Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. I am Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues on the Heritage Radio Network, coming to you approximately from 12 to 1245 every Tuesday here in the studio today with Nustacha the Hammer Lopez Cooking Issues as always. She is the hammer. How are you doing, Nastasha? I'm fine.
How are you? Haven't seen you. How was your uh holiday weekend? It was good. Yeah?
Uh-huh. I went to Fire Island. Oh nice, how was that? Fine. Did you get poison ivy?
Nope. No, you Fire Island is a uh they should like well, I'm not gonna say it's uh obviously they should not light any fires there, but they should get rid of that some of that poison ivy. The worst case poison ivy I think I've ever had I had in Fire Island. In fact, the doctor said it was the worst case of poison ivy that he had seen in in at least five or six years of practice. My entire arm swelled up.
I looked like uh the in the incre if the incredible hulk was bright red instead of green, it looked like I had one giant hulk arm that but it was instead of like muscle, it was a giant sack of water. It's gross. Well, because they had these blueberries, you see, they're growing uh all on Fire Island. I picked all these delicious blueberries and luckily was able to make possibly the most delicious blueberry pie I've ever made uh before my arm swelled up into a giant balloon. So I I guess it was worth it.
I don't know. Did everybody enjoy it? Oh, they loved it. Then there you go. That was that was a long time ago.
That was in uh 2001. Long time ago. That's the last time I was at Fire Island. They still have uh deer whose fur being eaten off by mange like this. There was one that was following me.
It was really freaked out. Yeah, but was it all gross looking? I didn't I walked the other way. I didn't look at it. It was at night.
Um yeah. Well, look during the day, they're mangy and disgusting. Vermin. Anyway. Uh calling all of your cooking-related questions to 718-497-2128.
That's 718-497-2128 coming to you live from Bushwick today. So, uh, today is here's some like like an airplane in the background. Yeah, it's weird. Yeah. Today is the last of my week long my days of weeklong raw vegan diet.
I have been on a raw vegan diet since Tuesday of last week. Uh Tuesday right after we finished the low temperature sous vide class. So we put ourselves into a meat coma in the low temp sous vide class eating like a bazillion short ribs. And then right after I went on uh raw vegan, and uh, you know, because for those of you that haven't heard, I made a bet on this radio show that no one could produce a raw vegan chocolate bar that I would uh even think tasted remotely of chocolate. Um, because frankly, I figured it's impossible because you have to roast chocolate, you see.
So chocolate beans, right? First of all, the the you know, the the the you know, the the cacao, right? It comes down, it's ferments, so often right there in the fermentation process, it gets above the arbitrary number of 118 or whatever you're gonna choose for something the Fahrenheit for something to be raw. Now, it's kind of odd that you could possibly uh uh overcome what makes it raw during a fermentation process, since the raw thing is supposed to keep the enzymes alive, and it's actually life, but you know, bacteria and fermentation taking place that is causing this temperature rise. But we'll we'll leave that aside.
So often the temperature will go above one eighteen right there, but that can be controlled. But then there's a step of roasting of chocolate where it's roasted, and that's where a lot of the characteristic flavors are developed. So I'm like, well, you can't do that, so hey, what the heck? You can't have real raw chocolate. It's not gonna taste like chocolate because crap ain't been roasted.
So our former intern, Grace, brings me this stuff fine and raw chocolate, and I tasted it, and I had to agree that although it was not uh, you know, anywhere near my favorite chocolate, or you know, even a chocolate that I would choose to eat on a normal basis, its texture was wrong, etc. etc. It was a little soft. You remember the chocolate, right? It still tasted like chocolate though.
Yeah. You could eat it. It wasn't good. I mean, I could eat it though. In other words, like I've I felt like I lost a bet.
So then the problem was now I can't welch, like it's impossible for me to welch. It's like you know, not an acceptable situation. So I had to do it. The problem was finding a one-week period where I wasn't obliged to do a demonstration where I had to cook. And so this last week, right after that, uh right after the sous-vide class was the only week we had where that was possible.
So I've been raw vegan uh for a week, and I break my raw vegan fast uh tonight when I land in Austin, Texas, and I think I'm gonna eat an entire cow when I get there. You know, actually, it's not the meat that I miss the most, it's it's uh like bread and like starch. I mean, think about that no rice, no bread, no starch. Um, anyway, so I'll I'll share before we get into the questions, maybe I'll share a little bit of the, although I am gonna post on it hopefully today or tomorrow, I'm gonna share a little bit of the raw vegan uh thing. So the the whole reason that you're supposed to eat raw vegan, you know, if you believe in this sort of thing, is that uh not cooking things makes uh has make keeps the enzymes alive.
The food's alive and therefore fruit foods alive, therefore it's more healthy for you. The vegan argument is an argument against animal proteins and uh either for moral reasons and also for health reasons. So it's a combination of like moral and health health reasons. Now, here's here's the thing. I don't believe it.
I just don't believe it. Like, first of all, you make your own enzymes. You make your own enzymes. We make our own enzymes. Do you know what I'm saying?
Like you produce your own enzymes. I don't see where consuming something whose enzymes are preserved is necessarily going to be uh that much more beneficial in general, right? Now, even assuming that you need to consume all sorts of raw enzymes, even if enzymes are good for you, even if they are necessary, right? There's nothing to say that every scrap of food that you consume has to be teeming with these enzymes, right? Also, there's plenty of things that aren't heated that don't have enzymes in them.
