Broadcasting live from Roberta's in Bushwick, Brooklyn. You're listening to Heritage Radio Network.com. Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues, coming to you live every Tuesday from 12 to 1245 out of the back of Roberta's Pizzeria in Brooklyn, New York. Join today as always with Nastasha the Hammer Lopez, but also special and unknown guest.
We didn't know he was going to be here. He was here for another radio show, which is prerecorded, which is why it's okay that we're going to steal him. But Alex Talbot, Alexander Talbot from Ideas and Food, the one and only is in the studio with us today. Hello, Alex. Hello, sir.
How are you? Doing well, doing well. So call in all of your questions. And if you're a chump sucker, if you don't call in and ask uh Alex your questions now, to uh 718 497 2128. That's 718 497 2128.
Nastash, how's your Halloween, by the way? Fine. Are you gonna ask people to to text us? She's by the way, folks, just so you know, Nastasha is typing on her computer and having a lot of people. I'm doing work for Dave, folks.
Yes, but it's during the radio show, Nastasha. Anyway. That's how busy you are. Are you gonna tell people to tweet if they're listening? So that we can keep track of how many listeners we actually have.
That's not gonna help, but like if I listened, I wouldn't even know how to tweet. It's not like I'm gonna set up Nastash is trying to figure out how many people. This is an ongoing thing. We're trying to figure out whether anyone's actually listening to this thing or not. Uh and uh, you know, we know a couple of you are because you're writing questions.
Thank you. Uh, but uh iTunes is making it impossible for us to um Or they can email me if they listen. If they listen. Yeah. Okay, you're gonna be swamped with all three emails.
Anyway, uh today's show is brought sponsored again by the Modernist Pantry, supplying innovative ingredients for the modern cook. Do you love to experiment with new cooking techniques and ingredients, but hate to overspend for pounds of supplies and only a few grams are needed per application? Modernist Pantry has a solution. They offer a wide range of modern ingredients and packages that make sense for the home cook or enthusiast, and most only cost around five bucks, saving you time, money, and storage space. Whether you're looking for hydrocolloids, pH buffers, 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 is his team and his team will be happy to source it for you. With inexpensive shipping to any country in the world, and by the way, we uh asked last week about this, and someone from I believe New Zealand sent it and said it was like under ten bucks. It was like five or eight bucks or something to ship whatever it is they wanted to New Zealand. So we're like they got it in like seven days or something.
Yeah, so we're like, hmm, all right, nice. Mm-hmm. Nice. All right, so it's no, it's no BS, it's no horse hockey. They will ship it anywhere in the world at a uh at inexpensive uh cost.
Anyway, uh Modernist Pantry is your one-stop shop for innovative cooking ingredients. Modernist Pantry now carries iota kappa and lambda. Lambda carragen. What the heck do you use lambda carragina for? You ever use that, Alex?
Chocolate milk. Yep. I mean, like, do you find you need to stabilize uh chocolate milk often for yourself? Not really. We actually pass over it all the time.
We uh just use a lot of chocolate. Yeah. And it's that's it. In other words, like from a cook's perspective, why would you want to use a lam lambda caragina? Just because you're cool.
So, folks, carragenin, uh, seaweed derivatives, and uh the deal is is that uh there's a bunch of different kinds. There's uh there's iota, kappa, and lambda are the three main different kinds of carrageenans, and they differ based on um I believe it's the sulfate bridges along the backbone, how they work. Uh Kappa caragina is the one that's closest to agar and its behavior, it's very brittle. Iota is very, very stretchy and elastic. And lambda is kind of non-gelling, uh, or we think of it as non-gelling, but it's used as a as an embodying agent in chocolate milk.
Uh no carrageenan mix is pure there because they're natural products. So, you know, kappa will have a bit of the other two and and vice versa. But things are primarily they they're sold as primarily iota, kappa, and lambda. Uh I know many chefs excuse me, chefs who use iota and kappa, but I don't know any chefs that use uh lambda, at least not that they've told me. Anyway, fans of cooking issues that place an order of $35 or more before next week's show will get a free package of iota carrageenin.
Simply use the promo code CI as in cooking issues 60 when placing your order online at modernistpantry.com. Visit modernistpantry.com today for all of your modernist cooking needs. I mean iota mainly puddings, right? I mean it is, yeah, I mean that's it. It's also the one of the only hydrocolloids that's uh self-healing.
Oh, right, true. So uh there's basically when you break a uh hydrocolloid by shearing it, they it never again comes back together. It's sheer irreversible when you break the gelatin. In uh iota, they will actually the gel will will heat up. Now if you are if you use iota to do a hard like when I say a hard gel, one that doesn't kind of break easily like a pudding, it's kind of a weird texture.
It is what's that uh that stuff that you used to get on uh shoot. I used to buy it as a kid. Uh rubber cement? It's like rubber cells. But it's but softer.
But softer. But no, there's shoot. There was a candy of sorts. You know what it's kind of like is you know those stretchy hands that you buy and you slap them across the room, you like fling them across the room and they stretch out and stick to the wall. And then snap back and hit you in the face.
Yeah, yeah. It's kind of like that, but without the sticking and hitting you back in the face thing. But most people don't use iota in levels that produce that kind of behavior. They're using it in kind of pudding levels, and then you can you can put the pudding into another container like a ramicin or something like that, and then you know. Yeah, I mean it it it it benefits from that little bit of kappa to give it just a touch of structure so that you know when you cut your spoon through it, you can actually see it as opposed to just you know the blob which goes back on itself.
Right. And the reason, by the way, that uh people use carrageenans in milk-based uh things is because there's a synergism between milk and carrageenin. So if you would normally to get you have to use depending on the actual one you use, but it's something on the order of one-fifth of the amount of carrageenin that you would have to use uh to thicken a milk-based system as you would to thicken a water-based system with the same carrageenin. So uh you can use very, very small amounts. Industrially, this is good because it means that you're using less product, which saves you money.
Uh if from a cooking perspective, the less of a thickening agent you have to use, the less chance you have, the less um opportunity there is for that ingredient to alter mar or mask the flavor that you're dealing with. Certainly uh I mean there's a couple other things we talk about a lot, but it it's the you want the you want to use the least amount of anything possible, be it salt or carrageenin or sugar, so to get the desired results. Uh you can also have the the calcium to uh because it it's iota is is calcium reactant whereas kappa is potassium. So you can if with if you don't have a lot of milk, just add some calcium. But you know what, you know what I never know, I never know it depends on who gives you the uh the the product, but I know like certain of the kappas are pre-formulated with the potassium salts in it.
It all depends. A lot of TIC gum stuff is is basically idiot-proofed. Right. It's by the way, folks, this is why this is w I mean like I love what Martin Larish from Chimelus has done for the world by creating his hydrocolides recipe Index. And by the way, he's getting better about going back and and a lot of your recipes are in there.
A lot of our yeah. Uh but the um the one thing he did was remove a lot of the brand names. And what I always tell people is that if you are going to specify a recipe, you should always specify the brand that you use. Because if you just say Kappa Caragine, and first of all, there could be anything natural like this, like could come in a wide variety of of chain lengths, for instance. There's wide variety of properties.
But also could or could not have uh the setting salts added to them already. I mean it's right. I mean, if you look at a lot of CP Celco stuff, they've got CP Celco different uh variation, but gel in. They've got JJ, which already has sodium citrate in it, which is a squestrant, which it allows it to be uh easier for for gelling and but whole other ball game. Right.
