Milk watcher | Hacker News Reader

Milk watcher

en.wikipedia.org

150 pointsbookofjoe91 comments

In action: https://youtu.be/eVQDUoD_cJY?si=qNL3NZNQPGJCHMPn&t=40

Wow, to my surprise, the sound is incredibly annoying and stress-inducing.

At first I wasn't sure if it's some kind of poor-taste soundtrack, but that is only the background tune. The tap tap tap is the stainless steel device.

Edit: @hombre_fatal - Steel on steel will always clang.

it's supposed to be alarming, so you can go turn the heat down once something starts boiling enough to boil over. Similar to a stove-top pressure cooker, you have to wait for the sound to know where to set the heat.

I use a glass milk watcher while boiling milk for making yogurt, and the clak (not clank) sound is not that stress inducing. On the contrary, it's a heartbeat which says that your milk is safe from boiling over and tasty yogurt prospects are still strong.

I think it's a matter of getting used to it.

Do you still have to stir to keep the milk from sticking to the bottom of the pot?

If your milk has around 3.3% fat, no you don't. I didn't try with milk with >5% fat yet.

Thank you!

Stress-inducing that's the right word to describe it

<https://yewtu.be/watch?v=eVQDUoD_cJY&t=40>

Thank you for the video. The sound would definitely make me come and stop it.

I wonder if this would work in a rice cooker or if there's something equivalent. If I don't wash the rice beforehand it will tend to bubble starchy bubbles through the top that makes a mess

not washing the rice is generally a bad idea even disregarding this factor, because the texture of the rice will come out quite wrong.

I normally rinse the rice too, but some think rinsing washes out some vitamins. I suppose the tradeoff is less vitamins or more pesticides?

Rinsing it can remove some of the toxic arsenic.

https://health.osu.edu/wellness/exercise-and-nutrition/how-t...

But only about 20% of the arsenic.

If you want to significantly reduce the arsenic, it is apparently better to cook rice like pasta in a large amount of water, and then drain it (in a sieve / strainer)

I fancy myself a pretty decent cook, but rice has been the bane of my existence. I don't own a rice cooker, and I could never get it right.

Then I learned about the pasta method. It probably closed about 80% of the quality gap in my finished product.

If you can afford it and have space in your kitchen I'd recommend you get a rice cooker, preferably one with 'fuzzy logic' and ceramic bowl. It removes the starch preparation almost entirely from the meal preparation process and allows more focus on the rest of it, and it becomes trivial to turn some leftovers into a decent meal or make 'fast food' by putting some pre-/factory-made dumplings and greens in with the rice. Commonly rice cookers allow setting a start time in the future, so you can prepare dinner or lunch at breakfast and it'll be ready at the appropriate time.

The 'pasta method' is fine however, ignore people that whine about it. It's also rather easy to learn how to make paella and jollof and similar, which is a really nice way to cook with rice.

Thanks, I'll consider going that route!

It feels like giving up on a challenge, but life is short and maybe mastering traditional rice cooking techniques isn't the best use of my time.

This sounds like a great way to end up with rice that's soupy and slimy like watery oatmeal or shredded wheat.

Last week I accidentally halved the amount of rice:water, and it turned out quite disgusting.

It's really not that bad, you drain the extra water in a strainer or something, and the residual water that's left mostly gets absorbed into the rice.

Still not the same texture as traditionally cooked rice and my Asian wife doesn't care for the cooked-like-pasta rice herself, but I personally don't find it objectionable when I've had it.

Did you use a rice cooker? Rice cookers operate by “sensing“ when all the water is boiled off, by means of a temperature sensor that detects when the temp goes above 100°C. (If you have just the right ratio of water in there, this is what you want.)

Having too much water in a rice cooker is indeed terrible for the end result, but only due to the nature of how a rice cooker operates… I’m sure if you treat it like pasta and take it off the pot after 10 minutes or so ( not waiting for the water to boil away) you’d get much better results.

No, cooked on the stove. I'm not even that picky about rice, but I draw the line at sludge.

Yes, but about half the arsenic has been transferred to the cooking water, which you can pour down the drain.

So far the arsenic doesn't seem to have any quantifiable negative effects on me, so I'll continue as I've already been for decades. Your concern is appreciated, however.

Wow, don't tell Uncle Roger about your technique:

https://youtu.be/53me-ICi_f8

> the texture of the rice will come out quite wrong.

Out of curiosity, in what sense can the texture be wrong? I never wash my rice, and I like the texture.

Rice contains a lot of arsenic. Washing it can remove some of it. This article also recommends pouring off some water during cooking as well.

https://health.osu.edu/wellness/exercise-and-nutrition/how-t...

This doesn't answer the texture question.

