Welcome to Cooking Issues on the Heritage Radio Network. I'm Dave Arnold, the host of Cooking Issues here with Mistacha the Hammer Lopez, the person who keeps the wheels on the truck. Call in all of your questions, cooking related or not. Well, probably cooking related, technology related or not. Although we will we will take all questions.
Yeah, it doesn't yeah, right. Today's today's show isn't just cooking issues, it's issues in general. Uh, you know, especially coming off the holiday weekend. Call in all your questions too. 718-497-2128.
That's 718 uh 497-2128. We're gonna be here live for another 45 minutes or so. Today's show is brought to you by 360 Cookware. 360 Cookware is 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, which creates a seal that surrounds 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. That's 360cookware.com. Okay, now. All right. So uh while we're waiting for that phone call, uh let's start in on the Thanksgiving and the uh the Heritage Turkey, the uh the Narragansett.
Um listened last week. Uh we uh received a heritage breed Narragansett turkey from uh Heritage uh Heritage Foods, and uh I cooked it using a technique we have a caller, so I'll go back into it in a minute, but suffice it to say, best damn turkey I've ever made in my whole life. So good, in fact, so good that uh uh no one was able to take a picture of it before it was completely gone. Swear to god, like I've never not had turkey leftovers the next day. We didn't even have that many people.
Turkey was obliterated. Obliterated. Gone. Anyway, okay, so we have a caller. Caller, you were on the air.
Hello. Oh, we lost our collar. Hello? Hello, hey, how are you doing? I'm doing fine.
I'm calling from California. And I actually have a question about your hydrocolloid course coming up in January. Alrighty. I'm trying to decide whether it's worth $1,500 for the course plus the flight across country and three nights in a hotel room. Right.
Well, so hopefully you'll also eat at some good restaurants while you're here. One of the benefits of being in New York. I do that every year, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.
So you're asking me to sell the class. Okay. Exactly. All right. Well, here's what here's what I hydrocolloids.
First of all, you know, I'm a little bit biased because I teach the class. Uh, you know, along with uh Nils Noran, the VP of Culinary uh Culinary Arts, I guess is his title over there. Um, it's you know, I realize that the classes can be somewhat pricey, and but there's a whole lot of work that goes into it. And whether or not it's worthwhile for you depends a lot on you. Hydrocolloids is a it's a difficult subject to teach because it invariably in the class we get people with a wide range of previous uh previous knowledge, previous experience, and also goals, right?
So when you're teaching something like low temperature sous vide cooking, uh, you know, pretty much everyone's goals are fairly similar, and it's it's a matter of just showing people what's possible within the realm within the context of cooking low temperature. You know, this is what we can do with different kinds of proteins at different times with different treatments, this is what we can do with uh, you know, uh vegetables, various technologies, ways to do things. And so, like it's very focused, and everyone is there pretty much with the same goal in mind. Hydrocolloids is such a wide open field that um we basically we have to hit, there's certain things we have to hit, right? Because some people in the class may have never used hydrocolloids at all, and some people might be very, very experienced.
So the the class has to be a balance between things that uh you know maybe you you might already know how to do, like spherification. We tend to deal with it with a more, you know, in in a more kind of rigorous way than you would get anywhere else. I think that's you know, the the goal that's what you know we try to do in general at the FCI and the tech department and cooking issues in particular, we try to do things in a very rigorous way whenever possible, and I think that's a standpoint you can you know you always get. But aside from those kind of basic techniques, we also try to teach some techniques. There's always something that no one's seen before because we always try to develop at least one or two new things for each class.
I mean, when I say new, I mean like brand new. And then um but the the the you know the other thing besides the specific applications is we try to teach a particular way of thinking about using these ingredients. So, you know, how to develop a recipe properly. So I mean, I think that I've had people take the class and come back to me and said that you know they were able to apply their stuff right away in in their menus. You know what I mean?
Uh I've never had anyone come back and say uh, you know, it was useless, you know what I mean? Or like what wasn't necessarily worth it. Uh but you know, uh I think it all depends on what you want to get out of it and kind of how you want to apply it. I mean, uh mo a lot of the people that we deal with are chefs, and so for them it's it's straight up. I mean, I don't know whether you're a chef or not, but a lot of them is straight up, well, am I going to get enough new menu items out of it?
And usually the answer is yes. Um, you know, also I'm terrible at selling myself. Am I right, Nastasha? That's true. I'm like the worst person at selling myself because uh, you know, I I hate to to sell someone on something and then have them not get what they want.
Is this helpful at all or no? It's a little bit helpful. Uh let me tell you where I'm at. Uh you know, I've read things like the you know, the hydrocolloid recipe collection from uh Martin Lurch, and I've read your primer and stuff and done some of the recipes. Uh I'm not as interested actually in recipes as I am in understanding if I'm going to be using sodium alginate and calcium carbonate, that what are the, you know, how does acidity affect it?
