Got me on this corner. And I don't know where I'm at. Supposed to be my baby. You are listening to Cooking Issues on the Heritage Radio Network. I'm Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues, where you phone in with all of your cooking related questions.
I'm here today with Nastasha the Hammer Lopez, and we are back in the United States finally, right? We're we're done with we're done with the majority of our travels. We're good now? I think so. Yeah, okay, good.
Alright. So call in all your questions live to the studio at 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. And uh today's show is brought to you by 360 Cookware, uh, which it's new, I guess I'm not familiar with it. Are you familiar with it?
No. Nastasha? No. So 360 Cookware is a uh top of the line stainless steel cookware that is made in America in the greenest cookware manufacturing facility in the country. It can be used to make all of your favorite recipes, but it also gives the option to cook using vapor technology.
What does that mean? I've no idea. Which creates a seal that surrounds the food with intense heat, locking in vitamins, moisture, and flavor without added oil, fat, or excess water. Visit our website at 360cookware.com for more information. Uh what do they think that means, vapor?
You think it means they're steaming it? That's what it sounds like. Sounds like it's steaming it. When I hear vapor technology and cooking in general, I think steam. Steam, right?
Yeah. So what they're saying is that they're steaming it. We have a collar. Oh, we have a collar? Alright.
So let's take a let's take the caller and then hopefully someday we'll figure out what 360 vapor technology is. Hello, caller, you're on the air. Hey, is that me? Hey. Outstanding.
Um, so I had a question for you actually about um Sue V cooking. Okay. And particularly the vacuum packing. Mm-hmm. So uh Thomas Keller, fairly famously is claims that uh the home units, the food savers and things like this manage to remove moisture.
Um and I'm trying to figure out how that's possible compared to one of the very high end, you know, eight and ten thousand dollar restaurant systems. Right. Okay. Well, you can by the way, at home you can get uh a like a commercial grade one now for I think about fifteen hundred bucks, like a really really, really nice one. It's small, it's not as big as the commercial one.
So you don't have to go spend quite as much money. But I think what he's referring to is uh you know, for those of you out there that have a food saver, right, which is the kind of the normal one. There's other manufacturers now, but the kind of the one that's been around the longest is the food saver. When it's sucking a vacuum, you have to use specialized vacuum bags that have little um crisscross lines in them, right? Right.
And that's is this what you have? You have the food saver? Yeah. Yeah. And so the the problem with those bags is is that the way that it sucks vacuum is by using those little uh lines as straws and literally sucking the vacuum out of the out of the out of the bag.
The problem is is that um basically the air is constantly coming out and air pressure is pushing on the bag, which forces liquid into those little straws. So if you let it run, right, it sucks the the liquid, literally sucks the liquid out of the bag like it's a straw. And that's probably what he's referring to. I don't think he's referring to it drying something out, right? Now that doesn't happen in uh commercial vacuum machine because, right, in a commercial vacuum machine, the bag is inside of a chamber and the whole chamber is evacuated.
So there's not extra pressure pushing on the outside of the bag while you're sucking the vacuum on the inside. So the liquids tend to stay in the bag. I mean, sometimes you can boil them because as you put a vacuum on something, you lower the temperature at which it boils, it can boil out. But if you don't boil it, the liquids are going to stay in the bag because the there's no air pressure on the bag while you're sucking the vacuum. And that's kind of the key, aside from the fact that uh uh the food saver's vacuum pump isn't nearly as strong as a regular vacuum, you know, real commercial vacuum pump.
That's the fundamental difference, and that's why a chamber machine is so useful as compared to a machine that just sucks the vacuum uh on the bag itself. Does that make makes sense? It does. Is there is there a way that you can sort of eyeball it and make sure that you can use something like this? I d yeah, I just bought one of these um uh um 2D pros from uh from poly science.
Um so I'm sort of tapped out as far as equipment experience for a little while. So um Yeah, here's the good news, right? So uh I I have a f had a food saver, it broke, but I almost always used it to seal potato chip bags, or if you're gonna uh save something for a long time in the freezer, it's really good. Um if you have to use a food saver to bag sauces, a lot of people will freeze the sauces first and then put them in as frozen so that it won't get sucked up. But uh, to me, that's kind of a pain in the pain in the rear.
I tend to do most of my work just using Ziploc bags. Um like m a lot of things, like let's say you're gonna work with fish, right? If you're gonna work with fish, you don't really want to suck a uh hard vacuum on it because it tends to hurt the texture of the fish, right? Or it or even chicken, if you suck a hard vacuum on a chicken, it tends to make it taste more like a canned chicken when it's cooked for some reason. I don't really know the reason why.
It's just test after test we've seen this, we've seen this happening. So uh 90% of the time when I'm cooking at home, actually basically 100%, unless I'm doing eggs, I put my stuff in Ziploc bags, and it's extremely easy to learn the technique to pack very effectively in a Ziploc. There's there's pictures on on cookingissues.com. But briefly what you do is is you you seal the entire bag, you put some liquid in, like usually oil or butter or whatever, or or a sauce if you're doing something like that. You seal the bag and you leave just you put your finger in the top where it's not sealed.
