recipe.

The results were Cardamom Cinnamon Rolls, and we think they turned out particularly well. Instead of smearing the icing on top, where it gets all over your fingers, we folded the icing inside the rolls. They are haunting and rich, without being too overloaded and messy. If you'd like to help us out, click here and vote! We are featured in the elusive "miscellaneous dessert" category. It's the last of category after "cakes", "cookie, bar, or brownie", "custard or pudding", and "pie, tart or pastry". You'll need to sign on, but it's free to do so. If your hunger can make it through all of the delicious offerings, we'd really appreciate the help.

"A proper Negroni is as perfectly and tripodically balanced as, say, a water molecule. "
- Jonathan Miles

The Negroni is an incorruptible drink. While the martini can be perverted by nefarious substances like apple pucker and vodka and many places make Margaritas by simply drizzling a little tequila in a cup of sugary mix, a Negroni is a Negroni. It has three ingredients (gin, sweet vermouth, and Campari) and their proportions are set in stone. It's a straight 1 to 1 to 1. There is nothing to add or subtract, no technique to screw up. If your bar has the ingredients, the drink can be made. If one piece is missing, the whole thing is off.

Most bars have gin of some sort, and though it may be old and slightly off, they'll have some sweet vermouth, too. Campari is slightly more difficult to spot, though I must say I've been seeing it out and about quite often recently. Which doesn't mean that it's exactly used that often. From bartenders I've talked to, Campari is usually the pariah of the bar, the one bottle that most of them would never touch.

Why? Well, Campari by itself has a slightly sweet front that is immediately overtaken by a lasting bitter note that rings for what feels like minutes in the back of your mouth. What looks like Shirley Temple cocktail in the glass, is bitter enough to make your tongue quiver, and your whole body shake. If you are not used to the taste, it can seem like a horrible joke.

Campari is an Italian bitter (honestly called that) that's usually consumed as an apéritif. It's meant to awaken your taste buds, and get you ready for a meal. In Italy it is often mixed with club soda, for a refreshing and slightly fizzy drink. When sweet vermouth is added to the equation, you have an Americano. And when Count Negroni, an Italian nobleman wanted something a little stronger than an Americano, the club soda was discarded and gin took its place. Sounds like a ridiculous story, but cocktail historian Gary Regan actually backed this one up. It's one of his favorite drinks, and it's definitely one of mine. 

It's a slow sipping drink and one of them is usually taxing enough on your taste buds to not need another. Like many acquired tastes, it breeds addiction. It started for me when I worked at LeNell's, a now defunct liquor store in the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn, which specialized in boutique liquors and an intense bitter collection. My boss used to sprinkle bitters into her water. When she was feeling sick she used to chug it like NyQuil. Whether you find that bitterness attractive or repulsive probably depends on how many times you've had the drink. After a few weeks of employment, I was hooked.

Much like excessive use of hot sauce or salt, I started sprinkling bitters in everything (gin, whiskey, water, it didn't matter). I craved that brazen, mouth puckering flavor. It awakes everything it touches. And that's really where the magic in the Negroni lies. Though too aggressive to sip comfortably by itself, something happens to Campari when mixed with the botanicals found in Gin and all the spices and herbs found in Sweet Vermouth. The drink becomes this stunningly complex puzzle, which seems to dart off in unexpected and exciting ways. Each sip revels something new. It's astonishing that so many different flavors can blend so seamlessly.

Blake and I didn't really have that much to experiment when we set out to make a perfect Negroni. Though a few lost souls on eGullet recommend adding a 1/2 ounce more of Gin than is traditional, we found that screwed everything else up. About all we could recommend was taking the extra step of stirring the drink over ice, and then straining it into a rocks glass filled with more ice. It leaves the liquid with a slightly heavy and more viscous texture. It's ready to sip, carefully, and slowly.

The Negroni

1 ounce Gin
1 ounce Sweet Vermouth
1 ounce Campari

Pour into a shaker filled with ice and stir for thirty seconds. Strain into rocks glass filled with ice. Serve.

Every Christmas, we eat cinnamon rolls. That's just how it is. When I was little, someone would wake up early and drive over to the Cinnabon store and come back with a gooey dozen, and always make sure there was extra frosting. The things were so big and sweet that it would take most of Christmas morning to finish one, plus three or four glasses of milk. The cinnamon rolls tided us over until the Christmas ham.

