We do a "Bagel Special" in my shop. Since we make our own bagels in our bakery we get to start with a fresh bagel. We slice it, toast it and put either havarti, provolone, swiss or mozzarella on the halves. It gets set on the warm toaster while we crack two eggs into a steaming pitcher and add some fresh green chile from the Mesilla valley where we be. We steam the eggs and chile and then top the melted cheese with the fluffy, hot and not runny eggs. Some folks like a little salsa on top of that. I have an Astoria auxilliary steamer for this preparation of the eggs. Once in a blue moon the auxilliary steamer will burn out an element and we will have to use one of the steam wands on the LM2. I'm very careful about that sort of thing and the aux steamer gets repaired within an hour or so if it happens. And the steaming pitchers are segregated by type and size so they don't get mixed up.

Bernie

bernie wrote: I'm very careful about that sort of thing and the aux steamer gets repaired within an hour or so if it happens. And the steaming pitchers are segregated by type and size so they don't get mixed up.

I'm thinking about planning a trip west just so I can cross the desert to go visit Bernie's shop. Of all of the times that I crashed there and had my morning cuppa out of a steam toy, or my Silvia, in some University adjacent motel, I could a been sitting pretty with a cuppa made on the LM and a fresh egg bagel...
Ah, I guess my touring days are over...
Anyhoo, I'm having a bit of confusion about the dangers of eggs compared to the innocuousness of milk.
How is getting milk up in the wand not as bad as getting egg? How is getting egg in the boiler so much worse than milk? How is egg so much harder to clean off the wand than milk?
Does anyone else have special plates for omelettes that no other food gets to go on after they're used for egg products?
I use the same wand for egg and milk, the same pitcher, and the same silverware etc. I just wash them really well between uses. I also wash them really well between using milk and using milk again a second time, though.
Am I missing something?

Psyd wrote:Now, if someone has a great idea on how to cook potatoes with the steam wand... ; >

Best I can come up with is either sliced or diced, put them in water, and use the wand to boil the water. (This technique can also work for boiled eggs, of course, and possibly for poached, but poaching is going to be tricky - not breaking the egg apart with the wand is a challenge.)

I think you'd get better results frying them on the cup warming tray - who wants boiled potatoes for breakfast?

If a person was skeptical about cross contamination (?), one could wash the pitcher and other ware in the automatic dishwasher, rather than wash by hand. - Dennis

denniskeating wrote:If a person was skeptical about cross contamination (?), one could wash the pitcher and other ware in the automatic dishwasher, rather than wash by hand.

If one were to trust the automated machine to do a better job than I do by hand, one might.

I've taken too many dishes out of the dishwasher with bits of film or crud on them to trust those things implicitly. OTOH, I've only found a few like that after I've washed them by hand. I ain't perfect, but I can kick any automatic washer's, short of an autoclave, butt.
Just like I can kick any super-auto's butt.

Psyd wrote:I ain't perfect, but I can kick any automatic washer's, short of an autoclave, butt.
Just like I can kick any super-auto's butt.

Maybe I'm misremembering, but autoclaves don't wash - they just sterilize with high temperature and pressure. The dishes will still have stuff on them, but that stuff will not have anything living in it.

Psyd wrote:I'm thinking about planning a trip west just so I can cross the desert to go visit Bernie's shop. Of all of the times that I crashed there and had my morning cuppa out of a steam toy, or my Silvia, in some University adjacent motel, I could a been sitting pretty with a cuppa made on the LM and a fresh egg bagel...
Ah, I guess my touring days are over...
Anyhoo, I'm having a bit of confusion about the dangers of eggs compared to the innocuousness of milk.
How is getting milk up in the wand not as bad as getting egg? How is getting egg in the boiler so much worse than milk? How is egg so much harder to clean off the wand than milk?
Does anyone else have special plates for omelettes that no other food gets to go on after they're used for egg products?
I use the same wand for egg and milk, the same pitcher, and the same silverware etc. I just wash them really well between uses. I also wash them really well between using milk and using milk again a second time, though.
Am I missing something?

Just give me a heads up when you head this way. The thing I'm really careful about is that having a bit of egg in a cappuccino is all about esthetic. It would be hygenic after all the steam, but not appetizing.
Bernie

Espin wrote:Maybe I'm misremembering, but autoclaves don't wash - they just sterilize with high temperature and pressure. The dishes will still have stuff on them, but that stuff will not have anything living in it.

I used to manage a sterile processing department in a large hospital. Autoclaves sterilize with heat. Steam is used, but it's for the heat, not the pressure. We also used ethylene oxide and a device made by a subsidiary of J&J that used hydrogen peroxide in a vacuum chamber that was, I believe, -22 atmospheres. I could be wrong on the atmospheres, but it was huge. The chamber was pulled down and then heated up. Then a cassette was punctured inside the chamber and an electric field was created by a metal grid lining the chamber. At that vacuum the 4th state of matter, plasma, was created which had the properties to insinuate the hydrogen peroxide into any bioburden or cellular structure and denature or rupture the cell wall and kill the organism. It was an amazing little gizmo. We were a beta test site and so the device (size of a refrigerator) had a little peephole window so you could see the "northern lights" effect when the plasma was created. Here is a better explanation http://www.infectioncontroltoday.com/ar ... feat3.html You can imagine what a pain in the ass it is to have a boss who used to try and keep bugs like Jakob-Kreutsfeld out of people in a hospital and now runs a food service.
Bernie

Espin wrote:stuff will not have anything living in it.

That's what I was referring to. It was a bit of hyperbole, I apologise. Prolly shoulda hadda smiley on it.

Psyd wrote:That's what I was referring to. It was a bit of hyperbole, I apologise. Prolly shoulda hadda smiley on it.

No worries!

I trust your scrubbing, rinsing and inspection routine - even if it's not followed by an autoclave.

bernie wrote:You can imagine what a pain in the ass it is to have a boss who used to try and keep bugs like Jakob-Kreutsfeld out of people in a hospital and now runs a food service.

Yours too.


Tangential discussions rock.