Oh you done me on this corner. And I don't know where I'm at. Supposed to meet my baby. 20 minutes late. You got my head all twisted.
You're listening to Heritage Radio Network. This is Dave Arnold with Cooking Issues, a show where you call in and talk to us about your cooking issues. Uh every Tuesday from uh 12 to 1245. Uh today's show is brought to you by the Barter House. The Barter House is a proud supporter of Heritage Radio Network.
The Barter House works with family vineyards and small bottlers from around the world to bring only the finest and most flavorful wines to the market. To learn more about Barter Hearts uh Butterhouse, please visit them at WW The Barter House.com or call them at 917-463-3076. I've actually never had the Barter House. Uh we're here with uh Nastasha Lopez from CookingIssues.com and uh AJ E to one of our uh one of the people who was our interns, he's now graduated. Um so you guys ever had this wine before?
No. No? No. No. Alright.
So uh we're just gonna open it on air and and try it. Uh while I'm doing that, I was like, there you go. Uh we're gonna drink this. It's kinda warm. It's a white wine here, it's a Chardonnay uh from New Zealand.
And uh we're gonna it's kinda warm. We're gonna drink it Cesare Chef Chesare Casella style, which means with ice. So I'm gonna pour this out here. And uh while we're trying this wine to tell you how uh delicious it is, um I'm gonna tell you the call-in number to call in and ask us any kind of question you want. 718 497-2128.
And so if you have any cooking issues, uh please call and we'll try to uh fix them or at least talk about them. Now uh just to give you a little background what uh we do is uh we're at the French Culinary Institute which is a cooking school in uh downtown New York and I run the technology department which means uh any kind of new technique or ingredient uh we deal typically with with chefs but basically anything kind of new or off the wall or kind of weird or any sort of strange problems uh we deal with those and we we solve them for uh various chefs we work with a lot of great chefs around the city uh so you know if you have any questions about sous vide cooking or low temperature cooking which is a you know kind of a new style of cooking that's making a lot of waves in restaurants right now or any kind of new new age thickener new ingredient or if you want to rant because you hate these things and want to engage me in an argument on the air we appreciate that I love rants. I love uh I I especially love ignorant people who don't know what they're talking about calling and saying things about how I use a bunch of chemicals. So if you want to do that I encourage you to call up and uh and we'll have this discussion on air uh and with a with a lot less profanity than you would if you came to my lab and had this conversation. Uh but anyway so let's uh let's first things first let's try out this uh this uh delicious uh this delicious wine uh we're we're drinking uh Kerner Estate uh 2008 uh Chardonnay uh from New Zealand.
Hold on what do you think guys? Hmm yeah yeah it feels old school like a working lunch having wine at lunch. People don't do that anymore. You know when you visit Europe they still have wine at lunch and then we like Americans drink wine like we do at dinner when we're at the lunch and then we're we're blasted for the rest of the afternoon. Unless actually what happens is in Europe, nothing gets done after lunch, which is I think actually the more accurate thing.
I think nothing in Europe happens after lunch. But uh but it's kind of pleasant, right? We're sitting here in in Brooklyn in the studio. And uh anyways. So while we're waiting for someone to actually pick up the phone and call.
Um, and if you call and it gets really uh it gets problematic, like you know, there's yelling and stuff. Nastasha is the hammer, just as she is on on our website, www.cookingissues.com, where when things get out of hand, Nastasha, who brings her her uh her fantastic mix of Russian and and Spanish, brings the hammer down on people. Uh she loves doing that, so please call and get out of hand. We really appreciate it. Nastasha hasn't been able to uh to crush someone recently, so she she's she's looking forward to it.
Um so anyway, so what do you what do you think? What do you what do you guys uh want to want to talk about uh before we before we get any callers here? You want to maybe you should talk about your rotive app, your new rota vap. Yeah, I saw the post go up last night. Oh, yeah, okay.
So here's the deal. For for those of you who don't know what a rotor vap is, which is I'm guessing 99.99% of you. What it is is it's a piece of distillation equipment um which allows us to do distillations to make booze basically illegally because you can't distill here in in the US um you know without a distiller's license, it's huge pain in the butt. But it allows us to do distillations at a very low temperature. And what's what's great about that is it is the flavors are the purest cleanest flavors that you could possibly imagine.
Am I right? You you guys drink it, drink it all the time. I mean, it's not it's not something that we we can get flavors. I mean, commercial beverages are delicious, but it's just we get different kinds of flavors in the roto vap, and they're kind of hard to commercialize because a lot of times they don't last very long or they're difficult to produce, or or they they would be expensive. Anyway, we've been using uh th this equipment, uh of course, like anything else, is exp is super expensive.
It's many, many thousands of dollars. And uh, you know, I'd used uh um kind of a beat up old version that was older than most of my students. In fact, uh we got off eBay for you know, I got a few bay, I should say, for for almost nothing and and kind of crabbed it together and got it to work really well. Well, the corporation that makes them Bukey, the first name in rotary evaporation. Bukey no, Bukey came to visit us and um they they make the kind of the butt kicking ones and they uh because we were gonna go on this show, the Jimmy Fallon show, and and I told them I didn't wanna I didn't want to have one of their crappy ones from the you know early eighties being the one that everyone saw and so they brought a uh a really nice new rotary evaporator and they they let us keep it, which is fantastic.
And so the guy sitting next to me, AJ, who spent many, many hours flying our old, you know, kind of beat up roto vap is quite jealous because he's no longer working with us at the school and now it's so much easier to do all of our work, right? That's true. Yeah, yeah. What are the advantages of of verto vaping? Well, all right, well, the the disadvantages are it's illegal, right?