One section isn't sealed, the rest is sealed, and then you you uh um put the bag underwater. As you put the bag underwater, the water displaces the air, and right before the bag sinks underneath the liquid entirely, you snip the last little bit closed, you press it closed, and it works great. I mean, I wouldn't use it on very, very, very high temps because though those Ziploc bags aren't meant to get all the way to the boil, but for ninety percent of what you're doing or more, it's a really good technique and doesn't require any sort of uh equipment and and it handles sauces very, very well. So I I moved quite a long time ago to that kind of a technique at home instead of using uh instead of using the food saver, which makes an excellent potato chip sealer, by the way. Um I mean I don't know if that's another thing.
If you have the the the poly science, here's one little um one little note I'll give you because uh I mean we if you're at home you might not have this problem, but you know, we've been using the new circulator at the at the school at the French culinary for quite a while, and under the use of a bunch of people who aren't necessarily trained to use it, one of the main problems we've had with the new unit is people have set the offset. Okay, so like if you notice on the new circulator, if you press the button you can change between Fahrenheit and Celsius. There's a i but the next thing after that is something called the offset. And I've had a bunch of chefs turn the offset like two and three degrees because they thought they were setting the temperature, and then the circulator is off by two or three degrees. And it's not that there's anything wrong with the circulator.
It's just that people have uh it's it's too easy for them to to mess with the offset. So if anyone plays around with your circulator, make sure they put the offset back uh to zero. The best thing to do is to is to put your new circulator into an ice water bath, with lots of ice and water. Let it like set it to like minus 10 Celsius or something like that, just so that it doesn't want to heat the bath. Let it run for like 10 minutes, and then you can see exactly how far off of zero is.
They're within a half a degree always. But you can set the offset then down or up to exactly calibrate it to zero, and then it'll be dead, dead perfect forever as long as no one messes with the offset. Is this is this helpful at all or no? Definitely very much so. Alright, well, listen, uh, thank thanks for calling and uh you know uh call back any any time if you want more advice on on uh on bagging.
We love we love bagging, right, Nastasha? We do, even I can do it. All right, thanks so much. Thanks for that, guys. Okay.
Um, so we have uh another question in and uh it's from Michael Griffiths who was actually at the Harold McGee lecture series last week, and uh I was a horribly or two weeks ago, I was horribly, horribly, horribly sick. Like I don't know, I've never kind of been It's unlike you. I was I mean uh you know chills, like a horrible, like uh let me put it this way uh without getting too graphic, right? Uh it turns out that if you uh expel everything out of your body for like days and days without being able to take anything in, that you lose some of your uh you lose the enzymes, you you lose the uh you know the enzymes that allow you to to digest lactose, right? So uh, you know, I now know if very temporarily I know what it's like to be lactose intolerant.
It sucks. Yeah. Yeah, it really sucks. I'll never make fun of someone for it again because it really sucks, you know? Um anywho, so I was very sick, I wasn't at my best during the class.
In fact, I had to leave uh a couple hours early just because you know the the shaking sh uh shaking and chills and the you know it was a little much with the the they had a space heater fired directly underneath me and had me wrapped in like three three sets of coats so that I my body just wasn't regulating temperature. It was just a nightmare. Uh but unfortunately I didn't get to set up the rotary evaporator and uh Michael really wanted to see the rotary evaporator and it didn't get set up because I wasn't there and uh there was a seal missing and so it was never able to get uh work properly. And I I apologize, Michael. If you're ever in the in the neighborhood, I owe you a rotovap demo, right, Nastasha?
Right, yeah, yeah. Anyway, no, not your fault. I mean, like I wasn't there, I wasn't available. But um we'll show you how to fire up the rotovap. It's it's one of those things where if you if you're not familiar with every single part of the rotary evaporator, and for those of you who don't know what the heck I'm talking about, rotary evaporator is a piece of laboratory equipment that's a vacuum stool.
We're actually demoing one tomorrow on the Martha Stewart show. Yes. Which we'll I'll talk more about that later. Um but uh uh you need to know what every single part does, and if it if you're just kind of remembering instead of like knowing intimately every part, it's almost impossible to set up properly. But I'll I'll do it for you if you're ever in the neighborhood.
And I happen to be in the neighborhood and firing up the rotor vap at the same time. But he has an actual question, uh two actually. One is about parsnips. So uh he juices champion uh parsnips in the champion uh juicer. The champion juicer for those of you that don't know, it uh it's a great little juicer.
It doesn't do citrus, it doesn't do wheatgrass, but it's basically got these little teeth that spin and it just m you know m mashes the juice all the heck, mashes fruit or whatever vegetables all the heck, and then presses the juice through a screen and then the the pulp, which is fairly dry, you can run it again if it's not comes out the front. I love the champion. We juice apples all day long and that thing with juice, carrots and that thing, and you know, ginger, horseradish, it'll juice most anything. Um so uh he's juicing parsnips in it, and he's taking the juice and he's heating it, and then it's all of a sudden thickening up. And I'm guaranteeing, I'm not guaranteeing, I don't know, but my guess is that the reason it's sticking up is that parsnips actually contain a good bit of starch in them.
