The first steps in making hummus bi tahini are soaking the dried chickpeas over night — “hummus” is Arabic for “chickpea” — and then simmering them for about an hour.
we can sense the top surface of the pan's temperature with a new active sensor technology we developed at impulselabs.com (which is a 4 burner cooktop with this tech)
Boilover preventers are an extremely simple solution that works well. It's a silicone/rubber replacement for the lid that seems to work by passively breaking up the froth at the top before the pot can boil over. Doesn't take up any space.
The solution is to use an instant pot. After the chick peas are done soaking, simply put them in the instant pot with water and salt, and cook for about 15 minutes. No boiling over problem.
Valid point. But an Instant Pot (TM) actually clears up counter clutter by eliminating a bunch of other gadgets. The bonus is that it can even expand your culinary horizon. :)
Instant Pots are fantastic. I was skeptical, but they really are pretty handy, for what they do and for how many things they do. My only real gripe is recipes which claim "20 minutes pressure cook time" and neglect to mention the ten minutes to come up to pressure, twice, because you have to open it up after 15 minutes the end to add potatoes and carrots for 5 more minutes pressure cooking. Easy to clean, easy to use.
Instant pots are the ultimate programmable pressure cooker. You don't have to babysit it. It got dozens of functions.
I like the air fryer too. The name is unfortunate, though. I like fried stuff and air doesn't fry. Air dries stuff. Never wanted one. I like my fried stuff fried in oil, thank you. Then I realized that it's a very small, portable, efficient, convention oven. I like convection ovens. Once that realization hit, the air fryer was a hit.
I had learned that baking three good sized potatoes in a toaster oven for two hours came out just about perfectly. Then I discovered that 90 minutes in my air fryer came out the same. Sooner and cheaper!
You might be able to hook up a cheap PID temperature controller to a hot place, that's basically the guts for how electric hot water tanks work, and home beer brewers often make such things from DIY instructions. The removable immersion filament in those big cheap electric turkey fryers is basically this setup ready to go, can be plugged in, set at 200 degrees and dropped in any sufficiently large pot.
Another commenter pointed me at a fancy induction hot plate that has a probe and lets you set the temperature to the degree. Unfortunately it costs about $1500. But then I looked on Amazon, using a search string that included "probe," and found one that lets you choose every five degrees and costs a little over a hundred dollars. And bought it.
Ah, check out inkbird itc-308, $35, a thermocouple-connected switch (or rheostat?), plug a sub 1100W electric hot plate into something like that and good to go.
Another automatic pot stirrer: StirMATE. This has been great for stirring ice cream custard for well over an hour. They make an attachment (Omni-XL) for large pots that looks useful, but it's been out of stock for a long time.
For hummus, I am a big fan of the Combustion Inc. thermometer with a pot clip: https://combustion.inc/products/thermometer-pot-clip. It won't turn down the temperature yet; it just alerts you via app or display, but I suspect smart stove/plate integration is a feature they will add soon. This is by far the gadget that has given me the most consumer surplus in my life. It's also the only electronics product I ever bought that improves over time with free upgrades. The customer support and educational videos are delightful: https://www.reddit.com/r/combustion_inc/s/9cXtOKonZb. I would happily give you a demo next time you are in Oakland or host another SSC meetup in SJ. The thermometer is expensive but has many other applications, especially for slow, low-temperature roasting, BBQ, grilling, brewing, and baking.
Why don't you use tinned chickpeas instead David? Once in a while I buy lots of tins of chickpeas in brine. Then you don't need to add salt to the hummus and you also don't need to boil the chickpeas either. Also, it is quite handy since one tin of chickpeas roughly matches one portion of hummus (if I just eat hummus and bread and maybe some olives for breakfast) or two smaller portions.
It is a bit more costly that way but I don't think you're living on a student's budget :-)
By the way, thanks for the translation, I had no idea hummus simply meant chickpeas :) In Czech humus (with a single m but pronounced exactly the same) means "something disgusting". I have no idea of the etymology though. I doubt it comes fro arabic (and if it does how do you get from chickpeas to disgusting? chickpeas are great!) but the words is exactly the same so it makes me wonder.