So th the you know the the reason why you don't see it uh uh uh in a lot of restaurants here is because the chefs are are confined to using it making uh non-alcoholic drinks. If they make an alcoholic drink and try and serve it in their restaurant or their bar, they're endangering their liquor license. So the consequently they don't do it. And the the stuff that's done with water just isn't as exciting enough, especially if you've ever done liquor. It's just not exciting enough to warrant, you know, an eighteen thousand dollar or you know, depends on could be you could get one for five grand, but to all that money, space and training just to do to water-based things, so that's why you don't see it a lot here in the States, although uh there are a couple restaurants in Chicago that use them.
Um but it allows you to separate flavors in a way that you know you've never done before. So we do, you know, uh as you guys both know, because I've forced you to do it many times, we'll we'll do a chocolate liquor that has uh you know just cocoa, you know, the flavor of chocolate with none of the bitterness because the bitterness doesn't distill just a Roman flavor does. So you have this like chocolate chocolate uh booze with no sugar in it that's you know delicious, and or we'll do uh, you know, very spicy peppers, habanero peppers that that have no spice in them. They're just you know the fl floral, amazing floral aroma. Uh you know, this kind of stuff.
Or f fresh herbs are kind of my favorite because they're just impossible to re- redo any other way. So, you know, something like uh, although uh Nastasha doesn't like it, you know, cilantro. You know for the by the way, Nastasha who's here, she I assume she's gonna chime in at some point with some of her likes and dislikes, which are the most preposterous dislikes in the she it turns out this lady who's in the food business now works with me who likes who likes everything. I basically like everything in the world with the exception of Nato, which is you know disgusting. The Japanese fermented soybean product natto, which is yeah, I I don't think even in Japan they like it.
I think they just pretend that they like it because it's supposed to be good for it. But Nastasha hates every damn thing that you're like, oh, I like I like delicious things. She's like, No, I I don't like that. I hate that. Whatever it is, if it's delicious, I hate it.
So speaking of uh Oh, Nastasha pounded that wine. Jeez. We're talking for like 10 minutes. You did not get a half pour. Come on now.
She yeah, she she obliterated that wine. Just you know, mutilate it. Anyway. So it's good though. Yeah.
Well, apparently you think it's good. You drank the whole damn glass. Uh here. Here, uh AJ, pour some pour some more. Yeah.
Anyway. Um so the uh so while I'm waiting for someone to call in, uh, I will I will that now talk about, because we you know nothing better to do, I'll talk about some of my my pet peeves. So uh related to cooking by my pet peeves. So like one thing I uh I hate, and uh if you know I've been on this network a couple of times on other shows, and I always get to say how much I hate the word molecular gastronomy. Well, here's my opportunity to say it right now, and and how however long and however angry I want to say, do not use the term molecular gastronomy.
You know, if any of you out there have have heard the term before molecular gastronomy, you do the best to erase this term from from your memory. It's it's awful term. I'll give you some reasons why. Uh one, it's meaningless, it has no meaning. Uh it what does it mean, molecular gastronomy?
What the hell f first of all, gastronomy is the worst word. It sounds good in French, you know, gastronomy, but sounds like g gas and trotronomy, gastronomy sounds like gastropod, sounds like you have gas, sounds like you're gonna get gas if you eat it, gas molecular sounds disgusting, doesn't sound delicious. So I don't you know I don't really see the point in tagging something you're gonna eat with a term that sounds inherently inherently disgusting. And remember, this term is pioneered by the by this guy in France named Hervé Tis. Ervétisse, who uh as I said, you know, I was on the you know a show here last week, I said, you know, I won't say anything negative about him except for he's a uh uh a charlatan and and what you know and a farce.
And so like the the thing is is that he thinks molecular gastronomy sounds good because he doesn't really speak English that well, right? He he thinks in English the word food sounds gross, right? Right. No, no seriously, he's like food sounds disgusting, food. Maybe for a Frenchie, but you know, I like food.
Do you like food? Yes. Food is delicious. Yeah. Anyway, so uh so it's it's a term that has no meaning, it sounds disgusting.
Uh it's basically a marketing term for this guy in France, Air Vatice. None of the chefs who are being described as doing molecular gastronomy want to be described as doing molecular gastronomy. And it puts you in a pigeonhole that I think is is wrong. First of all, either all of us are manipulating molecules, in which case a guy cooking over a campfire is doing molecular gastronomy, or none of us are manipulating uh, you know, molecules. I don't know anyone with a like a scanning tunneling microscope who's sitting there like adjusting individual molecules in the pie that they're making.
I know at least one. So but you but you you know you get my point. It's kind of it's it's it's pointless. And um it's also I think what most people don't realize is that these new technologies are being used in restaurants all the time. It's just they don't know it because you know they're not doing the kind of food that is labeled as molecular gastronomy.
So, you know, uh people assume that if you're using new technologies for cooking that you're actually you know making crazy food, making things that are wacky, making, you know, th and we do do that too, just because you know, we yeah, I mean we do, but you know, a lot of the best applications of these things, you would never know that uh that a technology was used uh to do it. So we serve you a delicious uh drink that's you know uh strawberry flavored and it's crystal clear and it's got you know amazing effervescence and the liquor tastes you know super fresh, unlike anything you've ever had before, and you're not thinking, hey, hey, this you know, these people used, you know, $30,000 worth of equipment and spent like five hours and did like all these new techniques. You're like this is a delicious drink. And I think those are the applications that are uh that are best, right? I mean, you don't necessarily want to know.