At some point somebody in my family wised up, and we started making them instead of buying them. My step dad, Doug, experimented with various recipes over the years until settling on a ludicrously buttery version adapted from Joy of Cooking: forget the fact that the dough is already buttery; he also systematically rolls and folds layer upon layer of it into the dough itself, like a puff pastry. The result is a glorious gut-bomb that we all have grown to love.

My wife Elin's parents are Estonian, and her Christmas baking memories are in the Scandinavian tradition, which means lots of cardamom. A wonderful spice, cardamom has the unmistakable aroma and taste of Christmas--even if you've never tasted if before. It falls naturally into the family of spices that includes nutmeg, allspice, and cinnamon. It simply belongs in baked goods during the holidays.

So it was with this Scandinavian baking tradition in mind--while remembering my own cinnamon roll history--that Elin and I set out to make our own recipe of cinnamon rolls based on a family recipe of cardamom-flecked dough. Taking a cue from the Scandinavian bread technique, which calls for starting the yeast in a warm milk-and-butter mixture and adding flour little by little, we experimented with numerous approaches to achieve both the heady and distinct aroma of cardamom and the gooey, buttery goodness of cinnamon rolls.

We cooked them in rectangle dishes, then in muffin tins. We painstakingly rolled butter into some of the dough, then left it out of the rest. We made the dough with more cardamom then less. We changed the amounts of lemon zest.  We cooked them in hotter ovens and medium ones. We made them without frosting, put frosting on top, then rolled it inside with the cinnamon.

Finally, after a long, flour-dusted weekend, we uncovered our recipe. Using a milk-based Estonian sweet bread dough gave our rolls a light, airy texture. Moving the frosting (cream cheese based to keep the sweetness in check) from the top of the cinnamon roll to the inside added huge amounts of gooeyness to the proceedings. It also allowed us to keep the rolls neat and compact, topped with "pearl sugar," often seen on Scandinavian pastries.

We'll probably never make cinnamon rolls without cardamom again, because we're so proud of this recipe. It's good enough to be adopted into our own newly-formed family lore. We might have just stumbled on our own Christmas tradition.

Cardamom Cinnamon Rolls

-makes 24 small rolls-

Ingredients
For the dough

• 3/4 cup milk
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter (1 stick) at room temperature.
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 package yeast
• 1 egg, beaten
• 3 cups all purpose flour
• zest of 1 lemon
• two teaspoons whole black cardamom pieces (found inside cardadmom pods), ground in a mortar and pestle or spice blender

For the cinnamon filling

• 1 cup light brown sugar
• 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon

For the frosting filling

• 4 ounces cream cheese at room temperature
• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 6 tablespoons (3/4 stick) unsalted butter

For topping the rolls

• 1 egg, beaten
• 1/2 cup pearl sugar (look for this in Scandinavian shops...IKEA carries it!)

First, warm the milk in a saucepan until very hot. Meanwhile, put the butter, sugar, salt, and cardamom in a a large mixing bowl. Pour the hot milk into the bowl and stir to combine.

Proof the yeast by putting it into a small bowl with a 1/2 teaspoon of sugar and 2 tablespoons warm water. When it begins to foam, add it to the milk mixture; if nothing happens, start with new yeast and make sure the water isn't warmer than wrist temperature.

Before adding the yeast, add about half the flour and the lemon zest to the milk mixture and stir well with a wooden spoon. Add the eggs and yeast mixture and stir until well-mixed. Continue adding flour and stirring with a wooden spoon until it's too thick to do so. Switch to kneading with your hands, continuing to add flour until the dough no longer sticks to your fingers, but is still quite tacky. It should feel sticky, but not actually stick (the copious amounts of butter help it from doing so). Depending on the type of flour, you might need more -- 1 batch took 3 cups, another 3.5. Knead for ten minutes or so. The dough should be smooth and tacky. The cardamom will smell wonderful.

Sprinkle the dough with a little flour and cover with a kitchen towel.

Allow to rise in a warm place for at least an hour, up to two. I found it effective to turn the oven on warm while I was kneading, then turn it off and add the bowl.

In the meantime, mix together the brown sugar and cinnamon and set aside. Combine the frosting ingredients in a mixing bowl and beat with a hand mixer until smooth, then set aside.

When the dough has risen substantially, about double in size, turn it out onto a lightly floured surface. Divide into 2 pieces and set one aside. Roll one piece into a large rectangle, at least a foot wide and 1.5 times as long. The dough should be about 1/4 inch thick at the most.

Paint a layer of the frosting, using about half, onto the dough. Sprinkle with half the brown sugar mixture, and roll the rectangle lengthwise into a long cylinder. It's important to use your fingers to continue tucking the sugar mixture into the roll, otherwise much of the sugar can get pushed out to the end. The dough will hold well, so don't worry about tearing it -- the rolls will turn out better if you roll them at least a couple times around.

