Hi, I'm Steve Jenkins. I work for Fairway Markets in the New York area. And we're awfully proud to support Heritage Radio. And we care so much about everything that goes on out here at Robert's in their studio because they talk to people who are serious about food. And that's what we are at Fairways.
We're serious about food. We we just care very deeply about you as a as a customer and how you cook and what you cook with and how you entertain. And that's why we love to support Heritage Radio because it it's pretty much the same thing. It's wanting to find happiness through serious food and people who are serious about it and care about learning everything there is to learn about it. And that's that's we're kindred spirits.
If it's something worth having in your kitchen, you're gonna find it at Fairway. And if there's somebody worth talking to about food, you're gonna find them on Heritage Radio, and we will be supporting you guys for a long, long time. At Fairway, I'm your personal grocer, Steve Jenkins, Fairway Market. Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues here on the Heritage Radio Network. I'm Dave Arnold, the host of Cooking Issues in the studio today at Robertas with Nastasha De Hammer Lopez coming to you live every Tuesday from 12 to 1245.
How are you doing today, Nastasha? I'm okay. Yeah? Mm-hmm. So it next week, am I in the studio or am I in Los Angeles next week?
Assuming I can get this all straightened out. I think you're in Los Angeles. I'm not here at all. Where are you? You're off the planet?
You're on like the last space shuttle mission. Where are you where are you going? I told you already I'm going to Rhode Island. Rhode Island, yeah. Well, uh, it's kind of not here.
Anyway, we might be doing the show from uh Los Angeles next week. Uh I'm not sure. We'll keep you posted by a tweet. Call in all of your cooking related questions, technical or not, two seven one eight four nine seven two one two eight. That's 718-497-2128.
Okay, so let's take uh some of the questions we got emailed. I got a question from Eric Zuwacky. Uh he says, I was sketching out an idea for a pork belly dish to replicate the feeling of being at a barbecue spot using the sense of smell. Uh thought of using one of the electric uh water pipes used for he says you know what, but it's for marijuana. It's like what they are is uh they're actually well, I'll finish the question.
Uh uh used for you know what, but instead of herbal medicine, i.e. marijuana, there would be applewood chips in the bowl, and then the smoke generator would be shot into an upside-down serving vessel, uh stemless wine glass, for instance, covering a dish so that when you open it at service, it would emit the smell of being in a place with a barbecue smoke pit. Alright, so what we're talking about here is uh back in the eighties, they developed these little miniature uh or 80s, yeah, 80s. They developed these little miniature electric vacuum cleaners that were powered with double-A batteries, and they were for geeks like myself. I own several, that uh so you could vacuum out your keyboards and and small parts and electronics and and crap like that.
So that and then some enterprise so there they were supposed to be vacuum machines, right? Vacuum cleaners, miniature. Uh, and some enterprising but extremely lazy pothead who couldn't take the trouble to inhale the smoke from their pipe because they were so they were so stoned that they couldn't lit literally could not inhale, uh, said, dude, I could put the batteries in this sucker backwards and it will run backwards, and instead of being a vacuum, it will uh suck the it will it will shoot smoke. And so what they did is they screwed a they burnt and screwed a bowl, you know, like a pot bowl, a little one, on the top of this vacuum cleaner, uh and then ran it backwards and shot marijuana smoke out of the out of the pipe, right? So that's where we were from, you know, I don't know, sometime in the 90s probably, up until the very early 2000s, uh, when a group of chefs started using them as smokers, right?
So the most famous uh chef that I know that uses it and used it fairly early was Juan Roca. I saw them do a presentation at Madrid Fusion, I believe in 2005 or 4 or something like that. Uh and they famously took these uh took these things and would uh do basically what you're saying, uh Eric, which is they would they would inject smoke under a cloche, under like you know, a serving dish, and then the dish would be completely obscured, and then when you lifted the the dish up, it would the smoke would go out, and you'd have this sensation of smoke and a really awesome visual effect and a really good kind of going from not seeing to seeing with the cloch only instead of being metal it being glass. So it's very famous presentation, works extremely well. I've seen it demonstrated a couple times.
I've never eaten it. Uh Harold McGee and Wiley have both had it and they said it was a good dish. Another thing that these guys did was they took a uh like a a little glass, almost like a uh looks like a gravy boat, but with a flat top, and they sealed plastic around it, uh and then they uh poked a little hole in it, and they put the smoke into that with a little with a little hole, and then every time your spoon hit the dish, it would uh put send up a little smoke ring. Uh that was also a really good presentation, really cool. Um and people also use it for smoking things, like you'd wrap something inside of let's say uh uh like a bowl or a Tammy with with uh plastic wrap, inject the smoke and let it sit.
Personally, I don't think that it has the same effect as actual smoking because the smoke is static, you're not constantly generating it, and after a while the smoke's gonna settle out. I just I don't think it's the same as actual smoking. The other problem is the the pothead uh vacuum cleaners are tend to be built not that well, but they're um and they tend to burn out and there's there's kind of problems with it melting and getting overly hot. Philip Preston at uh PolyScience makes one that's kind of more robo and built for cooking. I don't know what he called it, he calls it the smoking gun.
