Broadcasting live from Roberta's in Bushwick, Brooklyn. You're listening to Heritage Radio Network.com. Hello, and welcome to Cooking Issues. I'm Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues, coming to you live every Tuesday from 12 to 1245 from the back of Roberta's Pizza. We in Bushwick Brooklyn.
Here today in the studio, of course, with Nastasha the Hammer Lopez. As always. Hello, Nastasha. Hi. She's doing something or other on the computer, I don't know.
Probably having to do with the event we're doing for 300 people tonight. Is that true or false? No, for Thursday. For Thursday's uh Museum of Food and Drink event, which I believe is sold out, but if you know someone, you can get tickets. I.
If you beg and plead, you can get tickets. Although we are theoretically sold out. Uh is that true or false? Yeah, that's true. It's true.
So I shouldn't even talk about it. Uh see that we're we're at that point now, huh? Yeah. What's a lot? Over a thousand.
Oh, Jesus. Oh my god. Anyway, uh, you have to email Nastasha for that kind of uh for that kind of information. You know, go on the blog, whatnot. Anyway, call in all of your questions, cooking or uh uncooking related, I guess, or technical or not.
Two 718497. You just wrote this wrong. She's trying to fool me. I happen to know that the last uh the last four starts with two. Yeah.
So you kind of know the phone number. He pretends. I know I kind of know it. I know when it's wrong. I see when I look, it's like spelling.
And when I see it, I know that because isn't spelled that way, but just spelling it out isn't the same. You know what I mean? Call in all of your questions to 718 497, 2128. That's 718 497-2128. Anyway, today's uh show is brought to you by uh again, Chris Anderson from the Monitors Pantry.
Good news for all of you uh looking to get ingredients people out there. He was able to get his hands on some Pectanex SPL. The Miracle Enzyme, which we use for French fries, recipe on the blog, www.cooking issues.com. Uh enzymatic peeling of uh fruits to get really amazing peels with no albedo. That's the white crap, or to do auto supreming.
Uh we also use it for clarification. It'll self-clarify things like apple juice, but you need a center for us to do stuff like strawberry puree. Although I have a way around that. Uh I haven't posted about this yet, although I will because I found out that I'm still way behind on my contractually obliged uh posts per week. And uh they're trying to ship me off to do a demo for this school, and they won't pay my uh obligatory day rate because they say I'm behind.
So I'm gonna have to now go ahead and do all those things so that I can then uh stuff it in the appropriate people's faces. Anyway, true or false. Yes. True? I know they're listening.
Oh yeah, come on, please. Anyway, uh I'm gonna read uh the thing straight up, right? So you get today's show is sponsored by Modernist Pantry, supplying Monitus ingredients for the home cook. Whether you were looking for hydrocolloids, pH modifiers, or even meat glue, you'll find it at Modernist Pantry. And if you need something that they don't carry, just ask.
Chris Anderson and his team will be happy to source it for you. With worldwide shipping, Modernist Pantry is your one stop shop for innovative cooking ingredients. Fan of cooking issues that order during today's show, we'll get oh wait, of transglutaminase again they're running? All right. They're running the Pectanex.
Yeah, but what's the number on the I have there? I'll look it up on my thing. But apparently they're still running the transglutaminate special. So, fans of the show called What? No, it's a good one.
Well, Jack just handed me the thing. Well, see whether you get it. See whether you get it. Try to get some free some free crap. Try to get transglutaminates for free.
They said in the promo case of the CI 53. Yeah, but CI 53 is the meat glue. Uh you'll get pectin's for free. Listen with free domestic shipping. It's just like a drug dealer.
They give you the free first sample. No, this is just free domestic shipping on pectanex. Oh, free domestic shipping on pectin. For those people that call in during today's show, you will get, if you enter CI 55, I'm sure he'll uh have it maybe for a whole week. I don't know.
Uh if you enter it, you will get free domestic shipping on Pectanex SPL, the ultra enzyme. Anyway, oh I like that. I like the reverb on that. That was good, Jack. Nice.
Uh anyway. Uh oh, and it says maybe you could talk briefly about how you use Pectanex for the benefit of the audience, but it looks like I already did that. Yes. Anyway, uh, I'm very happy that someone is finally carrying this thing, and that uh, you know, who's a real person that ships stuff out, and it's not us just shipping the stuff out of the school because that was a pain in the butt. Yeah.
You hated that. Yes. A lot, a lot. Yes. Anyway.
Okay. Uh, first question comes in from longtime questionnaire Colin. Uh first a response to uh what we said, because last week he had suggested maybe you could use an ultrasonic uh homogenizer, which is a quite a violent tool as a toothbrush. Uh and he says, Well, listen, I know that you're not supposed to sh stick your teeth on it and rattle your brains into little bits. I don't have his actual comment here copied, but he still thinks maybe it would be fun.
Uh I say again, do not attempt. Do not attempt, Colin. But for his other question, um uh going back to the museum uh food and drink fundraiser that we had a uh back in what that was it, May? March. March.
Back in March. Um Wiley did a dish. I gave Wiley caveman food. Every chef had a theme that they had to do historical or fun, like you know, Wiley had caveman and Nils had uh what do you have? Food as uh no, he had uh diet, fad diets.
Anyway, so for caveman food, Wiley did an amazing looking dish that looked like it was just a split bone. It was done with high-tech stuff actually, but it looked like twigs and branches and bones, looked very caveman, it was awesome. And one of the things he did with that looked like little twigs was Anoki mushrooms that he had dried and turned to these twigs. I take that's actually the only thing I got to taste off that dish, and it was good. I'm sure Nastasha had a whole one.
