Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. We're recording on a Monday, but we're going to be broadcasting on Tuesday. So if you're listening to it now, you're probably not listening to it live. But uh if you happen to have read our blog post, you can call in your questions to 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128.
This is the last cooking issues before the big museum fundraiser event. It's going on uh at Del Posto next weekend on Sunday. You can still go and buy your tickets at Mofad M O F A D. That's the Museum of Food and Drink. Mofad.eventbright B-R-I-T-E uh dot com.
That's uh Mofad uh uh Mofad.eventbright.com. Anyway, uh we are privileged today to have a special call in guest, Harold McGee is going to be the the ultimate master blaster of the science of deliciousness, is going to be joining us via phone. Unfortunately, we're working uh very hard on the museum uh event, and so Nastasha cannot be with us today in the studio because in fact she is delivering produce to WD50 because Wiley Dufrain is gonna be working on the dish today for uh you know, doing some preparatory work today for his dish. So no Nastasha, but we do have Harold. Harold, are you there?
I am Dave. Good morning. Good morning. How are you doing? I'm doing okay.
How's the West Coast treating you? Uh it's it's okay. This last week has been really rainy and cold. Uh today it uh it was sunny to begin with, but the sun has disappeared, so it looks like it it may be another grim week. Uh I'd love it then.
You know, I hate the sunshine. Right. Well, but you know, 50 degrees, you want a little uh a few rays. Yeah, all right, all right. Yes.
If it's gonna be fifty out, might as well be a little bit uh a little bit sunny. Okay. So you want to start uh hitting these questions? We have a bunch of email questions in. Sure.
Uh before before we start, someone uh wrote in one of the questions. Uh they want to know the secret of Thai iced tea. Uh the mysterious spices in Thai iced tea. And I have to say I don't know 'cause I'm not a uh I don't really I don't drink it. Um do you drink it?
I'm afraid I ha uh I haven't for a long time. I did a couple times years ago, and uh uh yeah, I just can't pull back the uh the flavors. Yeah. And so I mean I think that, you know, this is the kind of uh question uh Aaron wrote in with it. I think this is the kind of question um you know, I would hate to give just a researched answer off of the web of of what belongs in it because I don't have the actual taste memory in my head to know whether it's right or not.
It's not something I've worked on because it's not something that i i it's just not something that I've you know focused on ever. But you know, I'm sure that we can find the answer. I mean if you uh you know, if you see PIM when you're out there or something like that, we can probably get the answer of what the what the stuff is, but I would hate to I would hate to guess on something like that. Yeah, yeah. No, same here.
All right, Aaron. So I apologize, but I will not be able to answer that question this week because uh I just don't want to give uh an answer that's BS. I'd rather not give a B I'd rather give no answer than a BS answer, right? Yeah, and also I mean uh d uh for Aaron to do his own research, uh shape him would be a good place to start. Uh David Thompson's book on Thai cooking is uh seems to be the the standard.
So there are a couple of, you know, authorities you can start with and then kind of move on from there. Yeah, I'm sure Thompson has a recipe for it in the book. I have it at home. I just haven't been home to to look at it to get the uh to get the the recipe out of it. But he his book is, you know, as far as I can tell, quite well respected.
I know that he's done all of his research on the on kind of the old on the old manuscript, so he has a a thorough knowledge of uh current Thai cooking and historical Thai cooking. So in fact I think he has uh a new book uh this last year on uh street cooking, street tie, uh, which might be the uh an even better place to look. Yeah. And that's where we'd probably go anyway if we were just gonna give you it wouldn't be our answer, it would be his answer anyway. So Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Or or check out Pim's uh Pim's uh site. Now I'm gonna knock out uh one question right away, and uh Harold, you can chime in because you've had some of this stuff. But uh uh Rick writes in and says that his roommate Zach's advisor just purchased a new uh rotary evaporator for the lab and has agreed to let them use it for a few days for food purposes, and they want to take maximum advantage of uh of everything that they can do in it, and uh you know they want to build their own, but they they're not ready for it quite yet. And so they want to know what we should do. Like uh he just wants to distill basically as much as possible.
Um he wants to get the flavors of phalernum uh into it, maybe. He wants to do um Martell Cordon Blue is ripe or something. I've I've actually wrote a VAT and Harold, you've had it. Uh we did a uh event with uh Mandy Aftel where we wrote a Vap Martell with frankincense. I don't know whether you like frankincense, but Martel does rotovap quite well.
Uh he wants to do something with maybe uh absinthe, any of these things, oak, dirt, grass, cigars, uh, peppers, like Wahillo Ancho and stuff like that. What are the rotovap stuff do you like, uh, Harold? Uh pretty much everything you've done. Thanks. I I love what you do with habaneros, for example.
That's that's an amazing experience to be able to separate the the heat from the aroma. Right. Yeah, I mean I've I've done dried and and uh have you ever had any of the dried pepper? I prefer the fresh pepper ones because I like the floral note that they have more. Yeah, yeah.
Um and then the I mean the the dishes that I've had uh that have really stuck in my my head, in fact the very first one is probably still the the one I remember best, uh, is the um the Roka family did a um an oyster in a jelly that was flavored with uh earth. Uh so um uh one of the ideas on the list here was uh along with oak and grass and cigars was dirt. And dirt works, although uh you and I had it, I think, um, when um uh the Rokas were visiting the FCI and it wasn't the same. Well they didn't give it to me. He wouldn't give he said he was gonna give it to me and he didn't, probably because it wasn't the same, maybe.