And so if you're taking the juice and heating it, you're probably functionalizing the starch. This is my guess, and it's thickening up just like uh just like a starch wood. That I mean that's just my guess. That's why you know the st you know, parsnips contain a lot of starch, and to prove it, like if you store them for a long time, they get sweeter because the starch is being converted to sugar. So if you have a parsnip that's not very sweet, it's gonna have a proportionally higher amount of starch in it.
And I guess depending on how you're juicing it or how much the thing is being broken up by the juicer, you're gonna get more or less of that starch in the juice. I don't know if you're adding the pulp back to it either to to add that, but there's definitely gonna be some free starch in there that is you know not functionalized until it's been heated and boiled and then it's it's gonna thicken up. This is my guess. Uh another question, and we'll take this before we go off into into break, is he has a question about using agar and marshmallows. Um so a lot of people actually are interested.
And the agar, by the way, is for those of you that don't know, uh, is my favorite hydrocolloid, my favorite kind of gelling agent. I love agar because it's easily available, it's you know completely natural, been used for like a bazillion years, and it's extremely versatile. I love it. Uh in fact, we're teaching a class where I'm gonna do a whole bunch of agar tricks this Thursday and Friday. We're doing hydrocolloids at the at the FCI.
Uh so um anyway, so the holy grail of for a lot of people are vegetarian marshmallows, and um, and so typically the marshmallow will be made with uh gelatin or mixture of gelatin and egg white to provide the foaming and the gelatin sets, and that provides the structure for the marshmallow. And so his question is is uh substituting agar instead of gelatin. And I would not uh do that. I would not use agar agar. Um agar is very porous and uh tends to have a lot of syneresis, a lot of a lot of weeping in it.
Typically, people use uh mixtures of carrageenin, which is a similar gelling agent, and uh and locust bean gum, which provide so when you take carrageenin, kappa carrageen, and there's a bunch of different kinds. When you take kappa caragenin, which is very brittle, right, but also, you know, is forms a good structure, and then you mix it with locust bean gum, another, you know, uh classic, you know, all natural, it's from a seed. Uh, and and you mix that the locust bean gum softens the carrageenin and makes it somewhat gelatin-like. And so there's very specific mixtures of um of uh uh kappa carrageenin and possibly other types of carrageenin and locust bean gum that are manufactured specifically to make uh marshmallows. Um and they're made by the C P.
Kelco Corporation, that's C P K-E-L-C-O, and uh one that they make specifically for marshmallows is genutine uh G-E-N-U-T-I-N-E, genutine X9303, and I believe it's available through Le Sanctuary's website or Las Sanctuary's website out in California. And if not, you could contact CP Celco directly and find a source for it. But that is a special carrageenan mix that's made to function just like gelatin in a marshmallow, and it should whip up without uh any problems. If you go into the hydrocolloid primer section of the uh of our blog, Cooking Issues. There's a little discussion that people have done on vegetarian marshmallows that might also be of help.
Anyway, hope this was helpful. We'll go out to the first commercial break. Call in your questions to 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128 cooking issue. 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 bunk good time. We gotta take you high. We gotta take the high brother.
Now I won't have a body. Let's bread blow up by a few courses. And then I wanna wave me and let's go into that with us. I'm gonna get that belly with a little horn over there. Take us higher.
You are listening to Cooking Issues on the Heritage Radio Network. Call in all of your cooking related questions, technical or not, to 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. We're gonna be here for another segment or so, so you still have time to call. Okay.
So uh here's a question. Uh a couple of weeks ago I waxed rhapsodic apparently about the wonders of fresh tofu. Uh and uh Derek has made it himself but encountered two big problems. When he's heating the ground soybeans to make soy milk, the mixture foams up an absurd amount, uh, and containing the mess was problematic. You know, I too have this problem uh at home, absurd messes, but for many, many reasons, not just for making tofu.
Uh cooking in small batches made it more manageable but also more time consuming. Any tricks for controlling the foaming. All right, well, uh I think I said mentioned this before, the book to get on tofu is uh the book of tofu uh by William uh Shirtliff and Akiko uh I I I can't pronounce her name very properly, but uh Ayagi. How do you pronounce that? I don't know, I'm terrible at pronunciation, I'm just such a jerk, such a moron.
Anyway, I happen to have it in front of me because I was rereading it and trying to figure out all your problems. I think I found out your problem. Um when you're making here's the process of tofu for those of you that don't that don't know making tofu, you need to go m first of all, go make your own tofu. If you want like a highly, highly technical tofu source, actually, Nathan Mirvold's book, when it's coming out, Nathan Miravold and Chris Young, the the Uber Tech Book that's coming out uh very soon, like the tech book to end all tech books, has a huge section on tofu and also on uh tofu like curds from other things like from peanuts, uh I believe from edamame and from from any of these things. So that's good, like when that comes out, that's gonna be the revolutionary tofu tofu curd to end all tofu curd like books, I think.