I had no food that day. Even you had no food, Nastasha? Now, just to let you know how hard Nastasha was working, Nastasha would stab a co-worker in the ear and let every piece of food you were cooking burn uh rather than give up the attempt the possibility of taking any morsel of food, even your mise en plus that you need for the dish. So it just goes to show how dedicated she is to the museum that she did not try that dish. Anyway, um uh I I I like I said I had just the Anoki mushrooms and they were good.
So Colin writes in when he made the twigs for his caveman dish. Did he use fresh Anoki, then season or dehydrate them, or did he use Anoki he bought pre-dried? Come on, Collins. Wiley, of course he bought fresh Anoki, season them and dry them. Come on.
Come on. They were fresh, uh, which is what I recommend you do. And his other question is uh what other than marketing in gold dust makes Quantro's spherification kit different? Any idea what their formula was? Okay, for those of you that don't know, spherification is turning uh fluids into tiny balls made popular by Ferron Adrias.
It was an industrial thing to make flaked fake blueberries and X, Y, and Z for a long time. Typically uses sodium alginate, which is a gel that uh is you know has a lot of good properties from a from a structural point of view and a lot of bad properties from a taste point of view, because it's it's a taste thief. Although I do like the balls when they're properly made, but it's hard. Anyway, so Quantro thought they were gonna get into what some people call molecular mixology, a term I detest and uh abhor because it sounds gross and I think it's dumb. And uh they made a kit that will teach uh basically anyone, any regular bar person to uh make little balls out of Quantro and then add quantal balls to dishes, and I believe they mixed some gold dust in to make shimmery quantro, shiny tiny balls.
I think that's what it was, shiny tiny balls. I'm not sure what they added to the kit, whether it was a mag stir unit or something like that, but I believe that they were just using I hope they were using calcium gluconate and not calcium lactate, I mean uh calcium uh chloride as their uh salt, because it's basically uh alginate plus calcium equals uh equals you know, alginate plus calcium equals a gel. So you make a an al you make an alginate uh mixture with your quantro, you drip it, dip it into the calcium, and boom, she sets. Um pretty sure that's what they were doing. I don't think they were doing reverse verification because it's more difficult and they were trying to train people to do it who had no training with hydrocolloids.
So I believe that it is just marketing gold dust, alginate, and calcium, hopefully calcium lactate gluconate because it's the least flavorless of the thing. And I believe a scale. You get a scale so you can measure this stuff out. You ever see them do that with Nastasha? No.
I've never had a quantro tiny ball cocktail, but you know, I'm willing I'm willing to try one. Although I have my doubts about the tiny ball phenomenon in general. What about you? You like tiny balls? Oh, fresh balls came.
Fresh what? Fresh balls came. Fresh oh, Nastasha ordered for her boyfriend uh the product fresh balls, which cooks across the world apparently tell me is much, much better than putting like uh cornstarch or whatever else you're gonna put into your pants to keep yourself uh fresh during service. Nastasha looks horrified. Well, Nastasha brought it up.
I mean, I have to say I was not gonna mention this at all. Tiny balls is an alginate food product that is absolutely uh wholesome and family oriented. All right then. Yeah. And you know, I don't want anyone writing or calling in saying that I suddenly took the show to a bad place when I believe it was Nastasha who brought it up.
And then, you know, you're not allowed to bring up an inside thing to our viewers without me explaining what's going on. It's unfair to the listeners. Let's move on. Moving on. Uh Alvin writes in about centrifuges.
Okay. Uh, because I just did a post on centrifuges. Okay, now I want a centrifuge. Actually, I wanted one before, ever since I had corn butter at Mirvold's lab in Bellevue, Washington. That would be Nathan Mirvold of Monitors Pantry.
Uh, what slash should I buy? Where to look? Perhaps eBay. I think you mentioned once on the radio show about finding one super cheap because of a misspelled auction. It's one of my favorite things of all time.
I got a centrifuge for almost nothing because they spelled it like what'd they spell it? Like centr centrafuge or something. Something wrong. I forget. Centerfuge.
Something something crazy. Uh finding one super cheap because of a misspelled auction. The approximate cost, I got it for under a hundred bucks plus shipping. Sick. Awesome.
Thing works great, by the way. Don't be, you know, not to make you jealous or anything. Works great. Uh please answer on the radio show because I listen to the podcast religiously. By the way, will you guys be at the Star Chefs ICC, uh, which is the International Chefs Congress, not to be confused with the renaming of the French Culinaries building, the International Culinary Center, although that is confusing, right?
Confusing. Do you find it confusing? Anyway, anyway. Uh uh, well, uh, Alvin, we will not be there as participants this year. We don't have to work it.
We just get to show up. Boo! Yuck every year. I've never seen any of the demos because we're working the whole time, right, Nastasha? You're right.
Anyway, this time uh I'll be hanging out and uh getting liquored up at the uh whoever the wine and beer sponsors are. I'll be going to the seminars given by my bartender friends and watching chef's demo and learning stuff like a normal human instead of uh running around like a chicken with my head cut off. Right? Right. Should be fun.
Anyway, okay, now to his question. Okay, you want a four or sometimes three. You want a three to four liter uh bench top centrifuge. If you can find one, refrigeration is not necessary, but refrigeration is helpful. If you're only gonna run one or two batches, it doesn't matter.
But when you're running a thing all the time uh and you don't have time necessarily to really chill your products down, they can heat up somewhat uh somewhat drastically in uh in a centrifuge because of all the friction of the thing spinning around. You want to make sure uh what you do is you you look up whatever rotor you're using, and you uh you can look it up on the internet. There's all sorts of calculators to help you figure out how many times the force of gravity uh any particular rotor is generating at a particular number of revolutions per minute, and you can look it up. You want to get about four thousand G's to be able to get the best benefit out of it, including all the stuff you do with enzymes and things like that. You're gonna want to get yourself some Pectan X SPL, of course, uh so that you can just clarify everything like a mamma jamma.
