The following episode of Cooking Issues has been brought to you by TechServe. This January, responsibly dispose of all your old electronics at one of ten e-waste recycling events held across four boroughs of New York City, hosted by TechServe and the Lower East Side Ecology Center. Computers, printers, monitors, and lots of other electronics are being accepted for safe and proper recycling. Visit TechServe.com slash recycling for more information and drop off location details. Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues on the Heritage Radio Network coming to you live every Tuesday from 12 to 1245.
I am uh I'm Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues. You can call in all of your questions to 718-497-2128. That's 718 497 2128. Most of the time we take technical questions, but we'll we'll take any question. Today actually, uh Nastasha is not in the studio with me.
She is live from where the heck does your family live, Nastasha? Near Pasadena in California, Southern California. So not not even in Pasadena, like near Pasadena? Yeah, a very small town. Uh anyway, so Nastasha's uh got up early in the morning, gathered all your questions, and is uh joining us across the country live.
So how's it going over there, Nastasha? How's the weather? Good, it's good. It's raining. Do you miss me yet?
Wow. Wow. Okay. So um now yes, of course of course we always miss you when you go, Nastasha. Okay.
Just just messing around. All right. So we have uh quite a bunch of questions to get to today, so let's start out. Uh Steve, okay, I'm gonna try to pronounce his name. Mignonia.
What do you think, Nastasha? You speak Italian. Steve Mignonia. I think it's a good one. I think that's fine, yeah.
Yeah, that's good. I just got a thermal circulator. Congratulations. Uh and for those of you that don't know, that's what allows us to do most of our low temperature cooking because it keeps uh water temperatures very accurate. Great for the restaurant, great for dinner parties, great for cooking for your family.
I use it all the time. I have two. Nastasha has none. If Philip Preston from Polyscience is listening, Nastasha Lopez would be great uh marketing tool for to for you to give a circulator to, just saying, maybe for Christmas. Maybe for Christmas, I'm just saying.
Uh it's not too late, you know. Uh I just got a thermal circulator and I'll be using it to cook short ribs for my family for the holidays. Also a good idea. I do not have a lot of time this week to experiment with cooking temps and times, and I want some advice on which to use. Uh my father, who's a big skeptic of any uh new cooking technique, I'm with you, Steve.
I know what that's like. Uh, we'll be making short ribs the old-fashioned way. Uh so we are going to have a short rib cook-off. Um Steve's seen different uh techniques between 55 degrees Celsius and 60 degrees Celsius, anywhere from 24 hours to 72 hours. Steve's leaning towards 58 degrees Celsius uh for 60 to 72 hours.
You're not gonna need to go that long. But anyway, I'll get it at it in a second. Uh Steve's ideal finished product would be a medium rare short rib that is fork tender. He's not looking to replicate prime rib or fillet texture, which is good because they shouldn't be the same. Uh but would rather have a more fork tender falling apart meat.
Any thoughts? He says he knows that I recommend 60 degrees Celsius for 48 hours, which is 140 for all you Fahrenheit heads out there. But uh, what's the final result with those numbers? Thank you. Okay, now uh a lot to lot to talk about here, and uh unfortunately we're gonna get into some technical minutiae for all of you uh people who are gonna space out on this.
But look, here's the deal. Uh here's here's the good news and the bad news. I would not pit a low temp short rib side by side against uh a regular short rib because I think they're different. And if someone's shooting for a a good old fashioned stick to your rib short rib, the old fashioned short rib's gonna have kind of a beefier taste. It's also gonna have more of a pull apart texture.
The low temp short rib is uh and Nastasha, you know this. Uh yeah, the the the the sh the low temp uh short rib is gonna it is it's gonna be soft and tender, but it is gonna slice more like a steak, right? Right, Nastasha? Mm-hmm. Yes.
Yeah. And and it's not gonna be rip apart like a uh like a like a regular short rib. But if you want something, I wouldn't go 58 degrees. 58 degrees is it's pretty rare. Um I think people want a little bit of a medier taste, they want it a little more cooked, but slightly pink on the inside.
I mean, you could go as low as 57, which is about 135 Fahrenheit, uh, and then you're in the kind of the the medium that's in the medium rare zone, but people aren't really expecting a short rib there. Um so uh what I would do is I would serve it entirely differently from the way your dad um serves his short rib. I wouldn't try to replicate, I would just recognize that they're two s entirely different products and um and serve it a uh accordingly. I mean, I wouldn't like shred it up and serve it over a pile of uh like some kind of a starch product. What I mean, Nastasha, you've eaten a lot of these things.
I mean, and from someone who's doesn't come at it uh from the same perspective I do, what do you think about the traditional versus the the the low temp? I haven't I actually haven't had a lot of traditional short ribs. I mean, whatever short ribs I've had have been at home, and well, we all know how that is. Yes, yes, nastasha's family can overcook even short ribs, apparently. Um but so uh in other words, I wouldn't try to pit them against one another, although it it's admirable.
I have done it many times, and um the the traditional short rib is gonna have a more traditional short rib texture. It's gonna be beefier because it's gonna be cooked at a higher temperature, but it's also gonna be the meat fibers themselves are gonna be overcooked. I would choose 60 degrees uh and uh because Nastash, you like the 60 better than the 57, right? Yes. Yeah, I would do 60, and I would do it um if you at 60 degrees, if you cook it for 24 hours, it will have the texture of skirt steak.
Uh at 48 hours, it will be uh a a firmer but still tender um short rib. At 72 hours, it will be to my taste too mushy. It'll have lost too much of its texture. So I would go in between 48 and 72. I would say somewhere in the range of like 56 hours at 60 would be a good number.
Uh I would sear the meat both, I would sear it quickly, uh, put a crust on it beforehand. The key to this technique is over-reducing your sauce before you put it in the bag. You must over-reduce your sauce. If you it has to be like almost gloppy, because what's gonna happen is you're gonna bag it with the sauce, the meat's gonna give up its own juices into the bag and water down the sauce. It's gonna taste like pot of four, like a boiled beef, which is not what you're looking for.
