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Since 1865, the Hearst family has raised cattle on the rich, sustainable native grasslands of the Central California coast. The heck were they thinking? Yeah, look it up. Well, maybe let's see if we can get that for our uh for our uh what's it called? You know, our intra song thing.
So, Jack, since I'm unable to remember the telephone number here, can you give it to him? 718 497 2128. That is 718 497 2128. Call in with all of your live cooking or non-cooking related questions, technical or not. Okay, so uh start with uh questions that have been emailed to us beforehand.
This one comes from uh now okay, last name is P E T H O with an umlaut. I'm gonna assume that's pronounced Peter, but I don't know. Joseph Petter and Corby Cummer, our friend from uh from the Atlantic uh Monthly, uh the senior food editor there, uh says, uh Dave, an article, uh, and there's been many, so we'll talk about it, about uh sugar, uh, suggests that sugar does not melt but rather decomposes, and that there is a time temperature relationship associated with sugar. My question, and this is uh Joseph's question, Corby just was like, hey, what's up with this? Anyway, my question is that does that mean that sous vide caramel can be created?
Any thoughts on this? As for me, I will try some experiments soon. Uh okay. So uh I'm gonna fill everyone in. There's a bunch of uh research that's been uh produced recently by a uh uh a group of people mainly out of uh university of Illinois, uh, showing that sugar does not actually melt in a traditional sense, but rather melts and decomposes at the same time, right?
So a traditional material with a traditional melting point, like a metal, uh, you can take it from a solid uh to a liquid, back to a solid, back to a liquid, back to a solid, back to a liquid, blah blah blah blah blah. Right? Uh, you know, virtually ad infinitum, uh assuming there's no oxidation stuff like this. Right? This has a traditional melting point.
Oh, Nastasha just showed up. The L train. Hold a second, I'm gonna have to lift my my headphone cord so she can get into her customary seat. Oh, there goes the microphone. Alright, here we go.
Alright, now we're up to full staff. Now, um sugar, on the other hand, right? Uh the research has shown that every time someone has tried to figure out what the melting point of table sugar is, sucrose, they've noticed that uh it's been widely variant over the literature. And these guys uh did a study basically showing that there is no single melting point that basically it starts to decompose uh and and that basically shifts when it melts. So that the how fast you heat it changes uh basically when it appears to melt.
Uh and all the way up to when they're they're using something extremely quickly where they can ramp up the temperature on the order of like five, six hundred degrees Celsius per minute. And still they're showing a uh a shift. Uh they have data that shows that um sugar starts to break down roughly at 120 degrees Celsius, which is too hot for uh too hot for sous vide. But uh not uh well I forget what the temperature in a pressure cooker is, but it's somewhere in that region. Uh you so you might be able to do something in uh in a pressure cooker.
I have gotten things to sugars to brown in a pressure cooker over time, but at 120 C at normal pressure, you're talking about long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long time for it to uh for it to start sugar to start breaking down. Um course you can get the temperature well above 120 C in a pressure cooker by uh basically just reducing the amount of water present. Anyway, so Sue V caramel, no, uh, but very interesting research on um sugar and it basically decomposing at the time that it at the same time that it melts and so not having a a melting point. And for those of you that really give a uh a hoot and a holler about this. Look up uh investigation of the heating rate dependency associated with the loss of crystalline structure in sucrose, glucose, and fructose using thermal analysis approach, 120 C, uh using thermal analysis approach, parts one and two of this year, along with their blockbuster follow-up.
Can the thermodynamic melting of temperature of sucrose, glucose, and fructose be measured using rapid scanning differential scan scanning calorimetry? So I mean those are was scintillating reading this morning, Mustache. I can't tell you how excited I was to read all those papers this morning. Oh my god. Yeah.
Uh anyway. Okay. So another question in from Steve. Uh oh, Steve, a often writing in, although I don't have his last name, but Steve. Writes in uh on pressure cookers and uh has a question on pressure cookers and pressure and on salt.
Hey, thanks for answering answering my question about pressure cookers. And no, the electric one, he has an electric one, doesn't hit 15 psi, it only manages 10 to 12 psi. But on the plus side, it can get really hot, so it's great for browning, and I don't have to keep an eye on it when it's cooking. Still experimenting with it and having fun with the results. Since I last spoke about uh electric pressure cookers, Quisinart sent me uh one of their electric pressure cookers.