Now, the reason I recommend four liters is because a four-liter, you're really spinning about three liters at a time, and I find that it really is a convenient size because if you have less product, you can spin two buckets instead of one. We've sometimes even spun one bucket of product, and then the other bucket just had uh like sugar in it as a weight to keep it weighted down. And it's just a really good size. We can put a lot of product through it. It's you know, pretty economical to time wise to run.
So I really, really like it. Uh you could maybe get a three-liter fuge. Um, I didn't enjoy using my one that only had uh 500 by six. It's like a liter and a half or something like that. What is it?
What is five hundred by six? That's three liters, but it didn't seem like it did three liters in those little bottles. Yeah. Maybe it was 250 by 5. Anyway, it was like a liter and a half fuge.
And I didn't really like it. I had to spin it so many times to get enough product to work. You know what I mean? And plus you need to have a little bit of air at the top anyway, so you end up losing. I would get a three to four-liter uh bench top centrifuge.
Um if you apparently, someone told me at the uh class I taught last weekend that uh the price has gone up substantially on eBay since we've been screaming loud and long that everyone needs to buy one. Um and so I don't know whether my particular model, the Zhuan, uh, you know, C whatever it is, C C 12, C14, is uh still a good deal, but you should be able to get one for about a thousand bucks in good working order, 1200 bucks in good working order. I never paid more than 200 for mine, but I'm willing to wait around and wait for something broken and fix it. Brand spanking new, they're eight grand. Uh and so that should give you a uh that should give you an idea.
Is that a good good answer, Stas? Yes. All right. Now, let's go to our first commercial break. And while we're doing that, pick up your phones and download your questions to 718 497 2128.
That's 718497-2128. We're having a party. Listen to the music. On the radio. The cokes are in the ice box.
Pop holes on the table. Me and my baby. We're out here on the floor. Some mister Mr. Easy.
Keep those place. Cause I'm a haven. Such a good time. Dancing with my baby. Just to give you an idea what kind of person Nustache is.
She wanted to cut the song off before you said dancing with my baby. No soul. No soul on that lady. Right? I guess?
Yeah, we're getting some nods from the from the room over there. Then don't come in and ask it for a ready, Jack. Well, he knows not to cut it off before he says dancing with my baby. Come on. Please.
Come on. Anyway. And you know what's funny? Nastashi used to work for MTV and like loves bands, loves going to C bands, kind of. Doesn't like to be in the audience, likes to be side stage.
And yet she, like, an actual song comes on, couldn't care less. Anyway. It's not true when it comes to Holland Outs. No, it's true. Hall of Notes.
If you would cut, if you would cut off Man Eater at a bad time, she would like all of us would be dead. Because that's her theme song. Oh wow. Boom. Alright.
So uh Johnny writes in with lots of questions. Uh I really enjoyed the discussion last week about which br uh blender brand to purchase and Daya's promotion of induction cooktops. Do you guys have an opinion about brands for induction burners? I own a couple of cooktechs. I've been happy with them, but I'm wondering if there are others that I should look into.
Unfortunately, uh Johnny, I don't have enough experience. Cook tech. I know a lot of people that use cooktex. Um they're out of Illinois. I believe, you know, they're a U.S.
brand, and so most people build them in. I haven't heard a lot of horror stories about CookTex versus other induction units in a commercial environment, which I'm assuming you're in a commercial environment because most people who use cooktex are in commercial uh environments. Um the main problem with inductions early on was everyone wanted the holy grail, which is induction units over a an oven, induction range over an oven. And no one, I don't care whether it was French companies or cook tech or whomever, uh, no one made induction units that simp that wouldn't burn out when they were put over an oven because um they just you know the the the electronics weren't cooled effectively enough and they would always just burn out, and that was what happened. That was the last time I checked into that was maybe four or five years ago.
So I'm hoping that they've solved that problem, although I don't know if they have or not. The other problem I've seen with with uh induction units, uh cooktop and cook tech and otherwise is just shattering of uh people like putting a heavy pot on on something in a in a commercial environment or dropping a uh you know, dropping a pan down on it and boom, they shatter. Uh and so those are the two things that uh uh I know had always been the Achilles heel, not of cooktex in particular, but of all of these units. So I'm hoping that some of those uh problems will change. I think when you looking into uh when you're looking into uh induction units, one of the interesting things is you can configure them kind of h however you want.
And so you can buy dual units that are either side by side or front back. Uh I thought the front back units were pretty cool because you could treat you could stack them like a regular range, which is awesome, and you could just make it any number of burners you want, but the guys at Somme who have one have a problem because they won't accept a big stock pot. So just figure out what you want, and uh I think CookTech is a fine brand to go with. I'm gonna get back to some of Johnny's questions in a minute because we have a caller. Caller, you are on the air.
Hi Dave. Uh this is Gary from New York. Um I have a question about uh tinctures. Um and basically, I was wondering if the rapid and fusion technique that you talk about on the blog, is there a way to uh do tinctures with that? So you know, you know, you don't have to wait six weeks for seven tincture or whatever.
Okay. Well, so so here's my feeling on that. So um the rate of infusion, what kind of proof of alcohol are you using? Very, very, very high? Well, since I'm in New York, they can't get uh grain alcohol, but I guess the highest thing I know I can get is like solely 100 or you know, something like that.