So you want to over reduce the sauce. Uh a couple hours before you serve it. I would then uh after it's done cooking, I would let it chill down. Don't chill it right away, or the meat's not gonna absorb a lot of the juices again. I would put it on the counter for about 20 minutes.
Then you could put it in uh water for about regular tap water for about 20 minutes, although that's an extra step. It does make it taste better, according to Bruno Gusseau and according to our independent taste tests afterwards. Then you can ice it down. I would then uh open the bag uh s you know several hours before you're done ready to cook, scrape out the sauce that's rendered, warm it on the stove, correct the taste and temperature of it. It will uh likely need to be defatted.
It will most certainly need acidity, uh, might need seasoning correction. Put it back into a Ziploc bag with the short rib. Don't let it, you know, uh me, sorry, first then sear the sort ri short rib real quickly from cold, right? To put a little extra crust because it's gonna look green and kind of weird. Throw it back into the bag and then re-therm it at like 55, 57 for up to four hours.
But you could probably uh like two or three hours, it'll reabsorb some of the new sauce that you've put in that's gonna be thick and juicy and delicious, and that is going to be a bang up delicious short rib, but it won't be the same thing as a traditional short rib. Any any comments, Nastasha on this? No, that's good. And then let it he should let us know what his family thinks of his and his dad. Yeah, well, here's the thing.
I mean, like, it's like anything else. The low temp short ribs, it's not there's some things that are just better, right? That I mean, that's the case. There's some techniques that are just better, uh, and then there are techniques that are just different. A traditional short rib is different from a low temperature short rib.
A traditional short rib, you're basically almost boiling out the meat, the fibers themselves are horrendously overcooked, and then you render the the collagen into gelatin, the gelatin plus the delicious braising sauce. By the way, the braising sauce is then reinforced with that gelatin, right? So so you get an incredibly uncuous uh sauce. Um, and and that's what makes the deliciousness of a short rib. But those short ribs can't be sliced, those short ribs don't have the same texture as a low temperature short rib.
Low temperature short ribs aren't as uncuous because you don't render out the gelatin. The gel the collagen breaks down, but when you slice into a low temp short rib, you'll see that the collagen hasn't rendered out. You can still see where the collagen was. It's just become soft. So that stuff doesn't render out into the sauce and doesn't give that incredibly uncuous texture to the sauce.
It also doesn't individually moisten each fiber of meat the way it does in uh in a traditional braise. Furthermore, in a low temp, because you can see it slices the fat, doesn't render out, so you're gonna have to slice off some of the fat. So it's all a question of what you're looking for. If you want something that you can slice into a beautiful presentation, is incredibly tender, but not the same as a traditional short rib, and you realize you're gonna have to make up for some of the stuff you're gonna lose, incredible beefy flavor. I would put some cooked uh rendered meat into your sauce beforehand.
Don't just rely on the on the short ribs themselves to provide that beefiness because they won't be there because you're not using a high temperature technique. So I would just try to keep in mind the benefits and disadvantages of each technique. Realize that they are just different techniques. And does it have to be a competition? You know, ask your dad, Steve.
Does it really have to be a competition? Anyway, uh happy collars. I guess. Someone just emailed me and said that that they can't get through. I don't know.
Is that true? Jack, what do you know about this? Jack, our our trusty engineer. We're we're short staffed today in the uh in the in the radio station. I see nothing.
Huh. Huh? Did I give the right number? Anyway, call if you can hear me, caller, try back again at uh 718. What is it, Jack?
718? 7184972128. Yeah, Nastasha, maybe tell them to try again. Yeah, because John Stewart. I hope it's the John Stewart.
Oh, well, that would be amazing, but uh I I assume not. Um so um, well, John, if you are listening to me, you are the John Stewart. Anyway, uh see, Nastasha is so bad with customer service, I swear. I swear, you gotta learn. Never learn.
Okay. Oh, we have John on the line. All right. Hi, John. How are you doing?
Hunter. Hey. Question for me? Yes, sir. Uh, so yeah, I just want to say uh big fan.
I've just discovered you guys uh month or so ago and have now listened to all of your uh backlog, and it's it's really really fun. So um you guys have inspired me to uh build my own immersion circulator. Nice and get some spherification supplies. Uh so I've been doing that the past week or so here. So I'm experimenting with both of those, um, and I hope to use both of them in a uh New Year's Eve dinner that I host every year.
How many people um uh it's gonna be twelve to fourteen. Okay, good. That's a good number to start with the circulator. Okay, yeah. So I mean last year I did a so I guess there's three questions I have about that.
So last year I did a beef tenderloin, uh, you know, just traditional cooking. It was good. Uh tenderloin's a crowd pleaser. Um and I guess you know, sous vide is appropriate because I can you know control the temp, internal temp very well. But uh I'm wondering if there's something I guess my question is what do you think is the m protein that is most improved by Sous V cooking?
Um I wonder if I should be more ambitious than just a tenderloin. That's an excellent question. Uh and strangely one I haven't really thought of. So let's just break it apart between sous vide and and the low temperature, right? Because most proteins can be done well.
Uh, you know, when I say well, I mean properly, uh low temp and to to good effect, depending on what you're shooting for. Some proteins I don't like very much in uh in sous vide in a vacuum bag because I find that affects their texture. Chicken most notably and and certain fish. But are you gonna be ziplocking or are you gonna be doing vacuum? Just Ziploc.
I don't have a vacuum device. I use by the way, I use Ziploc at home. That's what I use. Um I'm assuming that your circulator is gonna be able to do like about a degree or so. I mean, are you gonna P I D control it?
So it's gonna be at the end of the year. It should be accurate within you know tenth of degree, really. Couple tenths. All right, good. Okay.
So uh and as long as you have good circulation, it'll be accurate across the bath. Okay, fine. So you you can do pretty much anything you want. Um here's the good the good news about uh tenderloin is that uh it's fairly easy. You want to go super low temp on a tenderloin.