It does indeed do browning. It is great in that it is quiet, uh, doesn't release steam, doesn't release uh kind of any extra uh moisture into the atmosphere, but I was trying to run tests on it to see what the pressures related were, and uh indeed I wasn't even able to get uh 10 PSI. I was able to get roughly, I think nine PSI based on the temperature measurements, which didn't quite make it to 140. I forget what the actual numbers were. So my my next it's it has something to do with the way that they're uh regulating the temperature based uh on the bottom.
There's like a little spring that shows that the thing is in, and then they're measuring the temperature at the bottom, and that's how they're calculating what uh to do it. They're not actually measuring pressure as far as I can tell. So my next step is to open up the Cuisinart uh and see whether there's uh a potentiometer or something in there that I can futz with that'll change uh what the temperature uh set limit is. If there is, I'm gonna adjust the temperature up to have it be at 15 PSI and see whether 'cause I really want my pressure cookers to be at 15 PSI. I've run a lot of uh tests where we uh we checked uh the taste of different things at different pressures.
And honestly, what 15 PSI second ring is pretty optimal for things like stocks and also for the speed of cooking and for the modification of texture and things like meats. Um I want it to be 15 PSI, so more to work on that later, but it does seem like a great piece of equipment. I'm trying to figure out how to hack it now. If any of you have had experience hacking Cuisinar pressure cookers, please write in and uh tell us how how uh how to do it before I ruin the one that was sent me because I would like to use it eventually in my house after I finish messing with it, right? Anyway, thanks to Quisenar for sending it.
Okay. Uh I by the way, if any of you have some cool equipment out there that you want us to beat on and look at, send us some equipment to beat on and look at. We have a call, Nasasha? Yes. Caller, you on the air.
Hi, Dave. It's Colin. Hey. Uh very long radio silence. I had something to ask you.
Sure. Uh so have you used cooked with sorrel very much? Uh I've uh only you know you I've used fresh uh and I've used the basically the red, the hibiscus style stuff to do uh beverages. Um, you know, for it's basically the the the acidity and the color, you know, there's a whole group of uh uh Caribbean and also African beverages based on the Yeah, yeah, like sorry. Yeah, I think they're great.
I mean that they're you know the the acidity is very kind of uh specific. I haven't looked up what the acid is. I think it's I think it's I'm not I think it's oxalic, but I'm not totally Yeah, I was gonna say that's something like you say. Yeah, yeah, it oh it's it's it's at least partially that and that's what gives it its similar kind of acid characteristic to something like rhubarb. Um so and and you know, for those of you that haven't had sorrel but have had rhubarb, uh they're uh have a similar sort of uh feeling in in its acidity.
Um and so I would bet that their acid makeup is fairly similar. That said, I love it as a drink. Um I've had I haven't had good luck yet mixing it as an alcoholic drink. I've uh the ones I've really enjoyed have been more like uh non-alcoholic drinks. Have you had any good luck with it as an alcoholic drink?
No, I I haven't actually tried it as a drink yet. I just sort of have have some growing and have been cooking with it a lot. Right. But uh so the thing is, you know how it's got that really nice, bright, fresh acidic flavor when it's raw. Yep.
Uh when you cook it, it gets it tak it gets a very excellent texture. It gets this kind of like creamy, velvety kind of goop texture that's uh it's it's pretty nice. So similar to like metals. Um yeah, I'm not totally like uh I don't want to have them in like testos and things, so I don't know what they're like all down. But uh let's see.
Oh, but so it takes on this kind of cooked spinach flavor that kind of muddles every like you know, kinda uh takes some of the freshness out of that flavor that I really enjoyed. So I'm trying to figure out if there's a way to you know, cook the sorrel or get it to that creamy consistency. Uh one and cause like one nice thing about it is you can then strain that through a cheesecloth and get rid of all the fibrous matter 'cause it I don't know, it just turns into like like I said, in those like goop. Right. And uh so I'm trying to see, you know, if I could turn that into something fluffy.
But you wanna you want to turn the the leftover fiber into something fluffy? Or do you want to turn the No, no, the get rid of the fiber just like uh so you only have that creamy texture of the kind of leaf that gets doing so like it. You know, since it gets this kind of cooked spinach flavor, is there a way to say you know like cooked spinach to like keep it tasting fresh but still take on something cooked? I've tried I've tried the kind of like, you know, go to raw foodish thing where you like put a little oil and salt and massage it and like uh that's there's that's good, but there's still there's still too much structure to really like uh strain it out. Yeah, so those raw food things are are based on a couple of different ideas and that is they're basically to destroy structure without heat, but it's not the same kind of s uh structure destruction you get from cooking.
