I'm Sam Edwards, I'm third generation Cure Master from S. Wallace Edwards and Sons in Surrey, Virginia. We support the Heritage Radio Network because we believe in the cause and what they're doing. They're supporting family-raised uh livestock, small family farms, uh certified humane, pasture-raised, antibiotic free. Basically, we take the products from Heritage Food USA and make them into uh serrano style hands, prosciutto style hands, bacon sausage like my grandfather did.
You can find us at SurreyFarms.com or Virginia Traditions.com. Oh, you daddy rap. Got me on this corner. And I don't know where I'm at. Supposed to be a good one.
Hello, welcome to Cooking Issues from the Heritage Radio Network, coming to you live every Tuesday from 12 to 1245. I'm Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues here with Nastasha, the hammer Lopez, the hammer of cooking issues. Uh here to set me straight, keep me honest. Uh call in all of your cooking related questions to 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128.
So uh today's uh show is brought to you by uh Sam Edwards from S. Wallace Edwards Corporation. I have actually a little uh story to relate about that. I was coming home from Thanksgiving. Uh you know, I take the train uh from my mom's house in Westchester, uh just north of New York, down to Grand Central, stopped at the Murray's cheese shop and saw what might be the messed best marbled ham I've ever seen produced by an American corporation.
And it was one of Sam Edwards's uh one of his hams. And I I took it home, it was incredibly delicious. I've known Sam Edwards for several years actually, because I'm been kind of a ham nut for uh for a long time. So uh a couple of problems with the with the ham. It's not marketed under his actual brand name, it's marketed as uh Surrey Farms, and I don't really Surrey Farms I don't really I never knew.
So if you go to Murray's cheese in New York or you see something marketed as uh Surrey Farms, it's actually uh an S. Wallace Edwards ham. And then uh I I emailed him, I was like, Well, what's the deal? I've never seen an American ham that's uh that's you know so well marbled. And uh he told me that he was actually getting the pigs from Patrick here at Heritage Foods.
What do you think about that, Nastasha? It's pretty cool, right? Yes. Yeah. Anyway, so uh delicious product.
Uh we fully support Sam Edwards and his attempt to because I've always said, I think I've talked about on this program before, that uh American ham is delicious, and we have our own uh traditions, and you know, there's no there's there's no reason that Americans should try to pretend to be something else. We have our own delicious country ham, and we have for hundreds and hundreds of years, it's a unique cultural uh product. Uh so I'm a hu huge supporter of it. And my my one gripe has always been that although our cure masters are as good as any cure masters in the world, and by the way, we're it's still in the construction zone here at Roberta's Pizzeria. So if you hear any hammer drilling in the background, no one is attempting to break into the studio and murder us, it's just normal construction going on.
Anyway, so I've always said that the one of the main problems isn't the cure masters themselves or the techniques they use, but the quality of pork available to most ham cures here in the US as opposed to those available to let's say the Spanish. Um so Sam Edwards, uh S. Wallace Edwards, is trying to change that, uh, partially by getting some material from Patrick at Heritage Foods, the uh founder of our radio network. So anyway, so kudos to Sam Edwards. Now, on to cooking issues proper.
So uh some of you who listen to the show regularly might remember that uh several weeks ago, maybe even a month ago now, uh I issued a challenge that uh if someone could produce a raw chocolate bar that didn't make me want to throw up when I ate it that that even is remotely resembled real chocolate uh or you know tasted good that I would eat raw food for uh a week. Well I have an update to that challenge but before I get to that update uh uh we have a caller Nastasha we have a caller all right caller you're on the air Dave Howdy uh this is Colin Gore down in Washington DC Howdy and yeah I had a I guess not exactly cooking related I mean you know in the in the aura of cooking but not directly related question this time. Um I'm actually in a PhD program in material science department at University of Maryland. Nice. And we are building a seminar series for the upcoming semester and uh I was wondering if you knew had any contacts at PIC gums because I'm interested in trying to get someone from there to talk uh to us, give a kind of presentation that's a little scientific but also kind of cool and interesting.
All right. Well, TIC gums, for those of you that don't know what the heck we're talking about, TIC gums is a main major manufacturer of hydrocolloids, which uh again, for those of you who still don't know what the hell I'm talking about. Uh hydrocolloids are a group of kind of uh thickeners and gelling agents that in the past were used almost exclusively by industrial uh concerns to make foods uh cheaper or ship better or last longer when they're frozen, etc. etcetera. Uh but in the past ten years or so have really been used by uh chefs to try and either achieve special effects or increase quality.