We're talking like 55, 54, like as low, low, right? And and I wouldn't cook the tenderloin whole. I would cook it in uh I would pre-slice it out, uh sear and put it in the ziplocks and get it ready to go. Here's the main problem with the tenderloin, and one of the great things I love about cooking steaks uh in low temp, because that that's by the way, like in fact I might do this soon. It's one of my favorite like dinner party things because it's gonna be really easy for you to do.
Like you're gonna be a rock star, and it's also gonna be easy, right? Uh I prefer a big thick uh rib steak, like thick, you know. And so and so uh and the the bad news about the tenderloin is if you do it, if it cooks much more than about 40, like 45 is ideal. If it cooks much longer, like an hour and a half or so, because there's no connective tissue in the tenderloin, it's gonna start to feel kind of fibery. So for someone who's not used to it or is used to overcook tenderloin in general, they'll think it's fine.
But you you know, you probably won't think it's as good um as as it could be. I mean, you can do a bang up job on the tenderloin, but it's just you know, you have to be careful not to cook it too long. I mean, one of the great tenderloin applications, low temp, is uh the beef wellington, where you can cook the whole tenderloin like you know, for a short period of time all the way through, then wrap it in a puff and then hit it really hard in the oven so that you don't overcook the meat because it's already cooked, you don't need to worry about it. It's you know, technique we call low temperature for insurance purposes. But if you go if instead of going tenderloin, if you go rib steak and then and I like to serve the rib steak, you know, what I'll do is I'll I'll buy like a standing rib roast for a party, then I'll slice it into steaks.
Right. I'll uh you know, usually I'll take the bone off, maybe render that to make some meaty stuff. Then take the steaks, cut them real thick. Then uh I sear them, and I actually sear them a lot longer than I normally talk about to put a put a heavy crust on them because I make them so thick that you're not really losing that much meat by doing it, and it really gives a nice kind of crust and meaty flavor on the outside. You know, salt and pepper the heck out of them.
Then I throw them in a bag with butter. I throw garlic in. Some people don't don't like that, but then I use the butter afterwards to make garlic bread so that I have a no waste situation, right? Then uh then the the advantage of a rib steak as opposed to a tenderloin is a rib steak can cook for you know like a minimum for a real thick steak of uh you know an hour and a half or so, but up to like four, five, five, six hours, your window is a lot longer and you're not gonna have um you know, so people don't sit down or if or if something happens, you're not working right at the edge, and you're not worried about the texture going bad on you, right? And then about an hour before service or so, I would turn the bath down to uh fifty-two.
I mean, don't say I said so, but fifty Celsius, so that the whole whole temperature of the steak drops down a little bit so that when you put a real monster sear on the outside, when you take it out, you could put a really good crust on it without d uh raising the internal temperatures too much on the uh on the center of the meat. Then, you know, you just you know, and you can do that steak by stake. So you could so for a party you could if you have like you know four steaks that you're serving out, you know, really thick ones, you could do two, slice them down, send them out, and you know, then do the next, you know, then you know, take a five minute break, do the next two while you sear off the next two and and bring them out. And it's uh, you know, that's the way I run my dinner parties. Nastash, you've been to my house for steak, right?
Yeah, uh no, not for steak, but I've had the steak that you're talking about before. Yeah. The one where I drop it. Well, yeah, you made it. I we did it at the school and you made it.
I mean, that's that's a it's a crazy, it's a crazy awesome way to have a dinner party, right, Nastasha? Yeah, it's delicious. Yeah. So I mean, I would do that over over tenderloin. I mean, at these the it used to be, and this is like, you know, and uh it's not me being misogynist, I'm just like, this is what I used to hear, right?
That the ladies they like the tenderloin. And uh but I think nowadays, you know, I think uh you know, even people who used to go on those old you know, sex sex based stereotypes, which I never buy into, but you know, that go on it, I think everyone realizes now that a dude a dude thinks it's like mucho sexy for a woman to tear into a uh a rib steak. Am I right about this? Yes. Yeah.
It's like it's like it's like it's become kind of chic for women to order like uh, you know, a uh a neat scotch at a bar because it's a sign that you know you that you that you're a butt kicker. Am I wrong about this? I agree. Yeah. Anyway.
Is this helpful at all by the way for your dinner party? No, that's a great, great suggestion. So what temperature you'd so you say 50 C to like finish it off, but what about the you know, few hours cooking beforehand? What temp would you use there? Uh okay, so I would do my personal some people I know like to do as low as uh some people cook really low, which I don't, but like fifty-five to fifty-six in that range.
Okay. Like so a good like middle ground is like fifty-five point two or fifty-five point five. If you have a chance to practice on one rib steak before you do it, so you can get a feel for what for what it's like. Um that at fifty five five, it won't be squashy at all in the center, especially if you cook it uh long enough, it will be good. Um 56 sometimes is a little too tight for people.
Um, you know, for especially for rare heads, it's a little too tight. But like 55 5, the squeamish people, if they look at it, they might say that it's underdone, but once they eat it, they're gonna like it. And and uh and the the rare heads aren't gonna be uh it's a good compromise, right? Especially if you put a you drop it so that the temperature goes lower and you put a good hard sear on it, no one's if their eyes are closed, no one's gonna quibble with the texture. Uh it's just a question of uh how it looks.
Uh and then of course, um, you know, even though I make fun of uh you know a lot of Nastasha is partial to any kind of Italian any kind of italian, it doesn't matter what it is, if it's Italian, it's good. So, you know, so I'm gonna bust on her all the time about it. Anyway, so but that said, when I do steak at home, I go Italian style and I drizzle some delicious olive oil over it, um, and you know, some crunchy wallin salt, and I've never had a complaint. Sounds delicious. Um, great.
So uh that's very helpful. I appreciate it. Um so the other question is about uh then spherification. Um so one thing I want to try to do is sort of a deconstructed bellini. So I'd like to uh do like a reverse spherification of peach and then drop that in prosecco, right?
Um so I'm you know, I'm obviously very new to this. Um what I've found online basically is that the idea is I'll put some calcium lactate in the peach puree. Right. Get calcium lactate gluconate. Don't get just straight lactate, get calcium lactate gluconate, because it has no taste.