It's more akin to forced wilting. It's basically all those raw food cooked vegetable things are basically forced wilting and shifting of osmotic pressure is how they work. Um but it when you're cooking something, you're actually cooking and breaking down uh, you know, the the the the pectins and uh all of those things, so it's actually a different thing. And I wouldn't think that you can get around the change in flavor. Uh but what you could do if you if you like the cooked spinach flavor in addition to the fresh flavor, you can do what I always do for blueberry things, which is all like mix some fresh back with the cooked.
Do you know what I mean? So like whenever I'm working with blueberries, like blueberry pies and blueberry tarts, I'll have my cooked blueberry component and then I'll also always put fresh blueberries back in because I really like the brightness of a fresh blueberry. But I also like the texture of the cooked blueberry goop in a pie, let's say. So you might be able to augment it. You know, do you think that would work or no?
Probably maybe 'cause I don't it's like that's the thing is when you strain it up, then I feel like it's probably gonna be straining out all the fresh stuff as well. But I don't know. I think you're gonna get some of it in there. I think I think you should try another thing you could try to do is try to get some of the uh the like the hibiscus, although it's red, bright red, you know, like that, like uh and then make a tea of that because even though it's dried and then heated in tea, it's pretty bright and then you could li mix some of that mixture back in and get some of that brightness back. Okay.
And so what do you know what c what kind of things lead to these more l I know in green vegetables or you know how like uh in spinach or in basil made when you keep them and they get kinda dark, you know they o are they oxidizing or like what's going on that really changes the flavor. Uh I don't really know what the change in flavor is ascribed to, although I will remember to ask McGee that, but most of those green things, if you remove their characteristic top notes and aromatics have a very similar cooked spinach smell. So when you ro when you do rotary evaporation on basil uh and you blend it and then after everything is sucked off you get this kind of cooked uh spinach smell and that is uh that is something that uh McGee knows exactly what it is and it it's a couple of compounds that I should remember but I can't I can't for the life of me remember what they are but a couple of compounds that give that specific smell, and all those green things have it in it. I'm gonna try to remember and the next time for next time I'll try and I'll try and uh bust back on what it is. Right.
Okay, so it's probably not something just coming from from being oxidized that you could get around by doing it in a vacuum or having some kind of shielding gas. Well, the browning is caused usually, I mean, by uh if it's turning dark, there's a bunch of things going on. There's enzymatic browning, so if you cook it quickly enough, uh if you blanch it whole without breaking it, you should be able to keep some of the green color. Then there's uh, you know, uh then there's other things like the chlorophyll can get eventually broken down, cooking long time, then it's gonna go olive grab. So there's a bunch of different color kind of changes that can happen um when you're doing it.
I'd have to look specifically at what you have to kind of see what's going on. But I wish I can remember what the flavor thing was. We'll have to ask Nastash, are you gonna remind me to ask McGee next time I took it? Yes. Yeah, you're you you're not even gonna remind it, you're not even writing it down.
You're just forgetting it. As we speak, all right, now she's now she's using her texting for good. Thank you. All right. So uh hold on second, I gotta go back to uh for a second to uh Steve, because Steve uh had his question about uh pressure cooking, right?
And so he then says uh this thing about salt. He has Steve also has a question. He says, I have a question about salt and bitterness. What is happening to the bitter flavor when you add salt to a grapefruit, for example? Is it blocking the bitterness or destroying compounds?
Uh and then he he has an experiment basically he does with tonic water, adding salt to tonic water to remove the bitterness or to change the bitterness, and then freshening up coffee, i.e. the bitterness by adding a bit of salt, but would love to know exactly what's happening. Well, Steve, I don't know that it's known for certain. Uh there are some papers that have been written about it. Uh the one that I read was the influence of sodium salts on binary mixtures of bitter tasting compounds by Keist uh 2004.
Um and they seem to indicate, he he she, they seem to indicate that um that salt is actually acting, uh the basically the ionic strength of salt is uh the the you know the the fact that it's charged is acting on at the site of your bitter receptors and altering uh how you perceive uh bitter literally altering how your taste buds perceive bitterness. Uh and the argument one of the arguments there is a study that was done a while ago where they put if they if the if you mix salt and bitter together and put it on your tongue, it is less bitter than if and then if you just add bitterness, right? But if you add bitterness to one side of your tongue and salt to the other, you could still taste uh the bitterness, basically. Uh and the thing they're showing is that you need to actually have the salt at the site where the bitter is being uh received. That argument I don't think is actually true because I don't know that your tongue can't distinguish uh like pattern of excitation.