Uh yeah, yeah. So uh in fact I I had it and it wasn't as good. And I I think with something uh a flavoring that you uh rotovap that isn't a standard food ingredient. Uh it's more of an environmental uh aroma. Uh I think you have to just nail the concentration just right, otherwise it tastes like dirt instead of like the forest.
Well, and also they were using a water based distillate, and the water based isulates tend not to be fixed very well. So if they're opening and closing the bottle and it has to be transported, I mean, I don't know uh what kind of freshness problem they have with that just in terms of loss of the volatiles, but I mean it's a huge problem with uh with non-alcoholic rotovapped products is that they just tend to the the aroma is so fugitive they tend to just pfft go, you know? Could that have been it? Was it overly dirty or was it just not not as just unbalanced? What was it the the one?
Well, it's a good question. I was I was guessing that it was uh the concentration because it did seem to be just stronger. Um but it could have been stronger because you know the wrong things were were popping out. And um so it it could have been that it was just uh you know, he he had to prepare the distillate and then bring it with him, and uh who knows how many days old it was, and that may have been the problem. Right.
Well, okay, if you have a roto vap for just a couple of days, I would uh obviously I would recommend trying something that you could do no other way, and that would be some sort of fresh herb, right? Uh some sort of fresh herb uh that you distill, and I would drink that right away. Make it very, very fresh, very, you know, summery spring like. Uh that's like, you know, the one that we do with the um do with the Thai basil and cilantro and uh the cucumber and the orange, right? Something something like that with those flavors.
Because uh you can't recreate that with a normal distillation because the temperature is too high and it's gonna alter the flavor of the herb. So I would definitely do that. I would then do um something like uh uh a pepper. I would choose a fresh one that's floral, kind of red, so you can get the floral notes so you can see what it's like that the spice doesn't go through. I would then do horseradish because horseradish makes an intensely, intensely pungent because the the the pungent principle of horseradish does distill.
And that's gonna last you a long time. So you'll have that for uh uh you know, a good long time. Then just start doing wacky things like de-oke some liquors, um, you know, try some of the culinary preps like uh dirt or earth. Just remember you're gonna have to uh some of the things that are more aromatic, like horseradish or um or habaneros or whatever you do, you're gonna have to totally break down and clean all the grease out of the rotovap joints uh before you run the next batch because you'll get contaminated. There's also if you've never run one, unless your roommate knows how to run it really well, or the or the the you know the uh professor knows how to run it really well, there is a learning curve associated with it.
Don't set it to the automatic distillation, sit there and and actually constantly force the distillation so that you're getting uh the fastest rate possible. Set your chiller as low as it can possibly go. For alcohol, you're gonna want to set it around minus twenty Celsius. We now use a cold finger distillation, distill with uh liquid nitrogen, and we can do water-based distillations that way. But um have some fun with it.
Tell us how it worked out. Right? That's good advice, right, Harold? Yeah, yeah. It's always fun.
Good stuff. I've never done a cigar. I don't know. I've done smoky stuff. I've never done a cigar.
Anyway, um an unsmoked cigar, you think you means, or like the ashes of cigar? No, it must be unsmoked. I mean, the the fermented leaves, that's the that would be really interesting. Right. Right, but it's not characteristically what you think of as cigar the smoke.
It's a different, it's a completely different thing. Well, yeah, it's the cigar box smell rather than the yeah, than the the smoke room, which which I think is a good thing. Right, right. Yeah. All right, here's a question for you, Harold.
Uh, does r using reduced fat uh milk lead to a higher way higher whey production in uh when you're making yogurt? Like if you're gonna break it. Well, uh it shouldn't. Um because if you're using reduced fat milk, usually reduced fat milk is um supplemented with uh whey solids which include uh lactoglobulin which is uh a whey protein not the the casein proteins that that curdle but uh whey protein that's soluble but when you when you heat the milk uh which you should do at 180 for 30 minutes before you make the yogurt that protein denatures and helps uh give the yogurt body and and uh water retaining uh ability and so uh a reduced fat milk is gonna have more of that protein and it should in fact uh release less whey rather than more and the heating then is necessary to uh alter the whey proteins that is a necessary step because that was one of the questions before uh yeah in fact if you uh if you just make the the yogurt without the preheating step you'll of course still get uh curdled milk but it's not gonna have the kind of um thick pleasing consistency that you really want there you have it all right and uh then as a separate question what makes uh a marinate effective obvious factors are uh time but uh what about uh oils ratios of oils, acids or other liquids or the consistency of the herbs and other aromatics uh Joshua would like to know. What do you think?
Well um i uh uh yeah d different ingredients are gonna provide different things uh and uh consistency for example you're gonna get a lot more direct contact with uh the meat that you're marinating if the uh material has been finely comminuted. So if it's uh if it's ground or very, very finely minced and instead of chopped or whole um uh if it's spices then uh you know some of the aromas are gonna get out into the liquid and will get into the into the meat that way. But there's not much that happens beyond the surface unless you're actually gonna leave it in there for days. So that's something to keep in mind. Or if you vacuum bag.