Your somewhat inflammatory "rice contains a lot of arsenic" isn't supported by your source, which has the much more equivocal "rice may have arsenic in it — potentially high levels".

I doubt they meant it as being inflammatory. It's just a fact, if you don't read it as being perfectly literal. I parboil my rice and pour off the water before cooking it to try and avoid arsenic exposure (which is more or less a washing procedure). This also gives it a nice fluffy texture, but if asked why I do this, I would say something similar to GP.

> It's just a fact, if you don't read it as being perfectly literal

What other kind of fact is there?

"Rice has a lot of arsenic" reads the same as "rice may have arsenic in it — potentially high levels" if you don't take it as literally applying to all rice in all circumstances.

Washing rice is one of those hygienic practices that evolved into a social more and was incorporated into regional cuisine thereafter. If you're living in a developed country with effective food safety regulations, you don't need to wash your rice.

Which doesn't mean that it's a bad idea to wash your rice. But it's certainly not inherently wrong to not wash rice. For certain cuisines you're actually supposed to not wash the rice, like when making risotto or paella.

Unwashed rice is normally gummier or more starchy

There's nothing wrong with liking it that way, it's just more porridge-like because of the starch if you don't wash it and some people prefer individual rice grains.

Individual rice grains remind me of ant larvae.

So rice. Out of the plant, rice is not that white grain we're used to see. It has a protective layer (called bran). It has all kind of nice nutrient in it, but also contains quite a lot of oil and can go rancid. So for conservation purpose, it's usually removed. The way it's removed is by grinding it until we get to that white layer we all know.

Now this white layer is mostly starch. And by grinding the grain up to this white layer, you necessarily make a lot of microscopic starch powder (I'm simplifying).

When you rinse the rice, you remove this microscopic powder. So when cooking, it cannot gelatinize and provide that creamy (... or goopy, depending on your point of view) texture.

Note that this preference depends on the cuisine, cultivar and even recipe. As other mentioned, risotto is supposed to be creamy, banh chung is held together by magic, pilaf have distinct grains, etc...

You explained that very clearly, and I am grateful for that.

Try it for once. You'll notice the difference

I actually only recently understood that rinsing the rice would improve the overall quality

Tatung rice cookers double-boil the rice so you don't get bubbles everywhere with brown rice.

For the double-boiling uninitiated (like me):

A double boiler uses steam from the hot water in the bottom pot to gently heat the contents in the top pot. This keeps delicate ingredients away from the intensity of direct heat.

Most rice cookers work very well without any manual monitoring

https://youtu.be/RSTNhvDGbYI

Does anyone use this?

I'm surprised in my multi-cultural familial exposure, I'm not aware of any aunts/uncles using this in cooking, or cousins finding one in a drawer.

Yep, used a stainless steel one. Works great. I'm from Russia.

Judging by the quoted patent dates, guessing it was most useful when mothers were still cooking for large families (and so had multiple pans/pots going on).

It's still useful if buying raw milk is cheaper then getting pasteurized one from the store.

Nowhere in the developed world is that true though. Economy of scale forbids it.

Unless you happen to be a dairy farmer -- when I was a kid and we went to my grandfather's farm, he'd draw a pitcher of milk right from the holding tank and put it in the 'fridge for drinking. I'm not old enough to remember drinking it, but my older sister said it tasted better than store bought.

I live on a dairy. We sell raw milk self-serve (bring your own container too) for $3/gallon. Kansas.

There are so many things in my kitchen that we've gotten from relatives that have no discernible purpose.

Like a ridiculously long knife with a slightly curved blade, rounded tip, and blunt edge. Or a serrated knife with that curves back on itself. I keep them because... one day, surely, I'll realize what they're for.

These things need labels, people!

Here's a good example, a little tiny hammer that you'd never ever use for anything. Oh wait, there's a label on it. Hm. Lemme look that up. OH IT'S FOR MAKING CANDY.

https://i.etsystatic.com/7417371/r/il/5caf0a/4106895282/il_f...

I have one of these (though it just says "CHOCOLATE") and I mainly keep it around so that when I see it and feel that warm glow of knowledge, I can then be spitefully angry at all the mysterious, unlabeled niche-problem-solver tools in my kitchen.

These are the sorts of things that won't yield to a specific keyword search (because you aren't giving the search engine the "terms of art" used people who use the thing), but where you can probably figure these out pretty quickly if you just do a search to find some kind of index for the category-of-thing and start browsing.

I'd recommend search queries like "types of knives", "obscure kitchen utensils", "what is this knife", etc.

You can also try giving /r/tipofmytongue or a related subreddit a very detailed description of the object. Some of the results from the above queries point to people asking questions like this on subreddits like /r/tools.