In other words, like like if salt and bitterness are in the same area, it can modify even if it's not actually modifying your bitter receptor. But these guys have an interesting study where they they say they tested a bunch of different bitter compounds, and many of them were uh debittered slightly by salt, and mixtures of them were debittered by salt. But there's a couple of bitter compounds, uh one in particular that I can't remember the name of they checked, that salt did not affect. And so because salt was able to affect certain bitter compounds and not others, they're saying that it is not a cognitive, i.e. an like a brain integration effect uh on on salt modifying bitterness.
Rather, it is a modification of how the bitter molecules are being perceived at the taste receptor sites. Uh I still don't think that this is necessarily like slam dunk as an argument of what's going on because it could be that uh s that that certain bitter receptors are more apt to be uh cognitively interpreted along with salt as being less bitter as opposed to others. But I don't know. I haven't really read it thoroughly, but it's these guys seem to say that um that the salt is actually modifying the way your taste receptors uh taste the bitterness. But uh I'm willing to hear arguments from other people.
Yeah. Alright, with that say, why don't we go to our first commercial break? This is the way we laid down on the L train. But yeah, help me out now. Yeah, yeah.
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Get to the Dan Chorus, guys. Seriously. Seriously. Of course they would like the L train. Anyways.
Uh Ian, oh, by the way, uh, in case you weren't there before, call in your live questions to 718497 2128. That's 718 497 2128. Alright, now. Ian writes in with a question on vacuumed fish. Dear Dave, I'm curious about using sous vide for raw fish portions for storage.
I've heard that this is not a good idea. I don't know from whom, but we'll talk about that in a minute. And in practice, I found that fish can develop all flavor after a few days. I'm sure it has a lot to do with freshness of the fish before packaging. I bought fish from Japan that has been packed in plastic, and it was impeccable, but it's probably been packed immediately after it was killed and prepped.
Just wondering if you have any specific information on storing fish sous vide do's and don'ts. And Ian enjoys the program. Thank you. And uh another question came in uh that I'm gonna just smack these together because they're very similar. John writes in also about vac fish, and he says, Hello, I have a quick question I'd like to pitch for tomorrow's show.
Uh I recently purchased an immersion circulator, good call. This and this weekend I would like to cook a couple of monkfish loins. I don't have a cryovac, uh, and I haven't tried this before, but from what I've heard, monkfish is a good fish for low temperature cooking. My plan is to wrap the fish in plastic and then pop it into Ziploc bags. Am I at a significant disadvantage versus vacuum sealing here?
And I was hoping to get a suggestion for an appropriate time and temperature. Thanks so much. Okay, uh, I'm gonna start with John. No, John, you are not at a disadvantage. In fact, in some ways, you're at an advantage.
I find that um in tests I've run where we vacuum fish, if you put too much of a vacuum on fish, you can affect it the texture. So I really like fish cooked either wrapped in plastic or just directly in Ziploc bags with oil. Uh I presume you're wrapping it to preserve the shape of it, and then putting it you if you wrap it in plastic wrap, a couple layers of plastic wrap, and you can go on www.cooking issues.com, low temperature primer, and check the uh ways of packing without a vacuum machine, and you can see a rolling technique. You don't need the ziploc at all, actually. You can cook it directly in a plastic wrap.
And that's a a great technique, or cooking in a ziploc is a good technique. So, in some ways, I think you're uh at an advantage for that because you're not going to destroy the texture by over vacuuming it. Uh as for um uh times and temperatures, they're kind of all over the map. Uh I haven't personally cooked month monk fish, uh so I can't tell you, but I you know, like the Juan Roca style technique, which is also I think put out by some other people, is they use a 60 degree Celsius, which is a hundred and forty degree water bath, uh, for um uh t for about t 12 to 15 minutes. Uh and this is delta T temperature.
They're not trying to cook it all the way through to that temperature. They're shooting apparently for a core temperature of about 48 degrees Celsius, which is pretty low. Uh another person cooks at about 57 degrees Celsius, which is about 135 for 30 minutes. That's not delta T and that's significantly higher. That's that's what I do like striped bass at, so that's like a really firm uh tasting.
And then another person really enjoyed 48 degrees C for one hour, which seems to me not the way I would go. Like I don't think I would like it quite that low, the monkfish. Uh I think I'd probably like it higher, closer in the 50s, but I could be I could be wrong. And I wouldn't necessarily cook monk fish for a full hour just because I think it might start breaking down. I don't know what the enzymes are like, but a lot of fish have enzymes in them that break them down if you cook them for too long and make them mushy.
Another note is that one of the reasons temperatures for fish can be so all over the map is a lot of fish go through basically two zones where they taste good. A very low temperature range where uh you know it's kind of fudgy and tran almost translucent, uh, and uh like one roca and a lot of like you know, new school people like that, but a lot of people hate those fish uh cook that way. And another one slightly higher, usually fifty for salmon it's like fifty Celsius, right there, salmon, bang, fifty. Uh that's more traditional taste, and a lot of a lot of people like that. So it can be kind of confusing.
