Ginger milk curd (2014) | Hacker News Reader

Ginger milk curd (2014)

blog.khymos.org

139 pointspolm2336 comments

This is the perfect application for a sous-vide. If you place a wire rack below the water line you can make a very accurate bain marie. You can easily maintain +/- 1 degree. I've been using mason jars to make individual yogurt servings, puddings, and custards. I might have to add this to the mix.

I've been meaning to try mason jar custards. Any other good vegetarian sous vide applications? I was gifted a Joule, but I pretty much only use it the four or five times a year I treat myself to a good steak or some such.

Sous vide carrots weren't as revelatory to me as they were to others. Like many other veggie recipes they also need rather high temperatures, and a vaccuum machine instead of zip loc bags.

I have never had luck with sous vide vegetables. The high temperatures required also raise concerns about the stability of the plastic bags.

I agree! I am not going to eat food cooked in plastic bags, for any reason.

I do recommend reusable silicone Sous Vide bags. You cannot vacuum seal them directly, but you can submerge them in water to drive the air out. You can also place them inside a vac bag, pump down, press the seal close, and then remove them from the vac bag.

Thanks, do you have a recommended product?

I don't. At least the ones I got gifted[1] fight you every step of the way.

The silicone is very thick and stiff. It's hard to remove air by submerging them, depending on what you put in there, there are always some pockets of air remaining. And the way they seal is very fiddly. One of the sealing clips broke after a few uses. Maybe it gets easier with experience, but some things just shouldn't be that aggravating.

On the other hand, a cursory search shows that there are many other products available that may be more sensibly designed.

[1] PureSiliconeWare is the brand name

A mason jar or similar is a great alternative. Glass will certainly not leech any nasty stuff into your food and there's no need to create a vacuum.

I'm not talking from experience but it's easy to find information on that kind of cooking on the internet:

https://anovaculinary.com/5-tips-for-precision-cooking-in-ca...

There are some amazing vegetable terrines that are baked in a bain marie. Most use gelatin as a binder, but with some experimentation it should be easy to sub in agar. I bet that there are some vegetable combinations that will self-set sans gelling agents. I've been meaning to experiment by making smaller test batches and dialing in the temp and duration. Ideally, I would like to find a low and slow method that minimizes the breakdown of the flavors. A properly made veg terrine loaf is the ideal showcase for fresh vegetables as well as a gorgeous centerpiece for all those dinner parties we are having at the moment.

Perhaps some sous vide pickles?

Sous vide creme brulee too.

Yep. Combined with the requirement for fresh ginger juice it would seem the best protocol would be to dissolve sugar in warm (for easier dissolving) milk in a jar, let it cool to room temp, squeeze the ginger directly in the milk, stir, seal, put in a 62.5C sous vide.

I have tried this sous-vide thinking about it as a normal custard ie make mixture, fill pot, circulate. It didn't work. My theory is that the proteases had already degraded by the time the milk got up to temp.

The recipe explicitly calls for the milk being hot, which I naively didn't do. I was doing it for a dinner so instead of doing some more tests sous vide I just did it old school since that had worked. If you try it with preheated milk please share the results!

All the talk about myths and then it says funny things like:

> Place juice in a bowl and pour milk into the ginger juice from a height to allow sufficient mixing.

Surely the flow of the pour is more important than the height. You can get complete mixing from very low height and poor mixing with a lot of splatter mess from high height. The difference is in how rapidly you pour, not from where.

> Do NOT stir as this will interfere with the gel formation.

"Make sure they mix, but don't mix them!" is a weird bit of advice. Perhaps it should say don't stir continously.

Perhaps they meant don't mix into a homogeneous substance (?)

I'd read it as saying that the important structure formation happens in the first second or so of the mixing, so if you have to put the jug down, pick up a fork, and start to mix it, you'll be damaging that structure.

It’s called out for being vague in the notes for further experimentation at the end.

> pour low vs. high: I believe the point of the “high pour” is to avoid any extra mixing/disturbing of the gel

I think it's clear: mix, don't stir.

You know. Kinda like a Vesper Martini.

Neat, I'm going to have to try that, the graphs & diagrams are really nice. It's interesting how narrow the temp window is for it to gel. That kind of reminds me a bit of controlling the mashing temp. in brewing to keep the enzymes happy.