But uh in the meantime, I will I will tell you this. So, what you do is you take soybeans, right? You know, hopefully relatively good quality soybeans that aren't too too old, you want to soak them for eight to ten hours, you break them open, you look at the inside to verify that they've soaked through but haven't over soaked, right? Then you you I usually use about a cup and a half, which is what uh you know, the shirt lift book recommends. Then uh you're going to blend those with with very hot water in a blender, right?
Then you're going to add that to more water and heat it, right, until it just gets to the boil. You're not going to boil it with all the pulp in it. Then you're going to uh pour out that you know, you're gonna get a sack like a cloth. Then you're gonna pour the that entire mix, it's got the it's got the you know the pulp and the and the soy milk into a sack and press it out, then you're gonna remoisten the you know the stuff that's left over, which is called okara, that's like the hulls and the solids, right? Remix that with some more hot water, bring her up to a boil, and then and then pour it, pour it back out again to get the the the soy milk out.
And then you boil the milk uh to kill, you know, kill all the the enzymes in it to prevent you from uh from using all the all the protein. If you try and boil it with the with the actual okara in it with the pulp in it I think you're gonna have horrible boiling mess problems you're probably gonna get uh okara you know boiled and stuck onto the bottom of your pot it's gonna be a king hell mess. So uh what I typically do is a little bit different from what they do in the because in the book they're very concerned about energy consumption which is smart because this guy is very very concerned about all this kind of stuff. But in general I have about seven and a half cups of water that you bring uh you know you keep it hot it's basically almost at the boil and then you have uh another pot with uh another like eight cups of water a boiling in it and it's just gonna sit there and boil and so what you'll do is you'll take uh you'll take like a half of the soybeans that you're gonna have soaked if you start with a cup and a half it'll increase slightly after it soaks and you blend that with two cups of water out of the out of the boiling water pot blend the hell out of it hopefully in a vita prep then pour it into the pot with seven and a half cups then blend another batch of uh soybeans with two cups water pour pour it in take like a half cup of that boiling water rinse out your blender pour it in right bring that whole thing to uh a boil then drain it off press out the okara mix another three cups of the boiling water that you have left over with the okara to get the rest out squeeze it again and then you have about a cup left over to use with your solidifier. Now he also had problems he was using nigari nigari is the traditional Japanese solidifier that's used and it's basically a derivative of seawater.
It's not the the sodium part they'll take the sodium chloride off off the seawater and then all the other calcium and magnesium salts that are left over in it you make the the nigari out of and you can buy Nigari a bunch of different ways you can buy it as a liquid, you can buy it as a solid. I have to say this, I have not had that good luck with uh Nigari myself. Um I I would say you'd probably I don't know what you're using, but in our in the batch size that I do, which starts with a cup and a half of soybeans and ends up with about 15 um you know, fifty fifteen cups of water added to it. Um we end up I they recommend using like two and a half uh to four teaspoons of the Nigari, depending on whether you're using the solid or or the liquid. But I use Epsom salts, which I really like, even though apparently I'm a Philistine jerk, like moron for liking Epsom salts, but you can just go into Dwayne Reed or CVS or whatever, buy Epsom salts, don't use too much of it because it's a laxative.
I use about two teaspoons of Epsom salts. Epsom salt is uh magnesium sulfate, it's awesome stuff. You can also use calcium chloride, which all of you hydrocolloid fans probably have sitting around, even though it tastes horrible, it's not going to be that noticeable in the in the final batch. I would use also about two teaspoons of that or two teaspoons of magnesium chloride, which isn't going to taste nearly as bad as the calcium chloride. Um and you can use any one of those things.
I've really had no luck using acid to make it, but other people, other people have. And you're gonna want to put it in in several stages. You stir some in and then you pour some over the top and let it sit, and it takes minutes for the curd to form. Another thing you're gonna want to do is when you're getting the curds, you you're gonna want to press down on them and get the way out. Don't try to agitate it too much, or you're gonna break the curds up into tiny things and it's gonna be a nightmare and all hell's gonna break loose.
Uh so anyway, so I hope that is that sound helpful or does that sound like I have a question. Okay. My mom buys tofu, my dad won't eat it because he's like a meat and potatoes kind of guy. So what's the best recipe you have with tofu? Well, that's interesting.
When I make my own tofu, I tend to just want to eat it because you put a lot of work into it and it's delicious. I I I hate the idea of taking tofu and making it into some fake other crap. You know what I mean? The problem with most tofu that you buy, unless you're going to a like a like a high quality tofu shop where they're making their tofu every day, is that the tofu's been soaked in uh so much water, it's sitting there in water that all of the actual flavor of the soybean has been leached out of it and it's basically worthless. You know, when you're making your own tofu, you have I mean I'm uh I don't I'm not gonna offend anyone here.
I mean I don't mean it's worthless. You know what I mean? It's just it's not for me. Like I never use it. I never buy it.