Transfer the roll to a cutting board, cut side down. Using a very sharp knife (or the rolls will get flattened), cut the cylinder into 1-inch wide pieces. Transfer these to a rectangular baking dish, placing them quite close together so they are just touching. Repeat the whole process with the other piece of dough. In all, the rolls should fill two 9 inch square baking dishes, though we cooked our rolls in a 9 x 13 pan and put the leftover dough in a small pie dish.

In any case, cover with a piece of plastic wrap and a kitchen towel and allow to rise in a warm place for 45 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. When the rolls have risen, uncover them and lightly paint with the beaten egg, being careful not to press too hard and risk deflating them. Sprinkle liberally with the pearl sugar.

Bake the rolls until just beginning to brown but still gooey on the inside, 15-18 minutes.

The concept of making cheese has always fascinated me, the idea that you can take milk and add a little acid (or rennet) to magically separate it into curds and whey. Milk seems like such a stable liquid, a wholesome elixir of childhood, but with a little citric acid, lemon juice, yogurt, or rennet it completely de-stabalizes into thin, watery whey and fat chunks of curd.

What you do with the curd presents endless possibilities. In Montreal they stud it into gravy-covered fries to make Poutine, a glorious dish I had the pleasure to sample in a search through Montreal. But usually what the curds become is proper cheese, pressed into molds to age with various bacterial cultures, becoming anything from Cheddar to Parmesan.

There are many cheeses, though, that require no aging or bacterial cultures: ricotta, for example, or Greek feta.

Though Nick has explored making ricotta cheese using citric acid tablets, I was on the search for something made more easily with household ingredients. Ricotta is sometimes made with lemon juice, and I thought about exploring that--but I've recently become fascinated by paneer, which is an Indian cheese that's heavily pressed into cakes and fried.  While ricotta is meant to be fluffy and creamy, all the liquid is mercilesly pressed from paneer to make a dense, crumbly cake. Its taste is clean and milky, and I love how it can be caramelized in a pan -- the combination of savory and dairy is intriguing.

A while back, a good friend of mine in New York from India had his parents in town visiting, and they cooked a lavish meal for a handful of friends. One of the dishes was Mattar Paneer, a simple curry with peas and  paneer (the literal translation is "Peas and Cheese"). His mother was kind enough to email me the recipe, both for homemade paneer and the curry.  The paneer recipe is the only one I've seen that uses yogurt instead of lemon juice or vinegar.

What follows is a step-by-step, fully photographed overview of the process.  It's pretty foolproof, and a lot of fun.

The ingredients needed are as follows:

• 1/2 gallon whole milk
• 2 cups plain nonfat yogurt
• 1 2-ft square piece of muslin or 4 layers of cheesecloth

Makes 8 ounces.

First, pour the milk into a 3-quart or larger saucepan, and heat it rapidly until close to boiling. It is important to stir it often as it heats. In the meantime, measure out the yogurt and whisk it until smooth.

Once the milk is nearing a boil, but before it completely boils and begins to spill over, stir in the yogurt. Continue to stir constantly as the milk begins to separate into curds and whey. Be patient, as this can take some time -- you want to be sure it's completely separated. On my first attempt, I drained off the curds before it had all really separated, so I had a depressingly small amount of curds. The whey should look nothing like milk anymore, and may have a slightly greenish hue to it. If the majority of the liquid in the pan still looks white and opaque like milk (like it does below) the separation process is not complete.

I ended up returning it to the saucepan, and once it heated up again, the remaining curds emerged.

Next, drain the whey from the curds by lining a colander with the muslin or cheesecloth and placing it over a large bowl. Pour the contents of the saucepan into the colander and allow the whey to drain for a minute or so.

With the curds still inside, pick up the corners of the muslin or cheesecloth and transfer to the sink. Tie the ends over the faucet and allow the cheese to continue draining for an additional 5-6 minutes.

Remove from the faucet and gently twist the cloth ends snugly around the cheese to squeeze out excess moisture, then place the cheese on a dinner plate in the sink. Place another dinner plate on top of the cheese and weight it down with a large pan or water or something quite heavy. More liquid is sure to drain off, so again, do this in the sink. Let it compress for 10-15 minutes.

Remove the cheese from the cloth and place on a cutting board. It should be compressed into a chunk. Cut into desired shapes, then store in an airtight container for up to 4 days in the refrigerator, or 2-3 months in the freezer.