How does uh you know temperature affect things like that, so that I can then use those chemicals uh on my own without a recipe uh to develop new things. I mean that that's our that's our goal. Our you know, my my goal in general, and if you talk to you know, like my brother-in-law Wiley Dufresne at WD50, he hates giving hate, but he he prefers not to just give out straight recipes because he wants to foster understanding of how to use these ingredients, right? I mean, with I mean the the the one problem is is that it's a over the course of two days we're gonna be dealing with a w wide range of uh of products. So, I mean, like for instance with alginate, one of the things we deal with in general, alginate, you know, as you've you know alluded to.
Uh for all those of you who don't know what the heck we're talking about, sodium alginate is a seaweed-derived uh hydrocolloid, like a like a gelling agent that stays liquid until it hits uh calcium, free calcium, at which point it forms a gel that you know uh that is not broken neither by heat nor by anything else, basically. I mean it's just the gels there forever. The unfortunate part about sodium alginate is it tends to uh suck up flavor, have very kind of poor flavor, the gel itself. You would never eat a block of alginate because it just tastes wretched. Anyway, but so uh as you know, it's affected by acid.
So yes, we get into that, right? Um but you know, or like you know, uh it's more saying the level we're gonna take it to is look, if you know you can't have acid too much acid because it's not it's gonna cause the alginate not to set. And then uh, you know, furthermore, you need to use uh something called a sequestrant to sequester the calcium that's freed up in the water as the acidity increases, or use a buffering agent such as sodium citrate. I mean, we'll get into that kind of stuff and like sodium hexametophosphate, but it's you know it's not it means it's i there's only a certain level of actual technical information we can get into in the class because we're d like I say we're dealing with people with a wide range of backgrounds and goals. You know what I mean?
So we're gonna deal with it, but uh you know I'm not gonna say that it's the same as reading scientific literature on the subject, you know, which which we can point you to you know you know what I mean? This is well the scientific literature doesn't necessarily apply I find a lot of it is just uh to get to the where I can use it in my cooking uh is a bit obtuse. Um yeah just uh I'm a culinary instructor and and I d uh really don't like giving out recipes. I'm in that that frame of mine I'm I want to teach people principles. I'm gonna teach them you know how to think about the food and then go ahead and do it uh without having to follow a recipe uh line by line some sort of prescription.
So that's the sort of and it sounds like you're doing that in the class so you're not doing recipes that you are going more into the the principles. Right and we've had really good luck with culinary uh instructors by the way taking our class so to get to school to pay for it. It's a non profit sorry. Yeah all right well anyway I I hope to see you in January and thanks for calling. Okay.
Bye. All right. Okay, so now uh back to our uh Thanksgiving real quick. Wait, oh we have another caller caller you are on the air. Hi there.
Dave it's Colin Gore again from down here in DC. Howdy uh I have two things I want to ask uh I know there's probably a break coming up so maybe pick whichever's easier. We'll we'll power through it. Let's do it. Alright, okay.
So first thing I want to do, I I'm making oyster mushroom soup oysters, right, out of kind of dropping them in an alginate bath and making these kind of like snotty little oyster looking things that are full of delicious briny oyster soup. And uh I want to make the kind of that alginate skin on them a little more pearlescent, a little more like you know, oystery, not like s thin uh translucent kind of snotty thing you get from the alginate. Right. Okay, so but like like hard snot. It's not like it's not like a Xanthan snot.
You're not adding a lot of Xanthan Oh yeah no no they like they come out great. It's just they're they're clear right I want this I want that very surface kind of skin to have a little bit of tr like be more translucent than transparent. Okay. Give it some kind of color Okay, here's a here's a couple of ways we can go. First of all, are you doing a forward alginate or reverse alginate?
Uh reverse. Okay you're doing so you're doing and you're they're frozen beforehand or or not frozen? Not frozen. Okay. Just out of curiosity I I do a a lot of mine I'll freeze just because it makes it easier like you freeze the mixture and then you drop it in and you don't have to worry about it.
Yeah so I'm on definitely had problems like you know forming them hit or miss. Yeah basically 98% of the time I'll pre freeze them because it's not that long of an extra step and it just makes the processing much easier. Okay now to your pearlescent problem. There are a couple of solutions. So you're looking to add something to the alginate bath both to modify the texture and the look.
Okay. Now if you want to just modify the look I don't recommend this by the way what I'm saying to you I don't recommend but you can go the Quique de costum method Quique de costas you might know famous Spanish chef uh adds a lot of metal dust to a lot of his stuff, right? So you can get food grade, basically pearlescent powder that's relatively flavor free. I'm not recommending this, but I'm saying like as the fastest way. So he did a famous dish where he did an oyster that he literally put silver dust on, like an oyster oyster, not like what you're saying, I believe.
It's been a long time, been many years. But that looked, you know, that was some shiny stuff. You know what I mean? Uh and it gave her an interesting look. I'm not so much about adding stuff that doesn't have a sort of a flavor impact.
Now, if you want to go flavor impact, you can do that. It's gonna look good, it's not gonna affect the taste. So you can get food grade silver either from like uh well, usually leaf if you get it from an Indian source, like an Ayurvedic source, but or you can get food grade powders. I don't know where Kiki got them, probably somewhere in Spain. Now, if you want to add more of a shimmer to it, and you want to modify the texture of the alginate, right?
