Bain Marie aka a hot water bath
A bain marie is a water bath used to gently cook custards or other items that need slow and continuous heat. Water bath are super useful for other applications, like tempering chocolate, gently infusing liquids or making your own candles.
While not for cooking per se, the chafing dish may be the most widely used bain marie today with it’s cerulean blue flames gently (or sometimes not) warming the food in every corner of america again and again. While we’re not fans of the chafing dish in most circumstances they do an acceptable job of hot holding sauces on a crowded brunch line or taco fillings on a beach.
Taken a step further, a bain marie can be incorporated into a wood fired grill to maximize the diversity of dishes prepared, warm soup or just make some beautiful steam for the gram. Works best on a snowy morning after literally burning the cabin down at the wedding reception the night before.
If wood-fire isn’t your style — and it definitely isn’t in the five boroughs of New York City — you’ll find another excellent use for those little sterno cans, with or without hot water. Utilizing what is known as a “hot box,” caterers all over the city improvised make shift ovens, broilers and ranges by lighting entire trays of strenos (8-20) on fire and closing them up inside of an aluminum box. The result is temperatures that can exceed 600 degrees farenheit and will gently finish par grilled proteins, reheat vegetables or act as a heated holding cabinet. Be careful, the exterior temperatures of the aluminum can easily burn the uninitiated. While there’s no prohibition on gas fired ranges or convection ovens in rural Vermont, it’s still nice to be able to watch the flickering blue flames die out as the sun sets on a cool fall evening.
Custards are an excellent, if not the first, use case for this cooking method. It’s French after all. Here’s one of our favorite custard recipes:
Basic Custard
Pre-heat an oven to 350 degrees and boil some water
Heat, by saucepan, microwave or otherwise, 2 1/2 cups of whole milk, add a vanilla bean, cardamon or anything else you want to season it with. Fresh herbs may be used, but should be removed before the final stage.
Whisk together 1/4 cup of sugar, 3 large egg yolks, and 2 large eggs. Duck, Goose or Chicken are all fine
Pour in infused milk, whisking until smooth.
Strain mixture into individual ramekins or a shallow pie dish
Place dish(es) in 9 x 13 baking dish or hotel pan and fill with boiled water. Be careful to only use heat proof glass. Avoid ceramic.
Bake for 35-60 minutes depending on whether you use individual ramekins or a larger dish.
Garnish.
Serve
Thanks Mark Bittman
Co. is for Colander…
And co-operative, collective, consortium and a lot of other words probably. Colanders, and their cousins the pasta-dunking-basket-things, let you take your (boiling) water bath to the next level to make delicious pasta. Instead of pouring the water out when you finish boiling the pasta, you’ll pull the pasta out of the water, leaving all that heat and starch behind. As they say, never throw out the baby with the bath water. In fact, don’t throw out the proverbial bath water at all!
As you may have heard, pasta water may be as precious as gold or an over-rated source of starch that flattens other flavors. Either way, you’ll have plenty of it using this method. If pasta ends up on your menu, we’ll need plenty of colanders and someone to run them.
Here’s the basic idea:
Boil a large pot, deep hotel pan or other container of water
Add salt until it’s nearly as salty as the ocean (for fresh pasta especially)
Add less salt if you plan to use the water or are cooking certain kinds of dry pasta
Cook some pasta, use the colander type basket to pull it out and taste it from time to time
Rinse (with a dash of pasta water) to keep from sticking, sauce and serve
Repeat (with the same water and more pasta)
On Steam
It’s not technically a water bath, but steam bathing, or the use of a sauna, is an age old tradition. There is not a member of our organization that hasn’t had a steam bath. Many of us swear by them and are stacking up our pennies for the day we can buy a mobile wood-fired sauna that boils pasta and makes coffee on the side. Kickstarter forthcoming. A different kind of generative intelligence.
There is a method to cook using a steam bath. Whether stacked atop a wok, in a pressure cooker at home or on an industrial scale, steam baths are highly efficient ways to transfer heat. This is how commercial canning operations operate using giant steam retorts that are loaded and unloaded with forklifts. Once sealed, high pressure steam is generated (stovetop) or injected (commercial retort) for a specified time calculated to heat all the units to a safe temperature.
If you opt for the high pressure route for your green beans, you’ll be more assured of their safety 6 months from now when you go to eat them. Just check the ball book or your local agricultural extension office to learn more. Always allow steam retorts and pressure cookers to depressurize completely before opening and follow the manufacturers instructions, including for any PPE required.
If you aren’t going for long term preservation, a steam bath will do wonders for dumplings, tamales and everything in between.
Here’s the concept, a la bigode (we have a first edition somewhere):
Select your filling(s). They should not be too runny in most cases and should have a flavorful punch
Select your wrappers. Banana leaves, corn husks, or wheat doughs are all great. There’s probably other options too
Fill your wrappers, but not too full. If using non-edible wrappers, a light brushing of oil may be needed
Seal and tie them somehow. Egg yolk and/or water work well with doughs. Thin strips of corn husk or twine work well with natural materials
Place in steam baskets
Set on top of wok, pot or other vessel with 2” or more of water in it
Put a penny in the pot
Listen for the penny to start dancing/singing
If it slows down or stops, immediately add more water
Follow a recipe or check a representative for doneness by unwrapping and testing