So there's been a major shift in these ingredients from uh being seen as additives to being seen as legitimate ingredients in in uh high cuisine. So TIC Gums is a major manufacturer of this and their and their uh headquarters is in Maryland somewhere. I think it's somewhere near Beltsville, right? So or they're are they in Pennsylvania? I always forget.
Yeah, anyway, they're they're no, they're in Maryland, a little bit a little bit northwest of Baltim northeast of Baltimore. Oh yeah, and I've uh I've supposed to be visited, I suppose I visited there many times. My main kind and th th what's interesting about them also, for those of you listening out there, they will sell to individuals. They're one of the m few manufacturers that uh for some reason takes an interest in in this and they have what's called or at least they used to, uh a chef's kit that you could buy stuff from them. And so t and it's TIC gums, and you can go to them.
They the unfortunate thing about TIC gums is that all of their products have horrific names like saladizer 210S and picaloid and you know, all these all these like horrible sounding they sound like parasites, diseases and insects, but um they make really good products. The other thing about them is that they they are uh they're a blender. They are a a gum blender, a solution provider. So they don't provide straight up raw materials the way let's say Dow Chemical would. They blend their own uh proprietary mixtures and their own sources and they sell them, so they won't tell you exactly what's in their mixture, which is the other interesting thing.
But the main thing with and I'm gonna answer your question, I'm just explaining to everyone else who doesn't know what TIC gums is. The uh TIC gums well the one we use most is a product called saladizer either the 210s or the 310s and this is something actually that anyone should have around their house it's a mixture of gum arabic and Xanthan gum both natural ingredients and it's uh fantastic at stabilizing uh you know um emulsions oil water emulsions uh uh for later uh to to dilute later so we use it to make simple syrups with oils and fats in them salad dressings sauces it's fantastic stuff it goes in cold it's really easy to use it's not too you know finicky so that that's the product theirs we use the most now the downside I no longer have a real contact on the East Coast my old contacts got Riefler moved to be the West Coast and uh Asia uh rep for TIC gums but they have a hotline called gum guru and uh if if you email us I will try to remember although if for anyone has ever met me I'm horrible at at email but um they're all really nice people down there and I'm sure they'd be happy if you find I don't have his contact info anymore but if you call Scott uh Riefler out on the West Coast he might to say who because he's a really good guy and interesting he used to give the culinary talks on the East Coast. So if you contact him he might know who his current you know incarnation on the East Coast would be because it would be an easy easy trip for them. But yeah TIC gums good people. Yeah all right thanks a lot no problem follow up with that no yeah so if you need any more help again contact us most likely a question on the blog is the best way to get uh a a response because that's the only thing I'm kind of guaranteed to respond to but you know that I they're they're good people and I'm sure they'll they'll respond and actually for those of you out there who have gum questions, like they're one of the few companies that if you ask them uh uh for a problem to it, you know, a solution to a particular problem, like I have XYZ salad dressing, it has these uh situations.
Which product do you recommend? They will, unlike most companies, they will actually get back to you with an answer. It's a they have a s uh uh what's it called? System? System called Gum Guru uh on their TIC Gums website.
So it's a good good uh good place to go, a good resource, and uh fine people. All right, well thanks for thanks for your question. Uh okay, now back to uh the uh raw food raw food challenge. So what I said was is that if someone could produce a raw food, a raw chocolate that was even remotely delicious at all, and really that didn't leave a bad aftertaste in my mouth, that I would eat uh raw food uh exclusively for a week. Now uh Nastasha is here not just to hammer on you people, but to uh although she never actually does that.
But uh uh but to keep me honest, and uh one of my interns, Grace, who's actually has her final today, she's gonna graduate the French culinary. We're gonna lose another fine intern, actually, several. Uh we're losing Piper as well, another fine intern. Um she brought some uh you remember the brand name, Nastasha? No, I don't remember.
Some raw it's like you know, it comes in some sort of craft paper, crunchy label thing from Whole Foods Market and it costs like a thousand dollars a bar or something like that. But I ate it and I wasn't revolted, right? Right, yeah. Right. So it looks like I'm I might have to actually do this because if there's if there's anything on earth I hate, it's uh it's a welcher, right?
You you know, you someone who welches on bets, you know, you could be a serial killer, I could find something redeeming about you. But someone who welches on that's not really true. If someone who welches on bets, is like, you know, that's like the worst thing in the world, right? Right. It's terrible, right?