So he sells one that's kind of meant to stand up to kitchenware. The the one that I went to uh I don't know what what the kids call them nowadays, we call them a head shop, right? Where you go and you buy pot paraphernalia, you know, but you have to pretend that you're using it for tobacco, otherwise they won't sell it to you. If you say, I need something to use with marijuana, but I can't say that dude in the man, you know what I mean? But if you tell them that, you know, um I'm gonna smoke tobacco in this thing, uh, then they can sell it to you.
Anyways, so like um you go to those, you buy one, but don't expect those ones to last too long. They they leak and uh they they melt because they're you know, whatever, they're not they're not high quality, as my son would say. They're they're low qual low quality products. Uh anyway, so I I hope that helps. Um okay.
Uh Ryan Santos wrote in and he says he's looking for some guidance in cooking pork blade steaks sous-vide. They're crazy marbled fatty. I was thinking of trying more of a pork belly type approach than a pork chop steak kind of approach. Any insight would be appreciated. Well, I've never actually cooked uh so basically what the blade steak is.
I mean, if I'm right about this, which I assume I am, is it's basically a steak cut from the pork shoulder, not the picnic shoulder, but basically the front shoulder of the pig and has a little bit of the blade uh the you know blade bone in it. Um and I have cooked whole pork shoulder before, and it works quite well. Um, but you know, I've never cooked uh just a blade steak that way. Uh the the problem with any of these kinds of uh cooking when you're doing sous vide or low temperature for a long time is it contains lots of different muscles, and it's very hard to get all the muscles perfect at the same time because if there's a muscle that has less connective tissue in it, then that muscle is going to lose its texture and get kind of a little mushy by the time the rest of the muscles are gonna get uh are gonna get done. And you have that same problem with pork belly as well.
Uh now with pork shoulder, I don't think you're gonna have to go nearly as long as you would have to go for uh a pork belly, right? So pork shoulder, you know, you can test and see how you like it. I would choose a relatively low temperature, like between I mean it depends on how you like your pork, between 58 and 60 Celsius, which is you know 140 and below. Although the pork council still believes that you can cook pork to 160 degrees Fahrenheit and have it be juicy. Do you think that's even possible, Nastash?
Is that even it's not it's like physically impossible, right? Yes. I mean like in unless you slather it with some sort of external juice, it's not gonna have its its own juice. But anyway, so uh I would cook it between uh I would cook it between like 138 and 140 uh Fahrenheit, and you you know try cooking it for see whether or not 12 hours is enough actually, whether it's whether or if that's too chewy, then try it for a day, and if that's too chewy, try it for two. I would not go over two days.
Honestly, I would probably go for like 24 hours. I like a little texture in my meat, though. I don't want it like too kind of mushy, and I'm pretty sure that some of the muscles in that steak are gonna turn kind of fibry mushy. So there's there's a kind of when you overcook something low temperature, it doesn't have the same characteristics as overcooked uh meat in general. Overcooked low temperature meat doesn't go dry, right?
It goes, what I way I say is kind of like it just loses its texture and turns mushy. So what'll happen is when you bite into it, it all like it'll be uh the first bite will explode kind of with with juice, but then as you keep chewing, it'll taste almost like little fibers like a paste mush in your in your mouth. You've had it before, Nastash, it's an accurate description. And it and it and it turns to kind of like just you know, kind of paste in your mouth. Unplu to me, unpleasant.
Some people actually don't mind it, but to me it's like a it's a huge, it's a huge problem. So that's what overcooking means in low temperature kind of a sous-vide uh environment. Um but tell us how tell us how it works out because uh I'm interested. I've never I've never done it before. It looks like a very inexpensive cut of meat.
Another thing I would do is I would cook it in a vacuum. I wouldn't I would suck a kind of a medium kind of a vacuum one, I wouldn't go too hard. I would then take this thing, I would cook it all the way through to whatever tenderness you want, then I would let it cool down, a hundred percent cool down, and then put a righteous hard sear on it on the outside, because you'd want I think you want to um you want to basically have it taste kind of traditional, probably, have a look a real nice crust on the outside and be soft in the inside, I think would be the way to go. Also, some tests that we've run recently, uh don't salt the meat beforehand. Here this is kind of obvious, and I don't know why I never uh thought of it before.
But uh we we were running a bunch of tests where and typically when if I if I'm gonna do what's called direct serve where I'm gonna cook it and then serve it right after it's right after it's been cooked, I will salt the meat before I sear it and then put it in the bag and then cook it. Um problem is is that if you're storing the meat for a long time overnight or the next day, the meat's gonna get cured and it's gonna lose some of its juiciness, it's gonna get firmer like cured meat. Duh. So the basic rule is if you're going to keep something for a long time, uh the exception is braises that you're gonna cook for a long time, really braise the meat out, in which case you can salt it beforehand because it needs to be seasoned throughout. But if you're gonna take a piece of meat and serve it like a steak, you don't want to uh salt your meat before you serve it, all right?
Um and we'll talk about that in a minute, because apparently we have a caller. Caller, you were on the air. Hey Dave, how's everything going? Going all right. I'm glad to hear that.
I got a you know, a quick question. I saw, you know, I've been getting more into fish, and I saw that you had a little thing on ikajime, I believe it's called. Right. And it kind of really fascinated me, but I don't fully understand it. How could kind of destroy it seems like what you destroy the the spine and something it makes the fish taste better?