You can do 151 is the highest proof you can get here, and they sell a uh I saw one that was slightly higher that was illegal, but you can get 151 here. Um you can't get uh you can't get higher than 151. So, but you you can go to New Jersey or Connecticut and get it and get the uh ever clear regular ever clear. Uh it tastes bad, regular ever clear. You could try to source uh some like lab or perfume grade, and if you convince someone that you're a business, you can get uh lab grade 200 proof, which is sweet.
Uh don't get too hard, get the 195 USP lab grade. It's really pure, it's awesome stuff. Um and if you find it on sale, it's not that that expensive. Okay. But back to your question.
Um I think that the the flavors you get are not going to be exactly the same. If you want a if you want it to taste like an old school tincture, then you're probably gonna need to make an old school tincture. Will you accelerate the infusion by doing rapid infusion? Yes, a hundred percent. But the the exact ratios of uh f you know, different compound compounds that are extracted under the different uh kind of time and pressure regimes might not be exactly identical.
Maybe it's gonna be better, maybe it's better. Maybe it's worse, maybe it's just different. I think you have to test it. So if you've made a particular tincture before, right, you can make one using the rapid infusion technique and and and I think have a good result, but it might be different. Another thing is is that when I have rapid, right?
I'm typically doing rapid stuff in the one to five minute range. Now I there've been people who have tested uh trying to do more traditional tasting like several week tinctures by keeping the stuff under pressure on the order of eight hours or overnight or one day and then venting the vessel. And I think people have had some good luck doing that, and that might taste closer to a traditional tincture because you're basically the amount of time it would take the liquor to percolate through and get an intimate contact and kind of displace the air that's inside of uh some of the products that you're steeping would be uh, you know, basically you get through that part of it right away. And then it's just uh it's just the you know, the the the marrying once it's together and then p you know, shooting it out that you get. So that might be another way to uh to do it if you if you want to give that a shot.
Yeah, I will. Thank you, Dave. Hey, no problem. Thanks for calling in. I love questions on infusions and tinctures, right, Sas?
Yeah. Uh let me see if I can get my iPad to find Oh, I have another caller. Caller, you were on the air. Hi. Uh hi, Dave.
I have a question. If I so a lot of recipes call for chicken or vegetable broth. Um, and if I don't have any in my apartment and I can't really like run out and get any, what can I do or what can I use instead of that? Huh. But you want it to taste like that?
Well, I mean, I guess so. I I guess it's not so much like if I'm making like a barley or something and I know that it would might be too bland without the chicken or vegetable broth. Yeah. Uh I mean and you just can't keep it in stock because you forget. Right.
So it's like it's always that one thing that you have in your kitchen and you for and you forget to buy it until you don't have it. Yeah, okay. Now listen, don't don't tell anyone who's not listening to this, but there that like uh there's whole groups of people who you otherwise respect in Europe who keep uh who use on a regular basis like Brodo, broth, bullion cubes. Yeah. And there are higher quality ones than uh than the ones that we normally get in the US, even made by the companies that make the same ones in the US because it's more of a respected product in certain places we show they shall remain nameless, Italy.
Uh and and so in other countries, like these uh broth cubes, uh Broto they call them, right? Cubes, what do they call them? Yeah. They you know they are a they are considered a valid ingredient. So what I would do is is if you're if your buddies are gonna bother you about it, hide it in the back of your pantry.
If not, say like, you know, who's shove that stick up your butt? This is a valid ingredient, stop being so provincial and look at the world. Uh and then uh and then what you do is you just have that there. Use your normal stock when you have it, and then have one of those sitting around just in case all hell breaks loose and you don't have it, right? Okay.
That's that sounds great. But you're gonna have to remember you're gonna have to change the amount of salt that you have in your recipe. So you're gonna want to make sure that there's no pre-salting going on. Okay, with the with the bullion cube. Yeah, and the other thing I would recommend, and this is another good one, is stock freezes almost indefinitely.
So what I tend to do when I'm doing a bunch of uh do you have a pressure cooker? I don't. Okay, well buy a pressure cooker. Anyway. Okay.
Like whenever you're getting chickens, I tend to buy whole chickens and then I break them down. Uh and then I just uh I throw the uh I throw all of the bones and and you know, you know, backs and necks and stuff into uh into zips and throw them in the freezer. And then after I've accumulated, you know, like four or f four chickens worth, I just I th throw the bones in the in the pressure cooker and just make a quick white stock. Don't even bother I mean like it's better if you roast everything, but don't even bother, just throw it in with some veg clamp it and like 20 minutes later you know you have uh a passable stock you can freeze into cubes and then you just have so you do you have three layers now you have some stuff frozen in in and you freeze them in ice cube trays and then put them in zips and and then you just throw individual cubes of frozen in and they melt relatively quickly. You don't want to freeze big core containers of it because then you have to thaw a whole core container out.
Yeah. Yeah. And so now you have three layers that are going to protect you. Yeah wow that's that was really great. Thanks so much.
I never thought about the ice cube idea that's that's really cool though. Well I forget who I stole that from back in the probably from Jacques Popin or Julia Child, someone back in you know way back in the day. That's okay I won't tell anybody I'll say it's Dave Arnold's idea. Alright cool thanks very much thanks for calling in all right so now back to Johnny's list of questions. He writes in are there any det is there any detailed information on changing the oil in a vacuum sealer.
Commercial vacuum machines another indication that Johnny's in a commercial kitchen commercial vacuum machines use uh vacuum oil and uh that that's how they seal how they get a good seal on them. And uh it's one of the reasons why they're much better than a food save or any sort of home machine because they have a much higher grade pump. That said occasionally you have to change the oil. You don't have to actually change the oil very often the oil gets contaminated with water every time you vacuum something with water in it. And you uh clean it typically just by heating the pump up by running it letting air go through it it boils the water out and makes the oil clear again.