I used my paneer immediately to make the dish I remembered, Mattar Paneer, a fairly easy and traditional curry.  The recipe is below.

What about the Whey?

My goal with this endeavor was to waste nothing and use every part of the milk, including the watery whey that is produced by the cheesemaking. So I did a little Google search of the phrase "What to do with whey?" and eventually stumbled on a suggestion to use it as the liquid for cooking rice, which I did. I didn't notice a huge difference in taste, but the whey is incredibly healthy, so it doesn't hurt. In baking, whey is supposed to be a good subsitute for any recipe that calls for milk, and supposedly makes great breads. I'll have to try that sometime.

Mattar Paneer

• 450gms/1 lb shelled green peas (or frozen peas)
• 250gms/ 1/2 lb paneer
• 2 medium onions (chopped)
• 6 cloves garlic (crushed)
• 1 tbspn grated ginger
• 1 small green chilli chopped
• 250gms/ 1/2 lb tomatoes (peeled and sliced)
• salt to taste
• 1/2 cup plain yogurt
• 1/2 teaspoon turmeric powder
• 1 teaspoon ground coriander seeds
• 1 teaspoon cumin powder
• 2 cups water
• 1/2 cup ghee or vegetable oil
•  
• To garnish:
• garam masala powder
• chopped cilantro leaves

1. Make a paste by grinding together the onions, garlic, ginger.
2. Heat the oil or ghee in a large skillet or saucepan and cut the paneer into 1 inch cubes. Fry the paneer to a light brown and remove to drain on a paper towel.
3. Add the onion/garlic/ginger paste to the oil, along with the green chile, and fry until the paste is golden brown. When it is golden, add the turmeric, coriander and cumin powder, adding oil if necessary to make sure the spices don't burn.  Continue cooking, stirring often, until the flavors marry, a minute or two.
4. Add the tomatoes and keep stirring until the tomatoes are blended into the paste.
5. Add salt to taste and the yogurt, and stir for 5-6 mins over low heat.
6. Add the peas and paneer and pour in the water. Simmer gently for about 20 minutes.
7. Serve sprinkled with garam masala and cilantro leaves.

There is no feeling in the world like popping open a batch of cider and realizing what you have created alcohol. It's really hard to describe. We've made all kinds of recipes before, including some meals that have taken days to prepare. But alcohol always seemed a little unreal, and dangerous. Making alcohol always felt too technical and lab-like. And if you're brewing beer, that's sort of true: you'll need a lot of ingredients, and don't you need hi-tech equipment and precision tools? The fact that we could make hard apple cider simply and humbly was inspiring.

We have have been attempting to make our own cider using a what amounts to a jug of $7 organic juice from Whole Foods, a packet of yeast, and equipment we bought from the brewery store for a grand total of about $2. Not sure what recipe to use, we decided to make four different batches, which we detailed on our last post. We plugged those guys up with airlocks and felt rather proud of ourselves. But when would they be done? Were they supposed to ferment for two days or two weeks? And of course, what would they taste like?

Yes, it got a bit serious when we realized that we actually had to drink the experiment. We went from hopeful of a heavenly brew to apprehension that the cider would simply be underwhelming, and then to a vague worry that this homemade cider might try to poison us.

Brian from Daily Ikuru, a brew guru, gave me this bit of frank advice: "Drinking it today, a week from now, or even two weeks from now isn't going to kill you, you know."

Yes, that was probably true.  And so we got our turkey baster out early this year, and plunged it in to have a taste.

We have lots of tasting notes from various stages, but it's all a lot of information. The jist is that three days in the cider tasted fresh and feisty, but low in alcohol and not terribly complex. In the beginning, the champagne yeast really tasted the best; our lager yeast was overly beer-like and funky. But after a week there was a dramatic change. Both batches made with champagne yeast (1 with some added sugar) were drinkable, with a nice apple flavor, but they turned out pretty dry for our tastes. They were a bit thin-tasting and had a small amount of unpleasant bitterness. Still, having tasted these first, were were pretty happy about our results.

But then we tasted the baches made with lager yeast, and there was an unbelievable jump in quality and drinkability. It was slightly fizzy, with a wonderful apple-y flavor. It made Strongbow taste childish. The batch made with Seedling cider from the farmers' market, which was sweeter to begin with, was complex and had the most depth. But suprisingly enough, it was the batch made with the cheaper Whole Foods juice that amazed us. Partly because of how cheap it was, but mostly because of its clean apple taste. We'd stack that up against any imported English cider for a taste-test.  If we had more time and expertise, no doubt the Seedling cider has more potential for flavor and subtlety, being fresher juice never heat-pastuerized.  But for our buck and the simplicity of the process, the Whole Foods batch is the big story here. It's cheap ($6.99), comes in perfectly sized bottles for fermenting, and makes a balanced, refreshing beverage in about 7 to 10 days. That's not bad.