For you, yeah. Well, for you too, no? You like a welcher? I don't like it. What?
I haven't dealt with a lot of them. That's because they're universally reviled and hated. Okay. Anyway, uh, so uh so I can't welsh on this. So now I I had a couple of outs.
I gave myself a couple of outs in this bet because I said that not only Yes, I did, if you'll remember, I said not only does it have to be delicious, but it has to actually be raw. And there is a lot of res there are a lot of people out there who basically say there is no such thing as raw as raw cocoa beans because of the processing that they go through on the way they all go above this kind of magic temperature of 108 degrees Fahrenheit where all enzymes are supposed to be destroyed. Before I go on, a little rant about that. Not all enzymes are disturbed, there are enzymes that are destroyed below 118, and there are many, many enzymes that last well, well, well, well, well above 118 degrees Fahrenheit. And how fast an enzyme is denatured is not only a function of temperature, but a function of temperature and time.
So to think there's some sort of magic brick wall at 118 degrees Fahrenheit where no enzymes can pass through that brick wall is absurd. I mean, beyond absurd, ridiculous. Has how much basis in science? Zero. Zero zero basis in science.
Um now that's one thing about raw food. Second thing about it is I don't know why enzymes like why why should I preserve an enzyme in in in a food? I I have not seen a a p a paper yet that tells me what the benefit is of preserving all the all the enzymes in the food. Now I'm willing to be proven wrong on this, like anything else, I'm willing to be proven wrong. Um but, you know, first of all, a lot of enzymes are going to be deactivated in the gut anyway.
Not all of them, but many of them are gonna be deactivated uh in the gut. Many enzymes are bad. You know, they do damaging things to you. Not all enzymes are little beneficent proteins that are like wandering around your body only fixing things that went wrong. So uh I I I don't understand really the whole premise behind raw food either.
But that is not that is neither here nor there. The the the fact of the matter is I said that I would do it, and I know many fine people that's exactly it's like the the uh the first the first defense of a prejudiced person, right? I know many fine raw food people. But anyway, it's true. I know many fine raw food people.
Uh, but I I have promised I'd do it, so so I will. Um now, but I have to to research it. Oh, the out, the out, sorry. Uh so yeah, chocolate turns out that 99% of the, according to the data that I could gather, which may or may not be true, uh, you know, 99% of the stuff labeled raw chocolate in uh in markets, in food markets, is in fact not raw because there is almost no one out there with processing equipment to actually produce the cocoa butter. So even if you obtained raw, completely raw, like controlled fermentation, so the fermentation never went above 118, which is possible, um, you know, although not likely, but possible, uh, and never been roasted, so it's not going to develop any of the roasted flavors that you would get.
To make chocolate, you'd have to express cocoa butter to add cocoa butter back to uh even if you were using just grinding raw raw nibs, you'd have to add cocoa butter back to it to get the chocolate consistency. And the cocoa butter that's pressed is pressed in such a way that the temperature basically uh you know has to get above uh you know 118 degrees Fahrenheit using the equipment that's out there. So uh most people who are providing uh um you know these products to the raw food manufacturers probably are misrepresenting what they're what they're providing. And this is the data that I'm able to gather on the internet. Now there's a there's an interesting guy by the name of Ben Ripple.
Ben Ripple has a thing called uh big Tree Farms out in Bali, and I've seen him present a couple times. I met him, although he he wouldn't never remember this, at a taste three, which is a uh an event that ate you know the Mandavi that TED conferences used to have along with you know with Mandavi, and I spoke at it a couple times, and Ben Ripple spoke at it. Uh and uh his deal is is that he wants he he goes to poor farmers in Bali and other uh you know places over there and uh wants to get them some money for their product. And so as far as I can tell, he doesn't really care so much personally about raw food, but he sees it as a niche market where he can all of a sudden raise the value of these products that his farmers are producing by producing a very specialty product for a very niche market where he's not competing with bigger growers or you know bigger countries, bigger industrial concerns. So he's been a supplier of raw cashews for a long time, true raw cashews, and he's spent a lot of time and energy trying to produce a true raw uh chocolate.
So apparently, if you get your cocoa products from uh Big Tree Farms, which is Ben Ripple's corporation, you have a guaranteed certified uh raw product. I don't know what the heck the price is. Apparently it's a lot, lot higher than most of the raw uh raw you know chocolate products that are out there. Uh and I think he's a raw, you know, he supplies two manufacturers. But so anyway, I don't know whether the one I got was real or not, but it's weak to try and get out of it just by saying that it probably wasn't actually a raw chocolate.