Calcium lactate still has some taste. Okay, so that was my third question, then is what is the difference between lactate and lactate gluconate? Okay. Um okay, so then uh so then I'll basically then freeze it. Uh so the ratio was about two point five percent, I think, for the calcium lactate glucanate.
Yeah. Two to two and a half, somewhere in there. That's good. You have to warm the peach puree to get it to dissolve properly. Okay.
Not hot. You don't have to make it hot, but you should warm it. I mean sometimes you don't need to, but you just want to be sure, you know. Okay. And then just drop that into a sodium alginate bath at uh point five percent is I think what I found.
It depends on your alginate. If you have a really strong alginate, then point five would probably work. If you have a weak alginate, uh then you might have to go as high as point eight, point nine. It all depends on your alginate. I'd try a couple different um a couple different ratios.
Also, how long you let it sit in the alginate bath, the the skin is gonna keep growing on it. What I would do uh if you you know you if you can make them beforehand, you put them in the alginate bath, you let them sit for however long, depends on your alginate and whatnot. Fish it out carefully, don't let them touch each other. They'll glue they'll glue to each other. Okay.
Then you're gonna want to rinse it off in uh water and to get the excess alginate off of it, and then you can put it into a calcium bath briefly just to make sure everything's set up. Uh now you can let them thaw in the calcium bath. You can let them thaw in peach puree. Uh you can let them thaw inside of uh your champagne flute if you want. But what you can't do is let it thaw in uh you can't leave it in the alginate too long, and you can't let it thaw and stay in a regular straight uh water bath or calcium bath because the the the sugar and the flavor and the color are gonna leach out over time.
So through the shell. Yeah. Yeah, it's per it's water, it's water, you know, it's it's it's semi-porous, so you're gonna leak the stuff out. It becomes like a membrane and and you have osmosis across that membrane, and you tend to lose color and flavor and sugar and acidity. Like and doesn't take that long.
So I mean you don't worry about it when you're making it, but I'm saying don't store it for hours and hours in a water bath. You can store it directly in your calcium-based peach puree, right? Which is always good. Or um you can uh let them finish thawing in your champagne flute. The only the the good news about letting it thaw in the champagne flute is it's easy to get in without breaking.
The bad news is is that if you have a broken one, you're not gonna know until you pour the champagne in. So, you know, it turns out you can never win. You know? Do you ever notice this? Yeah.
Um, and then how long, I mean, when you prep prep something like that and then put it in the the peach puree, like leave it sit in the peach puree. Um, how long is it good in that situation? I mean, how long ahead can I make these? Long time. I mean, uh, you know, I've I've never done it with the big ones to kept them a long time because I just do them for like an event or for the classes, but you know, we've I've had uh reverse um reverse spherification uh maple syrup balls that we've kept for Nastasha.
How long have we kept those things? Like a week? Uh yeah. Yeah. Like a week.
As long as it's isotonic, right? If you're storing it in the same stuff it's made out of and there's some calcium there, then you'll you'll be you'll be okay until the stuff goes bad. Okay. Yeah. We gotta take a break.
Great. Oh, yeah, we're going to our go into our first commercial break. Thanks for your call in and good luck. Let us know how it works out. Thank you very much.
Appreciate it. Appreciate it. All right. How you feel, brother? Feeling good.
You feel good? So much bone, brother. How you feel, mate? I'll feel all right. How you feel, bellow?
Yeah, yeah! 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 have a bump good time.
Let's take them up, Brad. We've gotta take you high. Alright. You wanna do it again? Yeah, that's the wrong thing.
We gotta take the high Brother. Yeah. Now I won't have about it. Let Brad blow up my two corpses. And then I wanna wave you and let's go into it with now.
Alright. I'm gonna get that fella with a low horn over there. Brad, get it take us high. Welcome back to Cooking Issues. Call in all your questions to 718-497-2128.
That's 718-497-2128. Coming to you live for another segment or two. And by the way, uh Heritage Radio Network is on hiatus. Hey Nastasha, you get to use the word hiatus. You like that?
Uh we're on hiatus next week. Uh, and we'll be coming back to you, I guess that means in uh in the new year. So this is uh this is our holiday edition. Yeah? Yeah, how said that earlier.
Uh it goes to show what I know. I was busy. I'm building a new computer at home and my head's been stuck in the sand. Uh sand is the polite word. Anyway, uh well, we're talking about low temperature cooking.
Uh, and again, if this is the first time you've ever heard me rant on about it, low temperature cooking doesn't mean that you're cooking something too a low temperature. It doesn't mean raw. And you know, raw raw cooking we're gonna get into next year. Nastash, we have to set a date. We have to set a date for our raw cooking extravaganza.
Our week of raw. Is that what we is it already set? The last week of January? We don't have anything to do, and I think it's I think it's a good time. We have no other events?
No. All right, people. People, last week of January is cooking issues, raw food week extravaganza, not just raw, by the way, because I can't stand to be called a sissy in public. Uh well, it's not true. I I let I let it slide all the time, but not when it comes to food.
So, you know, you can call me a physical coward, you know, you can call me like a relationship sissy. That's fine. But food sissy, no love. Anyway, so uh uh, you know, anyway. So we're gonna we're gonna do the raw food challenge the last week of January.
I've already purchased with my own uh my own money, an excalibur dehydrator because all the schools were stolen. We're sourcing a champion juicer. Uh I am you know, but I'm gonna go on this for a second before I answer the next question. Unless the caller calls in, I'll take them right away because that's service for you. Uh the uh uh so here's some things, Nastasha.
We have to think I w Nastasha and I have read now what, like like eight, nine raw food cookbooks. Yeah. Yeah. No, don't no, don't get no be nice. Well, I'm not gonna go post apocalyptic.
In fact, you can't cook raw food in a post-apocalyptic situation because you won't have your vita prep, you won't have your your uh you know your dehydrator, your champion juicer, all that. The question is can we at the cooking issues team, can we bring some stuff, some some stuff to the table that other raw food people haven't brought to the table yet? Yes, right? First of all, I'm gonna rotovap some stuff. I'm gonna make some hyper low temperature reductions.