You know what I mean? Like it has to have enzymes. It has to be like, you know, a living thing. So, like, why you're why your your salt needs to be particularly raw, which they care about. You know what I mean?
It's like I don't understand. And why every last damn thing, because it it's been shifted from the enzymes are good to cook foods are toxic. Like that's where the shift is taking place. Another thing that I don't believe. So let me just say this before I even get started.
Um, there are some people who who think by the way, eating raw vegan, I know I'm not supposed to make it seem post-apocalyptic, but it is a a hardship. It is a huge hardship for someone who doesn't normally do it. You know what I mean? Especially if you have two incredibly picky kids. Now, I wasn't able to cook or prepare raw vegan for the kids because they weren't having it.
They had like one or two nights of raw vegan. I did I Jen, my wife, sometimes went into the raw vegan with me, but I, you know, yesterday I made her hamburgers while I ate raw vegan. Uh I ended up actually like the like you know, okay, well, I'll get into it. One, they they say that you get this uh that you get more energy when you're eating raw vegan. I felt I am what we call a very energetic non-athletic guy, right?
I have a lot of energy, but I'm not athletic. Uh and I felt like I got hit over the head with a hammer with this diet because I lost all I lost all of my energy. I was passing out tired at night. I was kind of grumpy during the day. Now I I talked to someone, they're like, well, you need to eat it for a couple of weeks to get the effect.
Well, if I need to eat it for a couple of weeks, are you sure you're not just going into some sort of starvation euphoria and thinking you have more energy? Right? I mean, it is true, you do lose weight on this diet, right? I did lose some weight on this diet, uh, but you know, and and and for that, it's probably effective. If your only goal is to lose weight, your choices are so constricted, and your body's ability to process what's going on, more on that later.
Like your body's ability to process what's going on is sufficiently reduced that you will, I mean, at least in the one week period, who knows if you maintain it for a long time, lose a lot of weight. I also feel like I've lost a lot of muscle mass. I don't know that I have uh less energy whether it's just because I have less energy, but I feel significantly weaker than I did uh like physically weaker than I did a week ago. So, you know, I I consumed what I consider to be a fairly healthy all-around diet based on the diet the dietetic principle of eat everything in moderation. Uh I prepare most of my own food or eat good food, so uh, and I you know I think a hamburger is healthy, right?
And that's my feeling. So this is not a diet that uh I would say that you should go on for I don't believe it's healthier, that's what I'm saying, than than the my diet that I normally have. It's not just that it's a hardship, I don't believe it's healthier. Even if it were easy to do, I would not do it by choice, right? So that that's that's said.
Um you are going to get in a very good relationship with your toilet if you follow this diet. Let me just tell you, this stuff flies through you on this diet. You can't, like, there's no getting around it. You know what I mean? It's it's uh it's it's crazy.
And and and it's also extremely expensive. Now, it doesn't matter, like this is not an argument against it, but it doesn't seem to me to be like a diet, this is not an argument against it, but it's not an argument for uh a diet for the people. Everything costs eight bucks. Like everything. Like a little thing of of dip, eight bucks.
A little thing of crackers, eight bucks. Anything that's raw vegan, go to the store, look at it. Look at what it costs, eight bucks. You know what I mean? Like maybe you can get like a little tiny bar or snack of something that's less, but unless you are just straight up consuming raw fruits and vegetables.
And by the way, if you eat nothing but raw fruits in the morning, you crash. You get a sugar high and you crash like a mother. You know what I mean? It's just like you're and and you know I'm probably a little rambling today because I'm still in the raw in the raw vegan mode. I had uh one good meal at pure food and wine, Sarumelong Gaias's restaurant.
I called her 'cause I was like, I can't deal with this anymore. I have to have someone else do this for me. I went in. But their meals are extremely, extremely labor intensive. You know, I had had these high hopes that I was going to be able to make a lot of really interesting stuff raw vegan and my time just ran out and I had to do it anyway.
So my rotary evaporator is packed up so I couldn't do any low temperature uh you know brandies that you know are raw vegan even though they're they're delicious. I've had them before I know they're good. I didn't get to make the you know the raw vegan black Sapote ice cream that I wanted to get. But but all of these things are very very um they're they're esoteric. You know what I mean it'll be hard to do this in the real life.
What you end up actually eating is a boatload of pineapple, like blueberries, dried fruits, and then avocado tomato, sauerkraut salads for dinner. I mean and and and you know uh I feel I f the whole week I've been feeling like um I don't know like I'm like I'm just kind of trudging along waiting for it to be over. Like you know I'm not I'm not myself. So I've I I'm glad I did it. I have the exp experience of it.
It's not for me. I don't necessarily think uh that I I'd recommend it to anyone. I think it's incredibly expensive unless you are very have a lot of time to plan uh to do it. So that has been my raw food experience. What do you think, Nastasha?
I think that's too bad, Dave. Well, have I been incredibly mean. I only dealt one day with you. This is the second day. Was that was I mean?
Yeah, you were you were an asshole. Uh you're not allowed to say that on the air. That's, you know, this is a family program. Yeah. You know, you know, Nastachi says one thing and comes out and it's and it's a curse word.
Anyway, well, only go to our first commercial break and we'll come back. Uh, calling your questions to 718 497 2128. That's 718 497 2128 cooking issues. I heat up, I can't cool down. Round and round and round it goes.
Where it stops, nobody knows. Every time you call my name. I heat up like a burning flame. Burn in flame, full of desire. Custom, baby, let the fire get higher.