So we're gonna do it. Uh which means that I won't be eating the family meal at the French culinary. Well, me and my family, because who who else cooks at my house? Oh. Yeah, nobody.
Now, here's the thing. Now, do we have a uh the the here's do I follow raw food just based on 118? In which case I can have sashimi, right? Or do I mean most raw food people are also like vegovegan style folk, right? Now, if I'm saying what I'm saying is that to be raw food doesn't necessarily mean I have to go vegetarian, right?
I mean not that I could go vegetarian. Vegetarian for a week is not a problem. Vegan for a week might be a problem. Uh the problem is that I'd have to find unpasteurized milk, and you can't, it's hard to buy it here in New York if you can get to there's certain farms. You can buy direct from farms, but here in New York City, it's difficult to get unpasteurized milk, so I couldn't have unpasteurized milk.
Um but I mean I don't see any reason why I can't have shasim uh sashimi, right? Nastasha, do you see any reason? No. Or carpaccio. I can't have parmesan with my carpaccio, though, because the curd from uh Parmesan cheese is cooked to a uh higher temperature than 118 Fahrenheit during the curding process.
So I couldn't have parmesan with my carpaccious which might ruin it for me because really that's the taste of carpaccio anyway, is the is the parmesan and the olive oil. So uh also so that's the first question. Do I follow their rules or just the 118 degree rule? That's the first question I have to figure out. The second thing is I'm gonna have to plan this for a long time because I'm definitely not gonna buy any BS raw food product off the shelf that's just some hyper processed uh crap that has like not doesn't have a good taste, where the only criteria for its manufacture was that it had never been heated because I hate products like that.
I'm also not gonna have any substitute products, no, no, you know, raw food product pretending to be something that's cooked, right? The the the challenge is can I make everything truly freaking delicious, right? Truly delicious and also raw and wanting to be what it is instead of an imitation of something else. That's the real challenge. So it's gonna probably take me a month or so to figure out a good week's worth of recipes, learn a whole bunch of techniques.
I'm gonna have to read every raw food cookbook there is. Um, you know, I've read Sarma's uh one of Sarma uh Melangaiis' cookbooks. And you know, she's she's nice, she's nice. Maybe I can call her and ask for some advice if she'll still talk to me because I was supposed to help her with a bunch of dehydrator projects she was working on and we never got back to her. Remember that, Nastasha?
Yes. Yeah. So if she'll still if she'll still take my calls, I'll call her and try and uh and try and work on that. But uh I'm gonna shoot for a goal somewhere in probably February or something, you know, since that's such a crappy month anyway. We'll do a raw food uh we'll do a raw food week.
Nastasha, you gonna eat any of this or no? Sure, I'll I'll do it with you if it happens. Really? What do you mean if it happens? You call me a welcher?
Yes. Jeez. I just told you that the worst thing in the world is a welcher. Anyway, all right. So we're gonna go to our first commercial break, but call in all of your questions to 718 497 2128, 718 497 2128 cooking issues.
You feel good? So much bone, brother. How you feel, mate? I'll feel all right. I don't want to people to know you in here.
How you feel, fella? Hey Dam! Sure getting down. Look at you! We're gonna have a bunk good time.
We're gonna have a bunk good time. We're gonna have a bunk good time. We're gonna have a bunk good time. Don't take them up, friend. We gotta take you high.
All right. You wanna do it again? Yeah, that you won't. We gotta take you high. Brother!
Yeah. Now I won't have a body. Let's bread blow up by two courses. And welcome back to Cooking Issues. Dave Arnold, Coast of Cooking Issues, along with Natasha Lopez.
Here from Roberta's Pizzeria in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Call in all your questions to 718-497-2128. That's 718 497 2128. Have a question in from Paul. Uh says, Hi Dave.
It's well known that baking soda can be used to speed up Mayard reactions and browning. Is this just about pH? Is there something else at work? And then is there anything that can be used to slow down such reactions, myard reactions? For reasons not worth going into, I'd like to be uh able to keep simple broths and soups safely warm for up to 18 hours.
Naturally they begin to deteriorate after this long, especially those with vibrant vegetable colors. Any tips or suggestions of something I could throw in, thanks, Paul. Now, I'm gonna have to break this down a little bit. Uh and you know, I know Paul, you probably don't have the time to call in during the show, but this is something I'd really like to kind of figure out exactly uh what what you mean here. Majard reactions, right, are the browning reactions that are um you know that typically go on, they're they're uh very complicated, but they have to do with reducing sugars, certain kinds of sugars uh in proteins, usually uh in the well always in the presence of not always, but usually in the presence of heat, right?