Like I like making tofu and using it, but I never buy it. When you make it yourself, you can you can use like you can keep it like a cloud tofu, which is not pressed at all, which is amazing in soups. A lot of Korean soups uh done that way, it's delicious, you know what I mean? You can make uh a very soft tofu, you can make a firmer tofu, you can mix stuff into the tofu and set it. But for me, the main key is that you haven't completely gotten rid of all the the original whey that's in there, and there's no extra added flavorless water that's leached out what flavor it has.
Because tofu has a really delicate, amazing flavor when it's used when it's when it's made fresh and it's used just as is. And I literally like I can't I I never have enough to use in recipes because I'm always just you know cutting it and then eating it with like a an amazing dipping sauce. But you know, if you're gonna buy tofu, you know, I'll fry the hell out of it. That's gonna help. You know what I mean?
That's gonna help, you know. I don't know. Like uh let's see if you can make it. Yeah, making tofu is amazing and and it shows you it shows you kind of what you can do. I mean, it's really it I just don't I just don't much like the tofu that you buy in the store.
Like I just can't I mean I can eat it when it's you know chopped up and put into things, but I'm never like, well, you know, store bought tofu, that's amazing. We can't wait to have another thing of uh store bought tofu. You know what I mean? Yeah. Okay.
So uh Dan from Seattle writes in and says, Hello, I'm a fairly serious amateur cook. After enough media horror stories, I've started grinding my own meat uh essentially all the time for any recipe that calls for ground beef, you have uh you have great uh, you know, sticktuitiveness and patience, because that's kind of a pain in the butt to haul out your meat grinder every time you're gonna make meat. I have one problem on a relatively frequent basis. I get small bone chips even after very thorough trimming. Is there any systematic way to avoid this?
Okay. Uh first of all, notes on notes on meat. Uh when you're grinding your own meat, obviously you want to make sure that the cutters are sharp. I don't know whether you're using a hand grinder or the kitchen aid attachment, right? But you want to make sure the cutters stay sharp, otherwise you're going to be pasting out and uh and hurting, you know, basic basically pasting out the fat and overheating it when it's going in.
Another thing is you're gonna want to cut any kind of uh sinew or anything you don't want to eat out in general because it's not going to be pleasant, and sometimes it can get stuck in the grinder as it goes through. So that's that's also bad. Third, when you're grinding meat, you're going to want to, and I haven't answered your question yet, I realize that. Third, when you're grinding uh meat, you're gonna want to almost par freeze it, right? So that uh so that the t the texture stays good when it freezes through.
You want to like not frozen solid, but basically where it just starts to feel stiff and almost got a little bit of a crunch on the outside where it starts to freeze, don't freeze it harder than that. You feed it through, you're gonna have much better uh results straight off the bat, right? Now, some people pass it through twice. It really depends on the technique you're using, what kind of texture you want, whether you need to pass it through once or twice. But those are the basics of it.
I think the main problem people have, and I know you say you're doing a thorough trimming, is uh not trimming the meat properly. If you're putting uh just big chunks of meat in and you and the sinews going in and cartilage is going in, you're not gonna have a good product. So I think trimming it uh before you grind it is the most important thing you can do. Trim it into the pieces, then put those pieces on a sheet tray, put them in the freezer, par freeze them, then grind them. That's the way to get good results.
Also, remember, please make sure to thoroughly clean your and sanitize your meat grinder so that nothing gets in there because you know otherwise you're introducing the same problems that you could get in commercially ground meat. Now, as for bones, I'm if you the best if you're buying meat that was cut on a band saw, right? So like you're buying like just chunks of beef that were cut on a bandsaw and then trimming, there's always the possibility, because I don't know what cut of meat you're using, right? But there's always the possibility that you'll get a little piece of like chine bone or something in there that's very hard to see. Now, you could when you trim trim the pieces before you grind them and before you f uh freeze them down to grind them, if you trim all the pieces down and feel all over them, you know, just rub your fingers all around them, you'll be able to feel if there's any sort of any sort of chips.
But one way to do it is to buy if you're buying whole muscle cuts, right, like whole pieces to to grind and then trimming them into the into the pieces yourself before you grind them. That's the way to avoid a uh a lot of bones because you can see if someone's cut through, for instance, like the spine or something like that, or you see like a lot of bone things, you can see the entire structure of the bone, and it's gonna be a lot easier to cut all of those pieces out and trim down than it's gonna be if someone just takes meat and puts it in a band saw and it's hard to tell what the bone structure and the muscle structure is, right? So that's the first uh thing to do, and it also gives you like a real sense for the quality of the meat that you're using because you're gonna be chopping it into strips yourself. Um that's when I grind, that's typically what I'm doing, and I don't have problems with bone chips, so I'm assuming I just I'm just assuming that you're buying pre cut me uh like stew meat that's been like put through uh a band saw, and that's always there's always a slight chance that someone's gonna get a bone chip in. What do you think, Nastasha?
I think that's a good answer, dude. You have to take a break. Oh, all right. So uh we're going on to our second break, call your questions in to 718 497 2128. That's 718 497 218 2128 cooking issues.