So that it doesn't taste like solidified snot, right? Technical term, right? Nastasha solidified snot. Anyway, so uh uh what I would do is emulsify some oil into the alginate base before you drop. So what you're doing is is yeah, so that's gonna if this is an old uh semi-established technique, but one that's not really talked about a lot because everyone knows that the texture of an alginate uh gel is not so great.
If you add a little oil, mulsify a little oil in to it, right? All of a sudden, now your teeth are gonna break it better, it's gonna look better, it's gonna feel softer, and as long as you're careful with it, you're not gonna to destroy the integrity of it too much, right? And so and so that what I mean to me, much more than the than adding metal dust to it, like that, because you're improving the actual product other than just the visuals. It will also, you know, because you're emulsifying stuff in, it'll get a shimmery, you know, more of a uh uh salad dressing y, shimmery look to it, but you're actually also gonna be making a better product. Just make sure that you're emulsifying oil into the alginate and not the other way around because the alginate needs to be the continuous phase.
Okay. And what was the other one? Let's see whether we can tackle the other one real quick before we go to break, although Nastasha and Jack are gonna chop my head. Uh yeah, I want to ask if you ever so your juices that you clarified with your pectinx, you got you know, nice clear juices. Have you ever tried reducing them or making a glaze or even like a caramel out of that reduced uh juice?
Oh yes. Do you know if the pectin the pectinx has a negative effect on that at all? No, I we do that all the time. I mean, I've never done it overheat because like you know, we're all about uh trying to preserve the original flavor of it. So I typically will reduce in my rotary evaporator, but I've made some of the most ridiculous reductions.
So like typical applications we've done like fresh apple reduction that we've clarified and taking it down to a syrup, we've done fresh strawberry. Uh in fact, I don't know whether I talked about it on air, but it was a result of a question someone asked on air once. We I made uh a candy where we did uh I reduced the fresh clarified strawberry juice down, you know, without heat down to about 33 bricks and then used stirred that into a candy base that I had made that I'd let cool, you know, somewhat so that the strawberry wasn't flavored. Crazy, crazy good. Crazy good.
And uh we've done blood orange, you like the blood orange, right, Nastasha? Where we reduce it to a syrup post-clarification. So it's an excellent application. Um I don't know what the results with heat are because it's gonna taste a little bit cooked, but um you know, so there's certain clarification steps that if you can cook it, you might as well cook it. But uh on the other hand, pectinex is very good, especially on things like apple and and whatnot.
So yes, the quick answer is yes. So well, yeah, I was just curious then. What if uh if I wanted to kind of take the remaining starchy bits and the solid bits out of some like uh sweet potato slurry and try to caramelize the remaining sugars left ever? I know you even talked last week about uh like this is something I've been thinking about for a while. Because you know how like when you bake a sweet potato you get this delicious sometimes sometimes you get this delicious like caramel stuff that oozes out.
Yes. And like drips on the pan. And I want them I want to make that, but like in large amounts. So I figured especially when I had saw a paper a couple of months ago about uh you know there being a lot of amylases in sweet potatoes so you could maximize you know how much sugar's in them, maybe bite down some extra starches and then I gotta figure out a way to kind of turn that into like you know, remove enough of the kind of solid matter to get like a sugary liquid I can simmer down and turn it into a caramel. There's no question in my mind.
There's no question in my mind at all that you can juice a sweet potato and then clarify it. I there's no question. And then though the sugars will be in there. Now if you wanted to get sweeter uh you could add some um some brewers and some amylase to it. You know what I mean?
Some some alpha beta amylase you get a brewer supply shop, add it to that and just and just basically mash it out like you would uh uh a wort for a beer. You know what I mean? And then the question is getting the right balance then clarifying it and cooking out the mash before you set the starch. Before you gelatinize it. You know what I mean?
Because then after you gelatinize it all everything's okay in the ass. Would you rec uh you know rear I mean do you think pectan X would be a good wrap for that or there's no you know we I could try it. I mean physical separation is what I would try first, but I mean 'cause I don't know how much of it's soluble I don't know how much of it is stabilized by uh by by the pectin, but if something we could try to s if Nastasha remembers to write it down, we'll give it a we'll give it a a whirl. But yeah, definitely doable. Definitely doable.
But now now yeah. I mean, do you think I mean could I just try throwing like if I tried throwing it through a juicer, for instance, afterwards, would that be possible? Because I was like, I would juice it. I'll juice it right away. Juice it right away, and then do any procedure you're gonna have to the juice because it's just gonna free up more of the enzymes.
So juice do all your juicing medicine. I've never tried juicing a sweet potato before. I didn't really know if I could expect it to squeeze a lot out. I don't know what your yield is gonna be. I don't know.
But you know, you could also juice it, treat the pulp treat the pulp with uh with uh pectan X and re juice. Um button anyway, but give it a toy with it. Either way, you yield's gonna be better than what you get chipping out of soup, and you toss them in on can't be worse. Give us a h give us a holler, tell us how it works. Yeah.