Typically higher heats. So we associate kind of toasty brown bread, you know, bread flavors, brown flavors, cooked flavors, and uh a lot of the flavors on the outside of roasted meats and things like that as are Myard uh style flavors, right? And the you know the brown on French fries, the crispy skin, all that. These are things we associate with with myard. These um reactions are indeed speeded up by um the addition of alkaline ingredients.
So, for instance, pretzels, famously pretzels are cooked in uh in alkaline water before they're baked to increase uh the the browning in them, and they also give a characteristic kind of alkaline taste. Um, uh also egg whites will brown if cooked for a long time, even though they're not cooked at a very, very high temperature because egg whites are alkaline, so that myard reactions speed it up in it and that's the that's the you know the the thing behind hymene eggs these eggs that are cooked for a long time and turn brown and so at the school you know we do a lot of cooking with eggs and pressure cookers and the eggs turn brown because of myard reactions. So yes basic conditions alkaline conditions which baking soda will produce uh do speed up um browning reactions now that's not the same browning reaction that happens in a in a vegetable soup so if you're doing a broth with vegetables in it and I presume you mean green vegetables right green vegetables we're talking about. So if you're doing uh like a vibrant green vegetable color, those right are not broken down because of myard reactions, right? So like an herb uh an her a blended herb for instance is breaking down because of an enzymatic reaction.
So you can stop those things from going brown initially by destroying the enzymes. Now the the the the problem is is that then further browning uh and kind of olive draviness takes on because the chlorophyll in those vegetables is being destroyed because there's there's a magnesium uh that's inside of the chlorophyll the magnesium gets displaced by a hydrogen ion usually uh in the presence of an of an acid right or over long you know long cooking times and that causes the chlorophyll to brown and you lose the vibrancy of the color right so I'm trying to figure out exactly which you know which one of these reactions you're worried about. Now adding something basic like uh like you know baking soda or something to a green vegetable broth or puree should preserve the chlorophyll. Now one of the reasons not to add um you know uh you know baking soda to if you're cooking let's say green beans or broccoli to the water, one of the reasons against it is because although the the green is going to be very well preserved because the the magnesium's not going to get displaced from the chlorophyll, is that they go mushy very, very quickly because the other effect that's going on is that the cell walls of these vegetables are made up of pectin and hemicellulose, and the pectin, right, is um is very resistant to breaking down uh in alkaline in uh acid conditions, but breaks down very, very readily in in alkaline conditions. So you add baking soda to water and you get very green, mushy vegetables.
You had acid to the cooking water and you get olive drab uh very you know firm vegetables. So it's like you can't win. But if you're doing a puree, right, then you don't care about the fact that it's gonna be mushy because you're gonna puree the sucker anyway. So you might as well add a pinch of baking soda. You just gotta make sure that you don't get any off-taste, and this should help preserve the green color for a lot longer.
Now, also the other thing is that if you store your um your your soups at a lower temperature, you should be able to preserve uh the color faster. Now, I haven't done any control test of storing a broth that's not uh clo uh not a chlorophyll-based broth. I haven't really done a control test on any of this. This is just off the top of my head. But uh, it would be interesting to do a um do a test where we um stored just in an open bane uh you know, a soup at you know 70 degrees C, let's say, for 12 hours to see what happened to it.
I don't know how much more appreciable browning you would get, other than maybe you're also getting uh increased browning during uh during evaporation, like a concentration. I'd have to see. But I I'm kind of interested in the problem. So if you email another question into the radio, maybe more specifically, like what recipe you're dealing with and exactly kind of what's going wrong, I'd love to take a look at it, because it seems like an interesting problem, right, Nastasha? Um so anyway, uh, but that led me to another thing is that I did some uh more research on one of the products that we like to use uh is uh stuff called uh Thai red lime paste.
And Thai red lime paste is basically limestone, and I always thought that it was naturally red. Uh and there's been very little up till now that I've been able to find in the way of English language references on this Thai ingredient, other than it's used in uh soups and banana like this banana soup to preserve the cell wall of the banana. This goes back to the the mushiness, right? So um so what we do is we we use this Thai red lime paste, which you can get in an Asian grocery store. You put it into water, you shake it up, it settles out, and you use that water.