But uh I would if I was had to do it and I only had one shot, I would probably do the 60 degrees Celsius for about 15 minutes. Obviously, it depends on how big around the uh the thing is small. That's probably for a fairly thin portion. Uh okay. Back to uh the question of fish in a vacuum bag.
Very interesting. Uh I looked up an article this morning, modified atmosphere packaging of filleted rainbow trout by Begonia Jimenez in 2002 out of Brazil. And uh basically, uh the the story is is that uh the the big flaw of her uh test, by the way. I'm assuming begonia woman, right? Yeah.
I hope. Yeah. Uh begonia with an Enya, by the way. Yeah, begonia. Anyway, uh uh slightly flawed because she doesn't give her vacuum procedure.
She just says what equipment she vacuumed it with, and all of you out there should know that uh how you apply the vacuum is vitally important to a the texture of the fish, but also how much oxygen you you remove. But basically saying that um indeed there is spoilage in the vacuum bag, there's microbial growth, even of aerobic stuff due to residual oxygen left in it. Uh you know, you you don't I'll I'll read you exactly what they said about the sensory quality of different fish. She did uh overwrapped, that's French for plastic wrap, or I guess Portuguese for plastic wrapping, vacuum packaging and map modified atmosphere packaging, where they actually introduce things like uh CO2 that actually prevent bacteria from growing rather than just removing their oxygen supply. Okay.
Uh although the vacuum packaging kept this is their sensory panel, although vacuum uh packaging kept lower levels of T bars, T that basically that's some BS acronym for oxidation, because there's no oxidation because there's less oxygen than modified atmosphere packaging. It gave rise to a faster loss of fresh fish flavor. Faster loss of fresh fish flavor intensity along with a deterioration of the visual aspect of the filet. So basically her point is that um that you still lose some of the fresh flavor of fish if it's stored for a long time in vacuum bags. But uh don't store fish for a long freaking time.
You know what I mean? You know what I'm saying? Like what like all this good, what are we talking about here? Get your fish, pack the fish, cook the fish, eat the fish. You know, I've always said that uh, you know, one of the problems people have is they try to get this extended shelf life and are like, hey, can I buy the fish today and then like you know, cook it next year and still okay?
No. No. No. I mean, you can get some extension of shelf life, it's true. But when you're shooting for maximum quality, don't do it.
Don't do it. All right. Uh Derek writes in with an interesting question that I don't I'm just gonna say right out of hand, I don't know the answer to. Uh cookies and creaming. Hello, everyone, I have a quick question.
In most cookie recipes, when you cream the fat, usually butter, uh, and sugar together, and that's you know, for those of you that never creamed anything, I mean I'm I'm assuming that most of uh our listeners have creamed something before, but you know, you take your your your kitchen aid brand stand mixer, or anything actually, whatever you want, and you beat the hard butter and the sugar together. Usually fork, like my mom. She you can't cream with a fork. How the heck you can't convince her otherwise. You look the whole point is to beat air into it.
You're beating air into it. How are you gonna beat air into sugar and and and and butter with with a fork? If anyone out there, please send me a video where you effectively cream butter and sugar with a fork. I like you know that you know the impossibles that are the incredibles? Yeah.
That kid Dash, who's like the fastest kid in the world, like maybe he could do it, or like some sort of like bionic super person could effectively cream with a fork. I no, yeah, I've met Ukrainians before. You cannot cream with a fork. Are you you mean like something like biscuits maybe or pie crust? No, cookies.
In freaking sane. Insane. I'm just gonna go ahead and go on record and call that insane. Anyway, uh the whole point of that is to is to add air to your cookie. And then the reason that you add the eggs-oh, oh, sorry, I didn't even finish the question yet.
Uh in most cookie recipes where you cream the fat, usually butter and sugar together, the recipe then instructs you to add egg before the flour. I screwed up recently, added the egg halfway through adding the flour. It did not seem to mess up my recipe. What's the deal? Okay.
Alright, Derek. Uh the deal is you usually add the eggs, especially in things like cakes, because the eggs can add additional uh leavening, additional air trapping while you're beating them in, as opposed to the flour, which I guess they figure it doesn't. So it's the idea of generating all of your air bubbles uh early in the process. So first creaming to create uh um volume, then adding eggs, usually one at a time to increase the volume and the evenness of the mix to get a light fluffy, aerated mixture before you add your flour uh and then bake it, right? Boom.