Now, I might get called a sissy here because it's not gonna be useful for all the raw food people out there because they can't do that. But we can do distillations at low temperature, we can do fruit reductions, things like that, well below the 118 marks. So we're definitely going to do some of that, right? Um I'm also interested in using a uh trying to find some good recipes for the uh Santho, the wet grinder that they use for dolls, see whether we can't get some new interesting recipes using the wet grinder uh from a from a raw food perspective. And I'm also uh I'm gonna use a a bunch of enzymes.
I mean a bunch of now, because it right, Nastasha, there's nothing wrong with using a commercially available enzyme prep. I mean, enzyme is the whole dealy, right? I mean, why can't we use enzymes? Now, if I if I can get a hold of straight transglutaminase that doesn't have any maltodextrin in it, it's been heated, and it doesn't have any uh any uh casein, any milk casein. I don't see why we can't use some uh transglutaminase to glue some uh raw proteins together.
I mean it might be fun, right? So these are these are the kinds of things I'm I'm thinking about um for our raw food extravaganza, which we've now publicly announced so that we're not welching, is gonna be the last week in January. Which means we have to start cooking now. You know all those raw food recipes. There's all the all the all the raw food recipes are you know, stick some almonds in water and you know, wait eight years and you'll be able to eat.
You know, if you you know that like the cooking instructions are so bananas and all these things because it just takes so dang long uh to do. Anyway, we will do it, and uh we're gonna do a good job. And it won't be any yes, we're gonna do a good job. Okay. Kurt writes in my Queas and Arch slow cooker seems to hold a fairly constant 165 degrees uh Fahrenheit, 74 degrees Celsius when on the warm setting.
Is this temperature useful for any low temperature cooking applications, or is it simply too hot? Kurt, I am sorry. It is simply too hot. Um it's good for traditional cooks um and and uh and braises. You know something you could do in it that is uh going to be good is uh for instance if you want to do a duck confie, but you don't want to have to worry about it, right?
You can uh put into a bag uh and even uh uh listen, the uh the John S. C. Johnson wax, a family corporation, you guys familiar with these people? They make the Ziploc bags. Uh they're gonna they will they will write in and call me a bad human being if I say you can do this because their bags can't take boiling temperatures.
Polyethylene in them can't take boiling temperatures. But if in fact your thing doesn't go above 74, it should be able to handle this okay. If you take uh duck leg and even just a couple extra tablespoons of fat, and you you salt cure it uh with uh like thyme and uh herbs and whatnot for you know the recommended procedure, like overnight, uh, you know, a day or so, and then put it in that Ziploc bag, you can put it in your slow cooker and leave it for like uh you know several hours, uh, and you can make a very good duck confie that way without having to have a lot of fat. So it's really good to do stuff like that uh in in a similar vein. Any traditional braise like that, uh, or any conf fee, I should say, not a traditional braise, but any confie uh is great in that something like that because I actually prefer the high higher temperatures, the more traditional temperatures, but I like to be able to do it without having to have boatloads of fat around just because it gets uh expensive and messy, and then you need to cool it in the fat, which is a pain in the butt.
And so I think it's uh it's a really good technique, but just don't tell the SC Johnson wax people on me. Um what do you think, Nastasha? Yeah? Yeah, no, that's good. That's good to know for me because that's all I have here at home.
Yeah. Alright. Well, uh, I will say that uh when I use a circulator, nine uh out of ten times my circulators, unless I'm doing creme en glaze or a test for like vegetables at a higher temp, or like we're working on nictimalization, unless I'm doing something kind of special like that. Uh my circulator is set at uh below below six below sixty-three, really, most of the time, below sixty-two. In fact, at sixty or below ninety percent of the time.
Uh, you know, I'll do m most of my steak work in the the 55 range in there, duck at like 57, uh, and then uh chicken at 60 uh 3 to 65. That's what I should have said 65. So that range is where where I am, never really above that, um, unless I'm doing creme en glaze or something special. But it's really great for confie, and there ain't much more delicious than confit. Um let me see.
Michael writes in and says, Hello, Nastasha, here's a question for Dave. Uh hi, Michael. Uh, how can I make my own fizzing tablet like Alka Seltzer or Airborne? Obviously, I'd like to be able to give it an intense flavor and have whatever mineral salt is used in the tablet base not be too overpowering. I think the main thing I'm not sure about is how to bind the powder into a tablet, thanks, Michael.
Okay. There are two uh ways to well, I'm sure there's a billion ways to make tablets, right? Uh like the easiest way isn't going to work for you, which is you put the ingredients into a gum paste and then like uh cut them or or you know, push them into tablet shapes and let them dry out. This is gonna give you a texture similar to an altoid, right? But not kind of a hard shiny tablet.
Uh the next easiest way, uh, and that won't work for the this because uh if when you I don't think that if there's any liquid, when you combine that, the way you make a fizzy tablet is you combine an acid, typically some mixture of citric, malloc, uh tartaric acids, right? And uh I guess you could do lactic or something like that, but typically it's either citric malic, tartaric or a blend, uh, with a base, uh typically something like baking soda like sodium um sodium bicarbonate, although some people use uh I think uh potassium bicarbonate or uh you know other mixtures of of bicarbs, right? And when they combine in liquid in your mouth, they uh they they fizz, right? And this is the same thing that happens when you make a volcano when you're a kid when you add vinegar to baking soda and you get this volcano that spew up, right? Now, uh, how are you gonna get these in into a tablet?
That's the question. Okay. The easiest way, not very satisfying, but the easiest way is to buy empty gel caps. Uh and you can get those. I know Whole Foods sells them.
Uh they're basically the Whole Foods doesn't sell the gelatin ones, they sell like a carrageenin-based one, but GNC or any of these places where there's kind of people making their own pills all the time, or you can get them on the internets. Um you get gel caps, and you can fill the gel caps, push them together to form capsules, and they'll melt fairly quickly on the tongue and if you let it sit there and go acid. But I I get a feeling this is not what you want it what you want to do. What you want is something called a tablet press. Okay.