But when the time comes to change it, you change it much like you change a car. What you just uh you run the vacuum pump to get the uh the what's it called the pump hot so that the oil is uh a little runnier right and then typically it depends on the machine, but you might have to undo a couple of bolts and move the pump out. It's just attached by hoses and and pipes and stuff. You move it out a little bit. There's typically a uh a uh filling port at the top and one on the side, and you drain it just like a car.
If it would have any grit in it, you should look at the oil and make sure it had no grit in it. If it had grit, seal it, pour some fresh oil in, run it vacuum oil. You can get it any industrial supply place like McMaster.com or Granger or uh MSC direct and uh run it with some fresh oil, drain that again, fill it with fresh oil. It doesn't take much. Usually these things take under a quart.
Uh under a quart. Anyway, and uh that's it. It's fairly fairly simple. Um lastly, uh Johnny wants to know uh he was listening to the Nathan Mirvold episode that we had uh and and particularly the discussion on Confi, uh where we said where Nathan basically said that you could steam a duck, and it's the same thing as doing a confie. And uh and he's wondering how steaming can produce the same results as cooking in fat.
He guessed that he just assumed that the fat had some beneficial effect on flavoring. Now that's one of the more controversial things that uh Mirvold, Young, uh, you know, and everyone uh you know, Max were saying is that um confie, the fat actually doesn't make uh any difference, and that what it was is fat is a very gentle way to cook something in a liquid that's not a poaching liquid, right? So when you when you poach something in water, you're ch you're basically you're you know, fluids are exchanging, you're be getting more of a poached duck uh or a braised duck than you are a confid duck. But since the fat is considered a dry cooking medium and it doesn't really add moisture or remove moisture from the or water soluble stuff from the duck, it it's a way of doing a gentle low temperature cooking back in the day before there was any sort of low temperature, right? And if you roasted it in an oven without the fat, you get much more uh evaporation loss off of the duck, so you'd end up with a much much drier duck.
So it's a way to protect and cook the duck. Uh, but the but Mirval's thing is that basically it doesn't actually add uh any appreciable flavor to the duck at all. I don't know. I've never run the side by side test. The only way to do this is to do one in a combi oven set on steam at 85 Celsius or something like that, uh, and uh do another one uh traditionally comfy or even in a bag sous vide comfy.
Although you shouldn't do it in a bag because nothing can evaporate off in the bag. So you should do it basically traditional in fat in the six here's what you should do. You should get one combi oven, run one in a pan uh just steamed, and the other one in the fat in the same cavity at the same time, and for the same exact length of time, same temperature regime, and see which one comes out better or if there's any difference. I'm assuming, knowing those guys that they did that and they saw that there wasn't any difference. So I'm gonna have to say that the way that they were doing it, it didn't make much of a difference.
What do you think it does? Yes, all right. And apparently that wasn't the last question because he says sorry for all the questions, but he has one last question. He does a lot of low temperature cooking, but his partner doesn't like it because she's worried about the harmful effects of cooking things in plastic. I showed her manufacturer's recommendations in that I cook things under the temperature that they recommend, but she points out that plastics have continued to have increased negative effects that get revealed after new introductions and after new, you know, whatever research that comes out, and not enough uh is known to show it is safe.
Is she worrying too much or is it a valid concern? It's very interesting. Uh, because I mean the main problem is you either trust that it's safe or you don't trust that it's safe. You can't prove that something is safe other than saying, you know, we've used X, Y, and Z for a long time, there doesn't appear to be any negative effects. Now the fact of the matter is that a lot of these plastics haven't been around super duper long in food processing things, and there's all sorts of problems that we're having these days.
And some people point to things like plastics, but they also point to things like high fructose corners, they point to a lot of things. So it's very difficult to know, and it's almost impossible to prove that something doesn't have an effect unless it's by centuries of use. You know, it's very, very, very difficult. I will say this. Um I am fairly certain that there are materials that leach from plastics into food when you're cooking.
The question is, are those and depends on the plastic, of course. The question is, are those things harmful? They the reverse happens too. Uh things in your food leach into the plastics, which is why plastics sometimes take on smells and can't be cleaned properly. It's mainly with fat-soluble things because the fat uh you know fatty things tend to uh you know have a a crosstalk with your plastics more often, which is why if you use a crappy plastic wrap that has a smell and you wrap a fatty cheese in it, the outside of the cheese tastes terrible.
You've had that happen, right, Stas. It's disgusting, right? It's because the cheese is absorbing plasticky flavors uh and and and and vice versa. So you want to you want to be careful. Now I would stay away from uh certain things that have i if you for instance if you're worried about BPA, bisphenol A, right?
Polycarbonate uh has uh you know, has it, right? We don't wrap the food in polycarbonate, but uh, we use polycarbonate in drinking vessels all the time. So if you're worried about bisphenol A, you stay away from that. I would stay away from cooking with PVC because it has lots of stuff in it, including uh, you know, plasticizers and phthalates and all sorts of things. So and and and but luckily most plastic wraps aren't made of that.
Most plastic wraps nowadays are made of polyethylene. Uh and polyethylene usually doesn't have plasticizers, which are the things that are, you know, people most normally blame for a lot of the problems in uh plastics these days. But they, you know, they do have things in them, uh, you know, other things like ethyl vinyl acetate and polybutine that are added to make things cling better. They have solvents in them that are used to uh, you know, they're in the process of making them that are then flashed off. And are there the residual things like that in?
Sure, there are. I mean, I have but have there ever been shown to be any problem with them? Not not that I know of, but it's very difficult. I feel confident using um polyethylene at low temperatures. Um but it's very it's very hard to it's very hard to say.