That's the reason. Now, if A, your recipe doesn't need a lot of extra aeration, or like you don't want to marinated, you know what I mean? What? Like cookie, you know, like for instance, like when I'm making a brownie, right? When I'm making a brownie, uh you get to choose the texture based on how you how you do it.
You can go from basically like dense, like fudge master general brownie by melting your butter all the way up to creaming and then beating your egg and proper then folding your flour. You know, you can do a wide range of textures based on on your creaming and or egg adding procedure. So I'm assuming that uh with your recipe, if I first of all, I don't think that when you add the egg is gonna matter, like even like a speck, unless you're beating it enough after you add the egg to full to aerate it more. Do you know what I'm saying? Does that make sense, Nastash?
Yeah. You know what I'm saying? And also, I think adding the egg is going to help you incorporate the flour, but on something like a cookie where there's so little moisture anyway, it's not like you're going to develop gluten. You can hit it hard enough to get all of the flour in uh to the recipe without developing gluten. So I think it really is not going to matter much unless you want it for an aeration effect, which I don't think is going to be a big deal in many cookies.
What do you think? I think you're right. All right. Score one for me. Alright, now, uh question in from Eve.
Uh Eve uh Bergazen, who, by the way, is was a co-student, what do you call it? Classmate of uh our former intern, Tim Oogama. Ugamugga, Ugamaga. Remember Ugama? Yeah.
Yeah. Or we we call him Ojima, like Haihachi. Anyway, whatever. He was he looked like tall dude, looks looks kind of Amish, although he isn't, and like and like made fireworks. Really?
Yeah, I saw him recently. Tim. Anyway. Hello, Tim, if you're listening. Uh, and Eth.
Uh, I'm a graduate of the SEI Culinary Arts program. I work in the pastry department, a craft restaurant. I have an idea and I'm wondering how to execute it. A cold torch. Is there a way to take a tank of liquid nitrogen, a small tank, so that's portable like a blowtorch, and figure out a way to project it into a small stream, much like a blowtorch.
It'd be cool to create frozen shells around things. Do you have experience with something like this? Okay. Uh I do not have experience, although there are people that do have experience. What you want to look up is something called a bry mill can, B-R-Y-M, I think, I L L.
And they're used by uh dermatologists to freeze warts on people. It's a technique called like cryosurgery or anything like that. And it's basically it looks like a little oil gun, but it's a little liquid nitrogen canister, and you get different nozzles, and it sprays uh small amounts of liquid nitrogen to freeze uh small surface areas. A similar technique was used by uh the Arzaks, you know, Juan Marie Arsac and and uh and et al. Uh where they were basically freezing spots on plates so that they would have a hot plate, they would freeze one spot on the plate and put like an ice cream on that and a hot thing on the rest of the plate so that the you could have a nice hot plate for your whatever and then a cold section for your ice cream on like savory ice creams plated out.
Uh they were also using it to inject into chocolate to make these like weird chocolate balloon uh shapes. If you wanted some serious chilling though, uh these are like spot chillers. You're gonna want to get something called a snow horn, snow horn. And what they are is basically you hook them up to a CO2 tank and they just spray out like a like a fog of like hyper cold CO2, and that that's used for kind of flash freezing things. Look up Snowhorn.
I think they might be loud. I don't know. I don't have one. They're not that expensive. We could get one.
What do you think? Yeah. Weren't we gonna use uh liquid nitrogen to help people with their warts when we were in strapped for cash or sperm bank or something like that? That was your idea. It's it's Nestas always sitting there thinking, like, we got no money.
I can't. You know, uh a friend of mine, uh a friend of mine had a medical procedure, and so he uh and it was wiped out his uh it wiped out his his uh sperm because it was bone marrow transplant. And so they had to save his sperm in liquid nitrogen. And he, like like me, has a problem with like you know, paying attention to things like bills, so they kept on sending him messages. We're gonna thaw out your sperm.
We're gonna kill your your future offspring if you don't pay. And he didn't pay. And he got the note, like he like he got a stack of them all at once, and he opened them, and like the last one was like, Alright, you know, this is it, we're gonna do it. And it's like it was like dated, like, you know, like saying that they were gonna do it on a Friday, and he read it on a Saturday, and he was like, no, no. So he ran in person on Monday, and they luckily he like hadn't thawed the stuff out.
He paid his his back sperm storage fees and has uh two lovely children now. Anyway, uh Kevin from Virginia Beach uh writes in uh I heard on this past week's show uh that uh that you and I, Nastasha U and I uh and McGee were having troubles writing in the rain. I've used Right in the Rain, and that's spelled uh R I T by the R-I T E Right in the Rain uh products pretty extensively, and I can vouch that they work as advertised. As for getting your labels to stick to the wet fruit, good luck. You know, Kevin, you're exactly right.