So always say the brand you're using. Anyway, we have a caller, caller, you're on the air. Dave. Howdy. This is Mike, I'm uh commercial brewer, and uh interested in possibly doing some molecular stuff with beer.
And I'm wondering uh what you think. I'm thinking maybe like you know, doing a black and tan, but have one beer have maybe some some uh alginate in it, so when the black, you know, it'd be more like a lava lamp than uh a black uh traditional black and tan, or maybe uh making some little alginate balls with uh something sweet to go in, maybe a sour beer so they'd float around. What do you think about that? Uh you mean as a as a commercial thing? Uh yeah, just as a way to to serve beer, you know, in uh you know, just uh in a fun way, working the molecular kind of stuff into certain into beer.
Do you think you could have one beer that had something in it that would, you know, do more like a lava lamp in a glass or uh I mean the way lava lamps work they um the way lava lamps work is is basically it's an oil and water phenomenon, right? So you t you're taking you taking two emissive uh like liquids, basically one's a solid, it's a wax really, and you're heating it and when it heats it floats up and then cools and goes down. That's why it looks that it looks so awesome. I mean the real question with a beer is how would you get the how would you get the two beers to be to not mix unless you had an envelope around them. So so then that comes to your second question is could you do something with alginate?
And the problem with alginate, there's a couple problems I have with alginate. One, I don't think it tastes good. It doesn't taste good. It makes things taste less than the original. Yes.
You might as well not use it. It's a flavor thief. It that that I'm gonna steal that for you. I'm gonna write it down and I it's now stolen. So there you go.
Still the other problem from a commercial standpoint, and people have made obvious obviously people make um balls of things. So the famous the famous ball commercial ball drink is orbits, right? Orbits was gel an based. Now the problem with orbits was the the the beads were solid. They weren't liquid.
It's very hard to do a liquid based thing in a commercial way that's gonna last a a long time. By the way we're in a construction zone if you hear that hammering in the ball. That is actually Dave building a new road. Yeah exactly so so um so but you're gonna have problems with color stability in in these situations. So most gel systems are somewhat porous and so over a fairly short period of time you're gonna get color bleaching out.
Now the the guys who do this professionally with orbits took care of this by having uh the basically the the relative levels of that things are going to change the osmotic balance of the liquids very, very, very close to identical, so that they got very little color bleed over time. But you're gonna have huge problem in a black and tan kind of a situation keeping the tan and the black portions together. Although it's really kind of like brown and light brown, it's not really black and tan and brown. Kind of coffee. Yeah.
So you could mean like you could look, it's obvious you could do here's something you could another problem is is if the center liquid is carbonated, right? You're gonna have problems with air pockets developing on the inside of your uh membrane uh shell. Right. Which uh you know I've I've done it with carbonated liquids, and you definitely get an air pocket. And some people or not an air pocket, a carbon dioxide pocket.
And some people use this like on purpose, they do this on purpose, but um but it's a problem from a from a commercial standpoint. So you'd have to probably move to a still-based inner liquid. And then I would do the reverse, I would do a reverse verification, and you can use something nicer, you could do pectin, which is like pretty nice texture. You would basically uh uh form your liquid, uh freeze it in a larger format, so you get a more lava lampy thing, and then you'd set it uh uh uh uh you'd set like an envelope of pectin around it. You could use alginate as a first test because it's a lot easier.
Gel N actually is our go-to for for that for for all encapsulation. All right, you have to use deionized water and like go crazy, otherwise you sequestrants. Well, you see, sequester the hell out of it. Yeah, so in uh we actually talk about it in our book. There's a good plug for our book, ideas and food.
There you go, buy it. Um but we use uh roughly 0.5% low acyl gel in and we use 0.05% uh sodium hexametophosphate in in in a water bath. Boom, done. And then how's your water in your area though? It's fine, but we we've we've gone to uh Plano, Texas and done it, and uh when we did it without adding the little uh sodium hexametophosphate, we had a disaster.
Right. Because they're they've got crazy calcium water, but uh with the sequestron in there, and then we just drop everything into it and you get a beautiful skin. And once you get good with it, you can actually lower the amount of gel an in there to point three percent and really get a very self uh silky sexy uh skin.5 of gel an, low acyl gel in is equivalent to about 0.8.9% agon. Yes, but with the and also with the sequestron in there, it actually tenderizes. Softens a little bit.
It softens it, so it it's the uh a really unique gel uh as an exterior skin. So what I would do is if you have a vacuum machine, I would take your black, whatever you're gonna use is like your stout situation there, and I would decarbonate it in a vacuum machine. Then I would uh then I would um add some calcium to it, because I don't know what the calcium level in beer is, use gluconate, not uh not chloride because it's horrible. And uh then uh do what Alex suggests, which is get low acyl gel an uh make a solution of that with a sequestering sodium hexametophosphi uh phosphate aka shimp, which you can get probably at modernist pantry, although I haven't used them. Have you used them ever modernist pantry?
I haven't though uh I think via Twitter we've been referenced to them and and shot them. They're right here in Brooklyn, right? I have no idea where they are. I think so. And if not, I'm I'm promoting the wrong people.
Anyway, so but the uh do that and then you might get an interesting effect, lava lamp like where the carbonation, if you use a higher carbonated liquid, like instead of what you would normally use, like an IPA or something like that, and it might float the ball up to the top. Yeah, and if you used actu uh cap no iota carrogenin, really low low amount for your encapsulation, the the product, it'll actually give you that lava like texture as well. Well, go check out the book because I'm sure this is in the book. Ideas and food, the book. Perfect.
All right. Thanks for calling calling. We have another caller, caller, you're on the air. Hi. Um, this question is for Dave and Alex, obviously.
Um, I was wondering what do you what do you guys think is the best way to cook a leg of lamb? Cook what I couldn't hear you. A leg of lamb? What is the best way to cook a leg of lamb, according to you guys? What kind of equipment do you have?
Um, very basic. I'm not extremely experienced. Alright, then the best uh then clearly the best way if you don't have the equipment to do it properly is to bone it out, roll it flat, remove certain parts of the muscles that aren't going to cook properly, and then quickly grill it, wouldn't you say or no? I'd grill it, I give it a I'd give it a yogurt marinade too, just to get the flavor. Really tenderized it?
Tenderize it and give it a quick grill, just break it into pieces. And and you can try and seam it out, but it sounds like that might be a a bit of a stretch, so just cut it into smaller pieces. Or get the butcher to seam it out for you. Like, in other words, like I you definitely want that thing to get flat. Leg of lamb, if you cook it whole, is gonna be tough and overcooked with any kind of traditional cooking technique.
I've never had one that was really done properly. And there are people who like raw blue lamb in the middle, but they're not that many because the texture isn't necessarily good, right? I I I'm not a blue lamb guy. I actually like it medium rare, even even medium, is it's it kind of silkens out a little bit more. Right, so but I would definitely get it as flat as possible and and and as Alex said, break it into into pieces and then and then cook it that way.
Unless do you have a need to serve it whole, or you have some sort of like primal cuts dinner that you're gonna be doing? No, no. I I've been served it whole before and it was okay. I've had a lot of people who have grilled it whole, but um, if that's not the best way to do it, then doesn't really bother me. Look at or slow roast it.
Yeah, maybe look whole grilling gives you some things that you're not gonna get any other way. For instance, we all enjoy certain overcooked pieces of meat that are crunchy and kind of burnt and delicious on the edges of of things, right? It just it just renders uh, in my opinion, like those whole cut things, unless you're very good at it and they have a two-part flame and you're cooking it over a high and then you move it to lower or vice versa, however you believe, or slow roasting. Uh y it's very easy to get a large portion of the meat that's kind of dry and overcooked, especially the non-fatty areas. Fatty areas can take a lot more abuse because fat is delicious when it's high cooked.