Um the you know, the a lot of the bags have uh you know the the bags that we use, uh cooking bags have nylon, which is also relatively uh you know considered inert and uh you know and you know not harmful in any way. So what do you think, Nastasha? What's the what's the upshot of that? There is no upshot, right? No.
Have I have I helped at all? Or I just think you I think it helps. I don't know. Here's some things. You can also cook in glass jars in a pressure cooker.
You can cook in fat directly without cooking in um without cooking in in bags at all. Another thing is people have experimented making kind of uh foil pouches to uh cook things in um low temperature. Uh, you know, and I think there's gonna be more and you know, more and more people are gonna be interested, but you could just do low temperature directly in stock, directly in fat, uh in uh glass, packed in glass, uh in uh like I say, foil, though I haven't done that many experiments with it. So you there's all alternatives you can use if you're worried of for certain dishes if you're worried about the plastic. Yes?
Yes. Okay. Um Chris, uh, should we take one more break? Yeah. Okay, one more commercial break.
Call on all your questions too. 7184972128. That's 718497218. Too much love, I'll the man of sleep. You brought my will.
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Oh, you're fine. So kind. And let's remember that if it's Jerry Lewis, he's talking about a 15-year-old. That's not, but I'm thinking, but all I can think of is Jerry Lewis singing that to like a 15-year-old. Oh man.
I had to take it to a bad place, right? Yeah. But I listen, I like his music, but don't you think about that? When you see like when you have a musician that, you know, has like a crazy, and look, I respect him greatly as a musician, but when you think of someone who has a crazy foible like that, don't you have to think about it every time you hear the music? Wasn't it his cousin too?
Look, now you're just making fun of the South. I don't appreciate that. I'm pretty sure that. I don't know. I don't know.
Anyway. Uh Chris Beer, we're gonna get in trouble on this one. Like, you know, but with the fresh balls and this one, it's bad. It's been a bad day. Anyway, uh, Chris Beer writes in about ISI infusions.
Hi, David Nastash, I have a cocktail question for you. I've been doing a lot of ISI infusions and fat washing, and I have a question about rancidity. Even though I freeze and strain my fat-washed alcohol, is there some residual fat that can go rancid over a period of time? I err on the side of caution and keep it in the freezer, taking out as needed, and let it come to room temperature for proper dilution. Also, I've infused nuts into alcohol and an ISI.
Is there any nut oil that would seep out and go rancid at room temperature? I don't usually keep ISI infused alcohol in the freezer. My cocktail obsession didn't start until I took your hydrocholide class uh last November. Thanks for the enlightenment, Chris Beer. Well, thank you for the compliment.
That's very nice. Um okay, look, uh when you're fat washing, a certain small amount of the fat is soluble in the alcohol, and that's frankly where some of that taste is coming from. Now, uh as to whether or not it goes rancid, if you're worried about rancidity, one thing you can add is a little bit of vitamin E, which is kind of a uh fat, you know, fat soluble uh antioxidant that you can add to try and prevent rancidity. Uh I don't know, can you just buy that in the store? Vitamin E.
Can you just buy vitamin E in the store? Yeah? All right. You can just go buy it. Tocofurol.
Um, but I called up, I couldn't get in touch with Don Lee, but I was trying to get him and John Darragon, who were two of the guys at PDT who used to blast out uh their famous uh Benton's uh bacon bourbon uh fat washed uh drink for their bacon bourbon fat washed thing that was hugely popular at PDT, I don't know, what, four or five years ago, something like that, four years ago? Whenever it was, three, four years ago. And so I said to John, here's the here's the quote. John, did you ever have uh rancidity problems with fat washing? And then he writes back, he wrote, We didn't have the product around that long.
I was like, all right, all right. Have you ever heard about the problem? Because I have a radio question about it. He says, No, but then again, putting bacon sticks in a bottle of vodka, people putting bacon sticks in a bottle of vodka are probably experiencing it uh and won't know it because I don't know, because they're drinking too much bacon in vodka or something. He said something unprintable, so I can't print it.
But he basically says is that he he he there maybe there's some rancidity happening, but he hasn't noticed it, and people who are like doing a lot of bacon in vodka probably don't notice uh either. Uh he also says uh he thinks it uh depends on the shelf life of the fat. Someone doing a lobster fat wash will have much less stable shelf product than a duck fat or bacon fat. Would be interesting to see if there's a relation to proof of spirit versus stability of product. I agree, John, it would be an interesting thing to look up.
Uh I mean to test. I don't know. I mean, the one thing we do with fat a lot in the ISI is uh cocoa nibs. And of course, you know, cocoa butter is gonna get uh dissolved in there, but cocoa butter is famously stable against oxidation. You know, that's why chocolate lasts so long.
I mean, that that you know, it loses its temper, but it doesn't go rancid. Do you know what I mean? But you know, uh Evan has done a lot of butter uh fat washing. I wonder whether it goes rancid. I mean, certain things do go bad when they're infused.
Uh you know, we remember did you ever have this uh the hops one? It got all skunked. Nasty. She was 13 and his first cousin. You gotta speak more into the microphones.
She was 13 and his first cousin, but his management all insisted she was 15. Oh, well, see, just like me to believe the management story. Just like you. You know, just too trusting. Company man, yeah.
Uh Matthew writes in on sauerkraut and slow roasting. Uh hey, Nasta, I hope all is well with you and Dave. I had a question. I was hoping you could answer them when you had time. I heard Dave mentioned that lactic acid contributes to sauerkraut type flavors.
In fact, it's the acid that you get from the lactic acid bacteria making sauerkraut. And you can distinguish uh uh, you know, uh a pickle, you know, an actual lactic acid back pickle from a vinegar pickle based on the lactic acid. Uh I'm working on a bratwurst sandwich for my business, sounds good, that I plan to top with pickled purple cabbage. Would it be possible to incorporate a small quantity of lactic acid into my pickle cabbage to suggest a sauerkraut type flavor without actually going through the fermentation product process? Does this make sense and is it a good idea?