Heritage Radio Network is about to celebrate the hundredth episode of the main course with Patrick Martins and Katie Kiefer. The main course has welcomed talent that ranges from Temple Grandin on animal handling to Eric Asimov, the New York Times wine critic. Chefs and farmers, distributors, and restaurateurs. Everyone who is involved in the food industry gets to put their two cents in on how and why we eat what we eat. Check out the archives for more information on Fascinating.
Check out the archives for more information on the fascinating roster of guests that have graced the table for the main course. And be sure to tune in to the hundredth episode, Sunday, June 6th at noon on the Heritage Radio Network. Hello and welcome back to Cooking Issues. Dave Arnold calling all of your questions to 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128.
So Nastasha, we have a column coming out in Eater blog tomorrow, supposedly. And uh and that uh that's gonna basically be the same as the as the radio show, just in uh blog format, separate from the cooking issues blog, which you know we I hope to get my my raw vegan post up soon, along with all the other 15 posts that I have in backlog that I haven't written. But I'm now uh on with eater. We're gonna do I think a weekly where we answer questions. So some of these questions that uh that I've gotten by email, I might if I don't have time on the radio show, I might defer and answer them on the eater blog.
And you of course you can put your questions to the eater blog now instead of having to email Nastasha and we'll get emailed to me. Some of them will get answered on the air, and some of them will get answered on the eater blog. What do you think, Nastasha? Yeah. So we're thinking of calling it uh what we're gonna what are you calling it?
Issues cooking with Dave. Issues issues cooking with Dave. Yes. Nice. Yeah, nice.
You like that? Issues cooking with Dave? Yeah. Yeah, great. Okay.
Uh Marty Yu uh wrote in. He says uh he doesn't deep fry that often. I'm sorry, Marty, you should deep fry more often. Uh I don't deep fry that often. I'm looking for ways to preserve my fry oil.
Online, I saw some articles about rosemary extract being an effective antioxidant, especially a product called Inolens 4. Do I have any experience with this product? I couldn't find a way to obtain any. And do you know if it's available uh to consumers through uh any sort of hippie dippy uh health food uh store? No.
Uh I I hadn't heard of that, in fact. Uh, but I did look it up and Rosemary, you know, it's basically uh that's the kind of trade name, and I don't know where you can I don't know where you can get it, but the actual thing that you it's in rosemary that's being used as an antioxidant is uh I'm gonna pronounce it incorrectly here, is uh carnosic acid, right? So carno carnosic acid is derived from uh rosemary, there's a large amount in it. I assume it's in any kind of rosemary oil or extract that you can purchase um on you know in Whole Foods or any one of those other stores. But the problem is is that the one that they use as an antioxidant in oil, and apparently it is a fairly uh effective anti uh antioxidant to prevent rancidity, um the problem with it is is that they deodorize it, completely deodorize it, so it no longer smells like rosemary when they when they add it.
Uh so you if you add it, and and they're adding it in fairly small amounts. I don't know what percentage of rosemary extract that you buy in a store is gonna is gonna have uh, you know, is gonna be the you know the the actual antioxidant, but um i you know it's in the parts per million kind of range. The the question that I wasn't able to answer, it it definitely stops um rancidity development and storage, right? Uh, you know, the breakdown of the uh of the you know in into free fatty acids on storage. But I I haven't been able to find that much information yet on the frying temperatures, whether or not it basically withstands frying temperatures and will actually help you at those temperatures, prevent oxidation, breakdown uh, you know, of the of the lipids, those kind of temperatures.
But it's very interesting. So it might be fun to drop, and there's it's also by the way, in sage, not just in rosemary, and there's uh lots of antioxidants in sage and rosemary, but it might be interesting to to go to Whole Foods, buy some of this rosemary oil, put a couple drops in, and then do a side-by-side uh kind of temperature abuse. It would be a little hard to it'd be a little hard to do it completely accurately because you'd have to ramp, you'd have to ramp the temperatures up and down the same in two baths of oil, which would be difficult unless you had it in like a third bath of oil and ramping it up and down, so it'd be a difficult experiment to kind of do unless you were unless you had a professional lab. But it's it seems uh it seems interesting. Uh so if it was going to work, I would say that just rosemary oil should do the trick, but again, no experience with it, but it sounds interesting, yeah?
Yeah. Yeah, rosemary oil. Rosemary oil. Uh maybe Chesray can do that. Maybe a Chesaree Casel, you know, our friend the chef, like basically has rosemary growing out of his pocket for many uses at any time.
He has rosemary coming out of everything, right? Rosemary out of every orifice. The man is like the man the man sprung from a rosemary, a rosemary bush. Um anyway. Okay.
Uh Mike Anonymous, which I like that name. Mike Anonymous writes in he has two questions. One, uh, one's on meat and the other's on popcorn. So meat. Uh I'm trying to buy all my meat from local uh farmers, and that usually means that it's frozen.
Unfortunately, that is true because they don't sell it as fast, they don't have the pipeline out, so they s they'll slaughter it, maybe hang it, hopefully, then freeze it and have it for sale. That's just that's just the way it works, because they just don't have product all the time and they can't you know get it out of the pipeline that fast. Uh my general question is is the rule about not refreezing meat an issue of safety or quality, or both. More specifically, my question is can meat be refrozen after defrosting and manipulating? Two specific examples he's thinking of.
Can he defrost a pork shoulder, make a sausage, Italian for example, and then refreeze it uh in a suitable size? And the same question goes for dumpling fillings and other ground pork products. Can you defrost a rack of ribs? Uh thinking of uh McGee's oven method for barbecue ribs and refreeze them after cooking. Good shout out to McGee and refreeze them after cooking.