So I I tend not to do things like spray foams all all all into everything, which I think everyone's like, oh, you do foams, yeah, no, no, foams, foam. But and you know, I think that's kind of the you know, it being able to make a good foam is uh kind of you know it's an important you know skill to have but it's not uh you know I very rarely do it you know only when it's kind of when it's called for uh and you know foams are nothing nothing new either right I mean foams uh take for instance uh the head on a beer that's a pretty old foam. I think what people are doing is just trying to take the weirdest thing that they can find and turn it into a foam and then gastronomy. Yeah right gastronomy yeah no but uh I think that's right. I think and then and that's the other problem is some people who actually kind of like the term I mean the the the danger of this with with as with any technique is that someone will take the techniques and just do something just to do it and the stuff doesn't taste very good but then everyone who uses the techniques get paint gets painted with those with that brush.
And I think that you know that's the main problem. So you don't want to they need the marriage of technique and flavor. Yeah I mean look you know it's it's like saying uh you're only supposed to use these techniques to try and make flavors better or to try and achieve some sort of effect that you like. If you're you know if you're if you're using it just to use it then that's that's not a good that's not a good application. It's like if I handed someone a frying pan, you know they could make really crappy food with that frying pan.
You know if I hand someone a centrifuge they can make really crappy food with that centrifuge. Centrifuge is something that separates things based on their density. And only use them when they actually make the food better, not when they're just a silly gimmick. Although again, occasionally we will fall into the silly game. Just because, you know, it's my job.
But we try not to. Um, so pretty soon we're gonna be going out uh on our first break. So uh in advance of that, let's have a cheers to uh the barter house, uh a proud supporter of Heritage Radio Network. Don't forget to call in with your questions at 718-497-2128 uh to ask us anything you want about new cooking techniques, old cooking techniques, uh anything you want. Uh you were listening to cooking issues on the Heritage Radio Network.
Yeah, yeah. When the body gets up from every time and you need some love from fascination when the body won't do what you want to do. And you don't do it on the know what you threw. What's that? What's that?
You need some love when you test an easy What's that? What's that? Payback! Gotta go to Chato Gotta go to Chau Gotta go to Chico Gotta go to tension. And you've got a heat.
Take off that pressure. Check off that break that eat. Take off that bread that the man. Welcome back. You're listening to Cooking Issues on the Heritage Radio Network.
To call in and ask us a question, call in at 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. So before we left, we were talking about the fact that new techniques and technologies in the kitchen are used for a uh variety of reasons, and some of the best applications of them are actually ones where you wouldn't necessarily know anything is going on. I think one of the you know best things, uh best, you know, uh examples of that is is French fries. We did uh a many, many tests.
How many did we do? A lot. About twenty. That was twenty on that one day. Yeah.
We've done on that second day. We've done like probably 60, 60 in change, which is not a lot for you know for a commercial, you know, place like McDonald's who does, you know, thousands of tests, but you know, 60, 70 tests, making my interns do French fries over and over again again is kind of a pain in the butt. But what it's about is it shows a mindset. The problem is French fries are problematic, right? Here's why.
You want French fries to be uh one, you want the outside to be crispy and crunchy, right? Uh you also want it to be not you it doesn't matter how much oil is actually in it, you just don't want it to taste greasy, right? So you want something that's crunchy, not greasy. You want the potato to actually taste like a potato, potato flavor, and have an actual potato texture that's nice on the inside. Not uh, not uh you know, not overcooked, not undercooked, not hollow.
You want also the French fry to stay good when it's cold. I've repeatedly said a monkey can make a French fry that's good when it's hot. Same thing as a donut. A donut is a difficult problem. Any idiot can make a donut that's hot that tastes good because it's delicious when it's hot.
The challenge is to make a fried food, donuts or french fries, whatever, that is good when it is cold. It's especially true with donuts because they're supposed to keep. But French fries, our task was I want the texture on the outside and the texture on the inside to be good right out of the fryer and to stay delicious even when that that thing is cold. And so uh, you know, m many of you out there who make French fries are familiar with the uh with the double frying technique, which is uh, you know, it's attributed to the uh to the Belgians, right? It's a double double fry technique where you fry once to to form the crust and to cook it, and then you fry it a second time to to make it crispy again.
Uh this is kind of you know, that's like kindergarten French fry, as far as we're concerned. Like, you know, that's like that's like you know, not necessarily the you know the best way to do it. The best way to do it is to do an initial blanching step where you you kill the enzymes and cook the potatoes in a blanching step in water, salted water, which also flavors the potato, right? And then typically the old ways we would then dehydrate them a little bit, which is allows for the crust to get uh more uh it gets rid of some of the water, which means that it stays crunchier longer, then fry it once and then fry it twice again. So it's you know a several step process.
But these make delicious fries. But the problem is with the drying step and with the blanching, a lot of times we would get hollow fries, or they wouldn't be consistent. So we we tried to figure out the absolute best best best way to do it. And uh, you know, do how long do you blanch it? You know, Heston Blumenthal, the famous chef in England says you should blanch for a long time till they till they break apart.
So we ran all these tests. And if you go to cookingIssues.com, you can see what we ended up with. We ended up soaking the fries in an enzyme, a natural enzyme, not some sort of GMO nonsense, but uh an enzyme called uh pectinex SPL that you can also get from cookingissues.com. And what it does is it breaks down the pectin on the outside of the French fries and allows for the starch on the outside of the fry to swell very quickly and form a really nice crust. Uh it also means you don't really have to dry the fries after you blanch it.