And the way a tablet press works is you take a bunch of uh ingredients and binders, they use like dextrose powder, uh probably some uh malt sometimes some maltodextrin, whatever your flavoring is, and uh maybe some oil-based agents, I'm not sure. Uh, but they mix it all up and then they put it into uh a uh two-sided press, and then a press comes down and bang, smashes it into a capsule form. And if you're really rich, you you can write your name in it and stuff like that. Now, uh these presses, they're not they're not cheap, right? They they have manual versions of them.
I looked on eBay this morning and there's someone it's uh called a tablet press. There's someone selling a hand one for fifty bucks that I think you put the ingredients into a little cylinder and you screw it down, uh almost like you're screwing down like a jack, and it it smooshes a tablet and then opens up and you have it bang, you have a tablet. I don't know how fast those are. What I used to do leather work back in the day when I was a a leather worker with my wife making uh bags uh long time ago. Um I had something called a kick press that I used to use to do uh or you know, uh to make st put snaps into things and grommets, and they have all different dyes.
Uh that would probably be the next level up. I don't know if they provide enough force to make a tablet, but I didn't really I didn't really research it long enough. Uh all the you know the big the big machines they use uh like a hydraulic power and you press it and they squish it down, but now you're talking like a a several thousand dollar problem instead of a fifty dollar problem, or for the kick press, if you buy it used if it if it is the same kind of press that you use to do snaps and grommet work, you're talking like uh, you know, a hundred dollar, uh hundred and fifty dollar problem, something like that. Uh, but that's how you make uh the tablets. Um the trick is making sure that you don't have an excess of base.
It's usually okay to have an excess of acid because we like acidity in our in our tablets. It's not okay to have an excess of base. In fact, you need an excess of acid. If you don't, it's it's uh it's uh not gonna have any uh acidity to it. You will have a salty aftertaste uh that you know that comes along with uh the acid in the base mixing and producing a salt.
So I would choose a salt that you like the flavor of uh usually sodium salts. I think taste better than the potassium salts. Nastasha hates the potassium salts. Yes, they do. Yes, yes, she does, and she tells me all the time.
Anyway, uh, so uh is that is that helpful, you think, Nastasha? No. I think that's helpful. Let's take uh one last break. All right, we're gonna go to a commercial break.
Call in all your questions to 718-497-2128. 718-497-2128 cooking issues. Oh, how you feel, brother? Feeling good. You feel good?
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Yeah. Now I won't have a body. Welcome back to the holiday edition of Cooking Issues. Call in all of your questions to 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128.
We'll probably maybe extend it a little bit, Nastasha. Go another 15 minutes. So if you can make it to Nastasha's door outside of Pasadena in the next 15 minutes, you can ask her a question in person. Just kidding. Please don't, please don't do that.
Please don't do that. Please don't. Uh yeah, her mom her mom will probably, you know, uh put some buckshot into you. Yeah. Okay.
William called uh called in. He couldn't get the live feed, so he sent an email in. Uh and he said, Dave mentioned lab sales where you can find old rotovaps. It's a rotary evaporator, uh circulator, which is, you know, we've been talking about a lot today, uh, that you can find pretty cheap and just need to clean up and maybe fix a few fuses on. I try my Google Kung Fu for auctions or sales in the NYC area, haven't found anything.
Do you have any resources I could check out to find these kinds of sales? I've never uh gone to a um a live uh lab sale. Um I get m uh n all basically of my lab equipment off of eBay uh and just base it on um on finding either occasionally someone will uh like flood the market. That happened with rotovaps a couple times, and actually recently the the market on on eBay was flooded with rotovaps, uh so the price went down, but it's it's starting to go back up again. Um there's centrifuges and things like that.
LabX is another website, LabX is another place that a lot of lab people go to get uh lab equipment. Um the live auctions that I go to are mainly restaurant auctions. There's not a lot of labs in New York that go out of business. There's a lot of restaurants that go out of business or change owners or for whatever reason have auctions. So all the live auctions that I've gone to in the New York area have been either laboratory uh sorry, uh restaurant auctions, or I used to go to New Jersey and Brooklyn a lot for machine shop auctions back in the day uh when I was in the art biz.
And uh I used to do that a lot. And those I always found in the um, you know, in the New York Times, in the uh used to be at the back of the help wanted ads. I don't know if it is anymore, but uh, if you've never been to a restaurant auction, it's something to behold. It's a crazy, it's a crazy situation, especially if you need 8,000 uh pans that they've been beat to hell for like a nickel apiece. Uh which, you know, or uh my deep fryer, I bought one of those things for like, you know, uh 50 bucks.
And yeah, they're crazy. I mean, you can get some crazy deals at those, but I've never been to a lab uh one. Uh now uh eBay, uh eBay, the way to go. And just look for if you can fix things, look for things that aren't not working, but that you feel that you can troubleshoot based on the description. You have to take chances.
I've had things that I couldn't fix. It's rare, but I've had things that I couldn't fix for a reasonable uh amount of money. Um but you know that's basically what I do. I take my chances on eBay. It's a lot better if you can go to a live auction and kick the tires.
For that, you you you can look in the back of the New York Times, and they will have like major lab auctions that show up that you can go to live, but they're not usually in the New York City area. They're like they're around. Uh but you know, Eli Lilly did that a while ago, and there are people who who uh who deal with that. Um hope that's helpful. Didn't sound so helpful, but I didn't feel very helpful.
Was all right. Didn't feel helpful. Okay. Uh Teddy Davico writes in. Hey Teddy, how you doing?
Uh he's uh asked some questions before. Uh recently watched Wiley. That would be Wiley Dufrain, uh, my brother-in-law, friend of the blog. Uh Wiley's Meat Gloomania presentation for Harvard's food science class. That's the class that for on uh Adria is uh heading up at Harvard.
Uh we have had a lot of good friends speak there. I think uh uh you know McGee spoke in there, uh Wiley, Dave Chang, uh bunch of them didn't ask us, right, Nastasha? Didn't ask us. Not us. No.
No, no, no, no. It's you know we know why? We're chumps. Why? Chumps.