Well, I don't know. It's interesting. I've never had uh really a mix of lactic and vinegar, like a semi-vinegar lactic. I mean, maybe I have, but I haven't I haven't made it myself, so I don't know. Look, it doesn't harm you at all to call up Terra Spice or Modernus Pantry.
Does Modernus Pantry carry that? I have no idea. Anyway, call them up. Get yourself a bag of lactic acid. It's not that expensive.
It's powder form. I used to get liquid form, but it's a pain to deal with. Don't get that. Just get the powder form because it stays around forever. And sprinkle it in, and you know, it really does add, it depends on how you think about it.
Sometimes people think of it like cured sausage, sometimes people think of it like sauerkraut, depends on what it's added to. I'm assuming if you add it to cabbage, it's going to taste like sauerkraut. Uh, you know, I happen to really love sauerkraut, and so uh my feeling, not having done side-by-side taste tests, is you're not going to get the same sort of complex, delicious flavors uh from a quick pickle that you are from an actual fermentation that produces lactic acid bacteria. On the other hand, quick pickles can just be fresh and delicious tasting, and there's no reason why they can't have a lactic acid flavor as well as a vinegar flavor, right? Mm-hmm.
So, you know, uh, you know, I don't believe in things necessarily uh using them just as shortcuts, but I definitely believe in doing something that's going to make it more delicious, and so if it's a delicious product that you stand behind, then I think it's a good idea. You know? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Uh along the same veins, does shocking slow roasted or braised meats in an ice bath affect the reabsorption of juices into the meat?
I often slowly braise slabs of bacon or other meats wrapped in plastic and foil in the oven at temperatures between 200 and 250 Fahrenheit. I was under the impression that during the cooling process, they reabsorb some juices that may have secreted during the cooking. It would speed things up for me to be able to plunge them into an ice bath after brazing in order to chill them quickly. What mur worries me is if this would affect the overall outcome of the product in terms of juiciness. It absolutely will.
Absolutely will. This is one of the things that we do in the uh sous vide class every time we run it is we show the effect of cooling on uh pieces of meat if they're too rapidly cooled. And this goes back to something I learned maybe set six, seven, seven years ago from Bruno Gousseau, kind of one of the grandfathers of uh you know low temperature cooking, is that uh you want to cool meats relatively slowly in order to have them reabsorb uh juices properly, and then once they get uh much below about 50 degrees Celsius, they stopped reabsorbing juices. And so you want to ramp the temperature from cooking down relatively slowly. Now, I'll tell you what he recommends.
Bruno Gousseau recommends, and we've done side by side well, I'll tell you what he recommends. He recommends you take a product out of your uh your cooking bath and you just leave it in the on the counter, in air on the counter for let's say it's a thick product, like you're talking, like a bacon slab, 20 minutes. Then throw it into tap water for 20 minutes because the air is not a very good conductor, it's gonna heat it, cool it relatively slowly. Tap room temperature tap water, much better conductor is going to start dropping it down a little more rapidly. After that 20, throw it in ice, and it will get all the way down in a relatively quick and safe amount of time without having to worry about uh, you know, whether it's going to be chilled properly or not.
That's what Bruno Gusseau recommends, and we've tested uh various regimes from throwing it directly in ice, like you recommend uh or not you recommend that you ask about, and then versus just going uh on the counter for 20 minutes and then in ice first versus the full gousot uh on the counter, then in water, then in ice. And uh there's not that much of a difference between the full gousot and just leaving it on the counter for 20 minutes and then throwing it in ice. So if you have to omit that step, you can, but there is a marginal difference, and his method is marginally better. Fair? Mm-hmm.
Fair. The full gousot. Okay. Uh I also have a small sandwich business, he writes. I would like to make a cheese sauce to serve over a braised beef sandwich.
I'm looking for a more temperature stable solution than any traditional Mornay sauce. For those of you out there who don't not hip to it, Mornay is basically a bechamel. So you take a roux, like a flour and uh butter, you cook it, you uh add milk. Typically they would scald the milk beforehand, but I don't think it's really necessary because milk that we use has been pasteurized, right? Uh and then that thickens up when it comes to the boil.
Uh usually you cook it off now for like 20 minutes to get rid of any residual starchy and flour flavors, and then uh towards the end you stir in cheese to make a delicious cheese sauce. Like, you know, classic would be Gruyere or something like that, right? Staz likes Gruyere because she likes all kind of like fondue Swissy kind of crap. She's like she loves the like Italians and Swiss, right? Food.
Yeah. And people. I thought you're the one always uh coming to the coming to the defense of the Swiss people. I make fun of them because they're neutral and you're like, no, they're great. No, no, I like their food culture mostly.
But not the people. So you don't like Swiss people. You're going on record saying you don't like Swiss people. I like some Swiss people. All right, all right.
Just curious. I'm just asking. Okay. Um, where was I? Mornay sauce.
Okay. Ideally, I would like to be able to make this sauce ahead of time and just heat it up for service without having to worry too much about it breaking. I'm not sure if it matters, but I would like to incorporate cheddar. I'm not at all adverse to adding strange chemicals into the mix. I just wasn't I want the main flavor to come from actual cheese, i.e., not from processed cheese.
Any thoughts or ideas, this would be a great assistance. Thanks, Matthew. Okay, look. We've all had cheese sauce go grainy, right? Have you had a cheese sauce go grainy or have you just never made a cheese sauce before?