Alrighty, thanks for calling. So do we are we going to go to a break? Okay, we're going to break. We'll be right back with cooking issues. 7184972128.
That's 7184972128. So much bone, brother. How do you feel, man? I'll feel all right. I don't want to people to know you're in here.
How you feel, fellas? We're gonna have a bump good time. We're gonna have a bump good time. We're gonna have a bump good time. We're gonna have a bump good time.
We gotta take a high. Now I won't have about it. I'm gonna get that fella with a low hole and over there. No, James, hold on moment. Brad, get a take us higher.
Yeah. Take us higher. Brad! Bad! Bam!
Welcome back to Cooking Issues on the Heritage Radio Network, uh, the show where we answer all of your cooking issues, or as Nastasha said today, just your issues. Call in all of your questions to 718-497-2128-718-497-2128. Uh here live in Brooklyn. Okay, so back to Thanksgiving for a minute. Uh, because I didn't get to finish what uh what I was saying.
So we got this, uh, you know, Patrick uh gave us this uh gave me, I should say. Nastasha didn't get to eat me all. But I got my own. Oh, you did? Heritage breed?
Yeah. But how was it? It was great. Did you overcook it? A little bit.
A little bit? A little bit or a lot bit? A little bit. Was there any moisture in it at all? Yes, there was.
Was there a similarity with a with like a hammer? Was it was it like was it like a solid block? No. There was some juice left? Yes.
You could eat it without gravy. Yeah. Yeah, okay. Anyway, so as uh as I said last week, the one that we got, uh one I got was a narraganset bird. Clocked in around uh 15 pounds, I think, 15 pounds or so.
So smaller than my normal, you know, gigundous bird, but you know, because heritage breed. So I I did the bionic turkey, boned it in, you know, boned it inside out without cutting the skin, uh, made an aluminum skeleton for it, uh, made you know aluminum leg bones that we cut holes into, so they're like a sprinkler system, hooked it up to a circulator, piped hot oil through the through the uh Erzat's leg bones to cook the legs from the inside out at the correct temperature. I set my circulator at 67.5 for a final temperature in the leg after it was pumped through all the aluminum of about 66, uh, which is where I wanted it. Then uh after about an hour and 20 minutes of that, dropped the whole bird, still with the leg pumping through to get it inside a lot, threw it into a big thing of duck fat. When I say oil, I meant duck fat, uh, in duck fat, cooked it all to about a six, started it a little higher at like sixty-six and dropped it to sixty-five, and then finally a sixty-four for the finish off of the cook.
Uh so sixty-four and a half. Uh, cooled it down in the fat, like it was in the fat, like it was a confie, ripped it out, and because my parents, well, my stepfather actually is petrified of any sort of cooking operation and doesn't understand it, I decided I was gonna finish the bird in the oven rather than my preferred technique, which is first deep fat frying and then uh failing that, ladling hot fat over it to crisp up the skin. Uh so anyway, so I'm like, all right, listen, my stepfather's name is Gerard, so I'm just gonna call him Gerard from here. He's one time I fried a turkey you know on the on the you know, out on the lawn, right? And a little bit spilled over and hit a little bit of the grass, and he now claims that I started a major forest fire that day.
And when we says the grass is still dead there, which first of all, let's say it was, who who cares? I mean, he they got an acre of land, like a little patch of dead grass, make it the turkey, you know, cooking spot, right? Anyway, not a big problem, but this is the kind of thing that totally flips him out because he does, like I say, even though he's got one of the best palates for wine that I've ever met, of anyone I've ever met and like loves food, pe petrified and doesn't understand anything about cooking at all. Like doesn't know the sharp end of a knife. Do you know what I'm saying?
Anyway, so this year, oh, and then a year after that, I was like, Well, I won't kill your glass, so uh kill your grass. So I I fried it basically against my wishes. My mom said fry the turkey again. This is years ago. And I I fried it on the patio on the flagstone, and some oil hit the flagstone, and and this was one of those sub-freezing Thanksgivings, uh, you know, up in New York, and uh, and uh he was out there ho I don't know what the hell he thought he was doing, hosing down flagstone in below freezing weather because the water was just freezing up as he was trying to get the oil off.
Anyway, he ended up ruined Thanksgiving for the second time for turkey related reasons. I mean I've ruined Thanksgiving many times for other things, arguments and whatnot. But uh anyway, so this year I was like, it's gonna be somewhat normal. I'm gonna throw the bird in the oven, everything's gonna be fine. I decide my mom has this uh this clay, this clay, uh, you know, like a bake sh baking sheet, almost like a rumor toff, but it's made by you know it's clay baking sheet.
I'm like, Oh, I'm gonna throw this in like a pizza stone, I'm gonna throw this thing in the because it's got sides, right? So it'll catch the drippings. I'm gonna throw it in the oven, I'm gonna crank the oven to 500 degrees, and then I'm gonna put the turkey in, and the bottom's gonna get brown just like the top, because that's what you know, the bottom never gets brown properly when you're doing this kind of thing. And my mom's like, No, you're gonna set off the smoke detector. I'm like, mom, she has got a new one put in.