Um the other problem with with the with the leg, uh like is the leg is composed of a bunch of different muscles and they don't all operate, they don't all when I say operate, cook the same way. And so um this is my problem with you know, there's certain people who are very famous and whose product is good, I've had it, who are big big believers in what's called whole hog cookery when it comes to cooking pigs. I am not a believer in this. I in other words, uh like I've done certain tests to try and cook whole animals properly, but in general, unless you are willing to go through Herculean efforts to try and have all muscles cook uh when they're still attached to the animal, different muscles want to be cooked differently. That's just the way it works.
Right, the whole hog, aren't they all it's all chopped up together at the end, isn't it? Yes. And that's how they cover up the fact that the loin doesn't taste good. So so wait, so it's all it's whole hog, but we're gonna put it all together. So it's it's it's really blended hog.
It's real yeah, it really is blended hog. It's not whole hog. It would be much better if they took it into pieces and cooked each piece the way they wanted to, then chopped it up and put it back together again. So whole hog's a farce. Uh, but not in a good not like a stuffing way.
Not like in a stuffing way, but more as in like a false false uh pretense. Uh yeah, I just don't think it's I don't think it's a goal we should aspire to. I don't think it's I you know, and look, uh I love Ed Mitchell. Do you know what I mean? Like but my How can you not love Ed Mitchell?
I love Ed Mitchell, but I just don't necessarily see why I should aspire to attempt to create something that's good by and it is good, but I just don't see why I would attempt to create something that's good that way by doing something that's against what the meat wants to do, which is the loin wants to be cooked for not a long time. And the and the and the you know, the the cuts that have a lot of connective tissue want to be cooked for a longer time. And then mix them together if you want, crisp up the skin, mix them together. So basically keep cook each part separately and then bring it together at the end. I'm a huge believer in cooking each piece of meat the way it wants to be cooked.
Do you have a conversation with the meat first? Are you like a meat whisper? I do. I get up, I put my ear next to it. Are we helping all the way by with your lamb?
Another collar. Anyway, hopefully this helps with your lamb. I think you're good. Thank you. All right, call her.
You're on the air. Oh, they dropped off. Oh, they dropped. We missed them. Maybe we may maybe we talk that's our job, Nastasha.
See, this is like classic Nastasha. Nastasha's like, you're answering this person's question. So the next person dropped off. There is no caller. I was saying go to break.
Oh, go to break. See, Nastasha? Your your viciousness is incorrect. This is why we call her the hammer, folks, just because she is vicious. Anyway, uh calling all your questions too.
718497-2128. 718497-2128. Sugar Power coming back. You know that I love you. I came up myself.
I love you when nobody else. Come in go. Come in, go. And I just did it thousand times. That's a whole other thing.
And welcome back to Cooking Issues, Nastasha. How's your Halloween? What were you? 70s person. Yeah, you were supposed to be a cop, weren't you?
Or a donut? Mark had to work. Yeah, her boyfriend had to work. That's too bad. So you were a 70s woman, but I thought you hated like it was I wasn't sexy at all.
Nastasha, Nastasha, if she was wearing the sexiest outfit in the world, would put a pair of uh long Johns with elephants on underneath it to de sexy. This is this is her MO, folks. Happy Halloween. Oh, by the way, I brought you some Sour Patch kids because if you ever want Nastasha to like you and you think she's gonna hate you, which odds are she will if she meets you. You said if I were a fish, if you were fishing for me.
Yeah, but Sour Patch, so I have some for her for tonight. What about what about you, Alex? How was your Halloween? It was good. It was my daughter's first real big uh Halloween.
Yeah, how old is she now? She's gonna be three in December. Nice, and what was she? She was a cupcake princess, of course. Really?
But you you don't like cupcakes, do you? I can eat a cupcake. Really? Yeah, I'll th I'll I'll throw I'll throw down the the banter against cupcakes, but uh long and short, is I can choke a cupcake down really quickly. Well, because it's small.
It's small, it's edible. If it's if it's done right, it's good, but more often than a lot, cupcakes have a lot of tunneling at them. It it well uh have a lot of what? Tunneling. The uh they're they're they're just mixed improperly and so you they have air tunnels in that's not my problem.
My problem is the incorrect icing to volume ratio. Uh first of all, I like cake. I don't like cake. Cake is just delicious. Ah, see, I like icing.
See, you'd get along with Aki. Aki likes cake. Or actually you wouldn't get along with her because she you guys would fight over the cake and I could just eat all the icing. Yeah, see uh what I like is like a glaze icing. Eh, that's weak.
Uh cupcakes. I d I you know what? You know, okay, we can all agree on this. Anyone that makes a miniature cupcake should be wiped off the face of the earth. Agreed.
Okay. Except you know what's kind of like a miniature cupcake, but are actually good, but only if they're super fresh as Madeleine's. But they're not iced. They're not iced. They're cake.
They're cake. But they they're uh a size that's bad. They're a surface to volume ratio that's bad for a cakey thing. Sure, they stale quickly. Yeah, they're awful when they're old.
Yeah, I mean they're awful like 30 seconds out of the oven. Yeah, and why here's another question. Do I like black and white cookies only because I grew up eating them, or is it are they actually delicious? There's a few good ones out there, but there's there's a quest form. Aki has that same quest.
Because they're basically a semi-staled cake in a cookie form with icing on top, a glaze icing, I might add. And you know, I grew up, because I grew up around New York loving the hell out of them. And it's a better ratio, and if you think about it, it's actually taking the top off of a cupcake and inverting it and putting the glaze on the inside. Yeah, but it's a it's a good tasting icing, not a crap tasting icing. It's glaze.
Well, depends where you go. And mo and most actual black and white glazes are well. Look, if you hand me a black and white cookie that looks like it's got icing on the top that was knifed on and not poured and let to set, I will stab you in the eye with your icing knife, right or no? You will. Yeah, I mean it's not a black and white at that point.
No, it's something frosted. It's an abomination. It's not iced, it's frosted. Right. Okay.
It's fair. Alright. So we're gonna have to go to some of the uh oh, by the way, calling your questions. Two 7184972128. That's 7184972128.
I'm doing pretty well considering getting over a thing, right? Yeah. Anyway. Did you memorize that? I finally memorized it.
Wow. That's good, right? It's not on my it's not on my sheet like I normally used to have it. Okay. Uh three questions came in from Andrew.
One, how can we know umami exists? Do we have taste receptors committed uh to these umami specific amino acids? Yes. Yes. Yeah.
The research was done in uh the early 2000s, like 2000, 2001, 2002. We have taste receptors for umami. It's no longer a question, it's fat. And also it it's also exciting, yeah. I mean, you can you can trigger those umami receptors on the uh on your palate.
Yeah, and they've they've looked at it, you know, uh, you know, yeah, crap's real, real deal homie. Okay. Two, if you could design invent a machine without monetary constraint to aid in cookery or cocktail making to create a dish drink method wildly amazing, what would it be? A robot version of myself. No, I'm kidding.
No, uh, what would you do, Alex? Shoot. I'm not sure. Uh I'd need a lot more people, like me, a lot more people that you don't have to tell what you want. It's not that I'm particularly good or bad at anything.