We vacuum inject it into bananas and it makes a banana stay firm even when you cook it. So you can make like a banana's foster, but the bananas they taste cooked and delicious and sweet, but they don't get mushy. And you can also beat the crap out of them in the pan without them breaking apart. So it's one of our favorite recipes. We've been doing it for years.
I do it all the time. I love it, bang bang bang, right? But I haven't really found up till now any English language references on it. I always assumed that the the stuff was uh natural, uh, you know, that naturally red. But I found finally an English language blog called She Simmers, and it's written by someone named Leela, but I don't know her last name.
And uh she said that the red is actually turmeric that they add to it. Although I don't I don't know if that's true or false. I don't know, but that's what she said. And she also made some interesting points that it's uh that the Thai red lime, and I hadn't thought about this before, is basically calcium uh calcium hydroxide, uh lime, which is the same stuff that's used for nixtil mo nixtolamization, right? Which is the you know, the process used to turn corn into masa and hominy by soaking in an alkaline condition.
And I've been wanting to go get cow, which is what they use in Mexico to do this for a long time, and we've had it in our fridge the entire for all these years, we've had the nix nixtamalizing product in our fridge in the form of Thai red lime paste for years and years, and we've never done it. So we're gonna have to run our nixtimalization experiments with the Thai red lime, see what see what we get out of it. But she also does something very interesting, which is that if you add it to fry batters, right, the fry batter stays crispy after it's been fried for a long time, a lot longer than it would if you just used regular water in the batter. So I'm gonna try to do some tempura batters with this Thai red lime and see whether we can get a batter that does indeed blind, taste crispier with this versus not, because I was not able to find any papers, any you know, any scientific papers on adding alkaline uh ingredients to uh to batters to try and you know increase their crispiness. I wasn't able to find it.
Um so I don't know. I'm gonna do some research. That's something that you know could be very, very, very interesting, but it's you know it's more crap we have to do. What do you think, Nastasha? Yes, good stuff?
Yes, good stuff. But this brings me back to the other point about the about the uh this stuff, this uh lime, is that being calcium and being hydroxide, it's both alkaline but has calcium present. And uh, and what is calcium do to cell walls? Hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, uh she's been around. Calcium strengthens the pectin, right?
So, in the presence of uh a lot of calcium, you're gonna cross-link the um you're gonna cross-link the uh the cat the pectin in there, and it's gonna be resistant to breaking down either by heat or or anything else. And so what I'm wondering is if you use calcium hydroxide as your addition to the boiling water, can you get a vegetable that stays green and is also crunchy? So that is another round of experiments we have to run. I was not able to find anything on that either. But now I only searched for half an hour or so, uh, which is part of the reason that I literally ran in here panting with my hands frozen off uh about ten seconds before the radio show started, much to Nastasha's uh chagrin.
Uh the other reason was I couldn't find any gloves on the way out, and that's why I, you know, my hands, I feel like I could crack them with a hammer and they break into tiny little pieces. But um, so a lot of interesting uh experiments were brought up by your question about uh vegetables and broths and uh my art and keeping things green. Uh anyway, uh since it's uh it's about time, we'll go to our second commercial break. Call in your questions to 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128 cooking issues.
How you feel, brother? Feeling good. You feel good? Thanks so much, bone, brother. How you feel, mate?
I'll feel all right. I don't want no people to know you're in here. How you feel, fella? Sure getting down. Look at him!
We're gonna have a bunk good time. We're gonna have a bunk good time. We're gonna have a bunk good time. We're gonna have a bunk good time. We've gotta take you high.
All right. Yeah, that's your own man. We gotta take the high? Yeah. Now I won't have a body.
And then I want to wave me and let's go into it. All right. All right, all right. I'm gonna get that belly with a low hole on over there. Yeah.
Take us hold on, over. Bread! Bad! Bam! Welcome back to Cooking Issues.
Still time to call in your questions to 718-497-2128. 718-497-2128. Uh so we got a question from Kurt that he had a question about egg substitute. And uh he says as his grandparents have gotten older, he started to watch salt, fat, and cholesterol on their diets much more. Although I have to tell you that contrary to health, like if I get old enough, I'm gonna eat nothing.
Of course, I already eat nothing but fats and all this stuff. Anyway, if I make it to that age, I'm definitely gonna start loading up on all the stuff people tell me not to eat. Uh but uh they've tried to use egg substitute and are generally happy with the result in omelets and scrambled eggs, but less so in baking. Can you tell me more about what is in egg substitute as well as uh when is appropriate to use instead of egg? Now, the only thing I know much about egg substitutes is egg substitutes, uh you know, like actual straight up single ingredients that are used to substitute for certain properties in eggs, right?