So you you soak it in this enzyme for a couple hours, blanch it in boiling salted water to make it taste delicious and get cooked, and three times uh two times fry after that. And you you have arguably the most delicious French fries uh that uh uh I've ever had. Uh what do you guys think about those fries? Uh they're delicious. I don't even like fries.
Yeah. Okay, uh so it looks like we have a caller, right? We have a call? All right. Hello?
Hi, how are you? All right. I'm good. Um I was wondering what the benefits are of uh chilling a drink over dry ice. Uh, okay.
So this is an excellent question. Who am I speaking to? Uh this is Carolyn. I'm from Massachusetts. Massachusetts, all right.
Well, first of all, uh, here's the things about about dry ice. Dry ice, uh, for those of you not in the know is solid carbon dioxide, right? It's a lot easier to obtain, a lot easier to store than liquid nitrogen, which is actually our preferred chilling uh method for for drinks and for many things. But hard to carry over a bridge. Very hard to carry over a bridge.
I've done it. Uh so the uh dry ice you can get usually from an ice supply house or sometimes from welding supply shops. And uh when you chill a drink with dry ice, right, there's a couple problems. You don't want to serve someone little chips of dry ice because that's bad. Uh it's cold, it can burn your tongue.
Uh it's it's you know it's not very good. So one of the one of the pitfalls is that you you don't want little pieces of dry ice. Now, a friend of mine, uh Tony Cigliaro in at Bar 69 Colbrook Row was making daiquaries where he dr put chunks of dry ice in a blender with a daiquiri mix and blended them. And they I have to say he got them to come out quite well, although the technique makes me a little bit nervous. The the other thing about it though is if you let it chill long enough, the drink is going to become slightly carbonated.
So I wouldn't chill a drink with dry ice that uh you didn't want to have a little bit of bubbles in it because it's gonna get a little bit of bubbles in it when it when you have dry ice. But here's a really good technique for dry ice. Oh, uh and one of the prime advantages, obviously, is you make the drink, you get the dilution exactly the way you want it with water for a pre-batch drink at a party, let's say, right? And then now the dilution is perfect. Now your only job is to get it cold.
Now you can do that in the freezer by putting it in the freezer, but if you put it in the freezer, then it's hard to have it out and it's gonna turn to crap while it's sitting on your counter because your guests are morons and they don't drink fast enough, right? Right? And so it's sitting there on the counter getting warm, and you're sitting there and you're you're you're you're you're pinching yourself and you know, kicking yourself and all this because you know the drink's getting too damn warm and there's not anything you can do about it, right? And that's kind of a torture, right? Am I right?
Right. Like the party I went to last week. Yeah. Oh awful, yeah, right. And the drink is sitting there dying, dying on the counter because it's getting warm, and there's not a damn thing you can do about it unless you have dry ice.
Now, you throw a chunk or two of dry ice in there. Don't go overboard, you don't want to freeze the drink, right? And and then it's just gonna sit at the bottom of a pitcher. Don't use something too wide, like you know when you were kids, you got the sherbet and the dry ice, right? That's a little bit too wide.
Uh, you want to get kind of a narrow picture, just throw like you know, a couple rocks of dry ice in there, it lasts a long time. Dry ice is actually uh uh has a lot more cooling capacity than uh ice does, whereas liquid nitrogen actually doesn't. It's a lot colder, but liquid nitrogen's cooling capacity is somewhat similar to ice. Dry ice can chill for a long time. Throw a couple rocks of that in there, give it a stir.
After about 10 minutes, 15 minutes, that drink is gonna be lightly carbonated and it's gonna stay cold the whole damn night. And then if you have a problem, like you're running out of dry ice, just crack off another little piece of dry ice and throw it in. Plus, it's you know it's got the good show with the mist, people like the show. And it's easily accessible. Yeah, it's easily accessible.
It's really good technique, especially in summertime. You could have an ice cold, delicious drink. Even very traditional drinks, right? Like gin and tonics, uh for anyone who knows me knows that I I have a lot of gripes with gin tonics, right? Uh because uh they're usually either they're undercarbonated or they're uh they're not boozy enough.
And then and it's supposed to be a summertime drink. They always turn to crap. Always turn to crap, right? Yeah, you have to drink them very quickly. Yeah, so even if you want to go completely traditional, you don't want to do anything, go buy your bottle of tonic water, buy your gin, uh get some lime, mix it up in a pitcher, right?
A pitcher of gin and tonics. Put it, go out in your picnic bench or whatever, right? You know, throw a couple rocks of dry ice in there, that thing will stay carbonated and cold, and everyone can get shellacked on delicious summertime gin and tonics without having to worry about you know that last flat, nasty, warm sip of crap that they they they think they like it because the tastes are delicious, but they're just always executed poorly. Does that make sense? Oh, that's wonderful.
Yeah, what's your favorite kind of gin? Oh, now that's a question. It's like asking me to choose which one of my children I love best. I'm kidding. Uh uh different gins are are are good for for for different purposes, and they're you know, my kind of uh, you know, uh I I like Hendrix for some applications.
Um, you know, it's kind it kind of you know, it's it's pricey. I think uh that's my favorite. Yeah, uh I you know, uh a lot of times for mixing, my hand instinctively reaches for tank array. And I don't know whether that's because uh I don't know, it's because I don't know, just because it's uh it's nice high proof, it's easy to mix with. I but I know bartenders that are partial to you know any and any and every kind of kind of gin.