It's say it's the hardest part when you're cooking anything is is conveying your intentions, your intent. Right? Not intentions, your intent. The hardest when you're talking to someone, you're like, do it like I want it to get done, and then it doesn't get done what you like the way you want it. So like a really good chef, what they can really do is get is besides cooking themselves, is they can get other people to cook things the way they want them done, right?
So it's very, very hard to to kind of tell someone what you want them to do. So like you need a translator. You you need we need to build a translator. Yeah, something that I could just walk up to somebody and they would know what it is I wanted them to do. Or just speak into a box and then it it tells other people so that it just you don't have to do it.
You just you speak into it and say, all right, I want X, Y, or Z, and everyone else finally understands it. Yeah, you know what's even rarer and more awesome is when you say something and someone comes back with something better than your intent. That happens more often, not in my world. But uh you have any we'll we'll keep that one in hold. We'll think about that for the rest of the show.
Any machines that we want that we that are just cost. I mean, there are things I mean, obviously, like I'd love there's uh I want a twin screw extr uh twin screw uh extruder, right? I don't own one because they're fantastically expensive, but it's a machine that already exists. Sure. You know, I want there's a bunch of things I I would like a supercritical CO2 extractor.
They're just fabulously expensive. I would like a spray drying column as tall as uh you know as uh you know a a barn, but taller even. And it's it's a little maybe a little hard to store. Yeah. Well, that's the thing, like no monetary constraint.
But if design invent a machine, I don't have any things that I want to invent that are I'm not doing as a result of monetary constraints, more time constraints than the fact that it's hard for me to and plus David Chang will uh shoot over here with uh needles and stick them in my eyes if I tell you what we're working on. That may happen. Yeah, it might happen anyway. Anyway, three, can a food saver adequately compress watermelon for dishes like Keller's melon, mango, steak, tartar? Are food savers a wash, or do they have good use?
No, they cannot, in my opinion, and Alex might be different, uh his opinion might be different from mine. I do not believe a food saver adequately uh has enough of a vacuum to do a good job at uh at crushing uh watermelon, uh the air sacks and watermelon. What do you think? Not in the least. I I mean what what we're doing is and I think that's the I think the it one of the big issues is is the term compression is is partially mis misguiding, right?
I mean we're we're not compressing per se, but we're removing air. Right. So if you don't remove the air, ain't nothing gonna happen. You need a you need a good, good vacuum. Now, the cheapest way to get a good vacuum, which because you I'm assuming you're not gonna go buy a couple thousand dollar vacuum machine, and although I want you to, I don't think you will.
I haven't because my wife would kill me if I did that. Uh and you haven't built it yet? Well, okay, not one with a sealer, but what I have done that you can do fairly cheaply is buy a refrigerate a refrigeration vacuum online for like a hundred bucks. You can get uh uh you know an oil seal rotary vein vacuum pump that's used to evacuate uh compressors for refrigeration. Since they need to make a whole boatload of these and people don't like think they're fancy, they don't cost very much.
You can get them for like a hundred bucks. Where? Uh eBay. Yeah, get like the good ones like Robinair is a good brand. Uh there's a couple of good brands out there.
Some cost more, there's some cheaper ones that are knockoffs. They can they can without breaking a sweat achieve uh below 10 millibar of vacuum. Which is not horrible at all. Yeah, great. I use one in my roto vap, for instance.
One I have a better one that can get down to like four millibar. But so the so and they're pretty fast, which is awesome. So then you uh basically you hook a hose, like a rubber hose, uh to and you get a piece of plexiglass at the at your local like Home Depot style place with a rubber seal, stick it on a round bain marie, don't stick it on a a square one because you will crush it. Uh and uh you have a vacuum compression system all in for like a hundred and fifty, hundred and fifty bucks in that range. Yeah.
Works. Do it. Um do they have a good use food savers? Sure. They're a good way to package food for low temperature cooking at home.
I prefer Ziplocks. Um they're uh relatively okay for things like coffee. Yeah. Right. I mean, we used a f you know, before we knew any better, and before we we we could achieve more, we I mean we used a food saver for a year when we were out in Colorado, you know, messing with this stuff or out in up in Maine.
We we used a food saver. That was that's what we could afford. Yeah, I mean, look, it does a decent job of packaging things, and the food saver, if you buy the roll bags, I mean like the one thing I always used it for was like very, very long striped bass because there's no um there's no maximum length on a food saver bag as long as it's less than a roll. Right. And so, you know, I would bag like you know 36, 40 inch stripers in the 10 inch wide bags.
You jam them in. If you tried to pull it out, the fins would rip the bags, but you know, you put them in and you could bag whole fish that way. You could do a school of fish, actually. Yeah, it's in a row. In a row.
In a row in a ring. Uh huh. Anyway, so they have a use. I like them. I mean, they're they they are it's you know, it's my first vacuum patch packaging uh system.
They're also really good at resealing a bag of chips. Yeah, I have not used it for that. Yeah. But I and it's actually interesting. You can use this the seal bar just for itself if you want to just start sealing things.
Yeah, which you should. I mean, I have a sealer now at home, just a sealer because it's faster. Okay. Yeah. Um I use a sealer all the time for potato chips.
Okay. Uh oh, and PS, congratulations on the book deal. Thank you very much. I didn't we didn't leak that by the way. That was leaked by the publisher.
The fact that I have a uh book deal. One on cocktails and one on God knows what. Okay. Uh another umami style question from Jason. Dave, traditionally, before uh combo is used in stocks, we are told to wipe it with a wet cloth.
Doing so removes a great deal of white powder found on the surface of the combu sheet, which I understand are glutamate crystals. Since combu is generally used for its high concentration of glutamates, why would I want to wipe the surface uh glutaminate crystals off or glu glutamate crystals off before using it? Seems counterproductive. Man, I agree. I don't wipe, I don't I don't wipe combo.
We have we have a collar? Um I agree, I don't wipe it. I'll take the collar and then we'll go back to it. Collar, you're on the air. Hey, how you doing?
Doing all right, how you doing? This is Amy in California. Howdy. Uh not last week, but the week before you posed the question about using the was it the nitrates and the nitrites for uh clean tapes. Uh for and right.
Yeah. Do you have you have experience in this? Uh no. I do, however, have uh a very noticeable sensitivity to nitrates. And if killing them that way would introduce that into the meat, it would mean that not only can I not have preserved meat, I wouldn't be able to have pork at all.
Huh. Well, let me see. It's uh it's it's a I hadn't thought of that. Uh it's an interesting question. So, Alex, I don't know, like uh so the the there's some research where there's some research where they basically, in order to kill f uh feral hogs in, I believe it was Australia, New Zealand, I have to go back and look at it, they would put um tablets of uh nitr nitrites and nitrates uh around the pigs would eat it.
They don't have the ability uh in general to uh uh reduce the the stuff back, and so they basically um they they lose their ability to convert oxy you know their hemoglobin back into oxygenated hemoglobin and they die. So uh but they do it in a way that doesn't make them uh hyper excited. They don't you know they don't go crazy. They don't they they don't feel like they're being killed. They just pass out.
Okay. Okay, so the question is, can this be used for uh a humane um killing method? Right? So and then now the question is is well, there are people, and I hadn't thought about this, so thanks so much for calling in. There are people who are uh sensitive to to this, uh sensitive to nitrites and can't have it in cured meats.
Uh and the question is is would it, if it's used as an anesthetic, would it also have an elevated um level in the meat? Uh I don't know. That's a very good question. That's an excellent question. Um, it's kind of like uh I mean the the the real question I'd have is what are the levels?