I used to use canned chickpeas. I might have switched over during Covid when we stocked up on a variety of dried beans in case we ended up isolating for a month or more.
Re self stirring pot gizmo, available from Lee Valley Tools, $35cdn. It is a tripod that sits in the pot liquid and stirs it one way and then the other way, preventing sticking or burning.
Funny. While we were living in Sunnyvale, in a rental house without an air condition, that's how I kept the house cool (or as cool as possible). But it wasn't automated. Every evening I would run around the house opening windows and turning on fans. And in the morning I would close all the windows and the blinds to keep the sun and heat out. It worked pretty well!
I would also like a pot that would stir and scrape the bottom without me. I make yogurt regularly, and it needs to be brought up to 185 degrees and then kept there for 10 minutes and then cooled down to 110 where I will add the culture. There is always a film on the bottom of the pan that I have to scrub afterward. I've taken to using a thermal cooker for the 10 minutes of keeping it at 185, and again for keeping it at 110 to do it's fermenting thing at the end. But the cooking part would be lovely if it could be automated with a thermostat and mixer.
Have you ever heard of a Thermomix? A Spanish friend of ours showed me hers. It mixes, heats with a thermostat, steams, etc, all automatically. Spanish restaurants and cooks use it often to make perfect hot chocolate. https://www.thermomix.com/
We use a Thermomix knockoff (one from Lidl) for making yogurt. We use UHT milk, so we skip the cooking step, and all the machine has to do is stir the yogurt and keep it at 45 degrees for ten hours.
Some people use the UHT milk to make yogurt in their Instant Pots. I'm really happy with the thermal cooker now, since it doesn't use electricity to hold the temperature stable. And this way I can choose the best quality milk I can find. Could your Lidl machine do the initial heating for yogurt if you wanted to use a different milk?
Yes, I think if we wanted to use non-UHT milk regularly we'd add a recipe along these lines to the machine: (1) ask user to add milk (2) heat to 95 degrees (i.e. slightly below boiling) for 10 minutes while stirring (3) wait X minutes (I don't know if the machine has the ability to wait for a drop to a particular temperature) (4) ask user to add yogurt (5) ferment at 45 degrees for 10 hours.
The newer version of the machine is quite user friendly, with a touch screen interface that gives step-by-step instructions from an online database of recipes. I rather like the concept of recipes containing unambiguous instructions for a machine ("25 minutes at 90 degrees while stirring clockwise at speed 1") instead of the more ambiguous instructions, written for humans, that one finds in traditional recipes.
Whole house fans blow a lot of air out of the house all at once. They are designed for cooling a very hot house very fast in the evening. I don't know of any other products that would cool or heat the house as you suggested, but I did have some similar thoughts.
1. You could attach small fans, electric dampers, 45 degree connections, and vents to the outside of the house to both the return and supply lines. So when the outside air is cool (and you are trying to cool the house) or warm (and you are trying to heat the house), the small fans would turn on and blow outside air through the existing ducts. That would give a reasonably good distribution of fresh air through the house. And the dampers would close when the HVAC unit is working normally.
2. I live in Los Angeles. The outside air temperature during summer evenings is usually enough to cool the house by a lot. The trick to cooling a house is not just to lower the air temperature, but to lower the temperature of the solid objects in the house -- floors, walls, furniture -- but a lot. Their specific heat capacity is a lot higher than the air. So ideally, you want to blow cold air in all night long, even if the temperature gets well below the ideal temperature. If you did this in (say) rooms other than the bedrooms where people are sleeping, the other rooms would start of much colder when people got up. As the outside temperature rose, it would take longer to get to an uncomfortable range where people would want to turn on the air conditioner.
3. When I was in high school, I came up with the idea of running copper pipes through the attic and then pumping the pool water through the attic. For some reason, my parents thought this was a bad idea. : ) My second brilliant idea would be to replace the roof with metal bottom pool. In both cases, the heat in the house would heat the pool water.