I'm like, first of all, here's a note to everyone out there. Like, I know safe the smoke detectors, safety, all that crap. Like, put a dang some sort of switch. They are cooking detectors. These things are cooking detectors.
And my mom's cooking detector is hooked directly to the fire department. So as soon as you start cooking, like the engines come, and then in in Westchester, where my parents live, up they charge you, the city gives you a big fat bill if they show up at your house and there's no fire. Really? Yeah. So it almost makes you want to light a fire, like whenever they come.
You know what I mean? I didn't say that. I didn't recommend that. Anywho. So, like, you know, I'm running around the house like it's like sticking these like plastic covers, these defeaters over the uh over the the cooking detectors.
And well, here's what's demented, right? They don't want to put a switch on it in case you should turn it off and then go to bed, but instead they give you a plastic thing to defeat it that you have to remember to get on a chair and remove the plastic thing. Does this make any dang sense? It should be like your virus protection when you when you get on the computer where you say, Okay, I will turn it off for the next 20 minutes. You know what I mean?
Yeah. So something like that. Anyway, I hate those damn things. My wife installed one once in my apartment in New York, even though we're in a fireproof building, and my only memory of it is it going off and me getting so angry that I literally jumped up and one hand punch fist at it, like you know, like Street Fighter move, like punched the the detective and like rain down on the floor in like little pieces. And I was like, I'm sorry, I had to apologize to everyone.
I was like, sorry for the outburst, but I I have this like visceral reaction against cooking detectors. Anyway, uh, you know, anyway, whatever. Here's the thing also when you're cooking in the kitchen, right? You know if there's a fire. It's not like in your bedroom or in a hallway at night.
You know when you catch something on fire in the kitchen, right? Anyway, and plus everyone's house is underventilated, so there's always smoke whenever you're doing any sort of good cooking operation. So either everyone in the world is setting up apartments in New York, and houses that have those crappy little like Home Depot Brone, nothing against the Brone Corporation, like like Vents, and and you they fire them up, and they never can get all of the all of the uh the smoke out. So either everyone is cooking poorly, maybe true, or everyone is enduring smoke, more probably true, and then a good portion of those people, like someone in the house is freaking out about the smoke, right? It's irritating, whole thing's irritating.
Anyway, whatever. So I'm like, it's gonna be fine. We put the the little defeaters over the cooking detectors, fired up the oven to 500, which is the highest that thing would go, convection, threw in the baking sheet, got it all nice and hot, throw the turkey on, and for once the turkey actually fit in the oven because I didn't bring a 30-pound turkey with me, or you know, I brought like a 15-pound turkey. Put it on, all of a sudden, smoke all through the freaking house. Smoke everywhere.
Smoke, smoke on top of smoke on top of smoke. And I'm like, you know, whatever, it's smoke. I don't care. Everyone's flipping out. Open it up.
The dang baking sheet, the clay baking sheet had shattered in two. And all of the drippings and fat and everything from the turkey that was crisping up in the thing were on the bottom of the oven, basically smoking like smoking like the devil. And so I didn't get to fully brown the turkey. And yet still the most delicious bird I've ever made in my life. Once we got through the whole, you know, ruining Thanksgiving aspect of it.
Uh so to report back on the Narragansa turkey, do not overcook the turkey, but the bird definitely had like it was like turkey squared. It tasted like turkey with turkey flavor in it, even though I hadn't reinforced it with anything. It didn't put gravy on it. I brined it lightly before we cooked it, but you know, no big deal. But it had a very meaty flavor, enjoyed by all, including my stepfather's 90 or 91-year-old ex-butcher father who spent his years uh, you know, butchering animals back in the old days, back when meat had had real flavor.
So that's my report back on the Narragansa turkey. And don't try to crisp that thing on top of a uh on top of a clay baking sheet because bad things will happen. Um anyway, do you want to catch back up on time and take our second break now? Sure. All right.
Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay, before we go to break, let's uh I have a class coming up, and again, you know, I'm apparently if you listen to the first segment, not so good at the self promotion. But uh this is actually a very inexpensive class. If you happen to be in New York City tomorrow and you want to learn how to make some holiday cocktails that you can make at home and some that require liquid nitrogen or rotary evaporation, then uh for the meager price of $125 dollars, and you'll get how many drinks were you making? Some preposterous number of drinks for the hell is cheaper than a bar almost, because we're gonna give you snacks and everything, too.
I mean, when you think about it, it. It's two hours, uh 6 30 p.m. to 8 30 p.m. I'll be there. Nils Norn will be there, and we're gonna, you know, make some drinks that go on fire, we're gonna make some drinks that are cold, we're gonna what you know, anyway.
It's tomorrow, and you can uh sign up by going to www.what French Culinary.com or something. I don't really know. I shouldn't know this kind of stuff. No, I you have to go to the International Culinary Center from the French Culinary. Oh, well, I don't know.