Uh yeah yeah or jacquard obviously if you jacard it or inject then you can have this stuff happen very quickly. I mean I've noticed okay so a lot of people they'll do uh a buttermilade which you know chicken is fairly friable along the fibers you can get some penetration and if you vacuum bag it you especially can when you cook it that way I find sometimes it gets like uh acidic brines for me if you're not gonna take the next step and overcook the meat in a traditional way if you're gonna do so vide work on it it just is too mushy to me. You lose too much structure. What do you think? Yeah no I agree.
Uh that's that's uh something you see you know if you if you do a a typical wine marinade and overdo it, then what you end up with is the surface layer that you can just scrape off because the the meat has has denatured so much. And you don't want that. So uh uh uh using one of those the methods that you mentioned in order to speed it up if you really want some penetration and otherwise you know put put the flavors in the sauce. Right. I mean I tend to when I marinate I tend to you're right exactly I put acidic flavors and things like that in the sauce with rare exceptions and I put the functional ingredients for the w uh water holding capacity for proteins, salts and sugars and things like that, in the marinade or brine.
I mean that's typically what I do. Yeah, yeah, because salts are gonna get into the meat. Uh flavor molecules are much bigger. Salt breaks down into ions. They're they're tiny little particles that can move in and out of the meat pretty easily, but uh flavor molecules are not gonna do the same thing.
Right. Caleb has a question about smoking sausage. He purchased some cherry chipotle pork sausage. That's like a cherry chipotle it's got a ring to it there, right? And he's pretty excited about it.
With simply smoking the sausage as he would for a brisket or pork ribs, would that be a valid and delicious way to cook it? Well I don't see why not. Do you have any thoughts on that? No, sounds good to me and you know, get some cherry wood. I mean the the trick with the the smoking, right, I mean the the trick with any sort of sausage cookery is that uh when you're cooking off a sausage, uh typically what happens is you overcook the hell out of the sausage and you're relying on the high fat content of the sausage and hopefully the crafts you know the crafts you know person who made it making sure that there's enough fat in there such that it stays uh juicy even when it's overcooked.
Right. So if you can, I would try to control the smoking uh such that the sausage itself doesn't get much above one forty uh when you're doing it. And I think then you're gonna have like a really you know fantastic product. When we were cooking a sausage is what we'll typically do is is uh water bath them at one forty, which is sixty in Celsius land, and then uh and then grill them or fry them or pan them to get that nice, you know kind of crusty outside to it. So I think a lot of it is gonna be about the temperature control.
Yeah, no, I agree. I think the that's that's one of the the most common sins in the kitchen is overcooking sausages and losing all the I mean all that craftsmanship that that goes into mixing the the fat with the the meat just goes away the moment that you overcook it to the point that all the the juices are squeezed out. Yeah, what's the point, Ryan? Right? Yeah, yeah.
Just because it's a sauce tastes good, but right. Yeah, but just because it's a sausage doesn't mean you should mistreat it. You know what I mean? And it's so easy not to mistreat it, especially if you have a circulator on board. You know, you can just it make it makes life so easy.
Anyway, uh all right. So we're gonna go to our first commercial break. If anyone should be around listening, and it's remember, we're recording on Monday, not Tuesday. Call in your questions too, 718-497-2128, 718-497-2128 cooking issues. Nothing's new seeing the here before.
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That's 718-497-2128. Curtis Wayne, host of the show, not to be confused with Wayne Curtis, noted rum scholar. Weird, huh? Uh Harold, you uh still with us? Yes, indeed.
Beautiful, beautiful. All right. Um, so where were we? Uh we had a question. I will read it to you from Colin Gore.
He uh uh often asks us questions, but this one is specifically for you. Harold, the sweet potato is a delectable amalgam of starch, pectin, sugars, and other components. This I know. This mixed composition of sweet potato guts makes it a very versatile tuber. What I'm fuzzy on is why adding some acid, let's say vinegar, to hot sweet potato puree improves the film forming properties of the puree upon drying.
Without the vinegar, the film is glassy and brittle, but with the vinegar addition, the final film is essentially a kick-ass uh sweet potato fruit roll up. I saw a recipe for Ovulato, which calls for the addition of some vinegar to the simmering potato starch solution. So I assume that the vinegar modifies interacts with the starch in the sweet potato and other sweet potato components are just along for the ride. What is your hunch on what is being modified? Uh, and uh we'll we'll we'll hit that first.
By the way, for those of you uh who don't know, uh the Ovulato is that uh I think that's how it's pronounced, I don't know. Those are those potato starch uh sheets that you can wrap things in. You can you can buy them, I think um, I forget where they're made. Are they made in Japan or Spain? I I don't know.
I don't really use them, but that's what they are. Uh any any thoughts on this, uh Harold? You know, this is uh really interesting. I'm I need to play with this. Uh my guess is that uh he's right that uh it's an effect on the starch.
You're you're getting uh some limited hydrolysis and that kind of plasticizes the starch so that when you dry it all the way down, you know, you've got some you've got more um uh small sugar uh molecules and small portions, small um pieces of starch that help soften the the film uh so that it can't form as uh as brittle as she does he describes. And uh probably the same thing is going on with the sweet potato. Normally starch uh I'm sorry, acidity um uh makes vegetable matter of various kinds uh harder uh by limiting the degree to which the um cell wall components can be removed. Uh but in this case it's the opposite uh effect. And because he's seen it in in a pure starch uh system, my guess is that he's right that that's what's going on.
