The Spinzall is the latest product from Dave Arnold's company Booker and Dax, makers of the Searzall torch attachment. It is the first centrifuge designed for the home cook. Late last year Booker and Dax launched a crowdfunding campaign at Modernist Pantry to fund the tooling and initial production run and since I'm a bit of a gadget hound I jumped in. The delivery was made in the evening while I happened to be at the grocery store so I picked up some fresh basil and a neutral flavor vegetable oil so I would have something to play with. After unpacking the Spinzall I cleaned all the parts that would contact the food with hot, soapy water, rinsed well and allowed to dry while I finished reading through the instruction book. For the first trial run I cooked some whole garlic cloves in about a cup of the oil until they started turning brown, then turned off the heat and added another 3/4 cup of room temperature oil to stop the cooking. I cooled the oil further by placing the bottom of the saucepan in cold water, then put everything in a blender jar with about 1/2 cup of fresh basil leaves and blended on high for about a minute. After reassembling the Spinzall the basil/garlic/oil mixture was poured in the rotor, the lid and bowl locked in place and the timer set to 15 minutes.
In the video below I had left the cap off the feeder, so it's a little louder than normal. I also may not have one of the fins in properly.
I should have taken a photo of the basil oil before spinning to show all the particulate matter it contained, but here is the final product. Some of the bits came loose while I was removing the rotor from the bowl and the fins from the rotor, but they could have been easily filtered out if I had bothered. Definitely could have used more basil and there are probably some enzymes I could use that would break down the leaves more. I ordered the Spinzall Pre-Treatment Starter Kit from Modernistpantry.com this morning so hopefully I'll be able to make a better product in the near future. Videos of different things that can be made with the Spinzall are starting to pop up so I'll be able to explore more possibilities for this piece of equipment.
I've been listening to Dave Arnolds "Cooking Issues" for a few years now and had heard him talk about the torch attachment they had been developing on the show, so when he announced that they were launching a Kickstarter campaign to I jumped in. Today it arrived and I wanted to try it out!
The Searzall was packaged in a small box along with some hardware and literature.
Here is everything unpacked. Included in the box is the Searzall attachment, a spare set of screens, an allen key, limited warranty sheet, initial set-up instructions and a user guide. Also included is a small wooden stick, which confused me at first but made sense once I had read the instructions. There is also a torch head adapter which was already inserted in the Searzall.
Here is the Searzall attached to my torch. In anticipation of the arrival I had purchased the recommended torch head, a Benzomatic TS8000, a few months ago. Mounting the searzall was extremely simple, since the adapter was already installed (there is a thumbscrew to secure it in place) I just slipped the attachment on to the end of the torch. This is where the wooden stick comes in to play, you insert the stick between the tip of the torch head and the searzall to ensure proper spacing between the two, there should be a 1/8" gap. The Searzall is then secured by tightening a lock nut with the provided allen key and the stick removed (and stored in a safe location for future use!). The instructions at this point are to ignite the torch and position the Searzall with the screens pointing directly at the floor at a height of at least 4 feet for two minutes. The metal will glow red during this initial burn-in.
Here's a shot with the screen still red hot. It took about 7-8 minutes for the metal to cool to the pint it could be handled, but this thing gets HOT, so an abundance of caution is called for. I tried to get a temperature using an infrared thermometer but the temperature exceeded its range (550 C).
Finally I was ready to use the Searzall on some food. I've been trying to lose a little weight before the holidays so on the weekends I cook a lot of protein and sides, portion them to get the calories I want, vacuum seal the meal together and freeze. For tonight I pulled a sous vide pork chop with Brussels sprouts and new potatoes. The pouch was rethermed in a water bath heated by my Nomiku, removed and de-bagged. I patted as much moisture off the pork as possible and went to work with the Searzall, which gave me a really nice crust. I then went to town on the sides...
Getting a little char on the vegetables was a piece of cake! This weekend I plan on using the Searzall quite a bit while making meals for the next week, it will be a lot easier (and cleaner) than searing my proteins in a skillet like I have been doing. This is going to be an extremely useful tool!