Once the batches taste right, the next step is to "cold crash" them, which means you transfer the bottles to a fridge and let them hang out for 2-3 days. It halts the fermentation process, and all the yeast sinks to the bottom.

Then you get some siphoning equipment to transfer it to a second container, rinse out the yeast, and move it back to the original container. Now the cider can safely hang out for awhile: it can be bottled if you want to buy the appropriate equipment, or aged for months in the glass jugs.

Up until now, this whole cider making process has been rather reckless and carefree. Instead of taking classes, or making sure we had read every necessary resource, we decided the best way to learn was to try. That's true if you are also interested in making cider. But we hope this information, the availabilty of Whole Foods apple juice, and our very successful result has made the process that much more accessible.

Go forth and make cheap cider!

As we realized on our last post, it was time to stop talking emphatically about the cultural significance of cider, and start getting to the business of making it. Though we had read more websites, emails, and books than we could know what to do with, we were still confused, and more importantly, l didn't have a solid recipe. It was beginning to be a problem.

At its simplest, hard apple cider is pressed and strained apples that are left to sit around until residual yeast on the apples' skin turns the sugar into alcohol. That's the traditional way to do it, how it was done for a long time. But today, most people prefer to use packaged yeast: this ensures that the cider will taste right, rather than being subject to a wild yeast, and it is the only way to succeed if the juice has been pastuerized, which is usually the case unless you press your own apples.

The appeal of hard cider is enormous: all that's needed is apple cider, some yeast, and equipment to ferment it in. But the information available about each part of that process--the juice, the yeast, and technique--ranged from overly simplified to dorky and confusing. Finding good advice was proving difficult.

Our salvation came in two forms: first, the fact that Whole Foods Market carries 1-gallon glass jugs of apple juice, for $6.99, which would suddenly supply us with both the container and the juice to begin our adventure. And two, a confidence-boosting e-mail from a reader named Michael, who noted my tweet about using champagne yeast to ferment some cider, and who explained the process clearly via email.

And so we gathered four glass jugs, two kinds of yeast and juice, and some rubber stopper airlocks from the local Brew & Grow store near Bucktown. Our adventure would begin.

The Juice

Our juice decision once we'd found the Whole Foods jugs was easy: we'd experiment with that juice, knowing that a failure wouldn't waste much cash. But we also wanted to try some local, delicious cider from a farmers' market to see how it would differ. Seedling Cider is sold throughout Chicago, and is richly flavorful. It is also pasteurized using a UV light system that doesn't require heating the juice, and thereby preserving as much fresh apple flavor as possible. We went with their Mutsu Apple cider, which tasted the best at the market.

The Yeast

Most Internet sources suggest champagne yeast as the best option for cider-making, and that's what we first bought. Even the local brew store said it was the best. At that point, cider making seemed incredibly simple: toss in the cheap champagne yeast and off we go. But then a reader named Michael wrote us an email cautioning against champagne yeast. "I made my first two batches with Champagne yeast," he wrote, "thinking that this would help me create the crisp dry flavor I was looking for; instead I got a really high alcohol white wine essentially, that never carbonated, and is pretty unforgiving."

"Unforgiving" was not what we needed as amatuer cider makers. Michael went on to recommend ale yeast, which is (obviously) designed for beer-making. There are lots of suggestions at this page on Homebrewtalk.com about types of yeast to use with cider, most of which can be found in brew stores: Nottingham is a favorite, and Safale S-04 and Safale S-05 are mentioned.

But the overall jist was that using a beer yeast would give us a lot more flavor and would also be easier to work with.

The only mentioned beer yeast that our local shop had in stock was Saflager S-23, which is actually a lager yeast (Safale = ale; Saflager = lager). So we went with it.

The Equipment

The only equipment for the fermentation is a jug to house the cider, plus a simple airlock which allows the gas produced by the yeast to escape, while also sealing off the container from outside microbes and bacteria going in. The airlock can be as jank as a balloon with a pinhole in it, or any brewing supply store carries the two-chamber airlock device we used, which costs less than a dollar.