I don't know. Holiday cocktails. Anyway, it should be fun, and it and if nothing else, you will have a lot to drink. So uh check that out. Call in your questions.
We're coming back for another segment. 718-497-2128, 718-497-2128 cooking issues. How you feel, brother? Feeling good. You feel good?
With so much bone, brother. How you feel, mate? I'll feel all right. How you feel, fella? Sure getting down.
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're gonna take you high.
We're gonna take you high. Brother! Yeah. Now I won't have a body. Let's bread blow up my new cores.
Let's go and do that within it. Yeah, alright. I'm gonna get that belly with a little horn over there. Brad gonna take us higher. Take us higher.
Welcome back to Cooking Issues. Dave Arnold and Nastasha Lopez here in the studio, waiting for your call at 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. Coming to you from Bushwick, Brooklyn. Alright.
I have some questions from the uh from the email. We haven't answered any email questions today, have we yet? No. Alright. Uh I have a couple of questions, Chris S.
says. Uh, I really want an ISI or EC, because they're switching. They're switching to EC here in the US, or they're switching to ISI. EC, I thought. ECISC.
Yeah, they're both. Like in Europe, they're ISI and here they're EC or vice versa, or something like that. So they're both true. We're just gonna say EC from now on. Hey, you all know what I'm talking about, the whipped cream makers that we use for like uh whipped cream or th rapid infusion technique, you know, developed a couple months ago.
Um so the question Chris has is uh which is the best one of these uh EC uh things to buy EC whip. First of all, don't don't buy the I mean nothing against, but don't buy the Seltzer one, it's the most limited. Make sure you get a cream one. Uh and there's there's all different kinds. There's Profi Whip, there's the gourmet whip, like nine million, they don't have crazy names, but in general, the the big deal, the newer ones have silicone grip rings on them so that you can grip them when you're wet as opposed to the older ones.
So I'd look for the ones that are the silicone grip ring. I I should know like exactly what all the line models are, but I don't. The only big difference really is uh the thermal whip. The thermal whip is uh looks like it's like a three-quarter of a liter or something, but it's actually smaller, it's a half liter, and it's insulated. And with the thermal whip, the thermal whip is very useful for people who are working on a line or in an area where they need to keep something hot or cold, and they don't have access to either keeping it in the fridge or in a bain marie of hot water for for service, right?
So if you need to keep something hot or cold for a long time, then get a thermo whip. But they're a lot more money and their capacity is is lower. Now, I I would definitely I mean it you're more limited if you get a smaller size, but it's also going to cost you less to do a recipe in a smaller size than in a bigger size because you can't just when you're doing an infusion in an EC bottle, you you, you know, the the amount of product in it and how many chargers you put in it are variables, and so you want to keep your recipes the same all the time. Most of my recipes are written for half-liter uh half-liter containers, um, you know, but you can scale them up to liter containers. If you can only buy one and you know you're gonna need to make a lot of product at one point, maybe you have to get uh the liter size, but it's uh it's an interesting question um to answer.
I use mainly half-liters. By the way, for any of you that like we're like literature in a construction zone here. So if you hear any like hammering, like don't say that it's not Jack's fault, our our our engineer, he's not like doing construction this, but there's only so much sound insulation that we can do, and so there's like, you know, it's because they're making Roberta's pizzeria here even better than it was before. That's why. And so it's worth it.
Uh second question Chris has is uh if you put pineapple in an EC with alcohol and charged it, would you get both flavored alcohol and alcohol-infused fruit, similar to using a vacuum machine? I have tried it, we've done it, uh, and yes, you do get some uh some infusion into the pineapple itself. I don't know that it's uh I have to redo it again. It works. I don't think it's maybe as effective at getting the stuff into the pineapple as the vacuum machine, but it's pretty close, like it does actually work.
And in fact, I'll probably be demoing that tomorrow. Um the uh caveat is you want to make sure that you use nitrous so that the pineapple doesn't uh taste carbonated, and I think you're gonna boil more of the liquor out when it bubbles out than you would using a vacuum. So I think the vacuum gets a stronger infusion into the pineapple. Pineapple uh is also interesting because a lot of its aroma once it's extracted is very fleeting, uh especially in distillations and things like that. So you're gonna want to probably, you know, balance.
Like I wouldn't keep pineapple for a long, long time, even though people do. I think it like loses some of its good aroma. But I hope this hope that helps. Okay. Uh Teddy DeVico called uh wrote in and he said, What are your thoughts on getting the Sous vide Supreme?
Is it as accurate as an immersion circulator? Thanks. No. No, it is not. Uh the Sous vide Supreme, uh another little gripe you've heard me say before.
Sous vide is cooking in a in uh in a in a vacuum environment in a vacuum bag and sealed like using a vacuum machine. Sous vide Supreme has nothing to do with Sous vide. Sous vide Supreme is a low temperature cooker that's basically a non-stirred water bath. Non stirred water baths have limits of accuracy because they're not stirred, right? I'm not saying it's a bad piece of equipment, but I'm saying that there are limits to its fundamental accuracy and and over very long periods of time, it probably gets a fairly accurate result if you don't stir and you leave it.