You know what I mean? So first of all, like what levels do you think you're sensitive to? Um I don't know, but more than one slice of ham. Right. And for the week following, I have difficulty moving my fingers and toes.
It's like I've rented arthritis a week. Is it similar to like what like is do you become like cyanonic? Do you go like does it like do you have the like do you go blue or no? Like I I have no idea. I haven't researched it all.
Actually, my I I get I get swelling in my extremities. So my hands and my feet get swollen and my joints hurt to move. Right. Well, I again I I don't know anything about this because I haven't researched it. Um but but the and I and I haven't found anything about it.
It's just experimental with me. I I had weird symptoms, and one of the things that I found out when I took it out of my diet was that you know, if you know I can't I can't have bacon for breakfast anymore. And it runs in my family. My mother had problems with it, my sister has problems with it. I think my brother's in denial.
Well, uh the the okay, so it it's it's interesting. I mean, I I'm definitely gonna look into it just because that's the kind of thing I I like to look into. But um the the the thing is, look, there's a certain amount of small amount of baseline uh nitrates in and nitrites in in things that we consume. That's why they can reduce like a billion pounds of celery down to a powder and use it to fall false cure bacon. Or it's real cure, falsely say that they haven't added nitrates to it.
So there's gotta be some small level that you're okay with and it's exceeded in whatever you're eating in form of ham. So the real question is is what is the increase in muscle muscle content of nitrate in a pig that's been slaughtered this way? I don't know. We'd have to check it out. Research.
Yeah, research. Research definitely needs to be done. Someone in the U.S. needs to think it's an interesting problem who has a livestock research. And wants to dive into this one.
And wants to dive into this one. But uh thanks for bringing that to my attention. We'll definitely look into it. Okay. Thanks very much.
Um I ask you one other favor? Sure. Um, with Thanksgiving coming up, what veggies would you recommend for low temperature civide? Oh, Alex, you're a good one. I'm trying to think how how many different things I could have all set to finish, just pull out and go.
You can have as many. I was like, have the potatoes in there, pull them out, mash them, and they're good. Yeah, well, you should pre-mash. You should cook a pot I would cook a potato basically traditionally, mash it, put it in a bag, and then reheat it. Smush it flat and reheat it.
Carrots are traditionally genius in a bag and good at uh Thanksgiving sweet potatoes. Brussels, I mean, everything is at Thanksgiving is overcooked anyway. So you I mean she's trying not to overcook it, Alex. But that's the point. But the point of Good Thanksgiving decides are that they're overcooked.
Aw, Jesus. I mean, come on, the br the Brussels sprout, they're I mean, they're they're they're caramelized, they're roasted, I mean, they're they're tender, they're just at overcooked. I mean, everything is controlled overcooked. Are you a fan of the a super overcooked broccoli that Steingarden likes, the hour and a half long cooked broccoli? I like tender broccoli, but I don't like brown broccoli.
All right. But anyway, I would do any of those, any of those are good. Remember, if you're gonna cook a vegetable in the bag and you're not adding a lot of liquid to the bag as a flavoring, or even if you're adding a liquid like oil instead of water, it takes a lot longer to cook something in the bag than it would in because there's not as much available water. So it's gonna take more on the order of what it would take to roast that vegetable in terms of time. And you also want, I mean, if you cook it at at you know lower than what, 85, it's not cooking.
Yeah, yeah, no. You could cook something at 70 for like four weeks and it's still gonna be crunchy. It changes its taste. Certainly, but it it that texture is still just gnawable. Yeah, yeah.
Definitely true. Uh we used to do that demo. It's fun. People get freaked out. You just leave it there all week.
Pull it out. All right. So back to the combu here. I've never wiped the combu off. I don't wipe the combo.
I which I mean it I I'm looking for that. I mean, that's why that's why we're using it. Right. Now it's somewhere in the back of my head, even though I reread my McGee and he said that it is actually that is what the crystals are on the surface. I have a little nagging thing in the back of my head that says that it's that current research says it's something else.
But even so, I just don't wipe the dang things off. All right. Second question. How uh from uh Andrew, uh, how often should water in a low temperature uh from Jason rather? How often should water in a low temperature cooker circulator be changed?
Well, that depends on how dirty it is. I mean, you're keeping it hopefully at a temperature where bacteria are continually being killed. Um but that said, I usually dump it out at the end of a service or at the end of a cook and then and then put in fresh. You you need to change the water. Okay.
If if you cook something in in the bag, there there is still aroma transfer. Yes, that's true. And and so unless you want to have you know but what kind of bag but look honestly, like I used to test bags based on their aroma transfer characteristics, and some are bad, but some are pretty some are pretty there are waters where you can have that's why people cook multiple things in the same water, do rethum in the same water. You think it's bad practice? I don't think it's a bad practice, but I I I mean if you I would change your water daily.
Especially uh in I mean if you're doing like one thing, then uh you're fine. But if if you mean if you're churning through a lot of stuff at restaurants. In a home situation, after I'm done cooking, I dump the water out. Right. You don't want to have standing water lying around.
Not so much. Yeah. It's not that much water anyway. No. So I mean sometimes it can be a pain in the butt if you know you're gonna cook the next day, I'm not changing the water because I'm gonna turn it on again the next one.
From from a bacterial safety standpoint, as long as your cooking temperatures are above 55 or so, you're not gonna hurt yourself. Right. It's just a question of whether or not it's gonna be nasty. That I that I think it's the nasty factor. You also don't want any flavors or aromas on the outside of your bag because it might drip water into something that you're gonna serve when you're debagging.
That is a good point. Yeah. So I would just change it. Uh you look, don't go changing in the middle of your procedure. Like that, no, no.
But you know, might as well just change it. Yeah. Anyway. Uh caller, you're on the air. Hey guys.
Uh this is Rolf calling from Philadelphia. Uh love the show. Thank you. Excellent. Uh question about as long as everybody's asking about umami today, and you'd already talked a little bit about combu.
What about wrapping and marinating things in combucking? Do you do you need how much moistening do you do before that? No. Uh can you do this after making dashi or at that point is it really spent? How long can you really leave it, you know, wrapped?
What's the what are some guidelines for protocols there? I've only used fresh uh kombu that's been lightly soaked to make it more pliable. I've never used kombu that I've made uh dashi with. Have you? No, we use the the put this we'll call it spent kambu uh for we're cutting it up into noodles and for salads and stuff like that.
You can marinate that. But like but for instance, okay, I'll give you our cur our basic technique is that you take and you uh you have to soak it a little bit to get it pliable, typically. We don't even we don't even soak. I mean, the more often than not we've got you know, let's say we're gonna do fish. It'll it'll kind of fit on there and then put the next layer and vacuum seal it and wraps around it.
Well you know, Nils used to do duck breast all the time. Look, here's how you know whether you got it right. You leave it overnight, by the way, it's long enough. But the like uh we when you I think when you peel off the combu, you should get little strings coming little mucus-y strings separating off between the surface of your product and the kombu. This means that you've done a good job.
I wouldn't I would not use combu that's already been um used in dashi. I think it's gonna be spent. And in the same sense, I wouldn't I wouldn't use Neils' duck breast kombu to make dashi. No, but that combu is delicious, sliced up and used as a salad, because we've done it. If your combu is good, some kombu you don't want to eat by itself because it's texture is no good.
The flavor is good, but the texture's no good. But we took the duck because we we actually he actually cooked actually uh in the bag with the combu on. Sounds amazing. Took it off, and then the combu was cooked already, and then we sliced it and used it as a salad, so it's good. I think it's a fantastic technique.