He would like to cook several racks and stash them away for a future meal. Okay. It is not a safety issue, Mike. It is a quality issue. Every time you freeze meat, um, the meat is dehydrating uh as it as it freezes.
Water is leaving the cells, especially the way you freeze in a normal home freezer. Water is leaving the cells, and then the also the ice crystals that are formed can puncture those cells. So that when it rehydrate, when it thaws out, it essentially has to rehydrate. And if it doesn't rehydrate uh 100%, or if the cells are damaged too much, you get a huge what's called drip loss. You get a lot of liquid dripping out of out of the meat.
So you're gonna see like the sack with a lot of liquid liquid dripping out of it. And the more times you repeat the cycle of freezing and thawing, the more you break down the tissue and the more liquid you're gonna lose. And in fact, that is a technique that you know you people use to break apart cells, is freeze-thought, freeze thaw, freeze-thaw, freeze thaw. Now, assuming that when the meat thaws, it doesn't drip like a lunatic and it was frozen well the first time, right? By the way, but but back on safety for a second.
Freezing is not a it arrests bacterial growth, but it does not kill the bacteria, right? So as long as you have the product safe the whole time and then you cook it, refreezing it is not is not an issue. Even if you thaw it completely and then refreeze it completely, as long as you didn't temperature abuse the product, the product is gonna remain safe. Okay, so the safety concerns are the same safety concerns you would have with with anything else. The freezing itself doesn't alter the safety of it, okay.
Um now uh if you take a product that's cooked, like really cooked, like a stew or a braise or something like that, the cells are pretty much cooked anyway, and so you could probably freeze it after that procedure and then uh you know, like you know, cook it and then freeze after that procedure without too much of a quality loss, especially if you were gonna freeze it in something like a vac bag or or like a very like closed ziploc where there's no oxygen. You're gonna want to keep the oxygen out because you're not gonna want it to go rancid during the the second freezing, and you're not gonna want a chance for the the uh moisture on the inside to be able to sublimate out or recrystallize on the outside and get freezer burn. But as long as you don't do those two things you might get some quality loss on refreezing. I mean I'm not gonna say that you won't get a qual quality loss but I would say that you would probably get less quality loss on something that was cooked and then uh after cooked portioned and re-frozen. So you know it's it's all a question of whether or not you get a result that that you like.
I mean I think it's optimal to not have to freeze if you if you don't have to, especially if you you know your home freezer is not very good, but sometimes there's just no choice. You might want to try a very fast freeze by bagging and then putting the bags into a very heavy brine and uh ice solution and that'll drop it like a rock, freeze it really quick. But um and I think McGee also posted some stuff on that online but it's just like you would do for ice cream. Just make sure that the salt can't get to your food and the water can't touch your food. We have a collar?
Mm-hmm. Alright caller uh I'll get back to your popcorn in a minute Mike Anonymous. Uh caller you're on the air. Hi I'm Marcus from Venice Beach and I just have a question about uh different salumis. You know you have the surpassata, the different type of salum's I always wonder if you could speak a little bit about that.
You know um I know it's a very broad topic but well what what what in particular do you want to talk about with it? Well you know you have the subversato, you have uh the salame um what are what makes the difference in time and and so on and recipe. Alright well I mean the recipes all right so if we're talking like a Italian products, I mean they're all they're all extremely different, right? So the ba the fundamentally, let's say we're just gonna deal with pork products, right? So when you're starting with pork products, like the first thing you're gonna choose is kind of what assuming you all have the same quality of pork is going to be your fat lean ratio, right?
And then how finely the parts are gonna be cut up, right? So you can go all the way to like an emulsified product like with a mortadella or something like that, where it's basically emulsified fats and and and meat, you know, and and uh muscle or like very coarse like most of the super side uh we call it hey in New York we call it super sut. Anyway, like uh most of the stuff that I get, you know, it's uh it's fairly coarse, right? Down to something like uh you know like a like the hunter sausage at the Cachatori sausages that are a little bit in between. So then you have like uh what the fat lean ratio is and then how how they're they're cut up.
The next most important thing for the for these kinds of products is the spice and or sometimes wine mixture that's added to them, right? So that's where a lot of the characteristic uh stuff is gonna come into play. The ne the next thing after that is then how much they're needed by hand. So some of the stuff that we think of as uh traditionally like if you go to a deli and say salami right that they they're very or they're very finely bound together and it's because they've been kneaded with salt so they bind together and form a very kind of uh you know compact uh like mass and they're usually fairly finely chopped whereas you'll get some coarser products um that uh and I'm not even talking about whole muscle cuts like uh like you know copas or anything like that so it's like um so the the coarser ones tend to be not and needed as much so they don't pack together as much and then the the next step after that obviously is what size you pack in. So the thinner something that is going to be packed in, the the shorter the drying time, but therefore also, to my opinion, sometimes the less complex the taste, right?
Then there's so many steps. The next step after that is is well, a lot of times these guys, like in Italy or in a lot of places that aren't commercial, they'll they'll do what's called wild, they'll get a wild fermentation going because the these sausages, aside from usually in the US anyway, adding some uh nitrites to it to kill botulism. The word botulism, by the way, is derived from the Latin for kind of sausage because you can get botulism in these things if they're not uh cured, you know, cured properly. So the nitrates are in there uh to prevent that. But they the so they have salts and nitrites to prevent that, but then also bacteria are growing in there, and the bacteria that grow in there drop the pH and make it acidic.