But there is a company that actually makes a heat exchanger that does this. It is an aftermarket heat exchanger that connects to an HVAC system and the pool pump. It basically runs the tubes containing the hot freon to the heat exchanger, turns on the pool pump when the AC is running, and shuts off the AC fan. This cools the freon a lot better than the fan does, helps the HVAC system run more efficiently, and heats the pool with the excess heat. It was on an episode of Ask This Old House.
4. Put Maxwell demon in the window. Just make sure he is pointing the correct way.
Maxwell's demons are against Catholic law, I assume. But Hindus worship Maxwell's Demon. At least I do, and I'm a Hindu, and then we have the 1st Amendment.
When my second son was much younger, I had a shirt made for him, with "Agent of Entropy" on the front and "It's not just chaos, it's the law" on the back.
On #1, you would probably want an air filter too. And the fans can be small and cheap. Even small fans blow a lot of air. A small computer fan typically blows 50 - 100 cubic feet per minute. Its easy to estimate the cubic feet in a house and how much air would be exchanged. (E.g., 2500 sf x 8' ceilings = 20,000 cf. At 100 cubic feet per minute, that will turn over the air in about 200 minutes. Of course, you could add several fans or use bigger fans. But the point is that even small fans blow a lot of air relative to the size of houses.)
I like your idea for the induction range. I’m curious why you have or like the induction over gas. I’ve had all three types and prefer gas. What are your thoughts on gas versus induction? Certainly you’re not concerned about global warming.
I believe modern induction burners heat the pot considerably faster than at least ordinary gas burners. They also feel safer, since the only thing that can burn you is the pot.
A commenter pointed me at a very high end induction hot plate that lets you set the temperature to the minute and includes a probe for temperature. Unfortunately it costs about 1500 dollars.
Hey, that really cool. $1500 is a bit high, but the price will come down in a few years and you'll probably own one. Reminds me of the Carousel of Progress at Disney World. Have you ever seen it? It's my favorite.
I have now found one almost as good — the setting is adjustable in 5° increments instead of 1° increments — for a little more than a hundred dollars and bought it. It seems to work.
we can sense the top surface of the pan's temperature with a new active sensor technology we developed at impulselabs.com (which is a 4 burner cooktop with this tech)
Boilover preventers are an extremely simple solution that works well. It's a silicone/rubber replacement for the lid that seems to work by passively breaking up the froth at the top before the pot can boil over. Doesn't take up any space.
This is regarding the hummus issue.
The solution is to use an instant pot. After the chick peas are done soaking, simply put them in the instant pot with water and salt, and cook for about 15 minutes. No boiling over problem.
That requires one more gadget, and our counters tend to get crowded. But it might be a useful gadget.
Valid point. But an Instant Pot (TM) actually clears up counter clutter by eliminating a bunch of other gadgets. The bonus is that it can even expand your culinary horizon. :)
Instant Pots are fantastic. I was skeptical, but they really are pretty handy, for what they do and for how many things they do. My only real gripe is recipes which claim "20 minutes pressure cook time" and neglect to mention the ten minutes to come up to pressure, twice, because you have to open it up after 15 minutes the end to add potatoes and carrots for 5 more minutes pressure cooking. Easy to clean, easy to use.
Instant pots are the ultimate programmable pressure cooker. You don't have to babysit it. It got dozens of functions.
I like the air fryer too. The name is unfortunate, though. I like fried stuff and air doesn't fry. Air dries stuff. Never wanted one. I like my fried stuff fried in oil, thank you. Then I realized that it's a very small, portable, efficient, convention oven. I like convection ovens. Once that realization hit, the air fryer was a hit.
We live and we learn.
I had learned that baking three good sized potatoes in a toaster oven for two hours came out just about perfectly. Then I discovered that 90 minutes in my air fryer came out the same. Sooner and cheaper!