It's not just for fish anymore. You know, uh you know, I I've never done it on anything, it's not a protein. Uh we've done it on vegetables. How is it? It's delicious.
And then we flip that around too. I mean, we we think about uh Italian combu. What was that? Prosciutto. Uh so we we'll actually we'll actually thinly slice the prosciutto and then cure and and you know put it on fish, put it on vegetables, and let it infuse with the uh the the flavors as well.
But it doesn't make the strings though, does it? We have not gotten strings. No. No. But you do you get strings with the combu on the vegetables?
I haven't gotten strings on the vegetables. I've just done it for the flavor of the of the combo itself on the vegetables. Excellent, excellent question. I mean, have you have do you have any experience, caller, with uh the combu stuff, or are you just calling to ask about it? Because it is a great technique.
Well, yeah, it's it's uh something I had read about, and I've been making dashi uh quite a bit lately, and figured what the heck, I have all this stuff sitting around. May as well try it. You you may as well indeed. You might want to find the Japanese typically use different combos for wrapping uh than they do for making dashi, but in the small amount of experiments that I ran, I think if the stuff tastes good for dashi, it tastes good for uh it tastes good for wrapping. I don't know why I don't know what the reasons are for them using the different ones for different uh applications, but if it tastes good for dashi, it tastes good for uh combuping as well.
I would agree with that. Well so I'm just looking for mucusy strings. Uh on on skins of protein, that's what I have found. Uh I've only done it with fish and duck, though. But that's like then you know you get that that look when you peel it off and it just like right, Alex.
You know what I'm talking about? I haven't gotten the mucusy strings on our fish, but we've only done maybe six, eight hours or so on fish. Oh, yeah. Okay, so the the first time I ever saw it demonstrated was a guy that did Saba sushi, which is mackerel sushi. And he would basically form it up, put the combu over it and let it cure pressed overnight, and then he peeled it up, and you get the phew those like Do we know what the strings are?
I have no idea. Note to Sylph. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, good thing to research. But anyway, take take a look for it.
Also, you should um you should try to look for the incredibly delicious flavor that you'll have. There there is that. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Thanks for the call. That's good stuff. Sure. Thanks. Okay.
Hello, Dave and Nastasha and Alex, although Dan didn't know you would be here, so he didn't call you out. Hello from the West Coast. Uh I appreciate your show. Uh you guys have the best food pack podcast I found. Thank you.
Thank you so much. Um right now it's apple season in the San Francisco Bay Area, and I've been thinking about a dish I had at Moogritz in Spain s uh several years ago. This was a local uh cheese plate served with calcium fossilized apple. The apple is peeled with the stem left on and cooked in what we were told was calcium water. As a result, the inside of the apple was soft and scoopable and the outside had a skin a bit like a dried apple, and I thought it was amazing.
So how does this work? I was hoping that it might be within the range of a dedicated home cook. I found something called fossil powder and who when the guys who make fossil powder claim it's safier safer than calcium oxide out of Australia, but there wasn't any information out there about ratios or procedures. What do you think of this technique? This m that meal is the only time I've ever seen or heard about this being done.
Okay. Well, first of all, never use calcium oxide, uh, which is like dangerous stuff. You throw it in water and it heats up and uh does all sorts of nasty things. What you want is calcium hydroxide, which is uh where you take calcium oxide, someone else adds it to water, deals with the high temperature and the powder left over. Uh which is what Moogaritz uses.
Right, and we actually uh saw Antony present at Starchef's on that whole topic, and then uh Paul Librant from Corton extrapolated off of that using instead of uh calcium hydroxide, he actually used soaked sun chokes in a solution of calcium lactate. Did it work? It did work. Yeah. Uh and we wrote about it.
There's actually a whole piece on our website on it, and what it is is it's not so much the the calcium hydroxide, but you're you're getting the reaction between the calcium and the pectin in the vegetables or the fruits. Yeah. Uh you know, I've done I've done I had something on the blog about uh, you know, if you add baking soda, which is basic to if you add baking soda to water, uh your vegetables stay green, but they get mushy. If you add calcium hydroxide, which is basic, they will stay green, but they will also stay firm because there's calcium in them. Uh, you know, traditional use of calcium hydroxide to make vegetables.
I mean, it's been used for hundreds, if not thousands of years in places like Thailand, where uh you know calcium hydroxide in the form of uh Thai lime paste has been used to firm up the outsides of bananas. Uh it's used in pickling to firm up uh cucumbers. You're not gonna get hurt. You can't OD on it because calcium hydroxide is not very soluble in water. It's really, really bitter.
Horribly bitter. Yeah, but it's not that soluble. So typically here's what you do. Porous vegetables though, porous vegetables suck it in like there's no tomorrow, and you have problems. When you're using a uh a calcium solution, what they do commercially is they'll soak it for a while, they'll get the calcium interaction, then they'll soak it in pure water to get rid of the excess calcium.
Uh that's what they do. We we we played that game. I mean, like, look, you don't like calcium hydroxide? I'm not really making a uh smoothie with it tomorrow, no. What about tortillas, brother?
I I I I like the results. But the, I mean, in in in like we did Asian pears soaked in in calcium hydroxide for a number of hours, then rinsed it off and then roasted them. Unfortunately, had a bit of an inherent bitterness to them. Um then we we actually then switched back to calcium chloride. Uh chloride.
Chloride's better than hydroxide, but I I'm still going more towards what what Mr. Librant was doing, which was with lactate. Hey, listen, why don't we forget all this crazy calcium crap and just go buy some pectin methylester uh peck and pectin meth methyl esterase, novo shape. You can stick blueberries uh and raspberries into uh pectin methylesterase, aka novo shape, which is an enzyme, and uh boil the hell out of them and they won't and they won't break. You ever done that?
We have not. It works like a charm. I was looking for it yesterday because I have to do something with pears. I didn't want them breaking up. Anyway, it's totally safe uh to do it.
It's about look, you there calcium hydroxide supersaturates extremely quickly. So you're not gonna get more. I mean, the amount of calcium that it's used is gonna depend on how what the absorption rate of the of the product is. That's why the the limiting thing is actually not the amount of water and it's the amount of calcium hydroxide to product that you put in. And you also need to make sure you've got uh a fair amount of pectin in that product.
Otherwise it won't firm. It won't firm. Yeah, yeah. But that's a great technique. Uh I mean, I I'm saying this, I've never had it.
It it we had a blast with it. There's we did it with uh white sweet potatoes, and then we did it with orange sweet potatoes that we broke apart, soaked them, and then we uh we braised them in uh like a meat jus and then glazed them. And they had this regular shape to it, but soft on the outside, textured on the outside, or soft on the inside, textured on the outside. You ever you ever uh but I never had it moogeries? Never been.
Nah, I have not been. I'd love to go. Okay. Uh we're gonna have to rip through the rest of these questions because we're running late as usual. Hello, Dave and Nastasha.
Thanks for your advice on modernist style cheese sauce. I ended up using this is uh from Matthew. I ended up using a version of Miravold's mac and cheese. Uh it involves sodium citrate, which is a uh a melting salt and iota carrageen. It worked really well.
Good, I'm glad. Uh my question today is if you've ever tried these vegan cheeses that a guy named Dr. Cow makes in Williamsburg. I haven't, as a uh this writing, tried them, but people say they are super good, especially as cashew cream cheese. And I imagine Nastasha's making her vegan face as uh as I write this.
Yeah, she is making her vegan face. Uh I looked up, look, I like that. I I've had it. When I was on that raw food for a week, I had the cashew cheeses, not his, but somebody else's. They taste good.