Right, but it seems strange that you would have uh hydrolysis with just a little bit of uh acid, you know. And uh uh conversely though, it's just not like a protein where you're shifting the you know, the isoelectric point by adding a little by shifting the pH a little bit and then radically changing its properties. It seems odd. Maybe he's adding a lot of acid. I don't know.
What do you think? Yeah, well that's it. I d I don't uh get an idea here uh for how much acid is being added. Uh but you know it doesn't take a whole lot to uh uh to change the hydrolysis rate. You'll get you'll get hydrolysis of starch in in neutral water just from the water itself.
So it might be that um uh just shifting the pH a little bit uh can can make a significant difference. So it's similar to adding a little bit of acid to a sugar boil when you're boiling it, it's gonna increase the breakdown if the longer you boil it the higher the breakdown. Yeah that's right that's right and yeah that's that's the other thing that's missing here is uh any sense of uh of timing you know how long it takes whether this happens kind of immediately or whether you have to kind of incubate it to let it happen. Right because any breakdown of the starch into shorter train chain uh you know uh sugars and dextrins and things like that is going to plasticize the the sheet somewhat right? Yeah yeah of course so with adding a multodextrin.
But maybe you know this is easier I guess. Yeah that's true. If you uh if you add small uh small molecules uh as another ingredient then you could get the same effect without without the the acidity and without the flavor of vinegar and that that might be an interesting alternative. And vinegar is also an interesting choice because although that's for instance what I use in my candy boils and it's traditional it's a volatile acid so why you know it would be it's interesting that you would choose a volatile acid maybe as a self-limiting measure. I don't know.
Mm-hmm. Yeah interesting because uh I'd also have to I I've never done a test of uh boiling vinegar testing the pH before and after and seeing how much of the vinegar the acidity is reduced by the boiling. Uh you know, once you recorrect for the uh liquid loss. Yeah, yeah. I've played around with that with that a little bit, uh not not really systematically, just kind of, you know, uh, with my left hand while I was doing something else, just to just out of curiosity.
And it seems as though the the pH anyway is relatively constant, you know, as you as you boil it down, boil uh a five percent solution down, which surprised me. Because it should get more acidic, right? You'd think so, but but you as you as you say, you are boiling off um acetic acid as well as water as you boil. So it boil it basically you lost vinegar at almost the same rate as water. Right, right.
Interesting. I mean I know for a fact that when you spray dry vinegar, you get the taste of vinegar but not the acidity, so you need to augment the acidity with a separate acid. When you're making, let's say, uh vinegar potato chips and you're and you're sprinkling um vinegar uh it powder which is sp spray dried with a multixtrin carrier, when you do that you have to add a uh supplementary acidity to get the acidity back to where you want it. Uh-huh. So I mean it's it's volatile enough.
And then uh Colin's second question, because we have we have pumped your s your awesome walnuts on the on the show. So he has a question. Is there anywhere on the east coast that a fellow can find walnuts low in tannins and astringency? Is it merely a matter of harvesting walnuts in an immature state uh on uh San Giovanni's Day, as many Nochino recipes call for? I did not know that.
Uh I don't know what species grow in Italy where those recipes originate. Um and and we have black walnuts locally. I'm interested in finding nearby sweet sweet nuts as yours are likely off limits. I would be delighted if you could enlighten us further on the matter. Alright, let's have the talk on walnuts.
I don't think there's anything off limits about California walnuts. I think they'd love to sell more of them. Uh the the problem is finding uh a source on the east coast of the good stuff because, you know, that it ranges from good to not so good. And you can tell just by looking at the nuts uh how astringent they're going to be the lighter the seed coat uh the milder they're going to be um uh and of course you want to make sure by looking at them as well that they're fresh because that's going to be the other problem you know if they've been shipped across the country then who knows what kind of shape they're in once they get there. Uh immature walnuts are wonderful but they're nothing like um the walnuts we're talking about here they're they're wonderful crunchy they're not that astringent but boy you have to wear gloves in order to deal with them right stain the heck out of your hands right yeah yeah they they do have that the the fruits do do give you that wonderful kind of aroma uh that's nothing like a a standard you know dried walnut uh aroma but uh yeah it's a a completely different experience and a mess.
Right well I try well I as a kid I used to play around with that stuff. That stuff does not come out of your hands. It just doesn't because we had a bunch of walnut trees around. But the um okay so at your house we tried the red walnuts which people are are pushing but those weren't the miracle nuts. They were nice they were good the red walnuts maybe you could say something about those but it was these uh very low astringency why don't they just why don't they just ship only that like what like is it more difficult to produce?
Is it a tree by tree variation the same way it is with acorns? You know some acorns are more bitter than others uh and you just have to know the tree I mean um I don't really know much about walnut propagation. Is walnut clonal? Are these done by graft? Is it done by seed?
Is it just lucky shots? Like, why isn't everyone and as a separate ancillary question, like why are California almonds so low in oil? Why why? Why do they grow them so low in oil? But in other words, like couldn't could they make all the walnuts this delicious and they just don't?
I think so. I d I think it's m for the most part a matter of variety. And um uh you know, there's a particular guy I go to at the farmers market out here, who uh has several different batches. He's got red walnuts, he's got uh really light skinned walnuts, and he's got darker ones. Um and they're priced accordingly.