(Or you could do the same thing with ChatGPT — but that'll only work if someone has ever before described the object in a book or on the Internet somewhere, in the terms you're using. ChatGPT can only match your verbal questions to verbal memories. Whereas a person on a subreddit can take your description, conjure a mental image of it, and then correlate that mental image with a visual memory.)

I'll also take a shot at giving you starting points, just because I happen to find learning about weird kitchen tools fascinating:

> Like a ridiculously long knife with a slightly curved blade, rounded tip, and blunt edge.

A cake-icing spatula of some kind? I would imagine one made specifically for smoothing the icing on the side of a cylindrical layer cake would have this shape.

Usually cake spatulas are also offset (blade makes two complementary bends and so ends up parallel to, but not in line with, the handle), but they don't have to be.

> Or a serrated knife with that curves back on itself.

If the end can also be used as a fork, then that's a cheese knife.

I would also add /r/whatisthisthing to your list of subreddits as well. I subscribe to it just to learn about all kinds of obscure tools and utensils.

Ironically, that was the subreddit I wanted to use as the best example of a place to ask questions... but I just couldn't think of its name. :)

The first knife could also be a grapefruit knife?

Yeah, growing up my mom had a grapefruit knife. It's used to "scoop" the flesh out of half z grapefruit. It's a really weird looking utensil if you don't know what it's for.

Interestingly I can't find any pictures of what we had online. Ours had a serated blade (both top and bottom) and was arc'd through 90 degrees to the side.

> > Like a ridiculously long knife with a slightly curved blade, rounded tip, and blunt edge.

> A cake-icing spatula of some kind?

Perhaps! The blade is not tall/wide like a spatula, and the handle is oriented like a knife would be, not a spatula, but... it could be!

> > Or a serrated knife with [a blade] that curves back on itself.

> If the end can also be used as a fork, then that's a cheese knife.

Maybe! I've seen a lot of cheese knives over the years but this one is unlike any I've ever seen.

My guess is that it's for hollowing something out. If so, it'd be for something that's hard to get into but isn't super tough. Like... maybe scraping all the seeds out of a squash or something.

The blade is straight for maybe 4-5" then does a ~80 degree bend to the right and then curves back around to make a full circle back to the blade, making a roughly 2" circle of metal. I'm writing this from memory, so could be off a bit.

... it's basically bent to be a question mark.

My first thought was gut hook knife, but if it's especially question mark shaped it could be a "rescue knife". They often have a backwards facing cutting edge for seatbelts and the like.

Example: https://eknives.com/microtech-combat-troodon-rescue-otf-tool...

Grapefruit knife?

Grapefruit knife is the only knife I've seen that arcs at all, but even that is just a minor 15 degree bend. This blade has a full circle!

I've found this is one case where LLMs are very helpful.

I tried the Wikipedia picture with ChatGPT. Surely, I thought, that would give it the best chance.

> I found this in the kitchen. Do you know what it’s for?

> This object is a ceramic spoon rest. It's used in the kitchen to hold spoons, spatulas, or other utensils that are being used while cooking, helping to keep the countertop clean and preventing the utensil from touching other surfaces. The design typically features a slightly curved shape to accommodate the handle of the utensil and prevent it from sliding off.

…well, at least it invented a use case that would actually work? That is in fact what I’d probably do with one. Though know that I know what they’re for, I kinda want to put one in milk.

I'm pretty sure the hammers are for breaking up large blocks of chocolate; I've got them with blocks from old-fashioned chocolatiers that don't score their blocks.

I know it as a "toffee hammer".

Yes, the hammer is the one I actually know what it's for (breaking up large sheets of toffee or chocolate bricks), because they labeled it!

My point was that it sure would be nice if the other weird things in my kitchen had had a label.

This community is a good resource for that: http://reddit.com/r/whatisthisthing/

Looks like a saucer or soy sauce dish could be used for this purpose. Those things don't have notches, but it doesn't matter; they will release the large bubble one way or another.

They're not heavy enough and won't sink to bottom as fast as other watchers do.

The trick is they don't lift up from the bottom of the container they're in, just tip up a little, release the bubble, but more importantly hit with relatively great speed to stir the liquid from the bottom.

> They're not heavy enough

Ceramics have a specific gravity of at least around 2.2 or so; they sink like rocks, since they literally are.

> they don't lift up from the bottom [...] just tip

I can easily see a saucer doing the same thing: accumulating enough steam for the buoyancy to tip it up to release a bubble.

I don't suspect your physical intutition here is so accurate that you can declare that it wouldn't work, without any empirical trials.

Milk watchers may be massive, but perhaps that may not be necessary to their function. It could just be marketing: differentiating them from other objects and justifying their purchase. Nobody would buy a milk watcher if it looked exactly like a saucer, of which they already have eight at home.

