Azhdarchid

a sous vide machine and a pacojet are, philosophically, the same thing

let me explain

Normally, you cook steak by applying direct heat from a pan until it hits a certain internal temp (I am ignoring finishing steaks in the oven, a coward's move). This temperature is sort of an optimal compromise of fully cooking the proteins without rendering out too much of the fat or losing too much moisture. Because you are applying heat directly to the meat, the possibility of under or over-shooting is ever present, and all sorts of factors can induce error into this process that make it inconsistent.

In sous vide, however, you simply heat a large thermal mass of water to that target temperature, dump your meat in (sealed in a plastic bag so it doesn't get wet), and simply allow it to reach homeostasis. It is, essentially, a brute force solution: you are guaranteeing a certain final temperature by creating a system that will necessarily land on that temperature given enough time.

Now, a pacojet, if you're unfamiliar, is a big expensive commercial blender that is powerful enough to turn a brick of solid frozen material into something ice-cream like in a couple minutes. The way it works is that the blade spins very fast while it slowly descends, essentially slicing whatever you put into it into microscopically thin shavings.

Ice cream, as you know, is a complicated colloid made up of several phases: Frozen water, liquid water (with sugar or alcohol dissolved in it, which keeps it from freezing), fats (optional), and of course air bubbles suspended in it. To make ice cream, as opposed to a solid brick of something frozen, you have to freeze an ice cream base very fast while whipping air into it at the same time. Freezing things quickly ensures that they develop small ice crystals that can move around in the mixture, giving it the right texture. To keep the ice crystals small and to incorporate enough air, you have to whip as you freeze.

Except, of course, the pacojet machine just solves this problem by brute forcing it. You start with a solid brick of frozen whatever. The machine says: you want your ice crystals yay big? 'kay, I'll simply slice this into microscopically thin ribbons that are exactly that size. Instead of worrying about heat transfer and how different mixtures of water/sugar/fat/alcohol freeze, you simply reduce it down to a function of how fast the blade spins versus how quickly it descends.

No wonder both of those devices became popular in commercial kitchens. They can produce consistent results even when the inputs are inconsistent, because they systemically guarantee a certain determinant property of their products. And, of course, domestic sous vide circulators have been popular for a while now because they make it easy to replicate commercial kitchen results. It was only a matter of time until we saw a domesticated version of a pacojet.

Anyway this is how the robot uprising got so many spinny blade limbs. It's all the fucking Ninja™ CREAMi® machines people bought and used like four times that ended up in landfills for them to repurpose. So that's how I got those scars. Now fasten the chin strap on your damn helmet, rookie, you don't want it flying off when the shrapnel's in the air.

#cohost #microfiction #put your helmet on