That's where the tart tangy nature of uh of these sausages come from. So the temperature of fermentation and what kind of bacteria are in that also make a huge difference on the type of uh product you're gonna get. And so the combination of all of those things together, then along with you know, the the environment, its age, the microflora in the place where it's aged, are what are going to give you all the different kinds of results. Do you know what I'm saying? I mean, and that's a it you know, that's in a nutshell basically what's going on with most of the with most of the the cut up products and their differences.
That makes you there? I lost him. Anyway, I hope that's what he wanted to talk about. That's making me dang hungry though. I could use some salumi right now.
Man, I could use some salumi. Oh my goodness. Anyway, did that answer the question? I hope so. What do you think?
You make sense? I think that was great. Yes? Alright, good. See, Jack, Jack has a good answer.
Whereas Nastasha sits here, calls me an A-hole. Nastasha calls me an A-hole on the air, and then's like, I don't know, I wasn't listening to what you were saying anyway. Maybe it was an answer. Mike Anonymous calls in, uh, writes in with popcorn question. He goes, What's your go-to method, high or low heat, pan with oil, microwave, or other.
I make it in a saucepan with oil, heat it over high until a few kernels pop, add the remainder, and turn the heat down a little. I use a splatter screen instead of a cover, as excess steam seems to make it chewy. I make it regularly but have difficulty with uh consistently excellent popcorn. My problems are occasionally chewy, not light and fluffy, uh, corn and varying levels of pop kernels. I buy my corn from a local co-op in small quantities, so as far as I know it is fresh.
I've read about people who cook it over lower heat, but that doesn't seem right to me, nor does it seem right to me, Mike Anonymous. Now, uh I haven't had any experience with uh buying popcorn from uh Coa, local co-op. Um you might have some issues there because popcorn is pretty tweaked out, like you know, not that I uh uh I have nothing for or against the you know the the good folks at uh you know whatever it is orville Reddenbach or whatever, but certain popcorn varieties uh are are much better poppers and and the the popcorn that's left over, they're called uh I believe they're called widows. The ones that don't pop, the little little kernels at the bottom that don't pop, I believe they're called widows. I used to know that.
There's two basic kinds of popcorn. There's the butterfly shape that we're used to, and then there's the I forget what it's called, I think mushroom, which is the one that they use for caramel coating because it has a larger surface area and doesn't break apart. But usually we're eating butterfly popcorn. Um it's got a uh, you know, that they're fairly consistent, but they're grown to be popcorn. So there is a huge difference among varieties, and the one you get, maybe you like the taste, but maybe you don't get them all popped.
I don't know. As for the my favorite technique, like by far and away, my favorite technique is the whirly pop. The whirly pop is basically a lided hinge uh with uh a wheel on it that keeps the thing agitated while while you spin it. They're like 30 bucks and you just oil and whirly pop, turn it on, uh not so high that it's gonna scorch, and you just keep turning until the stuff pops. It's got steam vents in it, so the steam seems to leave.
I've never had a problem with popcorn being chewy in that. It's also a fantastic first coffee roaster if you want to roast coffee in a whirly pop. Uh do you know what I'm talking about? Does this make sense to you? Sure.
You know, it's got the wooden handle on it, and it's got like a little gear on the top, and it goes down, it's got a little wire that moves around and keep this keeps the popcorn moving on the bottom. And that's what I use. Uh uh uh uh almost exclusively until my mom decided that what she was going to get me for Christmas was a movie style popcorn machine that is like, you know, it it's meant for homes, but it's big enough to be in a movie theater. It takes up my whole apartment, but the kids fell in love with it, so now that's in my house. And that works on the same principle as a whirly pop, it's just a smaller, uh, it's a smaller container than the than the whirly pop.
It's basically, and that's the way most of the pro batch things work. They have uh an agitated rod with a loose-fitting flap-up lid with steam vents that allow the steam to leave so that the steam can leave while it's going. Um, you know, the popcorn kernels themselves should be well above the boiling temperature, so once it leaves, the steam's gonna want to leave. Uh spatter screen, you might have some issues with uh oil getting out or problems, I don't know. I mean, it doesn't sound like you do, but the whirly pop, if you make it often, get the freaking whirly pop.
Just go buy it. You're not gonna regret it. And then you can start roasting coffee as well. What do you think? Yeah, it's good.
Yeah? Yeah. Okay. Uh we have a question in from Stephen Garrett regarding pressure cookers. Hey, longtime reader of the blog and listener.
Thank you, Steven. I finally got my hands on a pressure cooker, a Quisenart pressure cooker, electric model, which got christened with a pork shoulder for pulled pork. As I've never used one before, I was wondering if you had any tips, techniques, or recipes to fully utilize the machine. Uh I love the look of your egg bread and was wondering how it is done and is there a liquid in the pot. Regards, Steve from Wellington, New Zealand.
Okay, Steve. I know a lot of people, Jeffrey Steingart is one who loves his Cuisinart electric pressure cooker. I what I don't know is what the actual pressure on the Cuisinart is, because the one failing of electric pressure cookers is they don't uh necessarily tell you what the pressure level on it is, right? So hopefully the cuisin art runs at 15 pounds per square inch, which is gonna, you know, uh which is what you know all standard uh pressure cookers run at, but not all electric pressure cookers. So if it runs at 15 psi, it's gonna work just like a regular pressure cooker does for anything else.