You know what? When I yell groove like this, oh say I got the bit, baby. Yeah, yeah. Black way of young man. Someone got a groove like this.
No. No. I need to grit. Grip, got to grit. Need to grit.
You know, I believe Brad Thomas. Brother. I'm getting ready to wave y'all in. You know what? I feel so down.
I need to get down in order for me to get down. I got to get in D. Auto for me to get down, I gotta get in D. Need to get in D. Dog the D.
Down D. Welcome back to Cooking Issues on the Heritage Radio Network. Call in all of your cooking related questions to 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. Coming to you live from Roberta's Pizzeria in Bushwick, Brooklyn.
So, uh, so Nastasha, tomorrow's a big day. We're gonna be on uh Yeah, we're gonna be on the Martha Stewart. Well, someone's gonna need to run the rotive app while I'm talking to her, right? No. Huh?
No, you're doing it legally. Yeah, but we need someone needs to run it. Someone physically needs to run the machine while I'm there. Uh for people out there who are thinking of getting a rotive app, it does not run itself, folks. The machine does not run itself.
And we're doing a live segment tomorrow, which is going to include we're gonna carbonate, we're gonna be doing a gin and tonic where we're actually it's pretty cool. Uh we're gonna take a so for those of you out there that have access to liquid nitrogen. Kudos to you. If not, get yourself access to liquid nitrogen. It's an amazing, amazing material.
So we're gonna take uh we're gonna take blood oranges, because Nastasha's fascinated with blood oranges, and we're going to uh use uh an enzyme, Pectinx SPL, our favorite miracle enzyme, and we're gonna chemically supprem the the uh the the blood oranges. And the reason to do that is because of you that aren't hip hip to the fact, right? So with the way supreming is basically where you you cut the peel off and then you and then you slice it. You don't you only have the little little vesicles, little pips. You don't have any of the uh any of the uh what's it called?
The membrane. Yeah, the membrane in there, right? So that's supreming, right? Problem with supreming a blood orange is if you suppress a blood orange, they're gonna leak everywhere, and we don't want any leakage because we don't want the we want the drink to stay perfectly clear. We don't want any blood orange juice leaking out of the thing.
So we're not gonna suppress them normally. We're gonna use Pectanex SPL, our favorite uh uh pectin uh lye slash hemicellulose uh breaking down enzyme. That's the same one we use to make French fries. It's the same one we use when we're clarifying any any damn fruit juice, right? We just we we go through SPL like the end of the world is coming, and you can buy it from CookingIssues.com.
Uh yes or no? Yeah, we have a little bit left. Well, we're gonna have to get more. I mean, we use that stuff all the time. Anyway, it's a miracle enzyme.
The guys at NovaZimes who make it, they admit that it's a miracle enzyme. Pectanex SPL. Anyway, so uh we're gonna take uh Pectan X SPL and chemically supreme it so that we don't have to we can get rid of all the membranes without actually touching uh you know uh with a knife the uh the blood orange and then we're gonna put that in liquid nitrogen and freeze it solid, and what what happens there is that uh when you freeze uh citrus in liquid nitrogen and then really hard, and then you hit it with a rolling pin, uh all the little juice vesicles, the little pips break apart uh and they stay whole and they're not broken. And then you can use them uh as a garnish, which is what we're gonna do. So we're basically gonna pour a gin and tonic over a bunch of these uh frozen blood orange things.
And we tried it yesterday. It's pretty, it's pretty darn cool. Pretty pretty good looking. It tastes good. And uh Don Lee, uh bartender friend of ours, Don Lee, suggested we call it gin sack sack after the Korean sack sack pulpy drink.
Sack sack. Anyway, so we're gonna do that. We're gonna run the rotary evaporator uh live, which we've never done it live before, have we? For a live show? Yeah, for Jimmy.
Well, Jimmy Fallon was pre- pre-recorded. We ran it like it was live, but it was pre-recorded. So anyway, uh so uh we'll get to have the fun of running a rotary evaporator. I think we're gonna do we normally do scotch and peanuts, we're gonna do bourbon and peanuts because our good folks at Maker's Mark sent us a whole bunch of makers' mark, and that's what we're gonna use. Uh so what else are we doing on that show, Stas?
And I think the ISI trick. Oh, yeah, we're gonna do some uh ISI infusion with cocoa nibs. Uh at least this is what I think. Well, we'll see whether they parish down, but anyway, that's what that's what we're gonna work on. Speaking of pears, I know I spoke about this before.
I don't want to get too into it because I know I've spoken about it before. I don't want to bore the hell out of you guys, but this I have a qu uh uh uh I need help on this. The t obviously the two pears that Nastasha and I tasted that were like, damn, I need that pear, right? Damn. One was Narun Barun, N-A-R-U-N-B-A-R-U-N, right?
It's in the list of stuff at the Brogue Dale, which is the miracle fruit collection in Kent that Nastash and I visited a couple weeks ago. Narun Barun is the pear that uh it eats like a pear, it's juicy like a pear, it's has no astringency whatsoever, and has the aroma and taste of a quince. It's a miracle pear. Sucker is a miracle. However, it is nowhere else to be found.