Good news - there is a great (but pricey) induction burner (stand alone) that does just what you want - precise down to 1/10 of a degree!
https://www.webstaurantstore.com/breville-commercial-cmc850-control-freak-countertop-induction-range-120v-1800w/981CMC850.html?gbraid=0AAAAAD_Dx-sf2SxDyD6itHh-3zsG6sUFv&gclid=Cj0KCQiA57G5BhDUARIsACgCYnxwAOXBedHyWiw5VDtX1hG0yHAP5Kgp5bfm5MTfyebTIUnuDLTxQagaAq8QEALw_wcB
We bought one for our son-in-law, who is a great cook, and he loves it. Well worth it for the great food he's made since.
That's impressive, but I'm not sure it is worth more than a thousand dollars more than the competition.
Thanks.
You might be able to hook up a cheap PID temperature controller to a hot place, that's basically the guts for how electric hot water tanks work, and home beer brewers often make such things from DIY instructions. The removable immersion filament in those big cheap electric turkey fryers is basically this setup ready to go, can be plugged in, set at 200 degrees and dropped in any sufficiently large pot.
Another commenter pointed me at a fancy induction hot plate that has a probe and lets you set the temperature to the degree. Unfortunately it costs about $1500. But then I looked on Amazon, using a search string that included "probe," and found one that lets you choose every five degrees and costs a little over a hundred dollars. And bought it.
Ah, check out inkbird itc-308, $35, a thermocouple-connected switch (or rheostat?), plug a sub 1100W electric hot plate into something like that and good to go.
Would that keep turning the hot plate on and off to control the temperature? Might not be good for it.
Another automatic pot stirrer: StirMATE. This has been great for stirring ice cream custard for well over an hour. They make an attachment (Omni-XL) for large pots that looks useful, but it's been out of stock for a long time.
A costly French “food processor on steroids” does stirring while cooking: https://www.thermomix.com. Megan McArdle wrote a review of an older model: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2011/12/in-defense-of-kitchen-gadgets/249624/. Given the price, they can now send someone to your house to give you a demo for almost free, just a few ingredients.
For hummus, I am a big fan of the Combustion Inc. thermometer with a pot clip: https://combustion.inc/products/thermometer-pot-clip. It won't turn down the temperature yet; it just alerts you via app or display, but I suspect smart stove/plate integration is a feature they will add soon. This is by far the gadget that has given me the most consumer surplus in my life. It's also the only electronics product I ever bought that improves over time with free upgrades. The customer support and educational videos are delightful: https://www.reddit.com/r/combustion_inc/s/9cXtOKonZb. I would happily give you a demo next time you are in Oakland or host another SSC meetup in SJ. The thermometer is expensive but has many other applications, especially for slow, low-temperature roasting, BBQ, grilling, brewing, and baking.
I found articles on pot stirrers and adjustable silverware trays on this design site I follow
https://www.core77.com/posts/123662/Same-Object-Different-Form-Factors-Designs-for-Automatic-Pot-Stirrers
Not sure these are all great quality but they seem to match your requirements
https://www.core77.com/posts/38387/14-ways-to-organize-the-kitchen-silverware-drawer
From the ones mentioned this seems like the best one:
https://amazon.com/OXO-Grips-Adjustable-Drawer-Organizer/dp/B000F3M0G4?ie=UTF8
But apparently it's discontinued on Amazon
Why don't you use tinned chickpeas instead David? Once in a while I buy lots of tins of chickpeas in brine. Then you don't need to add salt to the hummus and you also don't need to boil the chickpeas either. Also, it is quite handy since one tin of chickpeas roughly matches one portion of hummus (if I just eat hummus and bread and maybe some olives for breakfast) or two smaller portions.
It is a bit more costly that way but I don't think you're living on a student's budget :-)
By the way, thanks for the translation, I had no idea hummus simply meant chickpeas :) In Czech humus (with a single m but pronounced exactly the same) means "something disgusting". I have no idea of the etymology though. I doubt it comes fro arabic (and if it does how do you get from chickpeas to disgusting? chickpeas are great!) but the words is exactly the same so it makes me wonder.