The great thing about an electric is you don't have to worry about throttling the gas up and down, and it and you rarely, I think if ever, I've never heard it really scorch, have big scorching problems on the bottom of the bowl because you're not using uh a high high heat. Plus, you know, it doesn't take up a burner, it doesn't heat up the kitchen appreciably, so it's supposedly they're fantastic, although I've never really used um that one. The the interesting thing about the egg bread, we don't add any extra liquid to it. I would add some uh to the recipe, I would add a pinch of sugar or soy, not too much it'll burn. Uh but you actually don't need to make it in a pressure cooker, you can make it in a steamer, we found out later, um, because a chef randomly did it in a in a steamer instead of in a pressure cooker, and it worked just as well.
Pressure cooker will work, but you can do that thing just in a uh in a steamer. And it uses its own liquid, it's just egg yolks, uh baking powder, uh salt, uh sugar or soy, uh, and just beaten together and then uh not even a lot, just like basically mixed together and then put into rammickens and steamed. You can pressure cook it. Here's what I would do with the pressure cooker. First of all, I hope the Queens Nar, I'm not sure, is non-venting.
In other words, it doesn't produce steam when it's working, it's basically sealed or produces very little steam. In which case, you can use it to make some fantastic stocks, especially reinforced stocks, and like triple stocks. So if you get bones, you can do a triple stock, i.e., uh, you know, a fresh set of bones to get this incredibly stuck rich stock in like an hour. Secondly, even if it does vent, uh, from you know the guys at Modernist Cuisine, they seal their stock in mason jars. So they can do basically the work of sealed stock in small quantities in jars without having a vented pressure cook uh without having a non-venting pressure cooker.
The one I have is Coon Recon, it's expensive and also not electric. So that's very interesting. Also, garlic, pressure cooked garlic. I do it in milk typically, uh, blend it with uh for about twenty I do it about twenty minutes, then blend it with oil, that's a great pizza sauce. You can pressure Nils and I are doing a demonstration in in Texas, I'm flying out to Texas later this afternoon, and uh we're doing ramps, which are you know wild you know, allium things from the US.
Uh, we're doing a pressure cooked ramp ice cream, uh you can do onion ice cream, you can pressure cook uh horseradish and then puree it, you can pressure cook um, like I say, onions, any one of those things can be modified, pressure cooked. Did we ever put this stuff on the blog? Pressure cooked uh mustard seeds, you pressure cook them in, you first you blanch them in water, then you pressure cook them in vinegar, and then add sugar afterwards, toss it, and you get these like awesome, like they're almost like mustard seed caviar. The one thing, uh don't add a lot of if you add high sugar, things are gonna get really dark really fast because the sugar is gonna be an even higher temperature, so you might get some scorching. That's why I add the sugar to things like the mustard seeds afterwards so that they inflate properly and they and they don't you know get too brown.
Another great one is uh Hamine eggs, which are the eggs that turn brown because of the mired reactions that happen at low temperatures. Just put whole eggs, hard boil them. Uh if you I don't know if you can unseal it and let it boil. If not, like bring water to a boil with the eggs let it let it hard boil normally for like you know six minutes or so then put the hot water and the eggs in the pressure cooker pressure cooker for about an hour and when they're done hopefully they didn't break when they're done you peel them and the whites are are kind of dark nutty brown and have like a toasted kind of aroma when you cut it the yolks have a chicken liver kind of a chicken liver kind of aroma it's pretty cool so these are some good things to do uh and obviously it's really great for fast braises like like pork shoulder the one thing I have to caution you against is don't add a lot of extra liquid because you're not going to evaporate and reduce a lot of extra liquid you should you should put in your wine first and then uh then reduce it down so that it uh you know you get rid of the the kind of alcohol aroma you want to get off of it and then reduce like somewhat or pull the product afterwards and then reduce it reduce the stock but I would definitely start with less liquid than you're than you're used to uh and also you're gonna get a richer meatier taste but the texture is gonna be different because the fibers are gonna be broken apart a little more and it's because it's cooked at a higher heat it's you know overcooked overcooked in a technical sense but usually quite delicious. I actually like braises I did a uh a chili and a pressure cooker that was awesome awesome anyway uh hope that answered your question and uh get back to us and tell us tell us how it worked you want to go to one more commercial break let's go to one more break and come back calling your questions to 7184972128 that's 7184972128 cooking issues yeah some call me the gangster of love some people call me Maurice speak of the Pompatus of love Welcome back to Cooking Issues.
So I see Nastasha gave me at least one decent Steve Miller song, along with punishing me not only with a raw vegan diet for a week, but giving me the absolute worst Stephen Miller song. Right. It's unbelievable that Abercadabra was written by the same person or same people that wrote, you know, the Joker, right? I mean, I look I'm never I was never a huge Steve Miller guy growing up, but I gotta respect it. I mean that's it, you know what I mean?
Like that's real song. That's real deal. Did he say I'm a gangster of love or something? He is, yeah. I think that was the lyric.
Although some people do call him Maurice. You know, known by many names. But the but Abercadaver is gotta be the worst, the worst damn song in the whole world. Uh anyway, thank you for the quadruple punishment, Nastasha. Thank you so much.
Uh okay. Uh Brian Garrick uh wrote in with a uh Nick's de mal and alkali question in general. Uh he read the article on next mobilization in the blog, and he loves saying that word as much as we do. It is a great word. Nix damal, nix d'amal.