I could not find any other collections that have it. I couldn't find any references to it. If anyone out there, and we we've gotten in touch with uh the agricultural extension, uh that the germplasm library for pears in the U.S., which is in Corvallis, Oregon. We haven't heard back from them yet. But if any of you have any knowledge of this pear or of any other pear that tastes like uh and smells like a quince but has no astringency, please get in touch with us because I'm desperately seeking this.
It's a miracle pear. Hey Dave, how do you spell it? N-A-R-N-A-R-U-N, new word B-A-R-U-N, Narun Barun. Uh and it I think it's derived from Turkish meaning like like awesome scent or something like that. I think it lit in Turk in Turkish, I think it means like awesome scent or graceful scent or something like that.
The other pear that we can't seem to find that was delicious was uh Nimrod. And I know it sounds like you know, like like a moron like Nimrod, but it was right there on the thing, and we'll put pictures on because I'm gonna put the pear post up soon, god willing. Uh, but Nimrod tasted like candy. The pear tasted like candy. So we want anyone to find these two.
Correct, we want anyone to find these pears. Help us find these pears. Please help us find these pears. Um right? Yeah.
Yeah. Okay. Uh okay. So uh also uh we we're working on a uh a new project, one that we've actually been working on before, that we're extremely, extremely excited about, and it's not technically related uh technical related at all. At least we tried to make it technically related, but we couldn't.
No, is uh dragons beard candy. So for those of you out there who uh don't know anything about dragons beard candy, um what you what you're basically doing is it's hand-pulled cotton candy, right? And so uh what you do is is you cook uh a mixture of sugar. Technically, they would use maltose, uh the Chinese recipes I've seen use maltose, but you can just use a little bit of corn syrup. So, like for I think we did like a kilo of sugar and like uh a hundred or two hundred grams of corn syrup, uh, like a teaspoon of vinegar, which helps invert the sugar even more so that you're not gonna get too much crystallization problems, water.
You cook the whole thing up to about 133 Celsius, right? You pull it off at like 132, it's gonna rise up. Uh and then you let it cool down, you set it into kind of hockey puck shapes, right? Then after it sets into a hockey puck shape hard, you nuke it for like 10 seconds to make it pliable again, and then you form it into a donut, and then as you uh after you form it into a doughnut, you pull it uh in your hands, keeping it very even, and you keep dredging it in uh we used cornstarch, you can use rice flour, we use cornstarch. You keep dredging it in this and then flipping it as a figure eight, and and basically every time you flip it a figure eight and put it back into a circle again and keep pulling it, you're doubling the number of strands.
So we do this like like 13 uh 14 times, which is like you know, two to the thirteenth, so we're talking thousands of of street threads by the time you're done. Hence Dragon's beard, because it looks like little like threads of candy. The stuff is amazing, stuff is awesome. It's got an a fantastic texture, it's totally different from from cotton candy. The trick is, and we're gonna put it up on the blog, the trick is pulling it the right way.
And so you can look on uh vid there's videos on the web, a guy named uh Peter Pang, I'm not making that up, Peter Pang, P A N G has uh um and it's his recipe that we use basically. He has a a thing where you can see it, and there's a bunch of things if you look up Dragon's Beard on the internet that you can see uh people doing this, but they don't really tell you the key. Here's the key to it to do it to do it right the front hand, and you'll have to look on the on the website, but the front hand holds still the back hand uh pulls the candy and then you rev you reverse grip it again and pull it. And that's the that's the trick. If you really whenever um this is any chef by the way, it's not just with dragon's beard.
I almost always ignore everything that a chef is saying because a lot of times it's wrong. And I've spent all of my time focusing on their hands. Like how how are their hands connected to the food? How is their hand connected to the knife? Like, for instance, like learning soba.
I was at a soba class with soba's, you know, buckwheat noodles, and I was uh at a soba class once, and everyone was looking at the chef's face and while the chef was sitting there cutting the the noodles by hand, because you cut the silba noodles with a hand with a special knife. Useless. Well you're gonna look at the guy's face. The guy's face doesn't cut noodles, you know what I mean? The guy's hand cuts noodles.
So you want to sit there and like watch the watch the dude's hand, and that's how you learn anything. It's the same thing with the dragon's beard. The only way that we were able to get somewhat proficient is not by the instructions that are on the web, because they're basically useless. It's it's watching their hands and seeing what's happening and uh then practicing. Now that's the good news.
That's a good tip. That's a good tip, right? The the bad news is is that we that you know, I kind of like my job is a tech guy, right? The FCI, so I figured we're gonna tech it up. So I was like, we're not gonna use rice flour or cornstarch or any stupid cra Oh, by the way, I also spray it with a little pan before I start, so I'm cheating, so you know don't tell anyone.
That's kind of technical. Yeah, it's kind of technical. Yeah, right. There you go. Pam, boom, tech.