I used to use canned chickpeas. I might have switched over during Covid when we stocked up on a variety of dried beans in case we ended up isolating for a month or more.
Electrolux makes a hybrid induction/electric cooktop.
I believe they used to, but no longer do.
Hmmm. I have never heard of this brand. But they seem to be still making them. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CVLKQYC1?tag=toptenreviewed-20&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1&keywords=hybrid%20cooktops#customerReviews
I can find them in Sweden, but maybe they aren't being sold any more in the USA. Sorry for the bad lead.
Thanks anyway. It's 36" wide and we will be replacing a 30" range.
Re self stirring pot gizmo, available from Lee Valley Tools, $35cdn. It is a tripod that sits in the pot liquid and stirs it one way and then the other way, preventing sticking or burning.
Many thanks. I've ordered one.
Kind of off topic but It’s an absolute mystery to me why cars are sold without a cut out to stop the battery going flat if you leave the lights on.
Funny. While we were living in Sunnyvale, in a rental house without an air condition, that's how I kept the house cool (or as cool as possible). But it wasn't automated. Every evening I would run around the house opening windows and turning on fans. And in the morning I would close all the windows and the blinds to keep the sun and heat out. It worked pretty well!
I would also like a pot that would stir and scrape the bottom without me. I make yogurt regularly, and it needs to be brought up to 185 degrees and then kept there for 10 minutes and then cooled down to 110 where I will add the culture. There is always a film on the bottom of the pan that I have to scrub afterward. I've taken to using a thermal cooker for the 10 minutes of keeping it at 185, and again for keeping it at 110 to do it's fermenting thing at the end. But the cooking part would be lovely if it could be automated with a thermostat and mixer.
Have you ever heard of a Thermomix? A Spanish friend of ours showed me hers. It mixes, heats with a thermostat, steams, etc, all automatically. Spanish restaurants and cooks use it often to make perfect hot chocolate. https://www.thermomix.com/
I like the ritual of walking around in the evening and morning, opening and shutting windows.
We use a Thermomix knockoff (one from Lidl) for making yogurt. We use UHT milk, so we skip the cooking step, and all the machine has to do is stir the yogurt and keep it at 45 degrees for ten hours.
It's nice to see other companies offering less expensive alternatives to TM. I never heard of Lidl, but found this article https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/food/article-3069830/Can-Lidl-s-179-Master-Cuisine-925-TM5-Thermomix-can.html
Some people use the UHT milk to make yogurt in their Instant Pots. I'm really happy with the thermal cooker now, since it doesn't use electricity to hold the temperature stable. And this way I can choose the best quality milk I can find. Could your Lidl machine do the initial heating for yogurt if you wanted to use a different milk?
Yes, I think if we wanted to use non-UHT milk regularly we'd add a recipe along these lines to the machine: (1) ask user to add milk (2) heat to 95 degrees (i.e. slightly below boiling) for 10 minutes while stirring (3) wait X minutes (I don't know if the machine has the ability to wait for a drop to a particular temperature) (4) ask user to add yogurt (5) ferment at 45 degrees for 10 hours.
The newer version of the machine is quite user friendly, with a touch screen interface that gives step-by-step instructions from an online database of recipes. I rather like the concept of recipes containing unambiguous instructions for a machine ("25 minutes at 90 degrees while stirring clockwise at speed 1") instead of the more ambiguous instructions, written for humans, that one finds in traditional recipes.
Whole house fans blow a lot of air out of the house all at once. They are designed for cooling a very hot house very fast in the evening. I don't know of any other products that would cool or heat the house as you suggested, but I did have some similar thoughts.
1. You could attach small fans, electric dampers, 45 degree connections, and vents to the outside of the house to both the return and supply lines. So when the outside air is cool (and you are trying to cool the house) or warm (and you are trying to heat the house), the small fans would turn on and blow outside air through the existing ducts. That would give a reasonably good distribution of fresh air through the house. And the dampers would close when the HVAC unit is working normally.