My dad you was an old old school Bombay. He wasn't a sapphire guy, he was a uh you know, white label Bombay guy, and he that's actually where I got my love of tonic water and highly carbonated beverages was from sitting next to my dad. Well he he yeah, he would make a gin and tonic and I would have a just a lyman tonic, so you know, start me early. You gotta start your kids early. Give them tonic water early, get them started out.
Oxley is also good. Uh yeah. What is it? Uh it is just messing with me. I have nothing I'm I I like Oxley.
I like Oxley. Oxley's fine. Yeah. It's it's it's different. It's a different I don't think it's a traditional gin taste, but uh um a lot of people I know like beef eater.
I mean, like it's but there's a lot of a lot of it's personal preference. I recommend going and tasting a lot of gins. If you if you have friends that don't like gin, then a good a good gateway gin is Plymouth because it's light on a lot of uh a a lot a lot of the botanical flavors, especially the juniper that people find objectionable in gin. And so you can you can kind of start them out with that. So that's why we call it the you know it's uh you know the gateway gin.
Uh and it's it's available. Great. Well, thank you so much. No problem. No problem.
Thanks for calling. Uh our first official call. That's awesome. Yeah. And I think we were able to help.
See? Anyone out there who's listening, just know. Wait, but how much is is dry ice? Uh it depends. Uh I think that here in New York it's a it's a little more expensive.
You actually had to buy it last time. How much was it? It was like I didn't buy it. They ordered it. Yeah, it's on the order of a couple dollars a pound, and you have to buy, I think, like uh twenty twenty pounds or something like that.
So you're looking at like a forty dollar or something investment. But it's a small price to pay for a delicious beverage. Yeah, it comes wrapped in you know, at a party. I wouldn't say to keep it around all the time, but because you can you know, you can't store it in your fridge. It's sublim I mean if uh you can, it's sublimates, and so you lose it over time.
There's no way to store it for long periods of time at your house. But you you show up with just like uh you know, like a a disposable styrofoam cooler or cooler, you put it in it'll last for for hours and hours and hours in fact it'll last for you know a day or more depending on how well you store it. And um you know it's it's it's pretty easy and I think especially applicable to you know summertime parties. What about the handling of dry ice? Well okay so dry ice um first thing you should not do uh is the first thing that many many people do which is take a chunk of dry ice put it in water seal it in a soda bottle and throw it and watch it explode.
This is not considered safe practice. Uh in fact uh the problem is when with CO2 you know dry ice it will it will uh if if sealed it'll do one of two things it will turn to a gas and it will slowly uh increase in pressure up to about eight hundred psi or more or explode whichever comes first usually explosion comes first so uh it's not a good idea to seal large quantities although uh no never mind it's not a good I it's not a good idea to to do that. Uh another thing is it's very easy to get uh burns uh cold burns from handling it for too long. Uh so you know while it's fun to sit there and play hot potato with dry ice uh you know I would uh I would use gloves when I handle it it's uh a lot safer that way than liquid nitrogen is in terms of uh you know liquid nitrogen there's always a danger that it's going to get underneath a glove and really damage you whereas dry ice is not not such a problem. I also if you're gonna chip it I would wear glasses safety glasses because you don't want little pieces of dry ice it's very hard and uh you don't want little pieces flying off and hitting you in the eye.
At least I don't want that. Yeah it's awkward. Yeah yeah it is awkward. I'm blind and frozen. Yeah uh yeah, it's not not such a good idea.
And you know, uh it would be a bad idea to move into a living room and chill it with dry ice because your house will fill with CO2. Um okay so uh we're coming up on our second commercial break. If you want to call in with problems, dry ice related or not, technical or not. For instance, let's say you want to talk about fish sauce. I love talking about fish sauce.
Uh our number here at Cooking Issues uh Heritage Radio is 718 497 2128. That's 718-497-2128. And you are listening to the Heritage Radio Network Cooking Issues. You feel good? Thanks so much, Bone Brother.
How you feel, mate? I feel all right. How you feel, fella? Hey Jure getting down. Look in Ha.
We're gonna have a bunk good time. We're gonna have a bunk good time. We're gonna have a bump good time. We're gonna have a bump good time. We gotta take your high.
I'm gonna get that belly with a little horn over there. Brad, get it, take us out. You were listening to Cooking Issues on the Heritage Radio Network. Uh this is Dave Arnold and uh we are taking calls and fixing people's cooking issues. So uh who who do we have who do we have coming up here?
We have a call coming in. We have a call. Yeah. Hello? Dave.
Yeah? Thank you. Uh I really am excited to uh have you uh uh you know, at least live via this method. Well hopefully we can help we can help out. Who am I speaking with?
Uh John. Hey John, how you doing? So what do you want to talk about? Well, uh the the the two best things I bought for uh my kitchen this year, one was a cook tech. Uh uh uh uh I bought a cook technique.
Conduction unit yet? The induction unit. It's just terrific. Right. But the other thing I bought was a uh mini pack Torrey.
Oh, which one? The MVS 31. Okay. Uh let me just tell our users for for a quick second. So we're talking about an induction uh induction unit, which is basically it uh it's the most kind of uh it's the most efficient way really to cook.