No way. Yeah, we've all had a cheese sauce go grainy. She's not paying attention. She's literally staring off in Roberta's waiting for her pizza that is soon to come. So there's a number of things, like the couple of problems with cheese.
Some cheeses just don't melt very well, right? And they go grainy. The other problem with cheeses is you heat them up and they break. So you know the basically the fat is bound in kind of a protein and water matrix and then it breaks and it turns into a fatty goopy thing, and then like a curdled, nasty protein bull crap, and your sauce is ruined, and or it's grainy. And you want to try to prevent all of those things.
So one of the things you can do to prevent that from breaking is to ha uh starch. But of course, there's already starch in your sauce. You can add, you know, maybe a little bit more starch that's not necessarily one that you need to cook off as much, like a rice starch or something like that. Um, but I'm gonna talk about non-starch-related stuff to get it to go. Obviously, if you're making uh if you're if you're having problem with it getting ropey, right, you can add a little acid, which is what McGee recommends, and it's why fondues always have white wine in them to increase the acidity a little bit so that they tend not to get ropey and they tend to stay smooth.
But if you're having melting problems, right, and you want to know why how it is that Velveeta is so freaking delicious, but you want to not from a texture standpoint. I'm not saying you like the taste of Velveda Nastasha because she's making a stink face. I'm saying the stuff melts like a genius. Is there any better melting cheese? Is there anything more like melty, awesome than queso dip made with Velveeta, government cheese, and rotel tomatoes?
Delicious. Anyway, um my point is is if you want that melty thing, you have to add something called melting salts. So what they do is there's a whole category of things called called melting salts or emulsifying salts, and they're they use different ones. Sodium citrate is one that you might already have if you have hydrocolloids sitting around or different sodium phosphates like uh monosodium phosphate, um things like that. You add you you take your cheese before you make a sauce, take the cheese, grind it up fine, mix the salt in in the in the area of like a percent or something of this stuff, right?
Of the of either try sodium citrate, although I haven't used it like monosodium phosphate. You can get these things uh on the you know, maybe you can get them from Monarch's pantry. Fall Chris, we'll get it. But anyway, sodium citrate you probably already have if you do algine or things like that. Grind up the uh grind or grate the cheese, uh toss it all together with this.
If you need to add some other liquids if it's too dry, add liquids to it. If you need to add extra fat, add fat to it if it's very low fat cheese to try and get it, you know, in a relative into the relative proportions of a good melting cheese, like a grier or something like that, or like Velveeta. Now heat that, right, until it forms a smooth block, until it forms a smooth curd. Set that. And then you can use that cheese as the melting cheese in your Mornay sauce, and it'll be a lot more stable.
What do you think, Snaz? I think it's a good idea. Alright, so uh in doing this, I went and read a bunch of stuff on the internet. And um, oh, also if you add some of these things, they can make the pH of your of your thing, they can make it more basic because these things tend to make it like the they're alkaline, they make it more basic. And so it's gonna affect the texture of your cheese.
You need to add a little bit of an acidifier to the cheese as you melt it to bring the uh pH back down uh into the slightly pH range, or you're gonna have a problem. You can use citric acid, you can use whatever, you can use whatever you want. Um, you know, lemon juice, anything, anything you want. Um, okay. So, what I would do is go read uh if you want if you want to go stuff, go to the University of how do you pronounce it in Canada?
Gelf? University Gelf. They have the best, like one of the best dairy sites, and they have an entire section on how to make processed cheeses. Uh and so you should go to their to their website, the University of Gelph, look it up. If you want some cool pictures of what uh these things look like under the microscope, the little known food under the microscope uh blog, which you have to search for in Google under Foods Under the Microscope, have a really cool section on it, and also a really cool section on how to look at the curd boundaries inside of cheese that you buy at the supermarket um using uh like a cheese slicer.
You need here's what you need. You need a cheese slicer, basically, and you need uh sandpaper, and you need a two to five percent uh solution of glutiraldehyde. Now that sounds like you're not gonna have it, except for you can buy glutaraldehyde as a wort remover in roughly the same percentage that you need uh and denatured alcohol and acetone. So you can get all of these things basically at the local CVS or or right aid uh and and and do it. But I don't have time to go through their uh procedure, but just go under foods under the microscope.com and look up their awesome procedure for looking at curd boundaries in cheese.
Lastly, we just got a call in from I don't know from whom. Oh, from Don Lee, wrote texted us in. Uh by the way, Don Lee is tending bar uh from cocktail, he's you know, representing Cocktail Kingdom with Greg Bohm, which is a fantastic company that sells all sorts of awesome bar gear, including like the world's greatest ice pick, uh, for um it's an awesome ice pick. Like, I have no idea whether it makes ice crack any better than anything else, but you want to hold it all day long and tap people on the head with it who bother you. Uh, also, by the way, about them, not to push them or anything, but uh in general, I have a negative feeling about many reprints of old books because they're done so poorly.
And uh, you know, Greg, who does Cocktail Kingdom is also a publisher and an avid book collector uh of cocktail books, and I saw one of his reprints of uh, I think what was it, the Flowing Bowl or something like that, and it was such a good quality reprint that I thought he had reset the manuscript. That's how good they are, anyway, whatever. And they're being gracious enough to be one of the bartending crews at the museum event on Thursday. Don says, uh, regarding rancid fat, I have tasted a rancid fat wash, and it was seriously no bueno, but it was also a fat wash gone terribly wrong. They didn't freeze the fat and properly remove it.
The fat was left in slightly above room temperature for 48 hours and definitely had gone rancid. The longest safe fat wash I've done was 12 hours with ghee at room temperature before freezing. And that's just from Don Lee, and this has been Cooking Issues. Oh, you did. Thanks for listening to this program on the Heritage Radio Network.
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