2. I live in Los Angeles. The outside air temperature during summer evenings is usually enough to cool the house by a lot. The trick to cooling a house is not just to lower the air temperature, but to lower the temperature of the solid objects in the house -- floors, walls, furniture -- but a lot. Their specific heat capacity is a lot higher than the air. So ideally, you want to blow cold air in all night long, even if the temperature gets well below the ideal temperature. If you did this in (say) rooms other than the bedrooms where people are sleeping, the other rooms would start of much colder when people got up. As the outside temperature rose, it would take longer to get to an uncomfortable range where people would want to turn on the air conditioner.
3. When I was in high school, I came up with the idea of running copper pipes through the attic and then pumping the pool water through the attic. For some reason, my parents thought this was a bad idea. : ) My second brilliant idea would be to replace the roof with metal bottom pool. In both cases, the heat in the house would heat the pool water.
But there is a company that actually makes a heat exchanger that does this. It is an aftermarket heat exchanger that connects to an HVAC system and the pool pump. It basically runs the tubes containing the hot freon to the heat exchanger, turns on the pool pump when the AC is running, and shuts off the AC fan. This cools the freon a lot better than the fan does, helps the HVAC system run more efficiently, and heats the pool with the excess heat. It was on an episode of Ask This Old House.
4. Put Maxwell demon in the window. Just make sure he is pointing the correct way.
"4. Put Maxwell demon in the window. Just make sure he is pointing the correct way."
Sorry. That's against the law.
Maxwell's demons are against Catholic law, I assume. But Hindus worship Maxwell's Demon. At least I do, and I'm a Hindu, and then we have the 1st Amendment.
Against the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
When my second son was much younger, I had a shirt made for him, with "Agent of Entropy" on the front and "It's not just chaos, it's the law" on the back.
Ahem ... against the laws of physics or thermodynamics or ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell%27s_demon
On #1, you would probably want an air filter too. And the fans can be small and cheap. Even small fans blow a lot of air. A small computer fan typically blows 50 - 100 cubic feet per minute. Its easy to estimate the cubic feet in a house and how much air would be exchanged. (E.g., 2500 sf x 8' ceilings = 20,000 cf. At 100 cubic feet per minute, that will turn over the air in about 200 minutes. Of course, you could add several fans or use bigger fans. But the point is that even small fans blow a lot of air relative to the size of houses.)
I like your idea for the induction range. I’m curious why you have or like the induction over gas. I’ve had all three types and prefer gas. What are your thoughts on gas versus induction? Certainly you’re not concerned about global warming.
I believe modern induction burners heat the pot considerably faster than at least ordinary gas burners. They also feel safer, since the only thing that can burn you is the pot.
Also, my wife doesn't like gas either.
Agreed. Safe, clean and neat from a technological perspective. Temperature control like you mentioned might be their biggest weakness. Thank you.
A commenter pointed me at a very high end induction hot plate that lets you set the temperature to the minute and includes a probe for temperature. Unfortunately it costs about 1500 dollars.
https://www.webstaurantstore.com/breville-commercial-cmc850-control-freak-countertop-induction-range-120v-1800w/981CMC850.html?gbraid=0AAAAAD_Dx-sf2SxDyD6itHh-3zsG6sUFv&gclid=Cj0KCQiA57G5BhDUARIsACgCYnxwAOXBedHyWiw5VDtX1hG0yHAP5Kgp5bfm5MTfyebTIUnuDLTxQagaAq8QEALw_wcB
Hey, that really cool. $1500 is a bit high, but the price will come down in a few years and you'll probably own one. Reminds me of the Carousel of Progress at Disney World. Have you ever seen it? It's my favorite.
I have now found one almost as good — the setting is adjustable in 5° increments instead of 1° increments — for a little more than a hundred dollars and bought it. It seems to work.
It would be interesting to see a plot of actual temperature vs desired temperature for this product. What are you going to cook with it?