We're chumps. Low quality, yeah. Low quality, we're low quality people. Uh this sparked an idea. I think it would be possible to make hot ice cream using an ice cream base, transglutaminase YG, which is the yogurt uh transglutaminase.
Transglutaminase binds proteins together, including milk proteins, so it makes yogurt so it weeps less and holds together better. Methylcellulose and gel and gum, do you think this would work? I should be receiving my act uh sample of Activa soon. Thank you. Uh no, I don't think it will work.
Uh uh but you know, I look here's the deal. Hot ice cream is one of those things that people have been trying to make for for you know years and years and years and years. Uh the first hot ice cream uh uh attempts were made by a physicist named Nicholas Curti uh you know who is kind of uh one of the one of the people in the 60s who really started uh 70s started really popularizing uh you know science in the kitchen he was you know he knew McGee he was one of the original people in the molecular gastronomy conferences in Ariche uh and he wanted to make hot ice cream for a long time it didn't work out for him uh Wiley Dufrein uh took it on for uh a long time as something he wanted to do was working on it a lot back in the year uh I think like two thousand two thousand one in there uh and not able to do it um I've had uh other like bloggers and people's and who shall remain nameless their recipes for hot ice cream and uh none of them taste like uh ice cream um I mean the the problem with ice cream so the the the theory is I can make that I can make something that has uh the texture of a melted ice cream right so that's the gel end so you're making a fluid gel that holds its shape even when it's uh even when it's you know uh either caught or cold doesn't matter and has the texture of like a nice ice cream base can you do that? Yes. Uh can you take a methyl cell and make it uh firm up when you heat it?
Yes, right? And that's what all the hot ice cream recipes are based on some form of methyl cell that melts when it puts in your mouth and gets cooler, right? But uh but i none of them have uh the the texture is ice cream, none of them are as hard as ice cream, they don't have the bite of ice cream. Like ice cream is like a chilling effect in the mouth. It's just nothing I've had approximates what the the what you want in your head is something that that provides that the feeling of ice cream, but is somehow reversed from hot to cold from cold to hot.
And I've never and I've tasted a bunch of people's different recipes for it, and I've never had something that provided an experience that I thought was satisfying. Uh it just it just I think it's one of those it's like the it's like the philosopher's stone of uh of uh new cooking techniques. Every like everyone's had their hand uh you know, tried to make it, and you know, just like you can't turn lead to gold, I don't think you can make a uh hot ice cream. I can't think of a good bet to make on it, like we did on the raw foods. But uh I in other words, I would want to have it.
Like I hope someone could make it, because I think it would be really fun. But I've not had one so far that I thought was totally successful. Wiley made one, he said he can get the texture of soft servo okay, but not like a not like the hard ice cream. It's uh that that's even like the super holy grail is the hard ice cream. So I w I hope you have success.
If you call the different recipes on the internet, there are several uh for hot ice cream. Uh and I want you to have success. It's just I'm I'm dubious. Uh I am dubious as to whether or not you will be able to achieve it. What do you Nastasha?
Am I being too I'm not being hard, I'm not being hard, I'm just this is you know I mean I think the cool I don't I'm uh not really sure what you're talking about, but I think your brûlate ice cream is really good. Yeah, but that's different. That's a cold ice cream. Yeah, I know, but I I I can't even like register hot ice cream in my head. Right.
Well imagine something that's exactly the opposite of ice cream. It's like ice cream in Bizarro World, you know? It's like it's like it's it's it's hard when it's hot, and then when you put it in your mouth, it cools off because it's you know you're cooler than it, and then it melts in your mouth instead of you heating it to melt it. It's like every it's like everything bizarro. But uh, and I know many people who've tried to do it, it's just I've never had one that I thought, man, that's ice cream only hot.
You know? The brûleed ice cream is good, but it's it's still it's you know, it's ice cream, it's cold in the center. But Teddy, I want you to work on this problem. This is the the y you're you're traveling a good line of thought traveled by many, you know, very um very smart and very good people before you, so maybe you can succeed where where they they have not. I hope so.
Uh because that would be that would be fun. So tell us tell us what kind of results you have uh with it. Michael Nakin writes in uh and hello, uh he says, hello. Uh he has tapioca maltodextrin, which I've used for the usual tricks of turning various fats into soils and powders. By the way, uh Michael, remember don't call it uh just tapioca maltodextrin.
The one that turns oils into powders is ensorbit uh tapioca maltodextrin from the National Starch Corporation, right? Not all tapioca maltodextrins will will turn uh fats uh into powders. In fact, uh almost none will, except for enzorbit, uh because of its particular structure, it's a bulking agent. Okay. That's why it's so so light.
Um so uh in the fat duck cookbook, Michael uh continues, Heston Blumenthal talks about Maltodextrin DE19, which he says is a low sweetness sugar that he uses to make savory ice creams. Are these the same or closely related products? Can I use my tapioca maltodexra in this kind of application? And would either of them be useful in making a low sweetness vegetarian, savory marshmallow. Okay.
Uh here are my two cents on that. Uh they're they're not not equivalent, okay. Um dextrins are so basically you take a starch. It could be tapioca, could be rice, could be, you know, anything, corn, could be whatever. And you have a starch, which is basically a length of repeating glucose chains, uh glucose uh units, right?
And you break it down into smaller things. So uh the smallest thing you can break them up into is is sugars, right? Uh, you know, glucose and glucose syrups. And then uh slightly longer, like you know, like eight, you know, eight, eight glucose units long, you have seven glucose units long. These are called maltodextrins, right?
And they can either be not sweet if the chain is fairly long. The longer a glucose chain is, the less sweet it is, right? So the longer chain maltodextrins aren't sweet at all, really. And so the endsorbit brand tapioca maltodextrin is uh not sweet at all. Uh, but it doesn't really act like sugar the same same way.
The shorter chain ones can start tasting sweet to you, right? So DE19 means that uh it has that that powder has the uh I think this has been a long time, but it's basically 19% as sweet as sugar per unit weight, right? Uh and and it's composed therefore for of fairly short glucose uh unit, you know, chains of glucose, right? Anything much higher than that, and you're dealing with like a glucose syrup, which are also not that sweet compared to sugar. You're talking on the order of like a fifth of the uh sweetness of sugar.