The red ones are more expensive than the light ones, which are more expensive than the dark ones. And you know, you just you you can take your pick. We like the light we like the light ones best though, right? Yeah, because they have the uh uh just the the nicest flavor, the nicest nutty flavor. Um I think the reason though, uh the the red ones are awfully good.
The red ones have instead of having tannins in the the the brown uh seed coat, they have um anthocyanins, the same pigments that give color to lots of fruits and vegetables, grapes, things like that. Um they're they're very delicious too, and they're not nearly as tannic as um uh as standard walnuts. Um I think the reason you didn't like them as much is that that batch of red ones wasn't as fresh as my batch of pale ones. Uh so they're just as walnut y. Yeah, yeah.
No, they're they're delicious. Um all right. Well, I I stand corrected then on the on on the red nuts, but d what's this farmer's name? Do you know? I don't.
I don't. Um I know it's on his truck, and I'm just not able to to pull it into memory at the moment. He's at the ferry market, the ferry tunnel market? Uh no, he's actually at the Alamanya farmer's market. Right.
But why can't they why like is you think it's just freshness? It can't be. Like why why do they only why do they even grow the darker skin? Is it just easier? Yeah, I I think it's um and and it may be that it's just a matter of uh you know, farmers covering their bets.
If they just m all grow the the same variety and there happens to be a problem with that variety, it's the old um you know monoculture problem. Um also I'm I'm just not exactly sure which variety is which here. It may be that this is a new one or it's an old one and it's not as productive. There m there might be all kinds of reasons for the the pr predominance of the darker, more tannic nuts. Right.
I mean I really don't know much about walnut culture at all. I don't know how long it takes for a tree to come into bearing or I mean I know they bear for a long time, but I don't know kind of what the farm cycle is on a on a walnut tree. What why why are uh why are almonds from California so low in oil? Do they do that on purpose? Uh it's a good question.
You and I tried to figure that one out. Why are uh uh almonds from California just not more delicious? And uh no offense, California. But they could I mean they're I mean, talk about uh tannic tough thick skins. Um uh they're there's no mistaking a uh California almond.
Uh and I don't know, it again it may be a matter of uh agronomic yield rather than uh quality. Um I'll I'll look into that. I'll ask some questions. Because I would pay more for more in fact we do. We pay more for European almonds that are higher in oil and more delicious.
Yeah. Yeah. Anyway. All right. Aaron writes in from Hull and he says he's going to be curing some bacon next week, and he intends to use uh Michael Rullman's uh charcuterie recipe for it, which is uh four four four hundred and fifty uh grams of salt to two hundred and twenty-five grams of sugar to fifty grams pink salt, pink salt.
Uh I'm assuming he's using uh the instacure number one, which is uh nitrite, not a nitrate. You want to make sure that you know which pink salt you're dealing with. Uh and he's gonna cook coat the pork belly with some of this mixture and leave it in the fridge or freezer for uh some number of days before roasting it until it reaches an internal temperature of 65, etc. etc. Uh kosher salt is hard to come by where I live.
Is sea salt like um malden a I think he means malden. It says more than here, but malden's a suitable substitute. Suitable but extremely expensive. Yeah. Um I mean the the the main thing you're gonna want to do uh is uh I mean I don't really think it makes it that much of a difference in the people have uh uh all these uh uh questions about w whether or not certain salts are bad for um for curing.
It's true that sea salts probably have some sort of extra minerals in them, but I don't know what they add to the brining process. In pickles, it's extremely important not to use uh certain salts because they can discolor the pickle, but I don't know that it's a big deal in in a brine for a bacon. Do you, Harold? Uh I I don't think so. It I know that it is an issue in the curing of fish, white fish like cod, because uh the the calcium and magnesium salts can end up causing the the cod to yellow.
But with a bacon that's not an issue. Right. Ham guys swear that the type of salt that they use makes a difference. In fact, I'm wearing a Finchfield Farms country ham hat right now. Um they say it makes a a difference, but I don't really know what the basis is.
I I could go research. I have Fidel Toldra's book on dry cured meat products, and I could look into the effect of the different um salt components. But I am sure that you will be fine if your wallet allows you to use Malden uh then um then go ahead. Oh, maybe they meant uh Morton sea salt. Any sea salt's gonna work fine.
Uh I would like to try a bacon cured with maple syrup for a friend. Should I just add some maple syrup to the freezer bag? I'm planning on doing this by eye until it's pretty evenly covered. Does this affect the curing process in any way that I should know? Well, you're gonna be doing a a wet cure in that, and you would substitute maple syrup for the water and sugar and then put salt into the maple syrup, I assume, right, Harold?
That sounds right to me, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh number three was how long should I leave the bacon to cure? I'm guessing the amount of time will be a function of the size, shape, weight of the meat I am curing.
Could you give me some guidelines? Um I don't have any in my head. Um I believe that the charcuterie book, Michael Ruman's book, has some some guidelines in it. You can accelerate the cure by putting it in a vacuum bag, but usually penetration is based on the uh the actual strength of the brine you're using, which is crucial. So if you're gonna add water to it, like with maple syrup, that's gonna reduce the brine theoretical brine strength.