Uh I'm in by the way, if in case you don't know what the heck we're talking about, that's the process of taking uh a a base like calcium hydroxide is is uh classic uh and then cooking uh corn in it and uh it makes a characteristic a kind of uh flavor and texture for uh for masa dough for making tortillas. So you get that awesome. I mean it's just great. The bass basically breaks up the outside of the corn kernel, makes it easier to grind, prehydrates it, um changes the texture of it, the flavor, fantastic. Read the article on nickstamilization because unfortunately I'm not gonna have the time to go through the entire rigmarole here, but uh we love it.
Anyway, he's interested in making pretzels and possibly other things with basic solutions. Can you give me the down and dirty on all this stuff? It seems like baking soda is too weak, and you already covered calcium hydroxide with nixtimalization. Lye, which is sodium hydroxide, seems too dangerous per my article, and I agree that it is. I still use it at school, but I won't use it at home because I have kids at home.
If I didn't have kids at home and it was properly labeled, I would do it, but I'm not having that in my house with the kids. Uh Lye seems too dangerous as periodical, but what is uh but is what pretzels traditionally require. What about McGee's article about um baking baking baking soda? So you take baking soda and you and you turn it from um sodium bicarbonate into sodium carbonate. Um what about McGee's and go look it up?
It's a great article. What about McGee's article about baking baking soda to convert it from sodium bicarbonate to sodium carbonate? Does that really work? Does it make a solution stronger? Is it safe?
And what about the stuff I found at the Chinese market? There's a bottle of clear liquid labeled potassium carbonate and sodium bicarbonate solution, and they also have some white crystals of borax, which are labeled not food safe, but are right next to the spices. So what's safe and what's not? I don't want to poison myself or others. And as a final note, how does eteries make fossilized the fossilized veggies in Spain, like salsa v with calcium?
What's the reaction going on there? Is it the same as the banana that we cook with calcium hydroxide? And is there any other fun applications? Well, Brian, in San Francisco, uh a lot of questions there. I'm gonna try and hit them in the little amount of time that I have uh left.
Um he is using calcium hydroxide. Uh I haven't had them, by the way, so I don't know specifically, but I have talked to people that have had uh Adoreas' the uh vegetables that are done this way. I think also um uh Rennie Redsepi at NOMA does uses this technique, and they're uh basically firming up the outside of vegetables uh using um using they use calcium hydroxide to to basically crosslink the the pectin there. And that's what's going on. Calcium cross-linking of pectin.
They're usually done in conjunction with heat treatment, uh, which activates uh the enzyme inside uh the uh inside the vegetables that causes it to happen, which is pectin methyl esterase. And so the combination of calcium and the heat uh activating the pectin methylesterase makes a very strong outside shell, uh, and then uh the inside basically is allowed to get mushy in the outside firm. Now, what I do with a banana is I inject calcium hydroxide into the banana, and the injection of calcium hydroxide makes the banana firm all the way through. We've recently done it without the calcium hydroxide by injecting with uh just calcium and then heat treating it and getting a similar result. But that's that's what's going on with with those.
Uh and you can do those and uh you know at home. It's the exact same thing that goes on with the banana, uh, which is you know traditionally done in uh Thai cooking and other Asian cooking. So, yes, that's a very good thing. That's calcium hydroxide, really lots of different forms of calcium will do that for you. Now, borax is uh used as a food ingredient in other countries, but is not legal for food use here in the U.S.
Now I don't know what the specific health problems with it are, right? But there is food-grade borax, for instance, caviar is treated with borax. It's uh it it affects the texture in a way that I'm not really don't really understand. Borax is, I think, uh, I believe it's uh it's a borate, like sodium, two sodiums, and then borate, which is like uh I think four borons and uh tetraborate, I think. Anyway, and but it's uh it uh it's used as a texture modifier but also as a preservative.
So in caviar they'll add a little borax and to fish road, they'll add borax to it as a preservative. And I read on Wikipedia, so take it with a grain of borax. But um well, this part of it, that that our caviar that we get here in the US is more highly salted because borax isn't allowed to be added to it. But it's definitely used in uh in other cultures as I've never used it, as a firming agent and as a as a preservative. Um borax, if you can get a hold of it, is also the cool stuff that you mix with Elmer's.
It's it's a it's an agent that helps polymerize things, make larger polymers. So I was finding a lot of articles on using borax borax to to make uh larger like food polymers, but not I couldn't find anything specific for you know normal use. But if you mix it with Elmer's glue, you can make slime. Borax and Elmer's glue mixed together. Silly putty is I think different, like PV polyvinyl alcohol is the is the glue is the what glue Elmer's white glue is, and if you add borax to it, it polymerizes and turns to polymerized PVA, which is slime, you know, gAC or whatever, that's stuff that's in the that's you know, that's slime, which I'm extremely interested in because I want to make a food-grade slime.
I'm working on it, but I haven't fixed it yet. Okay. The potassium carbonate and sodium bicarbonate solution that you see is consui. That's what's used to make um that's what's used to make the stretchy yellow alkaline noodles, right? So you add that, that's a basic solution, and that's very classic in Chinese uh, you know, recipes.
Your flour is gonna go very yellow, and it's gonna the noodles are gonna have a lot of bite to it, right? It's gonna really uh enhance the kind of gluten snappiness of those things. That's the consuway that's typically used for for the yellow aqual and noodles, although I don't know how basic it is, it might also be useful for pretzels. I'm not sure. That stuff is also mistakenly sometimes sold as lye water, even though it doesn't contain lye, which is everything everything's gotta be.
Brian, everything's gotta be a pain in the ass. You know what I'm saying? Oh, you can't see that. Like ass is different, it's a donkey. Uh it makes no sense.