All right, are you uh are you do you fish? Uh I don't fish. I just you know, I'm just now getting into seafood a little bit more. All right. This is a very this is very glad you asked this question because I just shot something with uh Dave Chang last week on Ikojima.
I hadn't done ikajime work for a while, and then I just came back and uh did some just this week. So this is very, very good question. So um Ikajime is basically just the entire range of Japanese fish killing techniques. And um it there's a whole range of them, but they're uh they they basically accomplish two things. One, they are meant to bleed out the fish properly, right?
Because Japanese fish, they all about getting the blood out out of the fish. And the second aspect of it is um preserving or enhancing the texture of the fish based on how it's killed. Okay. So there's there's two there's there's the the spinal cord thing is one aspect of Ikijime called Shinke Nuki. So I'll just run you through all of the techniques.
So there's a technique that we haven't experimented with uh up until now, but it seems like a very good technique, and so I'm gonna do it from from now on. They make a little curved uh knife, right? And so the first thing you do is you take the live fish and you in you impale its head with this curved knife and you destroy the brain, right? And and so what that does, right? Normally what I would do instead of doing that is uh just sever the spine, okay, with a knife.
Uh uh up right under the gill flap, sever the spine. And what that'll do is disconnect the brain from the rest of the muscles so that the brain's no longer controlling the muscles. Two things though, one, it takes a uh you it takes a little bit to get the knife in there, and also it takes a lot of force to accurately break the uh spinal cord there, so you might miss, in which case you're gonna cause stress to the muscles. The fish has more of a chance to flop around because you're uh doing more adjustment while you're doing that, and so there's more chance that you're gonna drop the fish, which causes stress to the fish and to the muscles. So, my new theory, and also when you sever the spinal cord that way, the brain is still alive in the fish.
And so if you're gonna serve the head, there might be some detrimental effect on the on the uh taste of the head, although I don't know this, I haven't studied that. Uh but in general, I think just for humanitarian reasons and also for ease and speed of killing, which equals better flesh reasons. The best thing to do is to take this knife or an ice pick or whatever, go into the brain right you know above and behind the eye, and basically take its brain out, right? Now the brain's gone. Um then I would cut the spinal cord at the top and the bottom.
When you sever the spinal cord near the tail and near the front, what you're doing is first of all, cutting all of the uh you're cutting the connection from the brain to the spinal cords. Now the spinal cord is isolated from the from the brain, right? And that's good for reasons I'll tell you in a minute. But two, you're severing the blood vessels that run um down along the bottom of the spine, and what that allows you to do is really bleed this sucker out. So if you cut just in the front, that's the equivalent of what's called gill cutting, that's what we do kind of traditionally.
But if you cut in the front and the back, that basically the fish can pump the blood out of its body more efficiently. And eventually we're going to stick it in water, like salted ice water, and then it's going to pump out and pump clean water into its system, and you're going to get a really nice pure bled-out fish, which is what the Japanese really like. They don't like that that taste of what they would call the chiai line, which is that blood line that runs along like on a fish that you see the dark stripe in like a tuna. They would prefer like the like the lighter flavor of the thing that's been totally bled out, right? So that's the that's the basically the bleeding technique.
Now the the next technique, the further technique, is to then take a needle, thin needle, like a wire, and run it up the spinal cord, right? So not in the center of the spinal cord, but at the bottom of the spine is the are the blood vessels, and at the top of the spine are it is this is basically where the spinal cord is running. And it's a straight shot all the way up. And so you stick a needle through the spine and it basically wipes out the spine. And that's kind of the interesting technique that because we can kind of intuitively understand what's going on with all of those first steps, right?
With the bleeding, uh, and you know, it those all kind of make sense. It's it's this taking out the spinal cord with the needle is the thing that is kind of weird, and we don't we like why would you do that? The answer is is because the spinal cord, even though the brain is not sending messages to the spinal cord, the spinal cord has its own way of sending out messages to the muscles. There's things called central pattern generators that are in the spinal cord itself, telling the muscles to basically to swim, right? And they don't swim because they're no longer coordinated by the brain, but they're sending impulses to the muscles, causing those muscles to contract.
Then when the muscles are are are have these impulses going to them to contract, um, what happens is they lose their energy quicker. The ATP, which is the which is your energy source in fish muscles and your muscles and my muscles. So by depleting the ATP, right, as ATP is depleted and the energy stores in the muscles are depleted, that's what causes the muscles to go into rigor mortise. Because rigor mortise basically you know that you need energy to contract your muscles. You also need energy in the form of ATP to release your muscles.
So as you lose ATP in a dead muscle, they just ratchet tighter and tighter and tighter and tighter, and they can't unratch it, they can't open up. So the it turns out that the faster you go into rigor mortise, the faster you deplete your energy, the harder the rigor mortise is. And fish muscle is strong enough to do damage to itself with rigor mortise. So when it comes out of rigor mortise, right, if you haven't shoved the needle up the spine, then your fish turns softer. It's less firm, right?
So when you put the needle in the spine, what you're doing is preserving the texture of the fish. You're going to get less gaping in the in the in the muscles, less dripping, less weeping, uh, and it's just firmer. The weird thing about ecogimi, and some Western chefs kind of can't wrap their heads around it, is that it takes longer for the fish to be in prime uh prime condition after you do ikijime. Right when you do ekajimia, if you eat any fresh fish that was just killed, it's uh it's gonna taste kind of almost crunchy, you know, almost like crunchy like uh like giant clam sushi, kind of crunchy, right? Uh and then um, or like you know, geoduck or gooey duck rather, a clam, that kind of crunchy.