I have Right in the Rain uh lab notebooks. Uh I've been using them for a while. Uh Wiley Dufrein's been using them in the kitchen for a while, and he actually gave me some. I think he got them before I did, and he like likes to give them to his cooks and then throw them into stockpots to make fun of them because they don't get all messed up. Uh they do make great products.
Uh and I actually ha had one uh in, but it was packed in my freaking bag. It wasn't with me in the place, and plus Nastasha writes the notes, and she refuses to carry a right in the rain product around. How can you carry the room? You've never given it like a whole stacking to use it for the diary in the city. People out there, people out there listening.
Here's what happened. I have a stack of write in the rain stuff, which are meant to be cooking notebooks for your kitchen, right? And she's like, Okay, can I write this uh rip this paper out and use it a post-it note? I'm like, no, no, no, we have stacks of post-it notes. That's what happened.
Uh, you know, who are you gonna believe? Who are you gonna believe? Me. Yeah, right, sure. All right.
Maybe for people that haven't met the both of us, they would believe you on this. Jack, who do you believe? I'm not gonna get them into it. I'm not gonna get them into it. No, don't no comment.
Yeah, no comments. I have no peep with the nostalgia these days. Uh uh. Uh and then before I get to uh the related question, because uh Kevin wants to know uh whether or not there we have any uh recommendations for must-visit food enthusiast destinations similar to the fruit and spice park. Kevin, I'm gonna get back to that.
But uh uh Rolf Wind writes in on the same question uh and he says uh in the most recent issues uh uh cooking issues radio broadcast, Dave ranted about the need for weatherproof fruit labeling technology. And he goes, I believe that this technology already exists. Small portable tattooing devices are used to label rodent tails in laboratory settings for animal identification, sometimes just to make them look like badasses. The labels are essentially permanent, labeling is quick to perform. If 200 hour uh mice per hour can be achieved, imagine the number of mangoes one could tattoo.
True story, true story. And orchard-friendly battery, uh battery operated systems are available. Their fruit compatibility is suggested by the fact that thick skinned, even waxy fruits are often used as stand-ins for animals during operator training. One of the many examples of this equipment can be found at AnimalID.com. Happy inking, keep up the good work.
Uh all right, well, uh, and by the way, that was addressed to Dear Miss Hammer, which I enjoyed. Anyway, Rolf, I love this suggestion, and you got me thinking about a bunch of different things here. Uh the one that you pointed to is the ATS-3 general rodent tattoo system. The problem with it is it's about three grand. And a like cursory view of uh eBay led me to believe uh that they're not widely available on the eBay.
I uh maybe I don't know how to how to anyway, like like different combinations of rodents and tattoos, other than tattoos of rodents, don't like show up so much on eBay. Uh so I don't know whether or not I'm I'm searching it uh wrong. But uh I did a quick search, and you can buy a battery-operated tattoo pen, right? You can spend as much as $150 or $200 on one that's professional, but they make one called like ra rabbit it, rabbit it, rabbit it, something like that, rabbit it, like a tattoo pen. It's battery operated, right?
And it's got like some sort of like you know, a lifetime guarantee. I haven't seen how waterproof it is, right? But it's just like you know, you take a triple A battery, you put a little ink in it, take it out in the orchard, and you could. I mean, I've never have you used a tattoo pen before? No.
Yeah, I have friends who do this for a living. I should ask them like use one. Okay, you're supposed to practice on something like a banana, right? So if we got an ink that didn't bleed too much into the fruit, I mean I'm assuming they use I think like some version of like you know, India ink or something, something nice black, you know, food grade. It's called human grade.
How's that is that better or worse than food grade? Human grade. I don't know. Anyway, uh I'm assuming you can just sit there and write the name of the fruit out. What do you think?
Yeah. I'm gonna buy one. Rabbit it. It's only that's like I think it's like 40 bucks or something like that. Yeah, anyway, Rolf, thank you so much for putting us on this correct line of thinking because I'm definitely not gonna spend three thousand dollars to tattoo my fruit.
But unless someone gives you one. Yeah, if someone gives me like a three thousand dollar fruit tattooing, I'm gonna say yes. Then uh, you know, not gonna turn that down. Um right? Yeah.