Not everything that has mass actually requires it for function, and it can even be counterproductive. Bicycles don't have to weigh 50 pounds, but cheap ones do, and they look rugged for it to the layman eye.

> Ceramics have a specific gravity of at least around 2.2 or so...

I think I failed to make my point clear. All milk watchers have a specific crevice volume / weight ratio, making them very hard to tip even under extreme conditions. So, the lifting force accumulating under a watcher is tightly controlled with the hole and the capacity of the crevice.

> I don't suspect your physical intutition[sic] here is so accurate that you can declare that it wouldn't work, without any empirical trials.

The problem saucers is their volume/weight ratio plus their asymmetric construction. Since they're not heavy enough, they won't be able to hit the bottom with the force required, hence fail to stir the liquid adequately.

Moreover, a milk watcher is symmetric. Even in an extreme case you can completely flip one, it'll continue to function. The moment the saucer flips, it's game over. Watchers have features to reduce their likelihood to fail.

Lastly, the internals of glass and ceramic watchers are slanted to further prevent lift-off, but to enable tip and hit back.

These features makes a watcher a deterministic device. Almost unflippable, with a tuned tendency to tip slightly and with a tuned weight to hit with enough force to stir the liquid. They are unhinged yet hinged wave machines.

The saucer is the complete opposite. A dome with a tendency to launch, with a low weight to crevice volume ratio, and no built-in mechanisms to prevent and recover from flips. A saucer has a tendency to launch up, a watcher has a tendency to "flip".

They are not marketing gimmicks. If they were they wouldn't be used in our home for 40 years, and I won't be continuing the tradition.

> Not everything that has mass actually requires it for function, and it can even be counterproductive.

Please, everything doesn't have to be light to function properly. Paperweights, door stops, wrecking balls, pool balls, throwing discs and throwing stones come into my mind. They won't work without their weight.

i recently discovered that if i heat up milk in a waterbath (a pot of milk inside a pot of water) it also prevents boiling over. most likely because it doesn't actually bring the milk to a boil, but keeps it a few degrees below the boiling point.

in most cases i just want to have hot milk, and i don't need the milk to have actually reached the boiling point.

are there any cases where that is not enough? (assuming already pasteurized store bought milk)

So a double boiler?

yes

Also known as a bain-marie.

Would that not increase the chances of things getting burnt at the base?

Not really, since milk contains water the max temperature you can reach is 100 degrees (given it has a path to atmospheric pressure). So the bottom can only burn if all the water boils off.

"contains water" is very obviously insufficient for this to be anywhere close to true.

Milk is mainly water as I'm sure you know. If you think it's useful to know what mixtures won't be held to 100 degrees, perhaps you could contribute some information to that effect - as opposed to just snark

you should really put your theory to test

A beautiful demonstration of the difference between theory and practice.

Sounds interesting! I wonder what happens, when milk gets burned!

- - -

I gave it some thought, and a possible explanation is that water evaporates from the bottom of the pot, it leaves some waterless milk there, and that burns.

But this assumes that the inside of the pot can be hotter than 100°C, I wonder if that's true, or milk keeps it ~100°C (water is very good at transferring heat after all).

Put some milk on high and see if your theory holds true.

Article says it does the opposite, as it effectively stirs the bottom

Neat, I'll have to pick one up now!

Does it work for pasta?

I was thinking about that, and I would guess no. The bubble pushing through the pasta would likely break into small bubbles again.

Placing a spoon across the top of the pot works alright. I just read something that said putting oil around the pot rim also helps.

You don't want to use this for pasta. The ideal cooking temperature is just above the boiling point. Boil-over is your cue that the water is too hot: uncover more of the pot and/or turn down the heat.

If you use this, then instead of a boil-over and a mess, you get a clang and no mess at the boiling point.

Gelification of the starches should happen at around 80C (although a bit slower); you can literally turn off the heating after it reached the boiling point, put the lid on the pot, and it will cook (but it should take ~1/2 minutes extra). In what sense is "just above the boiling point" the "ideal temperature"?

But in general... how can the water get "too hot" or "above the boiling point"? It will reach ~100 degrees, that's the boiling point (atmospheric pressure aside) and it will... just stop there? Technically salty water will have a slightly different boiling point, but it's not different enough to matter.

This is the "Italian canon" I've been taught: a gentle boil, stirring often. It ranges from no bubbles, to a few bubbles, to a lot. A few bubbles are ideal.

I'm not familiar with the chemistry, just with how the kosher al dente finished product is supposed to taste. I'm guessing the water temperature gradient goes from 100C at the bottom to something less at the top. If you prefer it cooked another way, then by all means.

I know the Italian canon, being Italian myself.

I was trying to point out that you can’t cook pasta above the boiling point. This thing should work fine in any case.

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