I mean, if if you just leave it sit, it'll probably equalize over a long period of time. But in general, cooking, I would say that it's not going to be nearly as even or accurate as an immersion circulator, which is typically good to a couple tenths of a degree across the entire bath. So also, immersion circulators are a lot, uh, they can they can do various different sizes and they take up less space in the kitchen. The Sous-de-Supreme, I realize is a couple hundred dollars less than a circulator, but if I was gonna get one, I would save up the couple of hundred extra dollars and get an immersion circulator. I would personally, and I shouldn't ever say this, I would rather have like my own like DIY, like you know, home ghetto circulator than the Sous Vide Supreme.
But that's me. That's me. Don't take this. I'm sorry, I apologize. It's not a bad product.
I'm just saying that I'm very pro-circulation. Another thing you might want to do is put an aquarium pump into a Souvie Supreme and have it circulate, and then I think you'd you get rid of all of its shortcomings. That's another solution. That's like a like a $25 solution of the problem. Oh, we have a caller.
Caller, you were on the air. Hey David, it's Rusty Shockerford. How are you? Hey, doing all right. I'm glad to hear that.
I got a question for you. Um I'm illegally distilling alcohol. Good. Yeah, I you know, when I saw it when I originally was directed to cookingacuse.com, I found a kindred spirit in you. So what I want to know is I want to do a Dr.
Pepper infusion because as we all know, Dr. Pepper's the champagne and beverages. Yeah. It's not, it's not, yeah, champagne. We gotta think of another one.
I have champagne for my favorite beers. We gotta call what we need, like some sort of sham soda term. Yeah, Dr. Pepper, good product. Okay.
Dr. Pepper is the preferred drink of the booth at Heritage Radio Network as well. Wow. Yeah. So okay, so what what do you want to infuse with Dr.
Pepper? I I just make a basically a neutral grain spirit. That's all I distill right now. Right. And uh it comes in around like 45, 50%.
And I wanted to just I bought an ISI and I want to infuse Dr. Pepper flavors into booze. Well, okay. Well, I mean, the problem is like a liquid liquid, like you know what you should do is just buy Dr. Pepper syrup.
Yeah. You should like like you should just like I don't know whether you can, like uh Dr. Pepper, I is that Coke or Pepsi? Uh I think it's actually like a it's not owned by either of them. It's like a neph lead or something.
Right, but they locally they always go through a uh, you know, in other words, like even if you're an independent locally, you either go through a Coke distributor or a Pepsi distributor for your for your bottling. So like I like you anyway, my point is that if it's ever on tap anywhere, which it is, right? Yeah, it means you can buy the syrup in a bag in box situation. And so those syrups are typically very high bricks because they're mixed in low quantity, so that you can get many, many, many gallons out of it. And then you could just do the real deal.
You know what I mean? So you're talking adding, you know, like a very small percentage uh of product. So you could still you could make a straight up Dr. Pepper, you know, booze and not take it, you know, below uh below 40%. If you're starting with if you're starting with 50, you could take it not below 40 and have just straight up Dr.
Pepper liquor. You know, and then carbonating. Well, okay, so cle so okay, so it's it's an interesting question. So clarification, right? Typically clarifying is just gonna get rid of stuff that makes it not light not pass through it.
Dr. Pepper, the only reason light doesn't pass through it is because it's so concentrated. Like everything is actually in solution there. Do you know what I mean? So like uh if you want it clear, right, the the the then you'd have to I mean the problem is is that like the sugars wouldn't come through and like some of the bittering agents wouldn't come through.
So if you redistilled Dr. Pepper, all you get is kind of the um the aroma. Do you know what I'm saying? Which isn't necessarily which isn't necessarily what you want. Another thing we could do, I don't really know the recipe, although I know it it has prunes in it, which is why like the fake ones are called like Dr.
Thunder. Uh you know what I mean? Uh you know, reference to your butt, I guess. But the but the the but i i I don't know the actual recipe of Dr. Pepper, but I'm sure this is something that is like a known like thing on the internets that we could look it up.
And then if we figure out what the flavor profile is, well then you could start doing distillations with the aroma components of it, and then try to mimic like the sugar acid balance of something like for instance in the prune and get it get it to come come across. And then you could use something that's like less color. Also, there are white prunes, right? So if you're gonna use a prune, like like uh most prunes are are purple because most plums that are made into prunes are purple, but there are white plums that are made into prunes. These don't you can't get them commercially.
I think there's some French ones. Uh is it stretching my memory a lot, but I believe like Brignol uh prunes can be white. I'm not sure. But anyway, so you can get that kind of dried fruit flavor and you can add some kind of plum essence back to it to get a plummy thing in a clearer liquid if you start from first principles. But then you're going down a much longer road rather than if you just want like straight up fast delicious, you get your s you get yourself some liquor and you get yourself some Dr.