Okay. Uh now uh to finish this out, another thing we had last week uh that was interesting was I spent a good number of minutes uh insulting uh insulting the uh like science's ability to recreate meat via 3D printing technologies. And literally the day after that, right? The day after that, uh, Nastasha and I had a meeting with uh a a person who helped uh in the co-founding of a company called uh organovo, organovo, right? Organovo.
And what organovo does to give you some background is they can do things like grow blood vessels, whole blood vessels, right? And so most of the meat printing technology, what they'll do is they build a scaffold of collagen and then let meat cells grow into that scaffold. And that is to me, as far as food preparation, gross. It's not gonna make good food. You know what I mean?
Uh it's not gonna make a good meat substitute. And that's basically what I was ranting against. And also, anyway, well, well, we'll get it. Before I finish- I'm gonna because I'm gonna start ranting again. So wait a minute.
So these guys actually print undifferentiated or partially differentiated cells, get them to bind together, they differentiate, and they turn into actual organs like blood vessels that they can graft in if you need a coronary artery transplant, let's say, right? And I was like, holy crap, I had no idea you could do this. Did you know they could do that? I was totally shocked. Crazy, crazy they can do this.
They also make human meat tissue not to eat, although they could. They make it because uh drug companies want uh human tissue to test out uh drugs on, and so it's very it's you know much better than using mice tissue or pig tissue, and you know, don't worry, no humans killed, blah blah blah. Anyway, and so he came to us and said, Well, what do you think about the idea that we could print meat? And he's like, I can print out actual muscles in like shape and the way the muscles are made with fat marbling and all that. I have my doubts as to whether it's possible, but if it's possible, is clearly the closest that uh anyone has ever even attempted to get to actually print out something that I would consider food.
Because as I said last week, most meat substitutes, it's all about like reproducing some sort of overcooked, horrible, like monotextural pablum crap. You know what I mean? But these guys are saying they can actually do it and then you know, and without killing the animal. So you could, you know, i if they could get uh I'm still have I don't understand scientifically how that they would do things like uh correct for what the animal ate or uh the different enzyme uh makeup that is in a cell based on how long it's been in the animal, because uh I think it said like like let's say you're using a pig to make uh ham. Older pigs have better uh have better um enzyme makeups for making ham.
In other words, the muscle breaks down differently. So a ham from an older pig, not just because of fat content or because of myoglobin or any of those things, but simply because of the fact that it's older is gonna make a different ham than a younger younger pig. So I don't know how they're gonna, you know, do things like that. Meat is some complicated business. Do you know what I'm saying?
Uh so I I don't know whether that's actually possible to correct for, but if they could, then uh, you know, we could all have manatee steaks. You know, one of my goals is to have a a cruelty-free manatee steak because I told you about this, right? Yeah. Yeah, because manatee, right. I I'm not advocating hurting manatees, please, please do not say that I'm advocating hurting manatees.
I'm not, but uh in a in in his book, The Unnatural History of the Sea, uh, the author whose name I forget basically says that we've actually been making animals go extinct for a long, long time. It hasn't been, you know, just recently. Uh and one of his favorite examples is this thing called stellar sea cow, which was uh named after an explorer stellar, and it basically these sea cows are manatees, you know, manatee relatives. And so there's this island in the Pacific where the these manatees were just sitting eating kelp, right? Kelp, you know, kelp forest.
So there's big cows like grazing on kelp under the ocean, and they're sitting there. And it's like you know, in a lagoon. So like you could basically look down and see them. And here's the messed up thing, right? No natural enemies.
For some reason, this like ecological niche had developed. Uh, and I believe this is like 16 or 1700s is when this was happening. Uh that I can't remember exactly. And so here it is, these things sitting there, herbivores, right? In herds under the water, right?
Fresh. And uh, and no enemies. And here they had one downfall. They were delicious, delicious. So people said that that nothing tasted as good.
And you know, as well, I don't know, because they're on a ship and they've been eating salted meat for you know months, so who who knows? You know what I mean? It's kind of like when raw food people say something's delicious and they've only had raw food for a week, so if it doesn't taste like literally awful, it's awesome. You know what I mean? So it's hard to tell.
But these guys were basically saying that these were the best uh animals in the world because they had no predators, you would like harpoon one, and then like the guy next to them would be like, what was that? Because they're not used to getting killed. And so they didn't even run away. So you could sit there and like you know, kind of butcher them at will, which is awful, awful. Anyway, so it's one of the it was uh made extinct in a in a you know matter of a few short decades because it was delicious.
But ever since that, of course, because I'm perverse, my idea is man, I wonder what those things tasted like. So these guys, these guys can get you the cruelty-free manatee steak cooking issues. Fishes, fish. Oh, you daddy wrap. Got me on this corner.
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