Where to house all that liquid isn't immediately obvious. We wanted to make multiple small batches, and most brewing supplies assume you want to produce 5 gallon batches of everything. The container must be food-safe plastic or, even better, glass. Though a jug of Carlo Rossi was discussed at some of our more desperate moments, with plans to dump it down the sink, we eventually found the Whole Foods 1 gallon glass jugs of apple juice, which meant we'd receive not only a good fermenting glass jug, but could use the very juice inside it for our initial experiments.

There are also tools to help you gauge the sugar levels, but we didn't have them, and it only gets more complicated from there. This is the point in time when our heads started expanding, and we stared out into space for about 5 minutes wondering what to do next.

Eh, forget it. We figured we should just get started. If the ciders failed, we'd loose all of 7 bucks.

The Batches

We decided to make four different batches. We'd have a super-simple control batch of Whole Foods juice plus champagne yeast, a similar version with added sugar to give the yeast more to munch on, then two batches with our fancier lager yeast with two different juices.

• 1. Whole Foods and champagne yeast.
• 2. Whole Foods Cider, 1/4 cup sugar, and champagne yeast.
• 3. Whole Foods Cider and lager yeast.
• 4. Market Cider and lager yeast.

The process is about as easy as you can imagine. With the Whole Foods juices, we didn't even need to sanitize the bottle: just mix the yeast with a little warm water, then dump it in, put the cap back on, give it a gentle shake to distribute yeast. Though the exact amount of yeast to use is not a critical issue (the available sugars in the juice won't change, so what's available to eat doesn't change), most packets are measured for 5-gallon batches. We measured accordingly.

Then, we topped each bottle off with one of the airlocks (you pour a little water into the chambers, which essentially seals off the inside while allowing bubbles to escape). Any homebrewer store should sell them. The plastic parts fit into a rubber stopper which varies in size; in the case of the Whole foods jugs the #6 stopper fit well. The whole contraption is less than 2 dollars.

And, well, that's it. The lager yeast needed a little cooler temperature, so we stashed those in an exterior hallway, about 50 degrees or so. The champagne yeast ones are living in the closet, which is just slightly warmer. We have no idea when they will be done or what they will taste like. But we potentially have cider on the way. We'll keep you updated.

Currently Blake and I have four gallons of apple cider fermenting in the back of his bedroom closet. The hope is that in a few days, thanks to some hungry yeast, we'll have something that might resemble hard apple cider. We're honestly nervous. We've undertaken ridiculous experiments before, but nothing that could potentially get us hammered. If it works, then we'll have made an alcoholic drink for less than it costs to buy a jug of Carlo Rossi. If it doesn't work then, well, we've got a lot of stank apple juice on our hands.

I suppose the first question to ask is "why cider?" It's one that has consumed Blake and I for a few weeks now. It started this fall when Blake was in Michigan, and ended up buying a bushel of apples for ten dollars. A bushel. Which, if you're not familiar, is more than 100 apples. They weren't excellent eating apples, and you can only make so many apple crisps. So we thought, why not make hard cider?

Of course, the turning of apples into juice is not the easiest process in the world: you need a fruit press or a juicer or some other specialized equipment which didn't exactly fit in our Chicago apartments. But we were still intrigued with making hard cider. So in the end, we ended up giving away lots of apples and opting to just buy apple cider to begin with.

What utterly fascinated us was that cider could be made quickly, easily, and cheaply from local ingredients. This same fact has also explained why we've never attempted to make our own wine or beer. About the most exotic ingredient we'll need is yeast, which we purchased from a local home-brewing supply store. Unlike beer, we can buy the main ingredient from the local farmers' market. That's really appealing.

There is also the fascinating history of cider, one that far more extensive than we ever realized. If you're interested in the wild history of cider in America, this article from Slate is a great place to start. In the article, author Brian Palmer uncovers this American drink. Cider was so commonplace in early American history, William Henry Harrison used a cider barrel, along with a log cabin, as his campaign logo in 1840. He won in a landslide. It was the every-man's drink. Farmers' could easily make it in their cellars and store it for months. It was, for a time, far more popular than beer. Cider became a quintessential American drink.

Cider's popularity was increased by a man named John Chapman--otherwise known as Johnny Appleseed--who collected seeds from local cider mills and spread them across the country. These apples were not particularly good for eating, but made very drinkable cider. So Johnny Appleseed's true mission was to plant orchards not for eating, but for cider-making. Again, we've stumbled on something quintessentially American.

The romanticizing of cider, though, flies in the face of one appalling fact that has kept me away from the drink for years: Most of the cider I've had is awful. It's usually overly sweet, fizzy, and cloying. After a few bottles, my stomach churns and my tastes buds feel assaulted. I beg for the dry sip of lager or ale afterward.