Anyway, so no. So we were like, okay, we're gonna use well, we tried tapioca and sorbit n. By the way, when you ask for tapioca maltodextrin and you want to make a powder out of an oil, I I mean I don't know how many times I've said this to people. Do not say just tapioca maltodextrin, say ensorbit uh M, I think. Uh tapioca maltodextrin from the National Starch Corporation, because no other tapioca maltodextrin will make a powder out of an oil.
Anyway, that said, I I say it a million times and it still happens. Anyway, whatever. So uh we tried to mix uh flavorful oil with tapioca maltodextrin and then cut it with cornstarch, and the texture wasn't as good, right? Right. Texture's no good.
And then we tried this is oh I had such high hopes for this. We we bought almond flour, which was delicious, uh, in Chinatown. It had it had almond and a little bit of bitter almond in it, so it tasted like an amaretto cookie. The flour did. It was great stuff by itself.
We then bought like some really expensive uh freeze-dried raspberries and blended them with the uh almond flour to make a powder, put it through a sieve so it was nice and fine, and then we dragged the uh the dragon's beard as we were making it instead of through cornstarch to that stuff, and it looked amazing. It tasted amazing, texture sucked. Texture was terrible. It was not nearly as good, right? Right, yeah.
Yeah. It's kind of unfortunate. So if any of you guys out there have a uh some sort of technique to to do this and to tech it up, then I can start demoing it like up, down, left, and right, because that stuff is super, super delicious, right? Mm-hmm. Okay.
So, uh on my way out, I'm gonna make a list. This is why people can keep me honest, right? Of what posts we're supposed to be working on on the blog. Right. Well, oh, and also people who who want to come to the hydrocolloids class, can they still sign up?
No, no, we have a hydrocolloids class uh on fr uh this Thursday and Friday, but it's already totally full because it's maxed out at seven well, kind of, yeah. Yes, it's maxed out at seventeen, so you'll have to sign up sign up for the next one. So, uh here are the posts that I'm gonna pretend that I'm doing very soon, but uh we need to get it done. By the way, so uh we've done a lot of tests recently on combu. Combu is delicious.
Someone's got to keep me honest. We've done a lot a lot of interesting work with uh combu, our good friend Yuji uh Haraguchi at uh at True Rural Foods, our Japanese uh mega supplier, sent us some amazing combu. We're tasted from the top, from the bottom, from the center, different concentrations. So it's really building on our old post on combu, which you can check out. I love myself some combu.
Gotta obviously do the pair post. Yeah. Someday I have to get back and finish those low temperature cooking things, right? But the most recent post we have out is on country ham. And I encourage you to go read it.
Uh I love American Country Ham. Uh one of our sponsors actually of our show is S. Wallace Edwards, who makes one of the finest country hams uh here in the United States. Uh which one did we have last night? Uh we had from Finchville Farms.
Finchville Farms is a manufacturer in Kentucky, uh that was actually just bought recently, uh a couple of years ago by someone, but who's kept all the old techniques that the Robertsons uh use and the Robertsons are still there, uh, you know, curing country hams. But uh I encourage everyone to buy more American country ham and just please, please do not well, you can cook it if you have to. Don't overcook a country ham. And better yet, don't cook it at all. Slice it on a meat slicer and serve it like prosciutto.
So uh go eat your country ham, try out S. Wallace Edwards, try out uh Finchville Farms, try out Colonel Newsom's out of Kentucky, try Alan Benton out of uh out of Tennessee. Try uh Burger Smoke House, which makes a bunch of commodity hams, also makes a really delicious uh attic age one, which is their special one. They're out of Missouri. What do you say?
Heritage. What heritage? They don't make a country ham. Oh. We'll just eat their ham.
Eat yeah, ham is look. Look, a fresh ham is a fresh is a fresh ham, right? Like, God wants cams to be cured. He especially wants them to be cured into country hams and or dry cured uh hams. Like this is like if your pig is gonna die, right?
You're gonna kill a pig, right? Pigs are smart, uh, they're friendly, they're amazing creatures. You're gonna kill this pig because it's so delicious. Like you owe it to the pig to make the the ham into a dry cured country ham. Seriously.
Like it's like the height of what can happen to uh uh a pig in terms of meat. It's the height of what can happen. I mean, um anyway, that's my feeling about it. Uh thank you. This has been Cooking Issues, and we'll see you again next week.
You've been listening to Cooking Issues on the Heritage Radio Network. And today at 3 p.m., there will be a live episode of the food scene on heritage radio network.com. Ian Nauer spent nearly a decade cooking in Gourmet's Tex Test Kitchen, catered for in the garden and the barefoot contessa herself, and now is writing a cookbook for Houghton Mifflin based on being a big city country boy. Again, tune into the food scene on Heritage Radio Network.com every Tuesday at 3 p.m. And right now we're running a promotion where you, the listener, can win five Porter House pork Shops.
All you need to do is send me an email at info at heritage radio network dot com or follow us on Twitter at HRN Update, send me a message, the first person to contact me with the code word bib salad will win five Porter House Pork Shops from Heritage Foods USA. Again, you've been listening to the Heritage Radio Network. Thanks for tuning in. Now when my baby sees me, she's gonna bust my head right in.
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