Based on Steve’s passion for cooking, innovation and creating the best flavor in his recipes, he realizes that no ingredient is to be overlooked, including water. In 2012, Steve teamed with Kinetico to prove the notion that purified water is core to creating great-tasting dishes in his restaurant and in the home. Read more about culinary expert Steve Schimoler.

View this video on Kinetico's YouTube channel

As a chef, I’ve been very fortunate to work in various capacities within the restaurant and food arenas. My experiences have helped provide me with a unique perspective in the appreciation of flavor and product development. There are so many variables that can impact flavors during cooking, but it wasn’t until I started working with our Kinetico water filtration system that I fully realized how important our water quality affected the flavor in my foods.

After 12 months of testing and working with the different blends and levels of filtration through our system in the Crop Bistro kitchen, I have come to the conclusion that our best results were with our Reverse Osmosis (R/O) water. It seems so simple, but by using the R/O water that is absolutely pure, I was not competing with any off flavors or aromas that were interfering with the flavor of the ingredients that were being featured in the dishes we prepare. Just like painting, you need to start with a totally blank and clean canvas when cooking. As a chef, I go out of my way to find and procure the best ingredients, why wouldn’t I want pure water! Water can be the majority of so many recipes and if it’s not pure, my other ingredients suffer.

The minute I started to look at water when I was reducing or simmering sauces or soups it became so apparent that when the water contained impurities, I was concentrating them by as much as double or more. Not a good thing…

So now I’m hooked and somewhat obsessed with learning more about our most basic yet valuable ingredient.

In future blog posts, I will share more culinary insights that you can use in your own kitchen, including exploring the many benefits of purified water.  Stay tuned.

Steve Schimoler
Executive Chef and Owner
Crop Bistro & Bar, Cleveland, Ohio

Steve Schimoler, owner of Crop Bistro & Bar in Cleveland, Ohio, is a culinary innovator with a focus on flavor. His popular restaurant has been named as one of America’s top restaurants according to Zagat and is a 2012 Wine Spectator Award of Excellence winner. Schimoler, 54, has also been featured on Food Nation with Bobby Flay and PBS’ Master Chef series.   

In addition to his visible role as an executive chef, Schimoler has an impressive business career in product innovation and development. His Rolling Fire Enterprises consulting firm serves a variety of leading consumer food, beverage and equipment companies. Much of this work is supported by a state-of-the-art research kitchen located in space below Crop Bistro.

Schimoler’s move to Cleveland in 2005 from Vermont came when he assumed the position of Director of Innovation and Development for Nestle North America. After serving in that role, he fell in love with Cleveland and decided to get back to running his own businesses.

A history of innovation

When he was just 23 years old, Schimoler launched his first Long Island restaurant. Within three years, he was running four businesses…a bakery and gourmet shop along with a café and his flagship restaurant, The Black Walnut. The Black Walnut received three stars from New York Newsday critics, and helped position him as an up-and-coming New York chef.

Other ventures have included the development of intensely flavored butter products for Cabot Creamery in Vermont and the launch of the firm Chef Stuff with several chef colleagues which created signature menu items produced in a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility. That venture was followed by the founding of the online firm Chefex.com which distributed artisan ingredients to chefs nationally—a business he eventually sold to SYSCO, the world’s largest food distributor. At that point, he assumed the position of General Manager of Culinary Business Development for SYSCO. 

Schimoler has also been a regular contributor to industry publications and has served as two terms as president of the Research Chefs Association.

Steve Schimoler and Kinetico Water

Based on Steve’s passion for cooking, innovation and creating the best flavor in his recipes, he realizes that no ingredient is to be overlooked, including water. In 2012, Steve teamed with Kinetico to prove the notion that purified water is core to creating great-tasting dishes in his restaurant and in the home. Steve is a guest blogger on The Kinetico Better Water Blog exploring purified water’s impact on cooking and restaurant operations.

L. Heiden has been in the water treatment business for more than 25 years. Currently, she is a National Account Executive for UL and is an active member of the Water Quality Association

Some terms in the water treatment industry can be confusing, point-of-entry (POE) and point-of-use (POU) are no exception. It is not a matter of one being better than the other, but which do you require for your needs.

POE is for the treatment of all of the water you use in your home. There are many different types of treatment that fall under the umbrella of POE. The one you need depends on the type of problem you are having with your water. The two most common issues are hard water, which causes scale build up on plumbing fixtures and in hot water tanks, and chlorine, which is associated with taste and odor.

If you have white scale on your plumbing fixtures or a film on your glass shower door that is difficult to remove, you may have hard water. Hard water is mostly made up of calcium and magnesium and these deposits are doing more harm than just making things hard to clean. They eventually build up in your hot water tank, which makes it very inefficient. According to American Water Heater Company (2006), use of a softener ahead of a hot water tank can give you up to 29% more efficiency.  Other benefits to softening the water in your home are ease of cleaning, reduced use of soaps, shampoos and detergents and softer skin and hair. Refer to the Kinetico website for more details on benefits of softened water.

