From Twitter

[burnunit]

• 12:50 Trying to poach fish in buerre monte. Isn't this hard enough without a broken thermometer? #
• 21:04 As with joel/mike on MST3K, I have no opinion in the "changed host" debate over Blues Clues. #
• 21:08 All right, enough of this Noggin stuff, gimme my "Sociopaths: Miami" #

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Comments

Blues Clues

[pisces3857.livejournal.com]

Classic BC, with Steve and the original blue screen, is VASTLY superior over the crap they're passing off now.

Just sayin'. As ---> I <--- DO have an opinion....

Re: Blues Clues

[burnunit.livejournal.com]

You are not alone, which I have observed since this note. And see, this is what is so particularly baffling to me. Dudes, these opinions shock and awe me, mostly for their ardor.

At least he's still alive (http://www.snopes.com/radiotv/tv/bluesclues.asp).

[dangerdhotrod.livejournal.com]

i didn't know what 'buerre monte' meant and in the course of reading i found out it's spelled 'beurre monte'.
but i don't get what it is still really. all i keep finding is information that says stuff like 'higher temperature emulsion bla bla'...

[burnunit.livejournal.com]

I meant to reply to this. I think I can explain, but I fear I might repeat info you've already read. Here's the way I see it:

When you throw a stick of butter into the pan and heat it up, it melts. When it melts, it breaks into three substances (roughly speaking): water, milk solids/sugars like lactose, and oil (in this case, fat in liquid form).

If you keep heating, the water evaporates of course, and then you have oil and solids. The solids eventually brown (or even blacken) and impart various flavors into the fat. You can use that in recipes in lots of different ways. Heat it slowly enough to gently brown the solids and then strain the oil and you have clarified butter or in some special cases, ghee. Doing this gives the fat a very high smoking point, by the way.

But what if you could heat up the butter without having it separate? Instead of a deep yellow or rich amber color and the intense caramel flavor, what if you could keep it pale yellow and creamy, the way it is fresh out of the fridge or at room temperature... except HOT? Hot enough to cook with, that is. Well, you'd have a super creamy substance that you could simply lay food into and let slowly cook. So suppose you have good quality seafood, you can gently heat the seafood to cooked temperature in a deep bath of hot creamy fat (instead of water, or broth, or wine or other common poaching substances).

To get that, I did what they recommend: boiled water, took it off the stove, and whisked small chunks of butter into that very small quantity of boiling water one or two at a time. What I observed in trying it was that the hot water in the pan melts the butter but it keeps moving so the components don't separate (I dont' know? maybe starting with hot water means you have a little extra water to compensate for what evaporates out when the melting starts?).

So then I had this quantity of slowly melted butter that still looked like pale yellow, room temperature butter. And I could keep whisking more butter chunks into it. I could keep adding butter but it wouldn't break into those three parts (oil, water, milk solids). I occasionally turned the stove back on, very low, to keep it melting. Then I kept going until I'd melted about a pound of butter into this warm pale pool. I sunk fish fillets in there, and kept a close eye on the temperature (I used a double boiler for part of it). The fish poached between 140 and 170 degrees. If the beurre monte reached much more than 190, it would break and I'd just have melted butter like you see if you just stick it in the microwave or something. I tested this after cooking, by the way, it broke really fast when I turned the heat up just a little bit.

So what? Well, in this case, I agree with chef Thomas Keller, who describes lobster poached in beurre monte as "relaxing" into it. The fish cooked slowly but really nicely. When I pulled it out, a good portion of the beurre monte drips off, so it didn't taste all fatty or gross either. I wish I could have afforded lobster! I'm going to try shrimp or something.

From my perspective, and I'm an amateur obviously, it's just a hot-enough-to-keep-safe-but-not-too-hot environment to keep/cook food in, while adding depth of flavor.