Uh and so you can use them for things like savory ice creams, which we do all the time at the school, we make a uh we make an ice cream uh that uh, you know, one of Nils's old recipes that is uh goat cheese ice cream, where we use glucose syrup, which has a s a slightly higher DE, i.e. slightly more sweet than uh than the the um multidextrin you're talking about, which is D of 19, we're like DE 20, D E in the low 20s range. Uh and we make like basically save not savory but not sweet ice creams with that. I don't know how useful they'd be for making a marshmallow because I don't know exactly how close the properties are to sugar, and sugar is not it's not only like a texture, it's a structural component in your in your uh marshmallows. So I would tend to think that you'd be better off using something like an isomalt.
Isomalt is half the sweetness of sugar, but cooks a lot like sugar. So for a marshmallow, I would go ahead and use something like isomalt. The uh the problem if you if if you uh if you use too much isomol, and I love isomalt, but if you use too much isomalt, like if someone eats like eight bags of isomalt uh um uh marshmallows, they're gonna get the poops. Because you don't digest it the same way necessarily, so like some of it goes as fiber, and so you can get you can get the poops from it. Uh anyway, so I'm told.
I've never gotten the poops from too much isomalt, but I got a cast on your stomach. I should feed some to Nastasha because you know, it if anyone says they're gonna have a problem with it, Nastasha will say she's gonna have a problem with it. Am I right about this? That's right. Yeah?
Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, so uh yeah, well, I had something else on that. Something else on sugar. Oh, I once tried to make uh savory marshmallows with this product called LyTess, which is a modified sugar product that has zero sweetness, but I don't even know if that stuff's on the market anymore.
I didn't have much success with it. It always uh absorbed too much water out of the air, and they got too they got too weepy. See, Michael's taking on a double-edged problem. First, he's got to get the good uh vegetarian marshmallow, which means you have to get the right carrageenan product to mix with it. Then to take it the next step and want to make it savory, then you gotta get the right kind of savory product.
I would definitely start with uh I would definitely start with uh with isomol. Definitely, definitely. Uh yeah, right, right, Nestor yes, no, yes. Okay. Yes.
Alright, so uh we Come on, Dave. Come on, Dave. What you have the goose question or you can answer that? Oh, the goose question. What was the goose question?
Did I get that one? Yeah. Number five. Give me the goose question. Other other than deep frying, this is from uh Adam.
Right. Other than deep frying, what would you suggest for cooking Christmas goose for the first time? My mother never let us have it because she thinks it's too greasy. I want to show her that she's wrong. Ha, goose.
It's an interesting problem. I have cooked goose uh several times. Uh it's sometimes hard to get like a meaty goose, and so it seems greasy or it seems tough because it's not, you know. I would goose. I mean, the question is, does you know, does he have a circulator?
We don't know. We don't know if he has a circulator. I mean goose goose would be great in a circulator and then crisped up in a really, really hot oven. Dang, cook a goose. I would do goose to try and render out if you if you're worried about greasiness.
I would try to render out as much of the fat. Now this is totally just off the top of my head, by the way. So, you know, take this with uh, you know, a box of salt instead of just a single grain. But uh I would um I would maybe do something like you do with a picking duck almost, where you you know, you kind of separate the skin away, uh, then you you know put the hot uh liquid over it, and then you allow it to air dry a little bit, and then I think you, you know, uh like with a fan, and then you could probably render out a good bit of the uh of the fat um and make it not so greasy. So I would tr I would I would treat it if you don't have a circulator, I would treat it as if it were a baking duck.
If I had a circulator I would break off the legs and then by the way Booker my my oldest son is started every five minutes he comes to me he's like I thought chickens made meat I didn't know you had to break the head off of a chicken to get chicken meat and then I'm like yes you have to break the head off a chicken to get chicken meat and he goes do you break the heads off of chickens I'm like no I mean I I I I would if I had to I mean I think it's you know kind of an obligation but he's like well why why not? I was like well you know we buy it from a butcher but it's he it's like so brutal he's like break the head off a chicken that's what he says break the head off of a turkey. That's like that's his imagery is that somehow you walk up to it it's alive and you break its head off which I guess not that far from the truth but it's just you know hearing an eight year old use terms like break the head off of anyway uh so uh if I had a circulator I'd break the legs off the tur off the goose and then uh cook them separately because they're gonna want to be uh at a higher temperature and cook for a long time to break it down whereas the breast meat's gonna get dry and overcooked if you if you let it go that long. So I would break it down uh do the breast low temp I would do it at probably 57 or 58 for about 45 minutes uh cool it down sear off the skin to crisp it up and then uh do the legs almost probably confit style uh but that's that's me but deep frying obviously a great alternative because deep frying is God's cooking technique. Uh uh what do you think?
Yes or no? Okay. So uh this I guess will be the last cooking issues of uh this year of 2010. We're gonna come back in 2011 a little bit of a uh an announcement Nils is uh Nils, the uh intrepid leader of the uh French culinary culinary program, is uh he's not leaving the the FCI, but he is uh changing his roles. He's stepping down from that role, he's going more on a consultant basis.
And so uh he came to us and I think we're gonna he's gonna be probably off the cooking issues mastead, he said, right? Because he's moving moving on doing other things. Is that what he said to us, Nastasha? Yeah. So that's that's big big news.
But uh, you know, he got put in uh in eater and various other blogs, uh kind of incorrect information uh about the the whole situation. Nils is just wanted to do some other stuff and is very is very, you know, time consuming, busy job running the culinary program at the French Culinary, especially because we're expanding and doing doing a lot of other things. And uh I think he just wanted to uh cook cook more and run schools less, right? Yes, that's a good way of putting it, yeah. Yeah.
Uh as as should anyone who likes to cook. They should be wanting to cook more. Uh and so that is all of our uh New Year's resolutions from here at Cooking Issues. Uh Cook More, and we'll catch you in the new year. Thanks for listening.
Happy holidays. Vicious Vicious. Oh, you dead.
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