It uses electricity, uh, but it instead of having a uh conduct conductively heat like make a lot of heat in your kitchen, it literally heats the pan by by using an oscillating uh oscillating magnetic electric magnetic field. And uh it's a fantastic way to cook. It's not as popular here as it is in Europe because our electricity is more expensive than our gas and because our chefs aren't used to it. The other the other piece of equipment we're talking about is a vacuum packing machine made by Mini Pack, and this particular one he's discussing, the M the M V S thirty one, is a really great size for uh the house. Uh and it it lets you do a lot of really fun things.
It's a really professional piece of equipment. Sorry, go ahead. And uh one of the great things about it, I mean, aside from trying to do sous vide or something like that, is the fact that uh, you know, just leftovers. Oh yeah. You c you And you know, like if you go to a a place like Costco that's selling huge packs of meat, you can repackage meat into uh uh usable sizes.
Uh but it that comes down I know on the uh on your uh your website you're gonna start uh doing a uh section on on vacuum sealing and vacuum packing. Yeah, we haven't done it yet just because I've been I've been busy, but it is the next in in this in the low temp sous vide list the vacuum packing is the next next one, yeah. Right. And I guess my question to you is how much uh how much are you extra how much air do you extract when you do it? You can go up to like I I guess like ninety-eight percent or something like that.
And I always try and get as much air and and uh uh the the the highest vacuum amount when I'm I'm sealing things. And I I know you've got a it can vary and you can you can seal them from like you know, zero to a hundred, but I I was just curious what what are your recommendations? Okay, so here here here's the base the basics of it. And um you can you can if you go on W.cooking issues dot com and search for uh I don't know what to search for, actually Nastasha will look it up like uh the on the back thing. We do we do a thing on how the texture of meat is affected by by vacuum.
Uh so you know how much vacuum you apply really depends on on what you're what you're trying to do. So if you're if you're trying to do texture modification, then you want to apply the heaviest vacuum vacuum possible because you want to get all the air out of your product before you do it. If you're if you're vacuuming to to pres like put something in the fridge or freezer, then you want a a heavy, heavy vacuum because you want to get all the oxygen out because that's going to be one of the prime reasons that things go bad, especially on leftovers, right? W warmed over flavor in meat. You know, you you can really prevent it by putting a good hard uh vacuum on.
Of course your product has to be really really cold before you vacuum it otherwise you're not going to be able to put a good a good seal on it. Now if you're going to cook the problem is is that uh on on red meat it's not as much of a of a big deal but on fish and on poultry, if you put a very hard vacuum on on on a product, uh I find it tends to change the the texture of the meat when it's cooked and and so the the the effect is uh for those of you that never vacuum before is that uh if you have a very high level of vacuum when you're when you're doing a piece of fish let's say your initial bite will be extremely juicy but all the water will kind of like rush out and then as you start chewing I think it gets more of a fibery taste and it turns almost uh how would you guys describe it like almost like uh it you you know you you if you've done it you know what I'm talking about it it the texture isn't good on the on the sixth and seventh chew let's say it's it's like putting a brick on it and just a normal uh uh normal manner of cooking it pushes all of the water out and so it just becomes a a grainy interior. Yeah I mean I'm not I I don't really understand the the I don't I haven't yet to my satisfaction figured out the actual mechanism of of what's happening. I just know from a practitioner standpoint that uh that this occurs. So what what we recommend is that if you're gonna bag fish uh you want to bag it uh at a low level of vacuum just enough to get the bag basically, you know, a good seal around the around the food.
And if you if if you're gonna bag poultry the same, I actually prefer to to do poultry w without vacuum in in in Ziplocks but poultry in a vacuum, if you're gonna do it, I would recommend doing a a low vacuum and just for yourself if you have the time. Sometime I would take uh like three identical pieces and seal one at at like ninety eight, one at ninety nine, and then one at full vac and cook them identically and then just ta taste the difference. Like next time you're gonna cook a lot of something and you have the time the time to do it, I would definitely do it. But y the vacuum machine that you have is a fantastic machine and you know I kinda wish I had that for my house because it's got a very good chamber size to uh you know to to machine size ratio. It's really a nice nice machine.
I mean and it does so many things so well and the fact that you can uh I I mean I've done blueberries uh last season that uh uh at low uh you know a low vac but it it preserves them you know without the ice and without all the uh other issues that uh uh you know come up when you try to f uh freeze anything. Oh yeah and you know another like easy application is you could portion out like let's say you if you're like me, you have two kids, you make a whole boatload of pasta for dinner and then you have a bunch left over and you want to be able to serve them for lunch or something like that. If you bag down the leftovers after they're done it makes it a a lot easier to reheat that stuff without either drying it out or ruining. I mean it it really is, you know it seems extravagant for the home, but it really you know it really has its uses. You know, I really like I almost think it's gonna be the the next big thing.
I hope so. You know that that it just if if somebody could teach how good vacuuming is you know i in and I understand food saver sort of guided the way for the you know the the whole consumer public to begin thinking about the stuff. But yeah it's really an amazing uh uh kitchen tool. Oh yeah. No, it's uh no no question that uh it we I I hope that they become more and more prevalent and maybe the price is coming down.
I know Mini Pac's working on it. I'm not a big fan of the food saver. I like the professional ones a lot better, but but I hope to get that next section of the primer out soon. Maybe if I have some time over the Fourth of July break, I'll I'll work on it. Nastash is laughing because she knows that I won't.
And now I see that uh uh uh they're com not them, but uh uh the uh poly science people are coming out with a uh new circulator. That's true. Yeah, it's good. Is it yeah it's slow? I I like I I like the Sous vide Supreme because it's easy and you can just sort of s stick it away.