They're not cheese. It's no well, I mean that's it. It it is it is an idea or is it an actuality? It's it's it's a it's a it's a it's a worthwhile food product. Okay.
It ain't cheese. It's not cheese. No, I I agree with you. I mean, you it it it's giving you a uh a frame of reference. Right.
Uh I'm gonna go more into this in a in a minute, but caller, you're on the air. Hi there. Um hi Alex and Dave. This is Brian calling from San Francisco. Hello.
Um question is about cook cookware and non-stick surfaces. Um what's safe, what's not safe? Um uh sometimes I smell some off-gassing when I eat it too hot. Wow, how hot were you heating it? What's your what's the deal and what should I know?
How hot were you heating it? Um I don't know. I had it on on the on the high flame for you know ten minutes or so. Oh, yeah, yeah. That probably a bad idea, genes were worn.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The the the I don't know about the toxicity of the surface once it vaporizes. I think they assume that you're gonna do it eventually, so it's probably it's not like Viton, which uh, you know, the certain certain polymers degrade into very toxic things when they're burned. Faint plastic wrap. Really?
Polyethylene is very toxic when it burns? I don't know, it stinks. Yeah, probably stink. But like Vitans is dangerous as hell when it vaporizes. But Teflon, which is not used in pans, so don't worry.
Teflon, I don't know when it decomposes what whether it's actually dangerous. I mean, I wouldn't necessarily use the I mean the pan is toasted after that, right? I mean, I've seen them close to. I mean, but I've seen cooks rip on on those Teflon pans, and I know I know extreme heats are not supposed to be used for them. Because they eventually start breaking down the Teflon coating.
By the way, you'll have to just go back and tell me what the question was again, because all I had in my head was an image of a pan on the heat and it it combusts. Okay, are there safe nonstick coatings? If so, which one should I should I get? Um it it's it's a question of of safety. I've never I don't think it's a sa I don't personally feel it's a safety question.
There are people who feel what do you think? Do you feel it personally it's a safety question, Alex? I have heard it. I have not tested it, and so I feel uh probably not knowledgeable enough to answer appropriately. I think that that's accurate.
I mean, like I think my problem I'm looking for this way. I have several nonstick pans. I have never had a nonstick pan, no matter what they say that can actually stand up to years of abuse. Well, I mean, the the also think non stick is means you're you're probably cooking something gently. If I mean if if you're you know roasting a ribeye in your nonstick pan, you've probably chosen the wrong pan.
Because it doesn't have to get a font. Yeah, I mean it's you know you have to use the right tool for the right job. I mean, there's these hard anodized aluminum things that are supposed to be non stick. That's probably fairly safe, right? I don't touch those things, man.
Really? What? I've never used one. I don't like aluminum pans. And maybe it's just a preference, but you don't like aluminum pans?
Good heat conduction. I don't know, man. They may have good heat conducting. I you're you uh old school anti-aluminum? Yeah.
You still believe the Alzheimer's story? I don't believe the Alzheimer's story. Or I I think I think. Yeah. Well, you know, you people used to think that uh that uh aluminum pans could contribute to Alzheimer's because aluminum ions uh aluminum uh was found in the brain tissue of uh certain uh elevated amounts are found in the brain tissue of certain patients who have an autopsy with Alzheimer's, but I believe that that lake has been um disproven.
So why do you have a luminate pants? Uh more often than not we're using some sort of acid. Oh yeah. All right. Um so w whether it be a pan sauce or deglazing or something like that, and so anyway, I don't think it's a safe I mean look, maybe it's a safety issue.
I'm more worried about it being a functional issue is that once they're toasted, they're they're n not good anymore, and then you get like micro sticking and they're a pain in the butt. Yeah, and they're no good anymore. They're no good anymore. I mean look, and then like you know, they tell you not to wash them in the dishwasher, and then scan pan said that you could wash ours in the dishwasher. Guess what?
I did, and you know what? The pan got ruined. So you can't wash it in the dishwasher. Well, that's what they say. Yeah, they said you can't wash you they said ours are so tough that you can wash it in the dishwasher and use metal tools on it.
Well I'm like, okay, I'll take you at your word and I'll use it in a dishwasher and I'll use metal tools. Then got messed up. Like within like a year, year and a half, it got messed up. Then they came out later with a second uh version of scan pan stuff and they're like, Oh, this yeah, this one actually works. I haven't tested it yet.
I don't know. You ought to just take it in for a uh changeover. Yeah. I know, but I'm not like that. Like even think something has a guarantee, it's like, you know, I'm just so lazy.
I'm not gonna show up with something and say honor your guarantee. Yeah, but yeah, you'll go out and buy fifty-two different versions of it and test it. Yeah, I'm a joke. Anyway. Anyway, I hope that was helpful.
Thank you. Thank you. All right, so back on this uh cheese thing. Here's my problem. Look, look, the vegan cheese is basically what you do is you you you use uh nuts, you grind them up, you ferment them somehow using some version of like uh either what they call probiotics, which is another one of these crazy terms that I don't uh has marginal meaning.
And they and uh and rejuvelac, which is basically fermenting sprouted grain stuff. Uh and it ferments and acidifies and somehow coagulates. Although I looked tried to look up the mechanism of nut cheeses, and no one's written a scholarly article that I could find on it. Uh but that said, I looked up the SuperCow or whatever it is, Mr. Cow website, and one of the benefits they have in their plant is they have a tachyonized uh electrical panel.
And I had to go look up what tachyonized meant. What does tachyonized mean? Because there's a guy had me attack. Yeah, well, so tachyons are a hypothetical particle that uh move faster than the speed of light that's been posited in some versions of uh uh uh physics uh that is obviously never been observed. And this guy claims that he can by using these tachyons in a machine that tachyonizes material, that he can increase the positive energy in the things around you and him.
I read about this in Calvin and Hobbes. For real? No. Oh, anyways. So I am very uh uh, you know, tachyonized.
Jesus, tachyonized. But that said, uh there is a very interesting thing about faster-than-light particles happening right now at CERN, where they think they did uh uh detected a neutrino that was going faster than the speed of light, uh, and they're currently trying to reduplicate the experiment. Those guys are no joke uh stuff. It should be due in November. So it's a very exciting time to be thinking about faster-than-light particles.
All right, Matthew has another question. I periodically get in debates. Actually, we'll do this one, we'll we'll do we'll do the one comment and then we'll finish off with this guy. What and then we have this one here. That was Ooh, how do you open an oyster with LN?
Uh we got that, or do you have it? Yeah, you t I mean, I've tried it, but the problem is, and Miraville really recommends it, but the problem I've always had is that if you try to open an oyster, shuck an oyster by using liquid nitrogen, is that you get partial freezing of the thing and then it works well. We've done it. We we we do like twelve to fifteen seconds for oysters or clams, drop it in and then let it thaw, and they pop themselves and they're beautiful. They're unbelievable.
Yeah, but you're freezing the oyster. You don't have you ever done a side by side. Do it do a side by side with me. Do a hand shuck and then do an LN shuck. And like uh do a triangle test, like f like f five reps.
And I want I I look, I'm I want to know if the freezing does anything to the taste. Perfect. All right. When are we doing this? Uh whenever.
All right. We gotta do it. I mean, look, it works. It m it works great. Clam clams are off the hook.
I mean, they're the plumpest clams. And when one of the things is I noticed that when when you're shucking them this way, is there's no there's no breaking at all of any of the oyster or clam membranes. So you end up with a plumper, just a visually aesthetic. You have side by side, and I've shucked them and it's supposed to be. So we'll have to blindfold.