So it looks like you're talking about an egg substitute that can literally be substituted for an egg in like an omelet. I'm more used to dealing with products that are substitutes for eggs, uh, like in in in baking, where you know you say, okay, I have an egg protein that needs to hold something in a in a specific, you know, way. So like I need to imitate the foaming properties of egg white, let's say. So then I would say, okay, then I know what to add. I'm gonna add s some com uh something like a Xanthan for thickening, and I'm gonna add uh some sort of aeration agent, like a methyl cellulose versus whip something like that right so like that kind of stuff I know about or you know Xanthan to hold things together or you know either in gluten or an egg replacing recipes uh or you know I need something that's gonna provide the emulsification of egg yolks so I'm gonna add probably soy less than or something like that.
Like these are these are things that I kind of like understand um but like straight up egg replacer I don't have a lot of um a lot of information on off the top of my head so I'm gonna but the thing is do we have a way to actually make sure that I look this up before next week's uh radio sti uh show or not? You keep the question yes keep so we'll just we'll pump it over into next week's questions. But it's it's something I'm I'm interested in looking I'm trying to figure out like what they could make you know that actually looks like an egg on the plate that works like an egg on the plate and why it wouldn't work in baking. So this is something I'm willing to uh investigate further and deserves more time than I uh was able to give it this week Kurt so I will uh check up on that Nastasha will pump that question over on to the next week and another one I got that was kind of difficult from uh Scott Koleric is um uh you know we talked I think a little bit on the Thanksgiving episode about the dragon's beer candy the poshmuck right didn't we? Yeah yeah and so in that recipe uh you know in which this goes to cooking candies um in that recipe you add acid at the beginning of the recipe and what happens is is that the the longer it cooks the acid uh continues to what's called invert the sugar it breaks the sucrose which is a disaccharide down into two monosaccharides um and that reaction is sped up by the presence of acid.
So the longer you cook in the presence of acid, the more you break the sugar down into uh the sucrose down into into uh you know glucose and fructose, and that has the um those sugars don't harden up the same way when when the sugar cools down, when the sugar syrup cools down, and so you end up getting a softer product. The longer it cooks, the softer it is. Uh so um Scott was working for a chocolatier, or is working for a chocolateer uh part-time, uh as a chocolatier, I should say, and uh he is told that the faster you cook a caramel to a certain temperature, the softer the product will be. So it's the exact opposite of what we've what we've been uh you know, what we have with regular sugar syrups, right? Uh and so uh he says, I understand that the the temperature in a candy is uh a function of boiling water off, so that as long as the accurate final temperature is reached, right, the product would be the same.
And this is something I think I probably also said on that on that thing is that the uh because I remember we also had a question on caramels or something like that. And it's true that uh if you cook to if if you if the only ingredients are sugar and water, and this is why maybe if I was talking about caramels last time, I'll have to look it up. You know, I probably spoke too soon. If the only ingredients are sugar and water, right, then the final temperature is strictly a function of uh of of you know how much water is in there, right? So no matter what, you know, the the the water content's gonna be the same once you reach uh the final the final temperature.
Uh and that may or may not be true if other ingredients are in there and changing, so and so altering the boiling point. Uh like if things break down and become soluble or no longer soluble, then they will will, or they will no longer affect the boiling point. I don't know how much that's going to affect the temperature, right? Um now the other problem is is that there's a lot of stuff in a caramel. There's milk solids, there's fats, there's all these other things, and each one of those right affects the final texture of your caramel.
And uh, I downloaded a couple scholarly articles, but didn't have a chance to necessarily wait wade through them. And I'm trying to figure I was trying to figure out why it is that cooking it for longer um is going to make it uh make it harder. And I haven't found any yet, except for to say that, you know, that that the sugar is only the the sugar the sugar and how much it's cooked is only one of the things that's affecting the texture. Like something that's going on, as you said, with the with the milk uh milk solids might be uh a factor, like if you cook the milk solids too quick or they don't get converted enough, that might affect the texture. Something going on with the fat, although I doubt it might affect the texture uh based on that.
You know, you had posited that you know the there was one cook that you that used to work at this chocolatier where he used to cook uh very, very quickly and he always had to cook to a higher temperature because his caramels were coming out too hard, and less uh too what'd you say, too soft. So you needed to cook them no, sorry, too hard. Anyway, again, getting all bam you know confused. But the um the point is is that I would guess that if you cook it really quickly, you'd liable to go to a higher temperature anyway. Uh you know, I I think it would be unusual where cooking something faster means you got to a lower temperature because I would think that you'd have hotter stuff at the bottom and when you pull it you get a higher rise.