I was looking at this recipe again recently for ginger beer: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2011/ju...

I've used the ginger beer plant a while ago, but it seems somewhat hard to get now and apparently the 'National Collection of Yeast Cultures' have it, but can't sell it as they're not sure of the exact composition alas. Maybe time to try 'making' it myself :)

> Some weeks ago, while doing research for Texture on gel formation in foods where no “external” hydrocolloid is added, I came across ginger milk curd (in Chinese: ????).

I don't know if this person needs to look up the Chinese for "ginger milk curd" or if there's a character encoding issue.

While this is indeed very interesting and I enjoyed the detailed chemical analysis thoroughly, I have to say that it doesn't look like it's particularly useful at least not as an ingredient in a larger recipe (edit: and it's too much of a hassle to just enjoy on its own). The quick syneresis means that you can't make cheese with it, for one thing. It also means it won't easily go as a topping to confectionery. Perhaps frozen as a topping to ice cream?

I confess it's the first time I hear of ginger curd so I don't know what it's usually supposed to be used in.

Anyway the article is really interesting and I also thought that the following:

  Kitchen myths arise when people randomly fail and succeed with a recipe.

Is the kind of sentence that could launch 300 HN comment threads :)

> it's too much of a hassle to just enjoy on its own

On its own it's a traditional Chinese dessert: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ginger_milk_curd

It's not supposed to be in anything. I do know yhere's a famous variation on it called double skin milk. But the point of Cantonese cooking is a kind of minimalism (think: steamed fish). Use the best ginger you can get, and really good milk. Wikipedia says Buffalo milk is traditional. If you use good ingredients the result can be sublime.

It can be a nice and quick relatively-low-calorie dessert. It doesn't need to be anything more.

Anybody know what this is supposed to be called in Chinese? The article just shows four question marks. (I thought it was an encoding error at first, but after curling the page and inspecting the character byte sequences, it looks like they're really just question marks.)

姜打牛奶. The article mentions that the literal translation is "ginger hits milk".

姜汁撞奶 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ginger_milk_curd

This shows the characters and a demonstration video. It's literally "ginger juice collides milk."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lJukAU_STA

What did she do wrong for the 3 that did not work?

It seems she's demonstrating the experiment with different temperatures and different ginger juices. There are two temperature ranges and two ginger juice types (one filtered and one unfiltered old ginger). The only success case is the one with unfiltered ginger juice at certain temperature. I'm guessing the unfiltered juice has ginger starch/fiber in it which helps the milk to crystallize at the right temperature. Crystallization requires "seeds" to serve as the nucleus to start the process.

I'm guessing two essential factors are temperature and some fiber material like ginger root. Other fruits with the right kind of fiber might work too.

The article contradicts what you say here. It provides a detailed explanation of how the ingredients form a gel.

I suppose the temperature of the ginger juice & milk mixture was not in the correct range for the gel to form. To make the dish reliably, I suppose one would need to make several servings, use the same volume of ginger and milk for each, and adjust the temperature of the milk to achieve the correct temperature of ginger & milk mixture. Unless you're lucky, the first one or two servings won't set. If their temperature is too low, you could try to use a microwave oven to heat them to the proper temperature.

I made this once. The final product has a mild flavor and delicate gel, and juicing ginger is extremely tedious.

It's a good chemistry demonstration, but from a culinary perspective I'd recommend infusing a normal custard or a ginger milk tea if that's what you want!

I hope you realize "from a culinary perspective" this is a classic Cantonese dessert. Cantonese cooking is a renowned cuisine, and calling the ginger milk curd a chemistry demo is culinary ignorance, and marginalizes the heritage of many Asian Americans.

I made this once and maybe the proportions were wrong, but it was much too gingery for me. Also, I also felt bad using so much ginger for such little yield.

I prefer the British posset, which is made by heating heavy cream and adding sugar and lemon juice. You could even add spices and ginger to possett.

I bet it tastes great. However, the research and chemistry diagrams are the best part.

I just gave it a shot and it was pretty tasty, but i wonder if it's stable enough to be strained like yogurt. Might give that a shot next time.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com