You have to blindfold. All right. Or unless unless unless visual is is part of the No, let's just do ta we'll do both. Okay. But first we should do taste, blindfold.
All right, so we'll do it. We'll do it. That's it. Uh there's no question that it actually works. It works, yeah, and it's it's 12 to 15 seconds in nitrogen, pull it out, let it rest in the refrigerator, and they'll pop themselves and then just use a spoon.
Or you can run it under lightland or warm water and they'll just speed up the process. Danielle Mullen writes in was uh hello, was reading about some reviews of ramen places in New York City and who's making the best bowl in the city, etc. I'm interested in starting to cook my own noodles and broth, and I was wondering if you had a favorite way for making the noodles. Fat or thin, do you cut them yourself, etc.? Do you use traditional consway or eggs?
I think if you're gonna make ramen, you have to use consway. Being the uh alkalizing uh agent that they use to make them A, yellow and B stretchy. We use baking soda and we use actually unbaked baking soda. But it's it'll mean does it go yellow? It gives it you get a slight tint, but you don't get that fill.
You get chew, and and it also makes them well uh easier not to overcook. Right. The here's the thing. You don't want like uh traditionally they're not cut, they're extruded, and uh look, Alex uh and Aki were fortunate enough to weasel uh an arco bellino amazing pasta extruder out of the company, uh which is like is offense for look if you like you have like 2,000 bucks jingling in your pocket and you want a pasta extruder. Find another 2600 bucks and then you can have one now that's two.
Yeah, it's gonna be 25 for the AEX 10, which is coming out, and that's that's including dyes, etc. It does just as good a job, it just doesn't have the auto-cut and doesn't have as many dyes, right? Doesn't have as many dyes and a little bit smaller, but it's the same guy, it's the same beast. It's awesome. This sucker is not that much bigger than a cuisinar, by the way, folks, and it really does a number on pasta.
Like, I was the first to think that a small pasta extruder would be a load of horse horse manure, and I was like, this is gonna suck. This thing is amazing. It's an amazing machine. Yeah. Uh anywho, you can hand cut them though, but they're very stretchy, is the is is the issue.
They're supposed to be stretchy. Uh I would use consway, uh, which you can get at any Asian uh market, and then you can tell if it's working, the flour will go yellow, and all of a sudden it'll get stretchy, which is characteristic of this. Here's the trick with ramen. Ramen, you like you know, you lightly cook it beforehand, you fry it. It partially dehydrated by frying.
So you have to fry ramen noodles. That's the real, not a secret. I mean, you can look it up, that's how you do it. But ramen noodles are cooked, fried uh as a dehydration process, and then I think further dehydrated and then rehydrated again. But that's characteristic of ramen.
I don't know whether the restaurants do that, but they should. I have not I've not heard that frying thing, so once again. Yeah, that's how they f you fry them. At least that's my memory. I didn't re I look this question came in right now, so this is coming from my memory.
Someone call me in and tell me I'm a moron, uh, which happens quite often. Okay, last up, uh I periodically get in debates with my girlfriend on the subject of using Fantastic Lysol or other such sprays to help me wash pots and pans. She firmly believes that I should not. I believe they help to sterilize and get crud off of things that if I thoroughly rinse the items, it's a safe practice. This assuming the stuff I am washing is non-porous.
Am I being a jackass or what? Huh. Well, uh, I looked up the MSDSs on uh Fantastic and uh and some of the Lysols. There's a bunch of Lysols out there. Um and but before I do this, I mean, look, you don't need a disinfectant for your pan because you're about to put it on a on a in on a flame again.
You know what I mean? Let it rip. Yeah, you yeah. Especially if it's that Teflon pan. Yeah.
But uh, but but uh you know what those things have in them is surfactants that help get rid of oil, right? Uh all of those household products are meant to volatilize and not leave residues on your surfaces. So you're probably going to be okay. If you're actually looking at a sanitizer, though, I would go with good old fashioned bleach. I like bleach.
I mean, bleach is great for a number of reasons. It's easy to purchase. Uh, you can use it in very dilute um look, you're really only wanting to use uh between uh a tablespoon and an ounce per gallon as a sanitizing solution. I mean, don't ever go over uh like half a cup per gallon for normal sanitizing because you're gonna have a lot of residual chlorine. You don't need it.
Like those lower amounts are gonna provide enough sanitizing to do it. Soak your stuff in that, and chlorine in those small amounts will volatilize as the thing dries and leave no residue at all. And then you're good. Then you're good to go. I mean, like chlorine's not good at getting the crap off of it.
You need to get the crap off beforehand. Which is elbow grease. Which is elbow. But before that, uh do that. Now, what is in Fantastic?
Okay. Uh, first of all, this is hilarious. I've never seen this in an MSDS. Uh they put this down color blue, odor fresh. Oh, that's that we can do that in an MSDS, huh?
Yeah, fresh, very fresh. And the other one I looked up there, the disinfectant fantastic was color blue, odor pleasant. I MSDS, by the way, is manufacture material safety data sheet. Yep. Okay.
So what's in Fantastic? Propylene glycol monobutyl ether, uh, ether. And that's a solvent and a coupling agent. It helps lock the grease and get it off, is what it is. Uh if you feed a whole boatload of that to rats, their liver will uh get cancer, but uh it doesn't happen to us so much.
It volatilizes fairly quickly, uh it evaporates, um, and we're not eating boatloads of it. The other main thing in it is alkyl dimethyl benzyl ammonium chloride, aka benzyl alconium chloride. ADBAC is highly toxic to fish and uh aquatic invertebrates, but it's not gonna hurt us in small amounts, and uh, you know, don't drink it. I mean, that's the old common sense rule. Yeah.
Lysol could have a bunch of stuff in it, uh including um isoprobyl alcohol, potassium hydroxide, why the hell would it have potassium hydroxide in it? That I don't know. Weird, huh? Uh, and also more of the ADBAC and some other cool antiseptic properties. But here's what I found out about Lysol.
You ready for this? Go for it. You know what lysol was originally sold as? In the 20s? Deodorant.
Feminine hygiene product. I was close. You were supposed to douche with this stuff. Fabulous. Not really.
I could I could I could not believe it. So I was a Wikipedia reference, so I was like, I don't trust Wikipedia on this, right? So I went and I saw a whole bunch of advertisements. Uh, and they were the like it just goes to show how, as a culture, uh, we were just an offensive bunch of uh people back in the day to suggest that here's how awful the ads were. They would put ads in women's magazines, and I'll read you some on the way out.
Ready? Uh by the way, before I start reading the Lysol copy from the 40s, which uh hopefully, if you have any sort of heart or soul, are going to make you uh be upset at the Lysol Corporation. But uh thank you, uh Alex, for being with us today. We had we had a great time. Um good to be here.
Okay, from 1949, uh in a women's magazine. Uh a picture uh picture an advertisement, a woman beating against a door and not being able to make through the door. Too late to cry out in anguish. Be aware of the of one of the one intimate neglect that can engulf you in marital grief. Too late when love is gone for a wife to plead that no one warned her of danger, because a wise, considerate wife makes it her business to find out how to safeguard her daintiness in order to protect precious married love and happiness.
One of the soundest ways for a wife to keep married love in bloom is to achieve dainty allure by practicing effective feminine hygiene, such as regular vaginal douches with reliable Lysol. Cooking issues. Vicious Vicious vodka. Oh, you did that. Got me on this corner.
And I don't know where I'm at.
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