But I also remember some glorious pints in England, served in big sturdy glasses, that were utterly refreshingly, fairly dry, with just a hint of carbonation to enliven each sip. I've also had some luck with some bottles from Northern France that I purchased from my local wine shop Red & White.

For the past few weeks we've both been reading books and articles, searching online forums, and e-mailing people in the know, hoping to discern any secrets we could before we decided to make it. In the process, our heads began to swell with so much information, and so many different opinions, that we almost gave up in desperation. Making cider became serious and studious. How could farmers a hundred years ago deal with all this confusion?

Finally, we realized that It'd be best if we just started. We'd read enough and talked about it long enough. Just like our kimchi challenge, we realized that the best way to learn was to try. If we failed, we'd hopefully learn something along the way.

We're going to have a more technical explanation of our process next week, which hopefully details our successful alcoholic potion and not some acrid swill. If you've ever attempted to make cider at home, we'd love your comments and help. The jugs are currently under a blanket in Blake's apartment.

For those really interested in the history of cider, check out The American Cider Book by Vrest Orton and Cider: Hard and Sweet by Ben Watson.

After a tasting of both kimchi projects, the results are in. We have a winner!

It wasn't easy to decide: there were things about Nick's kimchi that were better, and things about Blake's Kimchi that were better. We went back and forth about who should take the title. We tasted, waited, tasted again.

First, the recipes. Though our recipes were similar, there were some crucial differences:

Blake used a lot more salted shrimp, kept his cabbage whole, and used an Asian pear for sweetness instead of sugar. He also salted the cabbage rather than brined it.

Nick used just a tiny amount of the shrimp, sugar, rice flour, and he chopped his cabbage into pieces. He also brined his cabbage rather than just salting it.

Tasting Notes

Nick's "sauce" was sweeter--perhaps too sweet--but had this wonderful texture to it that clung to the cabbage that was probably due to the rice flour paste that he used. It combined better with the vegetables, rather than feeling like a separate element. It was well-melded.

Blake's kimchi's "sauce" was a little too spicy, and it had a somewhat grainy texture to it that we didn't like, probably from the pepper flakes. It didn't adhere to the vegetables thoroughly, feeling like a separate element rather then a melded whole.

But on the texture of the cabbage itself, Blake was the clear winner. Nick's cabbage tasted too soft and pressed, with no crunch. It didn't seem to have fermented properly. But Blake's kimchi tasted like real kimchi, with that tender-yet-firm texture to the cabbage, a deep fermented taste, and just a hint of tang.

That ultimately helped decide our winner.

It was hard to decide. But from a platform of successful kimchi-making, Blake's batch seemed the winner. It was properly fermented, and had that deep sour taste. We both had problems with our sauce--Blake's too spicy, Nick's too sweet--which made us even. But though Nick was more successful with the texture of his sauce, Blake was more successful with the texture of the vegetables themselves, which we deemed utterly more important.

So What Did We Learn?

A lot, actually. The clear reason Nick's sauce was more melded with the cabbage is due to his use of rice flour, which gave a perfect "mouthfeel" to his dish. In the future, we'll probably stick to the rice flour process outlined in Nick's post.

We also learned about how to treat the cabbage. Blake's kimchi was made very carefully, treating the cabbage nicely and doing as little as possible to macerate and chop it up. Blake tore the halves apart carefully, salted them carefully, and left the quartered cabbage with its stem on, wrapped in the outer leaves.

Nick, on the other hand, cut his cabbage up into pieces and placed a plate on top, attempting to press out as much moisture as possible. But he probably went overboard, and ended up affecting the crunchy texture of his finished product, an integral part of good kimchi. So lesson number two: treat the cabbage nicely.

The final question is why Nick's kimchi didn't really ferment properly, while Blake's did. Fermentation is most successful in an environment without oxygen, as it's an anaerobic process. This means that you either need a very good seal on the fermenting vessel, or the kimchi needs to be submerged in liquid (either the drain-off from salted cabbage or fresh water, depending on how salty it already is). If the cabbage is in a jar with a bad seal and above the level of liquid, it's not going to ferment.

What actually makes the kimchi ferment is the Lactobacillus microbe which is present already on the cabbage. It thrives where there's no oxygen and when there's sugar to feed on, and it can survive with levels of saltiness where other bad microbes can't. All that said, we don't really know why Nick's didn't ferment as well. Perhaps his rougher treatment of the cabbage did it. Perhaps Blake's copious salted shrimp helped push things along.