You make no sense. Alright. Uh now, the converting baking soda to uh to you know, the sodium bicarbonate to sodium carbonate actually does work and will make a fine pretzel. Lye is traditional. I've never done a side-by-side taste test of lye boiled pretzels versus uh sodium carbonate pretzels.
Um I have made sodium bicarbonate pretzels and they were meh, meh. You know what I mean? Like like, but I've never done lye versus sodium carbonate. McGee's technique definitely does work. You can also tell if it's worked because the weight changes of the sodium bicarbonate because water is being driven off.
So you can weigh the sample before and after to verify that you have in fact converted it. Use that um to is it water that's driven off? Don't know. Or CO2. Uh I can't remember.
Anyway, I can't remember what's driven off. But then uh you can weigh it and weigh the difference, and then use that to make your pretzels, add it and do the boil. The reason you boil pretzels uh in a basic solution is because that will radically in first of all it changes the flavor, makes it taste like a pretzel and not like like uh you know something else, like a bagel or something like that. You know, because a pretzel is supposed to taste like a pretzel. First of all, pretzels should be freaking twisted.
I don't like pretzel sticks. I don't like molded pretzels, I don't like any of these pretzeloids. I don't like I don't like like fish pretz-shaped pretzels. I mean, they're okay. They shouldn't be called pretzels.
Pretzels need to be twisted because the way they break up. When you eat a pretzel, it's twisted. It breaks up in a very specific way. The pretzels are supposed to break up based on the fact that they were a stick of dough that's been twisted into a shape that we know as a pretzel, right? And so uh, you know, the the middle knot has a different texture from the nubbins.
There's also bakes differently in different parts, which adds varied uh texture to it as well. So a real pretzel, and I've taught my kids this since they were about since they could speak, I can walk up to my kids and say, what's a real pretzel? And they're like, Daddy, a real pretzel's twisted, because that is what a pretzel should be. Anyway, uh aside from that, it needs the real pretzel taste uh from the um for boiling in bait in a basic solution. It also that's gonna enhance the Maillard reaction.
So the reason pretzels are so dark brown is because they have been boiled beforehand in a basic solution. Um but I haven't done live versus sodium carbonate, but I'm sure the sodium carbonate's gonna be good. If you can have lie around, do it. If not, I'm sure sodium carbonate's a fine, fine runner up. Also, if you are going to make a hard pretzel, please do not add any oil to the pretzel at all.
Don't add any oil at all. If you take most pretzels that are bad, even twisted ones or ones on the market, I'm not gonna call out roll gold as a bad brand of pretzels, but if I did, it's because if you looked at the ingredient label or Bachman, which like would otherwise be a fine pretzel because it's twisted, they're large ones, right? Uh, if you look at the ingredient label, they have oil in it, and that reduces the texture of a pretzel from what God intended a pretzel to be, which is delicious, to that of a cracker with a dark brown crust on the outside and salt. That's not what you want a pretzel to be. Alright, now I have one last thing, and I'm gonna defer this to the eater blog, as the first one's gonna go to the eater blog.
Adam Frost uh adds a question about legumes and the a vegetal taste uh that legumes have when they're raw. And since A, I didn't have time to research it thoroughly, and B, it's time for us to go. Adam, I'm gonna answer your question on eater tonight or tomorrow, although I'm gonna have to call McGee to see what he see what he thinks. Alright? So listen, your pretzels must be twisted, your pretzels must not contain oil, and your pretzels must be boiled in alkaline solution.
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. You got my head all twisted. And the guests can't get it straight. Nicole Taylor is always the first to talk with new and exciting personalities in the food world on her show Hot Grease. Check out a little clip.
Everything is super sweet in the Heritage Radio Network studios. Today, we're chatting with Fanny Gerson. Fanny is a graduate of Culinary Institute of America and the 2011 James Beard Foundation Cookbook Award nominee. Oh my God. We fry in bad style.
We have to talk dough. Donuts. I'm going to have to say, Fanny, I don't know if you know this. I was definitely the first person in Brooklyn to start talking about dough. Did you know that?
I I knew that last time I saw you. Ah. But I didn't know that before. So we have to talk dough. I mean, it is it is a bona fide phenomenon in Brooklyn.
Uh I'm so excited to be part of it. I and I can't believe it. I mean, I was just telling you before the show that uh I think about a month ago I went to dough on a Sunday at two o'clock, and all the donuts. You like what you hear? You can hear hot grease every Monday at 3 30 p.m.
live on Heritage Radio Network.com. Make sure to subscribe to the podcast or check it out in our archives. This is behind the scenes food news with Katie Kiefer. This little nugget comes from Food Safety News, which is a blog that you can get every single day if you want to sign up for it. I love it.
And in this one, it says, in what qualifies as ground shifting news in the food safety world. The U.S. Department of Agriculture today, too, on Tuesday, lopped 15 degrees off of its recommended temperature for safely cooking whole cuts of pork, aligning it with guidelines already in place for beef, veal, and lamb. Heating steak, roasts, and chops to an internal temperature of 145 degrees Fahrenheit, so long as the meat sits briefly before it's eaten is enough to ensure its safety, the USDA said. This latest revision for pork comes again on the advice of the FSIS, which is this food safety inspection service, which says cooking cuts of pork to 145 degree Fahrenheit with a three minute rest is as safe as cooking them to one sixty degrees, the previously recommended temperature with no rest time.
So now you can have a little bit of pink juicy pork, even if you're buying commodity pork, which should vastly improve its taste and eating quality. This has been behind the scenes food news with Katie Keefer.
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