And then it you have to let it age. And a western fish, one that hasn't done had the needle up the spine, is going to come out of rigor faster. And so for a small window, you might prefer it. But when you taste it, you can tell that uh that it has kind of a mushiness that's come from the this hard rigor that isn't in the fish that has had the needle gone up the spine. This is especially true of fish that ha do a lot of swimming, hard swimming.
So like stripers, tunas, uh, you know, uh any any kind of bass, any hard swimming thing, but also things like fluke, you can make a difference. There's some evidence I haven't tested. Every fish that I've tested tastes better with uh with the needle up the spine. But um there's some evidence that certain fish like place, for instance, don't uh benefit from the from the spine, but I haven't I have never tested a fish that didn't benefit. And I've tested blackfish, stripers, hybrid bass, um uh what else?
Uh fluke, uh a bunch. You know what I mean? And so I've never had a fish that didn't benefit. Is this making more sense now? We still is he off the air.
Did I talk him off the air? I think I talked him off. I took like ATT cut his cut his phone off by the time I I got anyway. So um there like the benefit is huge. The problem is is that it's big caller.
Well new caller. Oh, we have a new collar, okay. Well, maybe I'll talk more about Ike Jimmy in a minute because it's a fascinating subject. But we have a new caller, caller, you're on the air. Hi, Dave.
This is Andy from Chicago. Hey, how you doing? Good. How are you guys today? I'm doing well, doing well.
I didn't get down to Chicago this year for the NRA. I missed it. How was it? Did you go to the I did not go? I'm not in the industry myself, so I I missed it.
I I heard it was pretty big though. Yeah, I love going to Chicago because I really like uh I really like eating in Chicago. It's a great eating town, so and I like walking around in Chicago, so I'm sorry I missed it. Anyway, yeah, great town. I'm I'm actually really excited.
I got reservations to a Linia in August, so I'm pretty pumped about that. Oh, great restaurant. You ever been there before? I haven't. It'll be my first time.
But uh, you know, Grant's been getting all that press recently, and uh I saw it on Bizarre Food recently too, so pretty excited. Yeah, been reading a lot about it. Yeah, get get get ready because like if you get the full tasting and the and the wine, you're there for hours and they're gonna roll you out in a barrel. You know what I mean? You're gonna be like I'm yeah.
Yeah, I'm pretty excited about it. We're we're doing all you know, the full shebang, so you have an early reservation? Uh I think it might be like a 6 30 or something like that. Yeah, I don't remember. Yeah, no, uh well, I I once did that thing at like 9 30 at night uh and had the full tasting, and the entire kitchen wanted to Ikajima me stick a knife in my head because they we weren't out of there until like 2 30 in the morning, anyway.
Wow, wow. Yeah, we're we're definitely on the earlier side, so but uh I think I might have to take the day off from the next day. Yeah, recover. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
Yeah. So what's your question? Uh my question about curing salts. I'm doing uh prosciutto style ham in my attic right now, and uh when I got the ham last December, I went over to the spice house in Chicago, which is a great spice house. They only had one type of curing salt.
I forget which it was, but uh the guy there said that the other kind, which is essentially saltpeter, was illegal to sell in the United States, which I didn't think was true. But uh, you know, so I got the I got the one he had, and uh, you know, I've just I'm just wondering what what's the difference between the nitrate and the nitrite? Which one is saltpeter and and why would he have claimed it was illegal in the United States or some somehow not able to be sold? Uh yeah, well he's wrong kind of on both counts. You uh are lucky to live near a place called Butcher Packer.
If you're going to get stuff for curing, you should deal with the guys at Butcher Packer. Uh they're really good, and they will sell to you, not just to uh kind of industry types, and they have all the all the different things. There's there's two there's a bunch of different things you can buy right the two curing salts that they're sold are either called instacure one or instacure two or Prague Powder one or Prague Powder 2 and there's another thing you can buy called Morton's tender quick right most of them the instacure one and the Prague one and the and the tender quick have as their base sodium nitrite right um saltpeter like is an old form that of nitrates that can be used but you know sodium nitrate right is not the same as like what they would say is saltpeter straight saltpeter sodium nitrate is not illegal right the the fact of the matter is you're only supposed to use nitrate right on things like country hams or like prosciutto if well you know in Italy they don't use nitrates at all in in the in the in the prosciutto you know uh prosciutto department things like that but um in an American country ham and there are some American country ham people that don't use nitrates either right but the the deal is that n think of nitrate right which is like the instacure two right think of nit think of nitrate as kind of time release nitrite because what happens is is that you rub the cure into the surface of the meat and the nitrite right gets used up fairly quickly as it goes through turns to NO does its curing thing right the nitrate converts to nitrite right the nitrate then takes longer to convert to nitrite which then converts to you know the NO which does it which does its thing. So nitrates are long acting nitrites. And and they're only used on whole muscle cut, long cured items like country ham.
Right. So you never use a nitrate on like a bacon or on anything like that because those are usually pumped or even if they're not pumped, they don't need to cure that long. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah, definitely.