And then on uh certain number of days for penetration, a certain number of inches into the meat, and it also is going to depend on the particular fat, um, the fat quantity in your piece of meat uh versus the lean. Do you have any anything on that, Harold? Uh no, that's that's about all I could come up with. Um there are charts in books uh and and uh as you say, um uh days per inch guidelines, uh and uh that's that's really the place to go. Yeah.
And then lastly, uh he's just ordered a piece of equipment that'll allow him to try sous vide cooking at home. Congratulations. Uh would would uh he be better cooking in the pork belly this way after curing or not? If so, is there anything you should look out for using this method? Okay, uh I happen to love pork belly uh cure uh cooked uh sous vide, uh in which case you choose the temperature you want to cook in general.
I would do something l below sixty-five, something like sixty-three, uh, sixty-two, sixty-three, even as low as sixty. It's gonna take uh that's Celsius, uh so one forty and up uh in that range. Um it's gonna take uh a long time, like like th three days, two, three days to get to tendered where you want, and then crisp up the skin. Uh oh, and I think s he asked uh later, should you leave the rind on? I would, wouldn't you?
Yes. Yes, definitely. I would leave the rind on, and then I wouldn't trim it at all. I would crisp the skin up uh and serve it because that's the b that's the best part once it's crisp. Leave it on forever is what I would do.
Gnaw it off. Yeah, it's gonna sound a little gross. You might want to trim away the the areas where the teats are just because they don't uh they don't fit the pan as well. The crucial thing when cooking a pork belly for later uh cooking is to compress it a little bit before you do so that you get a nice flat surface to pan the skin on to make it nice and crunchy. The other thing I've noticed, and Harold, I think we've talked about this before, is that when you have uh the pork belly isn't um one specific muscle, it's a it's a group uh of muscles.
Yeah. And um some of them, the ones that are the streaky portion and streaky bacon, let's say, uh they um they respond very well to uh cooking for a long time, on the order of of several days. Uh there's one muscle that runs through the pork belly in that's uh that you can really see in the cut that's called in Chinese uh five fingers or five flour, whatever it is, pork. Uh one of those muscles doesn't respond very well to long cooking and gets mushy and and uh and kind of tastes kind of dry. And so uh it's it's a muscle that looks a little um oval as you cut through the pork belly.
Uh and uh I would take it out uh you know and cook that some other way. Do you have you had that experience with pork belly? Or have you noticed? Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, uh in uh no matter who's made it, yeah. If that muscle is in there, then it's it's just different from the others. Um kind of like uh the shoulder. There's so many different muscles that some of them are just wonderful and others are less so. Right.
I would say, yeah, I would say different and worse. Yeah. All right. And with that, listen, if anyone's out there, you have one more chance to call in 718. We're gonna go to our next second commercial break.
Call in 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128 cooking issues. Nothing is new, see you to hear before. Watching wedding. We should sit with you and you got a ride through the door.
Welcome back to Cooking Issues. 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. Our producer Jack was uh pumping up the Hall of Notes his particular song because he thinks it's nice rainy day weather, which it is here in Brooklyn, rainy. Uh I'll say one last time.
You have uh a couple more days to go to Mofad.eventbrite.com to purchase tickets for the museum fundraiser. I'll tell you a little bit about what I'm doing uh at the at the end of the show. But right now, let's get back. We have Harold McGee on the phone. Hey, uh, would you consider the next time you're in town on a Tuesday to uh do the show live here at the studio?
Yeah, I'd love to. Love to. Nice. Nice. I was I saw I saw uh our mutual buddy Nathan Mirvo this morning.
Nathan's doing uh his uh book tour. He uh booked out Jean George restaurant in the morning and they cook some of the um some of the dishes from his uh cookbook, and uh he might be a phone-in guest at some point, which would be fun. Uh just pushing, you know, we have some some good some good guests, you know, coming like uh apparently Grant Aikitz is gonna is gonna be on the uh show sometime in uh in May, I think. Uh I think I guess to push the uh opening of the new place or what? I don't know.
I don't know. I just I heard from uh from his publicist. Anyways, this is what's going on in Cooking Issues Land. All right. Uh now we have a question for you from Tom M.
My question from Mr. McGee is Does extended brining denature the enzymes in beef responsible for tenderizing it? I wish to have a tender corn beef brisket and I've considered cooking it sous vide for 131 for 12 to 24 hours, shocking it in an ice bath, and only then brining it. But if brining does not denature the uh the tenderizing enzymes, then I might as well brine it for a couple of days, then do a hundred and thirty-one sous-vide um, followed by low temperature smoking, and only then do a high temperature sous-vide uh to get to collagen transforming temperatures for the appropriate length of time. Uh am I making things too complicated?
And can I achieve it in a simpler manner? Well, I'll just I'll say two things before I hand it off to you, Harold. Uh one, um you don't want to shock, you never want to shock uh a protein like that uh after it comes out of the um out of the bath because if you do, you're um you're basically gonna uh prevent the the meat from reabsorbing some of the juices that have been expelled during the cooking, and even at 131 you're gonna get juices expelled. So you're not gonna you're not gonna want to do that. I'm also gonna say that I think that 131's a little low for a brisket.