But I don't know. So it looks like it's probably a more complex uh more complex problem than you know than first blush looks at. And unfortunately I was I would have talked about it with uh Harold McGee. I spoke to him yesterday, but he's kind of in transit. He's finished up his whirlwind book tour.
By the way, Harold McGee has a new book out called what's it called? The keys to good cooking, right? Yeah. Keys to good cooking. Was uh was on the New York Times bestseller, Harold McGee, good friend of uh cooking issues, good friend of the blog, good friend of ours.
And um so go buy his book. But anyway, next time I speak to him, which is gonna be at the end of the week, I'm gonna try and ask him about this because it might be something that he researched in you know in all of the uh all the stuff that he's been doing recently for his book. But it it is an interesting question, and you have me uh a little bit uh stumped. So anyway, uh so that is uh all of the questions for uh today. And so I want to uh uh this is a personal plea.
If any of you out there have good, and going back to the raw food route raw food challenge, if any of you out there have any suggestions for me, should we write this stuff up on the blog as we do it or no? Nastasha doubts that I'm actually gonna do it. Nastasha doesn't think that sh but not for the reason that you guys out there. You guys out there in Radio Land think I'm a welcher, which means that you think I'm a bad, a poor qual a low quality human being, as my son would say. Yeah, no, I don't think you're a welcher.
Well I just think you have a lot. Yeah, uh a lot of stuff to do. Yeah. Okay. Well, look, the fact of the matter is is that it doesn't matter.
Like it like a welcher is a welcher. If you say you're gonna do something and you don't, then you're a welcher. It doesn't matter if you're too busy, because the same thing saying, well, I would pay you, but I don't have the money. No, you're a welcher. You made a bet and you couldn't deliver.
So we have to do it, right? Um the question is are we gonna have the time to write about it? That's the that's the thing. But I'd like to write about the ex the experience of trying to trying to go raw food. But we're definitely then let me write about the experience.
Well, okay, so uh for those of you out here, this is a little insight into into the cooking issues team and why we don't write very often on the blog. And that and the reason is is because I'm a huge jerk, right? And so I have an extr uh I have an extremely narrow point of view about kind of uh everything. And so I'm I'm hard to work with when it comes to writing things. Is this true or false?
That's true. That's true. Uh including with myself. The only person harder on uh me is my wife, who's maybe one of the great editors. I mean, you know, maybe not as good as her sister, Miley, my sister-in-law who runs the Food Network magazine, but pretty pretty damn good.
My wife is a vicious editor. Um, but aside from stylistically, which I'm horrible at, you know, um content-wise, I'm pretty particular. So uh I don't know. What would you would you what would you want to write about? Uh the experience.
The expensive from from my perspective. See, for well, but like about what? Like it couldn't be a good idea. I mean the recipes, the you know, day one, day two, day three, how we feel, you know, the difference between maybe we should start a separate blog. Because we're not about our feelings.
I know, but I think people can't do it. Who cares about our feelings? Why would you listen? You guys tell us, but I don't think anyone cares about my personal feelings about anything. I think they do.
I don't think so. I mean, why do I I don't care about I I hardly care about my personal feelings about things. Why should anyone else? What you've seen all feelings. I've seen all feelings.
No, the thing is like I like here look, here's the thing. And this is maybe I'm gonna offend everyone now, probably, but you know, one of the reasons, you know, I like that the my whole issue with blogs is is trying to like strike this balance between um you know serving yourself and serving and serving other people. I don't necessarily see the value in saying what what I had for dinner tonight. You know what I mean? Unless it's instructive in some way.
Like I'm not a good enough writer or a good enough photographer where you know I could spin a yarn about what I ate tonight and have it be, I think, of any use to anyone. You know what I mean? So the the th the question is, you know, how do we do it without becoming self-indulgent? There has to be some sort of learning process. Which means, which is really irritating, is that we're gonna have to develop some sort of new technique or ingredient having to do with raw food stuff.
Nastasha's now banging her head against the microphone because she knows what this means is she's gonna have to go through hell because now we're gonna have to come up with some fancy new technique with you know regarding uh raw foods or something. Is that is that your your worry? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Anyway.
But uh, you know, if I if I have to languish in testing hell for a month, it's much better than being a welcher. This has been Cooking Issues. We'll come back next week to answer more of your questions. Oh, you dare
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