So if I went with the the sort of more quick release version, uh you know, uh obviously there I would I would imagine there's slightly more risk of you know botulism or something like that, but you know, as long as the rest of it's done properly and cured properly it should be okay, right? Well you're you're they're not really gonna get um you know watch someone's gonna come and say that I'm wrong. But you're not really gonna get botulism in something like a a ham. You're gonna get you're gonna get botulism in something like a sausage or like a sausage where it's mixed together. First of all, like hams are sufficiently dried and sufficiently salted supposedly to get rid of any risk of botulism right.
The nitr the nitrites uh in the uh the nitrates in the nitrites do a couple of things. They ensure that you're gonna get that cured color right that cured color will come just from long aging right which is why you don't need it for prosciutta de parma or for American country hams if you age it long enough. But if you have a shorter aged ham, if you've ever seen a a shorter aged ham when you cut it the parts of the area will be kind of gray and they were undercured, right? Uh and so you can you can see that that kind of thing happening but you're still not going to get botulism because the inside of the meat unless you hit it with a knife is relatively sterile, right? Yep and plus you know the whole thing are so heavily salted and you know it should be okay.
If it's done right, yeah. So it's it's if it's in your attic, right, the ham, then uh assuming that your attic is not really uh air conditioned, right, during the summer, if it gets hot, does it get hot? It gets I mean, we have an AC, but it still stays relatively warm up there. Like what? Like, you know, probably eighty, something like that.
Okay. So you're getting close to American country ham temperatures. I mean, one of the primary differences between uh prosciutto and uh, you know, Italian style prosciutto and an American style right is the temperature and the humidity. So an American ham is gonna be done in a f in a fairly high humidity, fairly high temperature environment. Think Virginia in the summertime.
Right. You know what I mean? Or or think and and by the way, just because you don't smoke it doesn't mean that it's not an American style because many American hams are not smoked, right? Uh you know, plenty of them. Uh so you know, that's kind of just a a choice that that that people make.
How old is it right now? Uh right now it's about six months, six and uh seven months, something right around there. I got it in late December and it started hanging in in like early January basically. Nice. Is it hanging upside down or is the hock pointed down or is the hot pointed up?
No, it's hock up in a prosciutto style. And I I weighted it as I salted it so it's got that nice flat, you know, prosciutto uh look to it, but it's uh yeah, hawk up. Right. You might want to um lard over the face of the meat at this point. Done.
Uh okay. How long ago do you do that? I did it pretty early on actually. Right. I mean you want to let some of the moisture come out of it beforehand, but then when you lard over the face, um you're now you're stopping a lot of the moisture from leaving on that side.
And that's one of the things that Americans don't do that I wish they did do because the face side of the meat gets too dry. Um but uh but you didn't debone it yet though, right? Bone's still in? No, bone's still in, yeah. Alright, cool.
Um yeah, so you how long you you're gonna hang it, like a year or longer? I'm thinking like a year, yeah. I'll probably dig into you know, I might try it in in December, maybe maybe January. I actually did a did another one before the just like a month before this one that uh was skin off and uh you know, more like a twelve pound like bone or uh I don't know, femur end ham, you know that I got from a guy. So that one's gonna cure more like six or eight months, I think.
Uh I larded over that one too, because there was basically, you know, no skin on it. Some fat still, but I put a nice coating of lard over that one. So that one I'll probably break into in the next month or so. But this one I'm gonna wait till at least two thousand twelve. Right, yeah.
And you know the ice pick trick, right? Shove an ice pick into it to smell it, see how you're doing. Yeah, yeah. I mean, the you know, cured aroma, that's kind of you know, obviously it takes practice, but uh I'm just looking for a cured hammy hammy aroma, right? Yeah, and you can search also to make sure that you don't have like a taint along the bone line or anything like that.
By the way, I've had many hams that have like a taint, like a little bit of like a an uncured part that along the bone and it doesn't affect the rest of your ham. Sure you already know this if you've already uh if you already done this. Uh uh by the way, a good place to look uh for a country ham curing, there's a guy named Norman Marriott who's a uh who's ex uh he's emeritus at uh I think Virginia Tech and he has a good online PDF on ham curing uh in a bag in case you want to try like total American style some point, bag curing, which is actually kind of uh kind of interesting. Maybe do an American style for your next one. Definitely.
How much did this guy weigh before you cured him, the big one? It was right about 25 pounds, I believe. Yeah. Nice. Twenty five pounds.
Nice. And not good it was a good one. It was a good uh good butcher from Central Illinois, he supplies a lot of the local Chicago restaurants. Uh and uh the other one is the other one I got was from this great Amish farmer in central Indiana where I spent a lot of time. Uh real, you know, purely pastured, uh real real natural pork.
So I'm excited for both of them. They should be pretty tasty. Nice. Sounds sounds like it's gonna be delicious. I certainly hope so.
I'm I'm waiting for ready for it, man. I want it to be I want it to be 2012 right now. Yeah, wait waiting's the hard part. That's why you gotta keep making them so you never have to wait to have your next one. Yeah.
Yeah. Next December, once the temperatures drop a little bit, I'm I'm definitely getting on another one. So beautiful. All right. Well, thanks for calling.
You have like a favorite country ham, you know, maker who you buy from regularly, or who who would you recommend if I were to get one? If I were to buy an American country ham, you think would be a good place to start. Alright, well, there's a there's a couple of really good ones. The problem is you gotta make sure you get the good ones from them, which means you can't you have to call physically call and ask like how the particular ham is. So that though like my go-to hams are I like uh S.