But have you ever used a circulator? Like a regular You will love the let me tell you something. It's it it's just boatloads boatloads better. It's just you know, when you move from a non stirred bath to a stirred bath, plus the it's so much easier to put away. This thing's the size of like uh it's like you know, uh in between a stick blender and a regular blender.
It's you know, it's it's um yeah. I mean, I'm not uh I'm nothing against the Sous Vide Supreme. I've never cooked with it, but I mean I use circulated. It actually works it it it works very well and and uh I've just been uh I've been doing a lot of like uh uh lamb chops. Yeah.
And you just hit 'em right on when when you do it at like one forty for like an hour and you know, some minutes and then then uh sear 'em off. It just becomes so perfect. Get your hands on it. Just test it. Play with a circulator.
I guarantee I've never here's two things I've never heard someone say. I've never heard someone say, Hey, I regretted buying that Vitaprep blender, and I've never heard someone say I've regretted buying that circulator. I've just never heard it. Maybe maybe someone somewhere has said that, but I've never heard it. The uh Sous Vide Supreme, it doesn't actually have a stirred bath, right?
It's not stirred. No, it's an unstirred bath. It's not that it's not that it does a bad job. It's just to me it's big it's bigger than it needs to be in your kitchen and it doesn't it doesn't have circulation, so if you're doing a longer cooked item, you're gonna be probably be okay. But if you're doing shorter term items or if you're the stuff's coming in and out of the the bath a lot, uh I th you know I think you're I always think you're better off with circ circulation.
So it'd be like a one bag, one bag at a time. I mean the circulator is gonna be a little more money a little bit. I mean I think the Sou Viet Supreme is about a five hundred now, and the circulator is gonna come in just under eight. But you know, to me it's uh I mean it's easy for me to say because you know I you know I've had the equipment for a long time, but to for me it's another three hundred dollars well well spent. But there's nothing wrong with Sous V Supreme.
No, no, no, no. Yeah, and uh it holds product in there very well, and I've not had any real issues with it. I'm not saying anything negative about the Sous Vide Supreme. No, I nor am I. I I love it, but I'm you know, I may just get a second one just just for the hell of it.
Because you know, there are times that you want to do vegetables along with the meat. And at different different temperatures. So you know, I don't know if you have anyone in your house who i is gonna need some convincing that you need this, but you can tell them I said that the circulator's a good purchase. Now can can you sell me on the uh uh on on uh uh your what what was the one that you just got uh uh what the rotovap? Well if you have if you have twenty grand to spend, yeah, call Bukey and get one right away.
But like Anyway, listen, thanks for calling. I got someone else to come in, we're gonna run out of time. Thanks a lot. Very good. Thank you.
Did we lose our we lose our next caller or we still got I don't know. No? Oh, there's no one. Oh, there's no oh we had someone. Now I made now I I cut I cut this this poor guy off, John off, because I thought you said we had another guy coming in.
So Dave, if you're gonna actually have to cryovac some fish, what is the general rule of thumb for the percentage of vacuum? Fish? Uh you know, look, you want the minimum vacuum that that you can that you can get uh on fish and you want to bag fish with uh with oil or some other liquid so that it doesn't crush the portions down. I think a lot of people when they first get a vacuum machine they put a hard vac on fish and then they you know they ru they the portion looks insane. It looks like a pillow because they've crushed the bag around it.
And they're much better off, you know, doing a light vac. Uh you know, look I I love the vacuum machine, but but get the circulator first and then and then you know, play around. I think we have another call. Oh yeah? Mm-hmm.
It's John? No, no, no. Oh, the person came back. Hello? Hi.
Hi. Hi, I'm Janelle. Hey Janet. Hey, I have a question about brisket. Brisket, okay.
Every time I try to cook it, it comes out terrible. Uh is there a trick to to having it come out, you know, like you get it in a restaurant, you know, kind of melting in your mouth. How do you cook it? Um well I've tried grilling it and that hasn't worked because I haven't been able to maintain a low temperature on my grill. That's very difficult, yeah.
Yeah, so so I just the oven, you know, uh about two fifty for uh depending on how many pounds it is, uh you know, uh a long time. But um I don't know if I should sear it first or if there's like a a trick to it that I'm missing. Right. Yeah. Okay, so I'm dealing with a uh a fundamental deficit and that it's been so long since I've had to cook without a circulator.
That it's difficult. But um, yeah, so uh I would guess that uh I wonder whether they the the guys in Texas put an initial sear on it or not. Probably not. I don't know. Probably not.
Isn't it all about the Mayard? Well, it you know, with briskets all about okay, so a brisket is a tough cut of meat that has a lot of connective tissue, right? And so the the basic technique is you're gonna overcook the hell out of the brisket meat, but then over time you're gonna break down the collagen. And the collagen that you break down is gonna turn into gelatin, and that's gonna re-moisten the meat. So, you know, w one of the problems you might have had is that you might not have cooked it long enough for it to get remoist again, but you treat it basically like uh like a like a braise.
Um uh uh Cooks Illustrated, I believe, did a uh uh uh a brisket recipe for the house recently, but I I haven't I haven't uh looked at it. But in general, you're right, low and slow is is the way to go, but you have to give it enough time for the collagen to kind of convert. The commercial guys do it in very you know, in a very low heat in a in a pit, and the smoke gives it that characteristic smoke ring, and then also treats it at a fairly low temperature so that it's basically doing almost like like a comfee thing, but without the fat. It's it's going it's cooking at those kind of temperatures, at those low temperatures. And uh you could I mean if you braise it, it's not gonna taste like brisket, it's gonna taste like a braise.