Um might want to I've looked I it's it's people do it all the time, very rare long long cookings like this. But I find that people, if they're expecting a cut of meat that is meant to be a little higher in temperature, it's better to go a little higher in temperature. Uh but with that, let me hand it off to you, Harold. Uh yeah, I'd I'd be interested to see what that's like, 131 brisket, but I have a feeling I'm gonna I'd prefer it at a higher temperature. Um and then uh on the issue of um brining denaturing the enzymes, uh, you know that uh I've actually never thought of that.
I I know uh in pretty good detail what's happening to the uh fiber proteins during brining. And that's the the major effect of uh uh tenderizing effect of a brine on meat is that it it kind of unknits the uh the muscle fibers and makes them uh easier to cut through. Um I've never thought about whether the the salt conditions are gonna change the activity of the of the enzymes that do to some extent break down the collagen and the and the fiber proteins. Um and so that's something I'm gonna go look up when we're all done. I I have no idea.
But but uh as a general principle uh you want to do the brining before the cooking not after the brining is only going to have its tenderizing moistening effects if you do it while the meat is raw. Right and also you can't cure cooked meat, right? I mean corn beef is cured somewhat so it's not gonna be cure cooked meat, can you? Uh yeah it's um again kind of an interesting uh counterintuitive sort of thing I I I think probably yeah what's gonna happen is that you will desiccate it uh but but the um uh the the meat is is cooked it's done and anything you do to it with salt afterwards is just gonna uh dry it out and make it salty. Right.
Right. Um yeah it's interesting I never even thought about trying to brine something afterward but I mean corn beef typically you'd add some amount of uh nitrite to it wouldn't you? I mean it's pink usually right so it's been it's been pinked. It definitely won't pink out you're gonna have it look uh gray. Well you want it these temperatures at 131.
I can't do the math in my head but that's somewhere in the mid fifties, right? 131 somewhere in the mid fifty Celsius. Um and you know we do our short ribs a lot in that range but find that people prefer them up n closer to one forty, uh between you know one forty and and and l and a little over. Um but I definitely don't think you need to go through like a million different steps. I think it's going to probably affect it you know like you the more steps the more chance for things to going wrong, things to dry out, things that for problems.
What do you think? No, I agree. Um and if there's a a straightforward way to do it um it's always almost always the best way to do it. Yeah yeah. All right so in the uh those are the questions that have come in so good we have at least four five minutes we can uh what are you working on?
Uh um I've actually been taking a little bit of a hiatus for a variety of reasons and um have not cooked uh anything serious in in like a month so uh uh but spring is coming and uh uh I'm sure that's gonna change fast. One thing I'm gonna do uh this coming weekend that I'm looking forward to is head off to uh Spain for uh a last meal at El Bui. 'Cause it's for real gonna be the last it's like real deal last now? Uh yeah. Apparently uh july thirtieth I think is the date now the restaurant will close uh as a restaurant and then reopen in the next day or two as a uh uh think tank.
Right. So who are you going with? Um a chef out here in California named Daniel Patterson. I love Daniel Patterson. Yeah.
Yeah his restaurant's great. Yeah. Uh and you know we worked uh together um you know, you know, we all did uh on uh Mandy Aftell's uh and his uh taste uh what was it called? Taste the s taste the smell. What was it called?
Smell in the Glove? What was it? Alchemy was in there somewhere. Yeah, alchemy of alchemy of taste and smell. Yeah, yeah.
You you have any uh any articles in the pipeline that you want to uh you want to let out of the bag or you want to keep them in the bag? No, in fact that's something else I've been taking a hiatus from. Uh but I'm hoping to get uh another curious cook column into the New York Times in uh about a month. Yeah, people crave it, but you don't know what you're gonna do yet. Uh actually it's gonna be about salt.
Oh yeah? What about it? And y we like what kind of what kind of aspects? So many aspects of salt. Well, uh exactly that.
Uh the the fact that there are now so many salts uh and some people say that they all taste different and that's uh for example kosher salt is uh horrible stuff, nobody should ever touch it. Um uh so I'm I've collected um probably close to twenty at this point, and um there there's been a very interesting controlled study with um uh professionally trained taste panel that actually tasted about twenty different salts to see if they could tell the difference. In uh in in what form? Uh a as a point eight percent solution to to try to maximize the opportunity to taste the difference because of course if you're gonna take salt and put it in mashed potatoes or something, odds are you're gonna have no clue. Right.
And it's so this is an extension of uh of uh a project. Was it was it part of the Eriche things that Steingarden went to because he was doing it in a Ricci years and years ago in his first book on salts. Remember that? Uh that's right. In fact, uh I I remember that tasting very well.
Um yeah, he he arrived with these little vials of uh of some of his favorite salts and some of his least favorites, and uh then we there was a sensory scientist who took play uh took part in the RHA meetings every year, and so he organized uh uh triangle test um where basically you're you're handed three little vials and you have to tell which one is different from the other two. And uh we we all took the test in a in a series of groups, and then they tabulated the results at the end, and it turned out that of the forty people in attendance, only one person was able to correctly distinguish all of the different salts. And was that a fluke or reliably, repeatedly was able to do it? Uh we only did it once. So it it may have been a fluke, but because that one person was Jeffrey Steingarten, of course it wasn't.
That's hilarious. All right, so we'll be we'll be looking forward to that. And uh so uh I'll just say what I'm working on for the museum uh fundraiser coming up. I'm doing the amouse uh boosh. I we like to, you know, in the back room we always call it the amuse douche because I think it's a ridiculous word, amoose boosh.