Wallace Edwards, right? He has one he has one that's now called a Suriano, which I I don't enjoy the name because I hate like pretending that it's like some sort of uh Spanish thing. But he is currently making those things with Patrick here from Heritage Food, his Heritage Pork. They're unbelievably marbled and they're they're very well made. I really like those.
They're kind of smoked in a Virginia Tidewater style. And I think he puts pepper on I think they smoke even the Seriano ones, but they're delicious. He might make an unsmoked one. I really like uh Nancy Mahaffey at Colonel Newsom's over in Kentucky. Uh, you know, their recipe goes back a long way.
I've heard that she's now experimenting with uh with some heritage pork. In fact, I tasted some. It's delicious. Her ham is hung in an area that has kind of like a lot of like funky molds. It's kind of like she's near a swamp, and her hams have a very faint wisp of kind of like a blue cheese note that I really really enjoy.
But yet you have to call her. She only cures once a year in the in the in the in the wintertime. And uh she sells this stuff out, so you gotta make sure sometimes she has some older ones that are held over from last year. You can call her and she will hold them for you. Uh she's great.
Uh I like uh Alan Benton makes uh some good hams. I haven't had his in a while, Benton's Country Ham. Um closer to you. Burgers Smokehouse makes uh uh like of some commodity hams, right? But they also make a like kind of a their heritage ham, which is 12 months old.
I believe it's called like attic age, but you have to call because they make some hams for Walmart, you know what I mean? And then they make and then they make some that are you know that are real that are old. Yeah, real. So it's all about kind of it's all about with with these with these companies like calling them up and and just talking with them on the phone and making sure that you're getting because they think that you don't want it, you know what I mean? Like they think that you want a four-month-old commodity ham.
And because that's what people have been asking for, because people have been searching for based on price, and they've been they want a kind of a less salty taste, and you're like, listen, I want you know, I want funky old, salty, yeah. Yeah. So burgers one's not super funky and it's not smoked, uh, their attic one. It's it's a milder kind of a ham. I think the the S.
Wallace Edwards depends on which kind of aging room he's in, but this new marble stuff is great. Uh Nancy Mahaffey stuff, really good. Alan Benton stuff. I don't know if Alan Benton is currently doing anything with uh new like the the heritage breeds. The interesting the problem with American country hams isn't that we don't have the technical expertise to make the stuff because we do.
It's that um it's that our pork quality had been lacking for many years in terms of uh marbling and also the older you the older an animal is when it's slaughtered, and the higher the slaughter weight of the animal, depending on the genetics, obviously, but for a given animal. The enzyme uh characteristics of the meat change as the animal ages, and they change more favorably towards making country ham. So the older the meat is that's slaughtered, not only the more flavorful will it be, but the better it will age. So, you know, these older, bigger hams not only age better because they're physically larger and they tend to physically have more fat, which protects them so they can age more, but also uh their enzyme makeup and their initial flavor uh profile is better. And so as we start realizing this, and as like some of the top-notch American country ham producers start buying better pork, I think you're gonna see us competing with some of the top uh European people kind of more head-to-head.
I mean, I I like it anyway. I prefer American country ham's taste profile because it's aged at a higher tent. But you know, like that that's kind of the last step we need to get to. Is it oh, also Finchville Farms, another really good one. They're in Kentucky.
So they're really good. Finchville Farms. Yeah. And Finchville Farms is interesting. They also uh, you know, basically I think they cure like one one one or two times a year.
They do a natural kind of cure. They're also nitrate-free, as is new uh newsomes, right? So you should taste those two side by side, because one's smoked and one's not, and they're both Kentucky, but they're aged in very different environments in Kentucky. Uh they make they make a really good they make a really good product as well. Cool.
I'm excited, man. Yeah, I do want to buy one of the little comparisons. Yeah. Thanks for all the info, Dave. No problem.
Remember though, to call those guys before you buy it, so you know you're getting the right one. Yeah. All right, cool. Yep. All right, thanks a lot.
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We got a call in that that we uh let us uh pump not only Heritage Meats, but also one of our sponsors, that's Wells Edwards. That's great. Yeah, nice. Advertising him. Yeah, and and uh I also happen to believe in those products.
Thank God. So, you know, it's a it's a problem. Remember the time we had a sponsorship. We don't read sponsorships. Yeah, the reason like other shows, like people will read sponsorship, uh the sponsorships, you know, they but Jack, our intrepid engineer, has to record ours ahead of time because no one ever knows what the hell I'm gonna say about a particular sponsor because if I think that the thing is crap, or if I don't understand why what it's you know, selling provision is I find it difficult to kind of sell it, right?
You're not the only one. I do it across the board now. Really? Because there was a bunch of us like that? Yeah, you know.
Yeah. But play it safe. Yeah, but S. Wells Edwards and you know, our parent Heritage Foods USA are two things I can I can kind of stand behind without uh qualification. Anyway.
Um where were we talking about before? Talking about Ike J May? Mm-hmm. All right. What was I saying?
Do you remember? I don't. You were explaining the entire process. And then you were talking about the Chang thing. Yeah.