It'll be delicious, but it won't be it won't be the same thing. Uh I feel I feel awful. You know what I'm gonna do? You know what I'm gonna do? Here's what I'm gonna do.
Go to okay, listen, in a week's time, give me a week. I'm gonna I'm gonna research this thing. Go to www.cooking issues.com, and someone will have posted a thread in the forum section. Go to the forums, and someone will have posted a section on it, and we'll we'll figure this problem out for you so that it doesn't happen to you again, okay? I've seen really great really great techniques with marination, like a twenty four hour marination before the actual cooking.
That'll keep it. Well, we're we're gonna start a discussion on the forums of cooking issues, and we're gonna get this tack down because we have some Texans who uh go to the blog, and I'm sure they will they will tell me that anything I say is preposterous and stupid, and having had the brisket they make down there, they do know how to make good brisket. Anyway, that's great. All right, thank you. Thank you very much.
Thanks for calling. All right, so back. Alright, so we we have someone else on the line here? All right, who do we got? What do we got?
Hello? Hello? Hello? Hi. Hi.
How are you doing? Hi, uh I have some questions. Is this who is this? Uh this is Weepop. Weepop.
Weepop Soupy Pot. Like, okay. People who are listening, this call is coming in live from Bangkok, Thailand. Wartor. This is this is this is Weepop Soupy Pot, one of the one of the great all-time people.
Uh a friend of cooking issues, uh, a friend of ours. And so Weepop, what is your question all the way from Asia? What is your question? Alright, so um I eat a lot of beef, right? And uh so be have been picking up in Thailand, and a lot of chefs are cooking tender Suvi tenderloin.
Mm-hmm. But uh I think I think um previous caller has kind of uh answered the question already, and and you've sort of half answered the question. Uh so why why does tenderloin become really fibrous and really mushy? Okay, tenderloin is a huge problem. As you know, um I can't believe Weepop was calling.
I'm so happy. Weepop, you I'm so happy. Anyway, uh so the uh tenderloin is is uh is an interesting case. Tenderloin uh wants to be cooked at extremely low temperatures because it doesn't have a lot of connective tissue. The more connective tissue that a piece of meat has, kind of the higher the temperature, the longer you need to cook it.
When you cook something at a low temperature for a long time, a lot of the initial effects of whether or not you're gonna overcook something happen right away. This is the hardest thing when you're learning to cook low temperature or sous vide to get wrap your head around is that you're no longer cooking in terms of uh just oh I'm gonna turn the temperature up to cook more. It's really temperature and time, and this stuff doesn't overcook just because you cook it longer, but you do get textural changes. So what happens in meat that is essentially devoid of connective tissue is that uh it gets not an overcooked, because it doesn't taste overcooked, but as you chew it, it tastes kind of fibery, as you said. And so uh with with tenderloin, you want to cook it at a at a low temperature at the low end of the scale.
When I say that, uh I'm sorry for all of you in America land, I think in Celsius, because I work at the French Culinary Institute. You want to cook it at like 544 Celsius, right around there. You don't want to go too much higher. And you want to put a sear on it, and you only want to cook it, a tenderloin for like 45 minutes. Now, the problem here is is that is that this isn't food code because you're not uh you're not right keeping it long enough.
Now it is kind of safe as long as you sear it, you kill all the bacteria on the outside. It actually is kind of safe because the inside of the muscle is sterile, but it's just not code. You know what I mean? But I don't know what the codes are in Thailand. Weepop is me.
We have no code. Oh, nice. So how you think it's perfect. Yeah, how are you doing over there in Thailand? How's how's everything going?
Is it Oh, um well, th things are going great. Uh we have new equipments in and um we're we're playing with food on this end. Well, get you know, ship us out there, ship us here. Bringing out a lot of stuff. I need to I need to you know I love you know I love all the Thai ingredients.
How come you don't get me shipped out there? We gotta go out to Thailand. Cooking issues has to Stasi, right? Cooking Issues has to go on the road to Thailand. Yes.
We pop is made me a happy man. The new uh David Thompson restaurant is gonna open up here in about a month's time. For those of you that don't know, he has the best cookbook on on Thai food in the English language, in my opinion. Didn't you buy something, Weepop recently? Oh yes, and and I bought a uh a secret royal Thai recipe that's uh supposedly not in print anymore, which um David Thompson is actually gonna use part of that book to um in to base his new menus on.
So you're gonna email us the recipe or what? I think I think it's in Thai. I would have to translate it. It's recipes from like 1908. Oh, nice.
Extremely old. Alrighty. Well, Weepop, thank you so much for calling. I can't wait till uh we can see you back in the States. We gotta get you back uh gotta get you back to the States, back stateside.
All right, thank you so much. Thank you. So uh so what are we doing now? We take if we haven't taken a break, we have to go to break. We have another caller?
No, you have another minute. We have another minute. All right, so this uh this then was the uh inaugural version of uh Cooking Issues, the show on Heritage Radio Network. Today, Cooking Issues was brought to you by the Butterhouse. Uh and the Butterhouse uh, you know, works with uh we we've polished off an entire bottle of one of their one of their family vineyards uh wines here, uh the uh Kerner Estate Chardonnay, and we appreciate that they are uh they are the sponsor of the show.
Uh thank you for listening and come back next Tuesday. Vicious Vicious Factor. Got me on this corner, and I don't know where I'm at.
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