In the end, the most important lesson we learned was that kimchi is like lots of things: easy to make a passable version of, but difficult to master. In the future, we'll pull elements from both recipes and hopefully come up with a master version. We have to humbly admit that neither kimchi is the best we've ever tasted, which was the whole point of this project. Honestly, the best bites were when we mixed pieces of both of our batches together. Their qualities seemed to finally balance each other. Still, neither is as good as the kind we can buy from the store.

The bottom line is that you can read about kimchi all day long, but until you get in the kitchen and start making it, you won't really know what it's like. Like any fermented food -- like, say, bread making -- you have to learn by touch, taste, and smell.

In short, this is not the last batch of kimchi that will emerge from our kitchens.

Though Blake was thrilled to jump right into this Kimchi-making process, I dragged my feet the whole way. It's not that I don't love kimchi. That's far from the case. It's just that I've been really happy with the jars of kimchi I've been buying from the Korean market. Uncovering the ways of kimchi, however enlightening the process may be, would sort of remove the magic from the whole experience and turn what had been a pure pleasure into an academic exercise. Kimchi is the one thing I never have to think about. It's always devilishly addicting, and can awaken a dish with ease. I sometimes just eat it straight out the jar.  

What kept me going was that, potentially, I could make a batch that was superior to what I had been buying. Of course, I feared the inverse could also be true. And no sooner had I started hunting for a recipe then I ran across this quote from Eat, Drink, Man...:  

People who say they got it down after the first couple of attempts are either a) lying, b) geniuses, c) don't really know what good kimchi tastes like or d) have low standards and expectations.

Great. Onward I went. I used a few sources, including Eat, Drink, Man, David Lebovitz, but mostly this incredibly detailed recipe I found from Hi Soo Shin Hepinstall's book Growing up in a Korean Kitchen. I wanted full-flavored kimchi, one that had the proper fermentation, and also that right amount of heat.

Unlike Blake, I embraced the use of sweet rice flour. I figured it was the best way of creating the proper paste to coat the cabbage leaves. It's an incredibly fun process. The rice flour thickens quickly, and is then mixed with salted shrimp and hot pepper powder. This could be my secret weapon.

But I'm pretty sure I made one crucial mistake. I don't own a jar large enough to store the quartered pieces of cabbage, so I followed the instructions laid down by David Lebowitz for leaf cabbage kimchi. But Hi Soo Shin Hepinstall wasn't happy:

There are two kinds of napa cabbage kimchi: whole cabbage kimchi and leaf cabbage kimchi. The ingredients are exactly the same...Whole cabbage kimchi has superior flavor, texture, and shelf life.

It was my only real point in the process where I gave in and took the easy route. I wonder whether it's going to come back to bite me.

Leaf Cabbage Kimchi

2 1/2 pounds napa cabbage, about one head
5 ounces kosher salt

Stuffing:
1 tablespoon sweet rice flour
1 tablespoon salted shrimp (saeu chot) , finely chopped
1/2 cup hot red pepper powder (koch'u karu)
1/2 pound Korean radishes, peeled and cut into 3-inch matchsticks
1 hot green Korean pepper or jalapeno, stemmed, seeded, and cut into 1/4 inch strips
3 scallions, white and pale green parts only, thinly sliced
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
1/2 tablespoon grated fresh ginger
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 tablespoon fresh lemon juice 

Remove the tough outer leaves of the cabbage. Chop the cabbage into 1-inch by 1-1/2 inch pieces. Rinse the cabbage well in a colander. Toss them into a very large bowl. 

Dump in the salt along with 1/2 cup of lukewarm water. Stir well.

Place a plate with some weights on top. In this case, I placed a bowl on top of the plate, with an iron skillet on top. Weigh it down for about 4 hours.Rinse the cabbage several times to rinse off the salt. Drain on paper towels. 

While the cabbage is salting, make the stuffing. Pour 1/2 cup of water into small sauce pan. Add the sweet rice flour. Stir well until dissolved, then turn heat to medium-high and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low, and stir often for 2 minutes. It should turn into a paste. Turn off the heat and let the paste cool slightly.

Add the paste to a bowl. Toss in the salted shrimp and hot red pepper.

Mix until it turns into a bright red paste.

Then add all the rest of the stuffing ingredients to the bowl. Toss with your hands. It will be very, very messy.

Add the salted cabbage. Toss very well.

Stuff the mixture into cans, making sure to leave at least 2 inches of space at the top of the jars. Double wrap in plastic. And then set aside in a cool room for about 2 days.