So oh my god. So I don't know how much I'm allowed to say. You know, Chang has this new TV show. Uh it's but it's not a TV show. It's uh it's an iPad application, and you you get to watch a little bit of it for free, and then you have to buy the rest of it, and it's being done by uh Anthony Bourdain's um production company, which uh you know, anyway, so uh he had me in to do uh this segment.
So I don't know how much I'm allowed to say about it because you know you're gonna have to see the iPad and stuff, but I'll say this. Before this week, I had never had real like line line caught right on the boat striped bass that had been done Ikajime with the spike through the head and with the with the needle through the spine. And we did them this time. They were huge. They were like, you know, 40 inches, um and they were caught right off right off Montauk, right on a boat, eKG made right on the boat.
We had Western style, which means Montauk style. So Montauk style is you'll you'll gill you'll cut the gill so it bleeds to death and then throw it directly onto ice and let it bleed out, right? So that's one step above just taking the fish and throwing it into uh into your ice well and letting it die by asphyxiation, which is how a lot of people do it. Because a lot of people they think that it's kind of barbaric to do all these things to the fish when you get them out, like cut their gills and stuff. But what it really is is they just don't have the cojones to dispatch the fish when it comes when they take it out of the water, and they'd rather have the thing suffocate to death in um you know in a box where they can't see it.
You know what I mean? Which to me, so in other words, like all of these things where you know you people say you're doing something kind of inhumane by you know sticking a knife in its head and then cutting uh the spine at the gills and cutting the spine at the tail. First of all, like these things are done to kill the fish as quickly as possible, right? Which is the most humane thing to do instead of letting it suffocate, right? Uh secondly, if you are going to kill, and this is you know something I you know, I said when we were shooting, I believe, is if you were going to kill an animal to eat it, right?
You are obligated to one try to reduce its suffering as much as possible while you're while you're killing it, which has the added benefit that it makes it taste better. The killing an animal in uh a way that is um the least trauma to the animal makes the best tasting animal. Um so you're obligated to be as humane as possible, and you're also obligated to make the animal taste as good as you possibly can, right? I mean, don't you think if you're gonna kill something, it's you should at least taste it. That's why like I tell my kids, you know, don't waste meat.
My kids are like, uh, Daddy, I have to eat this meat. I'm like, yes, because a cow died for it. I'm like, yes. You know what I mean? It's like you you shouldn't really waste the stuff, and you should you shouldn't really uh you should treat it well, you shouldn't overcook it.
You should you know you're obligated not to overcook it, you're obligated not to mess it up, you're obligated not to uh, you know, I think waste a lot when you when you when you eat this. So anyway, so these these techniques, which some people find kind of barbaric. In fact, my stepfather, who's a surf caster, he's in the Cape right now. He caught the biggest monster fish I've ever seen someone catch surf casting uh for stripers in the Cape. The thing was I don't know how the hell long it was.
It was like like 46, 48 inches, it's crazy, it was over four feet long, I think. It was huge. Anyways, so he didn't he didn't uh ek me it. One because I haven't shown him how, but he's like, My fish don't like things shoved up their butts. I'm like, listen, you know, if you're killing it anyway, you might as well have it be perfect by shoving it.
It's not up your it's not up the butt anyway. Anyway, uh, you know, so even though it looks weird, he's afraid to do it because he thinks the other surf casters are gonna think that he's a lunatic and gonna try and and come over and like you know, get mad at him for torturing the fish, but in fact you're doing the fish a favor by killing it quickly, and then you're doing yourself a favor and honoring the fish by having the flesh be as perfect as it can be. So we tasted these different ones, and the Western style fish was definitely not as good as uh you know the Montauk style, all props to Montauk, but Montauk's in Long Island for anyone listening who doesn't know the kind of this coast. Um and it's at the tip, it's where Jaws was, you know, supposedly from. But they have lots of fishing boats off Montauk.
It's beautiful. Anyway, uh so it you're doing good honor to the fish by do doing it that way. The one oh I know what I was talking about also. Western chefs need to kind of get their wrap their heads around the fact that the freshest fish isn't necessarily the best fish. So there's a Chinese technique where they prize freshness above all else.
And Nastasha and I saw a demonstration of this once where you literally wrap the f uh live fish's head in towels and then uh cut the muscles of the fish so it can't move anymore and then deep fry the body while the head's still alive. Now I don't practice this, so to please don't write in or call in. Because remember that demo we saw? Yeah. Remember, I guess on the phone the whole time, like planning a party in in Chinese.
Remember? I don't remember that aspect of it. Um but uh I do remember the demonstration. Uh I did taste it. Uh I don't think that I don't think it really like the idea is that it's supposed to be the life of the fish is still there, and so you're supposed to like it's that's promote freshness or whatever.
I don't think that it benefits uh the the fish really from a taste standpoint. So now now, like a huge chunk of like uh you know Chinese, you know, culturally Chinese people are gonna get mad at me for this, but I don't think it's and it's kind of like it's kind of it's it's kind of horrible. Well, you know, it's virtuoso technique, you know, but I think it's kind of horrible thing to do. I wouldn't advocate doing it. What about you?
You felt bad. You didn't want to I don't think I ate it. You didn't eat it? I don't think so. I ate it, but it you know, it's like that's a bizarre technique.