Pepper syrup and you know, you water it to whatever level you want to drink it at and then um and then carbonate it, and then you're good to go. I mean, that's like a one that's like a one day problem. Do you know what I mean? I will I will send you a bottle once it's uh homemade. Oh, we appreciate it.
We appreciate it. Thanks for thanks for calling in. One other question. All right. I want to know what your favorite Simpsons episode was.
Wow, you know, I haven't watched The Simpsons in a I appreciate the first non-cooking question. I haven't watched the Simpsons in a long time, a long time. Because I, you know, but I I used to watch it faithfully, and there are so many good ones to choose from. Uh the one where the pig is flying through the air and Homer says it's still good, it's still good, it's still good, comes to mind. At least for the vegetarian.
Yeah, that's it. That's that's a good one. Uh the the when uh you know when Krusty uh went to jail the first time around. That was an amazing, amazing episode. Like uh the itchy and scratchy, uh the itchy and scratchy uh censorship one, the flag burning one.
I mean, there's all there's so many, it's so hard to choose. Think about it for a while. I'll listen next week. And uh I'll put some good thinking into that one. All right, Dave, thanks a lot.
All right, thanks for calling. All right. So we see we can rip through some more questions before we're done. Sure. Jack, we have a couple minutes here.
Can I rip through some of these questions? And Jack, you've never given me a Dr. Pepper in the studio. Wow, calling you out, calling you out. Also, Dr.
Pepper, for those of you that are diet drinkers, a good diet flavor. Look, you know what? Nastasha's sitting here crinkling up her nose. I like look, people who drink diet sodas, right? And I grew up drinking, I realize everyone's gonna hate me now.
I gotta drink diet soda. Listen, it's like people who drink diet sodas, right? We don't drink just one. Like people who like have sugarful sodas are like, I need a little bit of a boost. You know what I mean?
People drink giant sodas, they don't drink water, right? All they drink is diet soda. So they need to pound a bunch of these things to stay hydrated, right? That used to be me. Now now I drink exclusively seltzer, right?
So I don't drink really soda that much anymore because I drink exclusively seltzer. But realize that your diet soda drinking friends and neighbors are using it as a hydration technique, not as a like I need a little bit of sugar. So, you know, and if you're buying for a party, right? Never let a sugar soda drinker buy soda for a party. They're always wrong.
This is why at the end of the night, there's no diet coke left, and there's 8,000 bottles of Coke left at the end of the party. Why? Yes, you have no idea what you're talking about. Look, a diet soda drinker goes over and locates their two-liter bottle, right? And then they drink it, right?
Whereas you have like a cup of coke. Like, mark my words. Let diet soda drinkers buy the non-alcoholic products for your party. Alright, hold on a sec. I got uh um I got another question from um I got a question from Jacob uh and he had a question about a tabletop vacuum sealer.
Um but uh Jacob, I'm gonna answer this question next week because I didn't have time to research the one that you put onto the uh onto the onto the emails. Emails. So uh I'll try and research that. A lot of people are interested in lower priced vacuum machines because kind of the entry level price for a real vacuum machine is in and around $1,500. And there's a wealth of new ones out there that are three and four hundred dollars.
And uh the question is, are they any dang good? The answer is I have no idea, uh, because I haven't used them, but I'd like to look at the specs and see whether they're any good. Uh I mean uh it would be great. Like my life would be really cool if like I had the money to go buy all this equipment and test it for for you guys. I don't, you know what I mean?
I don't have access to it because uh one thing I'm good at, Nastasha, right, is putting equipment through its paces. Right. Yes or no? Yes. Yes.
Uh okay. And one last question, also from uh Teddy DeVico is uh he recently recently got a twist and sparkle, which is a new carbonation uh unit from uh EC that carbonates liquid, and he says uh it's used in drinks, but why not savory things such as sauces or broths? Have you carbonated any sauces or broths or other savory liquids? Uh and uh yes, but you you know the the issues are one, the sauce has to be good served cold because when you heat it, you're gonna lose a lot of the carbonation. And it has to taste good carbonated, which means it has to taste good with CO2.
A lot of times with savory dishes, when things have CO2 in them, they start tasting like they're a little bit fermented. And so you have to watch out for that. I would do a quick test just by, you know, like doing 50-50 with uh I mean if you have the ISI Twist of Sparkle, just try it. The rules are make sure it's cold, make sure it doesn't have uh if it has any like milk in it, you're done. It's gonna foam over and spray all over your house.
If you if you have particles in it, then it's gonna foam up and spray all over your house. Um so it needs to be clear, otherwise you're gonna run into real problems. Uh but other than that, the only rules are keep it cold and does it taste good. And that's basically like a general good rule for life, right? With well, for carbonating.
Keep it, keep the temperature where it wants to be. And what? He said it's a good rule for life. Good rule for life, yeah. Well, you should yes, I'm not gonna get into it on the air.
Anyway, so uh this then has been cooking issues. Uh come back, visit us next week. Um Tuesday this time. Vicious visions. Oh, you did crap.
Got me on the score. And I don't know where I'm at. Supposed to be my baby. Between minutes later. Enhance your CTE programs with AP and the college credit it offers.
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