When you are on a municipal water supply, chlorine is a common issue. Chlorine, or more recently chloramines, is added to your water as a disinfectant to ensure it is safe to drink.  These chemicals affect the taste and odor of the water coming into your home.  Most supplies aim for one part per million (ppm)as it distributes water to your home, the difficulty in this is that as chlorine does its job it gets used up and will also dissipate over time. This means that the levels a municipality may have to use may be higher than the one ppm to ensure that the very last house on the distribution line gets safe water. In turn the house closest to the supply may be seeing levels at times in excess of three ppm, which is about the level in a highly chlorinated pool . High levels of these chemicals may have health affects as well. A whole house carbon filter or chloramine filter will reduce these levels significantly protecting your family from high levels of chlorine or chloramine.

There are many other contaminants that may require POE water treatment solutions such as: iron, hydrogen sulfide and sediment. If you are unsure of the type of treatment you require, contact your local water treatment professional for advice. You can use the online local dealer search to find your local Kinetico water professional.

POU is another form of water treatment which is generally used after a POE system to further protect and treat the water at a particular output such as a drinking water tap. It may be a simple under the counter filter for taste and odor of the water or a more stringent treatment such as a reverse osmosis drinking water system.

While a POE system treats all the water in the house a POU system will be treating only a portion of the water in your house. These systems produce less water a day relatively. You would not typically use this type of water for bathing and cleaning. Most often a POE system will be used for your drinking water and cooking use.

A common POE treatment would be a carbon filter which simply makes the water smell and taste better. Many people prefer using Reverse Osmosis (RO) which can provide additional levels of safety in the water they drink. RO uses a barrier method which, in simplified terms, separates the good things in water from the bad things in water.  Typically an RO will have minimally five parts to it:

1. A pre-filter - carbon pre-filter for city water applications and sediment pre-filter for well water
2. A membrane which rejects the impurities in the water
3. A tank to store the processed water
4. A post-filter which removes any taste and odor from the stored water
5. A faucet to get the water out of the tank and into your glass or pot

In the end, the answer to which is the right water treatment, POU or POE is basically like asking what is better a fancy sports car or a minivan. The answer is part personal preference and part necessity. The sports car would be nice to have. Although it isn’t essential for everyone, it sure is fun and would greatly enhance your life. However for most people, the minivan is a requirement. It isn’t very exciting but provides you peace of mind. It’s a safe, reliable means to get where you need to go.

Contact L Heiden

Fasten Your Seat Belt...

How many functions do we perform each day in our lives, primarily based on a “just in case” philosophy. Our automobile seat belt is probably one of the most prevalent, and it is now required by law in most places.  Other functions that could be broadly lumped into this category might be: using hand sanitizers, carrying an umbrella, taking vitamins, changing the password frequently on our computer, locking our doors, etc. Maybe it’s “better safe than sorry”, rather than “just in case”, but whatever the term, it is a widely accepted force in our society today.

I recently read in Bloomberg Businessweek, and  in my local newspaper, that a top official of the CDC’s* National Center for Environmental Health, and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry is now getting involved in investigating the possible contaminants associated with fracking. Fracking is a process used in the extraction of natural gas and oil from shale. At this time, there is no proof that the chemicals used in or produced by that process might affect our health but they believe it needs to be studied. At the same time, the **EPA is looking at the subject to see if those chemicals affect our environment in any way including ending up in our drinking water.  So “just in case”, do we need to stop all fracking until more is known?  This is under serious debate in many states right now.

We already know that our water supplies contain trace quantities of Pharmaceuticals and Personal Care Products (PPCPs). Individuals add PPCPs to the environment through excretion and bathing, and through the disposal of unwanted medications to sewers and trash. According to the EPA, (http://www.epa.gov/ppcp/) PPCPs have probably been present in water and in the environment for as long as humans have been using them. Although we can now measure PPCP levels at low concentrations there are more people ingesting or applying products to alter their moods, change their looks, or somehow “fix” themselves than ever before. Just as an example, the Wall Street Journal in August 2011 reported that in 2010 there were 253 million prescriptions written for antidepressants! That in itself is depressing.

If you drink water that is coming from a surface water source, you don’t have to wait for an error in gas well fracking to possibly send mystery chemicals into your drinking water. Thanks to PPCPs, you probably already have a mixed cocktail of them (albeit in very low concentrations) heading into your home and making their way into your Kool-Aid or coffee. Yet, in my recently supplied 2011 Water Quality Report from the Cleveland Division of Water, PPCPs are not even mentioned, though the report is well organized and well written.  The report does briefly explain that “Reverse osmosis filters…..remove things like fluoride and many minerals found in hard water.  Replacement filters can be expensive and several gallons of water are wasted for every gallon filtered.” 

I, for one, believe that it makes sense to process my drinking and cooking water through a reverse osmosis membrane to significantly reduce PPCPs and many other possible contaminants and have been doing so for the last 25 years - that’s longer than I have been consistently clicking my seat belt… just in case.

* Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
**U.S. Environmental Protection Agency 

Contact Keith B.