So anyway, so like there's a there's a whole section of people uh you know i uh around the world who believe that the freshest fish is the best fish, and so preferably with the head still alive while you're eating the body, which that's just perverse, right? Like if it tasted really great, I would say, well, I don't know, maybe, but I don't really think it tastes that that I don't think it was that good either. But anyway, um but the fact of the matter is that you really most of the time want to wait for the fish to go through rigor mortis before you eat it. So f the freshest fish isn't necessarily the best fish. It's the fish that is at the right time.
Now it is true that once fish reaches its peak, it doesn't stay in peak condition very long. So once it reaches its peak, you want to eat it very quickly. But it's like it the fact of the matter is is that peak isn't the moment it's killed. You know, tuna, it takes days for it to really come out of rigor and have it be have it be perfect again. And so you you know you want to really um it's not every fish the moment it's caught it's every fish at its proper time.
One thing that they they were looking for bluefish you eat blue fish Nastasha I love blue fish. Bluefish I've loved it for a long time starting to get popular a lot of people don't like it because it's an oily fish. They're real strong swimmers, real mean suckers they s they and they form huge schools and they go up uh a lot of times close to the beach and like uh my stepfather has seen it where people have been in the water and like a school of blues will come through and they'll just take a bite right out of like a a swimmer's leg because they're vicious suckers and they got like sharp sharp teeth. In fact if you're fishing for blues they use uh a lot of times metal uh leaders on them because they'll cut through their teeth will cut through other stuff and blues will they're monsters will eat anything um but delicious I want to try uh Ikijime on a blue fish because they're strong right so I think that they would really benefit from it and they're one of those fish that you need to eat relatively quickly people really say you need to eat it quickly because the flesh deteriorates so I'm wondering whether we can improve the quality of it by doing Ikojimi on a blue fish. And I'm especially interested because that is a fish that the Japanese guys don't eat right so they don't really understand the bluefish.
It's not a it's not something that they eat, as far as I know. So my goal for the summer, and if anyone's you know hearing this, buy Dave Chanck's uh iPad app when it comes out. See the Ikojime section on it because there's enough footage in that thing for you to learn how to do it from watching it. And so you can learn Ikajime from that and then go Ikajime some blue fish and uh tell me how it tell me how it turns out. So uh I may be in Los Angeles next week.
I may not, because even though it's next week and we're shooting this pilot for am I to s am I to say anything? I don't think so. I don't think you are. No? It's about history and and cooking.
Uh and I am going to like if it all works out, because even though it's only a week away, uh for some reason because it's me and I'm completely disorganized, we don't have the negotiations done yet, so I have no idea what's going on. But um if if uh if I do it, I'm gonna be a judge. Can you believe that? Me as a judge. How do you think that's gonna work out, Nastasha?
You're you're too nice. Yeah, but they should get they should get you to be it, because you'd sit there and just give them the death stare the whole time. Oh, I'm honest. And then just shake your head. You're honest?
Mm-hmm. That's what that is, honesty. Anyway, uh so hopefully I will be here. If not, I'll be coming to you from Los Angeles. This has been Cooking Issues.
Have a good week. 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. This is behind the scenes food news with Katie Kiefer. The USDA has introduced the My Plate icon.
I'm sure you've all seen that in the news, replacing the food pyramid that was in use for 19 years. This colorful icon contains portions of fruits, vegetables, grains, protein, and a little side dish of dairy. It can be viewed at www.choosmyplate.gov. It does look like a plate. It's divided into four quadrants.
They are surprisingly similarly sized. Vegetables, fruits, proteins, grains. The veg are definitely a little bit larger than the other groups, but protein was really big. I was surprised. I thought we were supposed to eat less meat.
Each component of the plate can be clicked on for a drop-down menu that explains portion size, healthy choices, nutritional information, etc. It offers significantly more information to consumers, but it is a little bit more complicated to use. We'll see if people actually look at it. This has been Behind the Scenes Food News with Katie Kiefer. Did you know we have a show entirely about cheese?
Take a listen. Well, I know this is a it's horrible to do visual things on the radio, but if you were all sitting in the studio, you would see this wheel from from late May is quite pale in color. It's uh um it's a little bit, yeah, like a milkier, um uh sort of a very soft yellow. And then the the wheel from late June is quite golden and intense looking. It's a really deep, deep yellow.
Um, what causes that that difference? Well, I'm quite sure it's the grass. Yeah, it's the keratin and the grass, and um that's giving it that yellow color, not fat. Um, but definitely coming from from the pasture. Um our animals are fed hay through the winter now.
We we don't use fermented feed because that won't work with our cheese. But um so they're essentially grass-fred year-round with grain salt. If you like what you hear, cutting the curd airs every Monday at 4 30 p.m. on Heritage Radio Network. Make sure to subscribe to the podcast or check it out in our archives.
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If it's something worth having in your kitchen, you're gonna find it at Fairway. And if there's somebody worth talking to about food, you're gonna find them on Heritage Radio, and we will be supporting you guys for a long, long time. At Fairway, I'm your personal grocer, Steve Jenkins, Fairway Mark. The following is a message from HeritageFoodsUSA.com. The difference between wild Alaskan salmon and farmed Atlantic salmon is just as great as the differences between commodity pork and heritage breed pork.
Huge. HeritageFoodsUSA.com is lining up a major social pie of sustainably harvested salmon in July and offering it at a phenomenal price to consumers. Check out HeritageFoodsUSA.com for more details on how to get in on this opportunity. Experience salmon the way it should be.
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