Vacuum (thermal) cooker

Hi everyone,

I was reading Mugaritz: a natural science of cooking, when I stumble on the recipe for the Tomato Center. The recipe calls for a vacuum thermal cooker (that is defined as an electric burner that incorporate a vacuum pump to allow low temperature boiling). How can I obtained the same effect or where I can find this kind of appliance? (I looked online but I can find at most a pressure cooker (that works the opposite way) or a vacuum insulated pot.

Also what is the difference between normal distillation and vacuum distillation in terms of final results?

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brian_martin2001

It sounds almost like you're talking about a vacuum oven. Short of either purchasing one, or rigging a self contained heating bowl/vessel that you could put inside a vacuum canister, or have a large enough chamber vacuum sealer that you can put a hot plate in, you might be SOL. Good luck!

Afonso_Tito_de_Morais_164825

From what I understand vacuum distillation allows liquids to evaporate below their regular boiling point, meaning less "cooking" of what you're trying to distill. For example, citrus juices lose a lot of flavour and turn really bitter and burnt when cooked alone at high temperatures, so by pulling a vacuum to distill them, they boil at a much lower temperature, "cook" a lot less and the end results are much purer citrus flavours, rather than burnt. Are you sure that isn't a rotovap he's talking about?

tshewman

When attempting the tomato recipe I had to make some comprimises as well and used a vacuum chamber (I modified the recipe to use it in the gnochii recipe) and pressure cooker at 1 bar. It was delicious but I don't know how different it would be by using the equipment they refer to which can be found here http://solegraells.com/tienda/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=492&language=en

ChefSteps_customer_168060

Wow, thanks. I was really interested to know what the equipment looks like, definitely out of budget

ChefSteps_customer_168060

I think is the Gastrovac Todd linked. I will find a way, the only thing I'm not sure about is that the recipe is calling for a 15 minute cycle without specifying the temperature (that I assume is low) so I wanted to find the machine to find what temperature correspond to a 15 minute cycle setting

ChefSteps_customer_168060

Hi Alfonso. Yes he's also talking of a Rotovap (for the distillation of the resin), but that was definitely too expensive (at least the kind of Rotovap we use in our lab), but I found some (not much) cheaper hacks to deal with that. I was only curious to know what does it change if I use a normal steaming distillation and you answered that question, thank you

tshewman

The initial extraction of the mastic gum/resin they use a rotovap (on my wish list), but the main component for combining it with the tomato is the gatrovac which lowers the boiling point of water (the opposite of a pressure cooker), So a pc helps to cook foods at higher temps (which the gv does not do) and more efficiently.

lfmichaud

The problem with your hacks is that as soon as you get to the boiling point the pressure will quickly increase. You need to continuously pull vacuum to keep the temperature low. There's way to to that but none of them are especially easy.

http://modernistcuisine.com/2011/11/vacuum-concentrating-part-2/

I have half a project that still on my todo list ;-)

brian_martin2001

You can have a continuous vacuum pulled with the methods I described. I'm not saying it would be easy, but you can do it.