Uh anyway, uh so the uh yeah, the amuse douche will be um I gave myself food as medicine as my as my theme, because you know everyone has a theme, like Chang is do is doing uh pre-19, uh pre-uh 1491 uh food in in America. So he's doing oysters and acorns, uh Wiley's got caveman food, Mark Ladner Rome, you know, etc. etc. So I gave myself food as medicine, and uh I'm using uh an ingredient uh I'm using uh okay, so it turns out that uh bitumen, you know bitumen, you know, like uh like uh pitch, piss asphalt, yeah. Uh huh.
Uh it's exuded uh in uh in the Dead Sea area and in Iran and has been used as a medicine for centuries as has a very similar um exudate pitch exp uh exudate um from the uh him Himalayas called uh shilajid right and so which is used in in Aravedic medicine a lot should the Shilajid is. And so this was mistranslated by um uh from the Arab because Arab you know Arab medicine was the medicine in the you know eight nine hundreds in that range right so this was mistranslated by medieval scholars in uh in like the 11th century as uh because the word in Arabic is mummii like like m like sounds like mummy and in fact the word English word for mummy is derived from the same root of like this waxy pitch bitumen our word comes from it uh anyway it mistranslated this uh medicinal ingredient mummy as ground up uh human cadavers from Egyptian mummies and here started the trade in medicinal mummies so mum mummies were ground up by the boatload and sold in apothecaries all over uh all over Europe and in fact um they ran out of uh reliable mummy supplies so they would uh make counterfeit mummies by grinding up and and and you know but taking fresh cadavers drying them out and grinding them up and so the original pitch right which was the the part that the uh the bitumen which wasn't actually in an authentic mummy because they didn't use bitumen until very late in the mummification uh process uh because it was cheap you know they used much more expensive stuff right uh but uh so it it got it it changed from the bitumen being the important part of the medicine to the actual corpse. So then it got transmogrified even more so that later on it was found that if someone died very suddenly uh in the prime of life, then that's the best mummy that you can get. So like for for centuries, up until um I mean the the prime time was like 16th and 17th century, was prime mummy medicine time. Um but it extended for a long time.
Plus, mummy was used as a pigment up until the early 20th century. The mummy was a specific color of brown made by grinding up mummies. Uh and so uh and but it's come full circle again. Also spawned like vampire legends, all sorts of cool, weird, weird, weird, weird stuff, which I think I'm gonna write about uh for the blog, definitely, maybe for somewhere else. And uh so I I've located uh a source of the uh shilajit, which is the one from the Himalayas that's used in Aerovag medicine.
And uh so I'm gonna have that as mummy. I'm gonna put that on to uh rhubarb that I'm gonna cook uh sous vide because uh Francis the First of uh France uh always carried with him mummy and rhubarb as uh some of his uh medicaments to uh help him from whatever ailed him. So that's gonna be one component is mummy, mummy and rhubarb, and the next uh component is gonna be uh when he was uh defeated by Charles V he was held captive, and the zupa alapavese was invented for uh for him at that capture, which is basically bread with uh an egg that's cooked by broth that's put into a shavings of parmesan. So I'm gonna do a little toast with uh a gelee of broth, a uh slow uh done, well not really slow, but low temperature done uh quail egg and uh parmesan twilight. And so the other two components you will have to come to the uh fundraiser to taste to tomorrow.
Anyway, so I'm gonna uh thank Harold for being on the show. Uh, hopefully we'll get you in live next time you're in. Hopefully, we'll talk to you soon. And we'll leave you with mummies cooking issues. Thanks for listening to this program on the Heritage Radio Network.
You can find all of our archived programs on Heritage Radio Network.com, as well as a schedule of upcoming live shows. You can also podcast all of our programs on iTunes by searching Heritage Radio Network in the iTunes Store. You can find us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for up-to-date news and information. Thanks for listening. And the guests can't get it straight.
The following is a public service announcement from the Museum of Food and Drink. Dave Arnold and Patrick Martins have gathered a team of New York's most innovative chefs and bartenders to create a nine-course fundraiser lunch at Del Posto, Sunday, March 27th. Their intent to kick start the greatest food museum in the world. The menu for this unprecedented event is derived from educational themes of the museum. Chefs will draw inspiration from sources outside their normal sphere.
How will a cutting-edge chef handle the Paleolithic or a dish only using pre-Columbian ingredients? What will a modern Italian chef do with ancient Rome? The chefs include David Chang of Omufuku, Wiley Dufrain of WD50, Mark Ladner of Del Posto, Nils Norrin of the French Culinary Institute, Cesare Casella of Salumaria Rossi, Carlo Moraci of Robert's, Brooks Headley of Del Posto, and Christina Tozi of Momofuku Milk Bar. Bartenders include Audrey Sanders of Pegu Club, Thomas Waugh Death Company, Simon Ford of Perneau Ricard, Damon Bolti of Prime Meats, and Evan Clem of VR Guest Restaurants. Proceeds from the event will directly support the Museum of Food and Drink.
Tickets are very limited and $250 dollars per person. To purchase tickets, please visit Mofad.eventbright.com. That's M-O-F-A-D.com. Once again, M-O-F-A-D.com. Sponsored by Frenell Record, Heritage Foods USA, Pat Lafrey to Meets, Barter House Wines, Delposto Restaurant.
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