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Money movement services are provided by Intuit Payments Inc., licensed as a money transmitter by the New York State Department of Financial Services. Broadcasting live from Robert is 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 on the Heritage Radio Network in the back of Roberta's Pizza Willia in Bushwick, Brooklyn, from approximately 12 to 1245.
Here today as usual. Oh, let me show you the number first. Yeah. Alright. Calling all of your questions to 718497-2128.
That's 718497-2128. We'll take any kind of question. Anything you got, whatever you got, we'll take it. Anyway. Here in the studio, uh, joined as usual, uh with uh Nastasha the Hammer Lopez, who uh uh joined me for my second my Sunday Thanksgiving, right?
Mm-hmm where we cooked uh Patrick's uh heritage Wacalote. That for those of you that don't speak that that means bobble turkey, right? So we cooked up a heritage turkey eggs delicious, right? What's the name of the farmer again? Reese don't know.
Sorry, I'm slow here. Frank Reese. Frank Reese, yeah. So it was uh it was a delicious turkey. I think I didn't cook the um the uh dark meat long enough.
So here's what I did, folks. Uh so I have to admit, I was going up to Mystic Connecticut where my in-laws live, and uh they'd already bought a turkey by the time I told them I had a turkey. So I was like, you know what? Crap on it. I'm gonna let them cook the turkey, do whatever they want.
It was good, by the way. They didn't horribly overcook it. They brined it, thankfully, which uh, even though I love my man Harold McGee, you know I love my man Harold McGee. He says not to brine the turkey because it makes the drippings too salty. I disagree.
I disagree. Because I'd rather not have my breast meat be horribly mangled and overcooked. Right? Yes? Anyway, bubble.
Uh you know what? Also, uh, like traditional oven roasting, it does make a delicious crispy skin, which is hard to emulate using the other techniques. I mean, my exoskeleton technique, I was able to get a crispy skin, but you know, I'm kind of a stickler for such things. But traditional oven and skin is delicious, yeah? Yeah.
It's it's Los Bestos. This morning on the subway on 44th Street, there was a funeral for a police officer. How is this? Do you know what they were playing? What?
Bagpipes. Oh, uh, all right. So this fallen police officer has nothing at all to do with crispy turkey skin. Has more to do with uh the bagpipes that we were talking about at the end of last week's program, which uh, by the way, I never said we're not played at funerals. Nastasha's opinion is that they're exclusively played at funerals because the next time she saw them play was at a funeral, it reinforces in her completely illogical mind that that means that they're only played at funerals.
Go to Scotland. I count the score, Nastasha One, Dave Zero. Wait a second, wait a second, wait a second. Wait a second. You tell me.
You know what else people do the day that they go to a funeral? They pee. Does that mean they only pee for funerals? Listen, you guys gotta learn your logic. This is stuff I'm trained in.
Listen, Dave, go to some weddings in the city. Find the find the bagpipes. Look, police officers and firefighters, when they when they are are killed or passed away and they have a function, yes, they have bagpipes at those funerals. And because you are completely uncultured and don't understand the ways of Scotland, right? You assume that that's the only time that it happens.
That's all I'm saying. Okay. Look, don't get me started. You know, I took bagpipe lessons. You know what?
I like how she messes around with bagpipes. I took bagpipe lessons. I owned a set of bagpipes. I no longer uh, you know, I I didn't really progress because what like you start with a thing called a chanter, and you learn to play on on the chanter, which is you know soft and reasonable, and then you move up to your first set of real pipes. And when I moved up to my first set of real pipes, they weren't a very good set of pipes.
Uh you can, you know, they were a cheap set of pipes, so they didn't sound they wouldn't have sounded good even if I was good, which I wasn't. As soon as I start squeezing on the bag and those drones start wailing out, Jen's like, nope, you're done. Jen's my wife. Anyway, uh I hope she hasn't missed this because she'll get mad at me for telling that story. She always she always gets mad at me because she thinks I tell stories that make her seem like an ogre, but really it's just I'm unreasonable and she's a reasonable person.
Mm-hmm. Really is how it works, anyway. So don't talk crap about bagpipes. I'm warning you. I will go off.
Anyway, uh you know, look, if one of one of you wants to call in and talk crap about the bagpipes, go ahead. Let's see where that, let's see where that gets you. Anyway. Where was I? Delicious turkey skin.
So, anyway, so uh when I got back on Sunday and I was having the second Thanksgiving, uh, I had two problems. Once we had a lot a bunch of vegetarians over, so we had to make a vegetarian stuffing. And of course, like i i in my mom's style stuffing, that the prime component is uh sage uh sausage. So we had to substitute that up. But I thought it was a passable substitution, right?
I have to admit it was a passable substitution. Nastasha ate it, and she's not she's not even folks making her vegan face. Of course, it wasn't vegan because it was full of eggs and all sorts of other great stuff. Butter. Uh anyway, I thought it was pretty good.
But I didn't cook the turkey in uh Thanksgiving fashion, meaning I didn't uh feel a need to cook it whole. So I broke it into uh dark meat, light meat, cooked them at two different temperatures in a Ziploc bag and butter, pulled them out when they were still hot, let the skin dry off so that I could crisp up, threw them in the oven to crisp off the skin after they cooled down. My oven was acting up on me and went I had it set at 600 Fahrenheit and it went down to 400 without me noticing because somehow uh one of the controls had gotten switched off, so I was kind of irritated. And I then had to pull out a blowtorch to to crisp it before I threw it back in for the final crisping. I don't like blowtorch crisping because it tends not to dry out the skin and make it crackly the right way.
It just browns it up a little bit, which I find irritating, and also at least torch taste. So I shot the torch through a uh um a Nichrome wire screen to act as uh kind of a flame arrester and also a stink arrester from arresting the stink that comes out of propane when you shoot it onto uh uh turkey skin. But it was pretty good, I thought. I could have taken the uh the dark meat about a degree higher or something like that. I think.
I think I could have done it about a degree higher. But the breast meat was delicious. Uh duck meat, I mean the uh dark meat tasted good, it's just what, you know, whatever. What do you eat on Thanksgiving proper, Nastasha? Some overcooked turkey at some friend of a friend's house.
Wow, friend of a friend overcooked turkey. Is there anything worse than an overcooked turkey? This is why people think that turkey is bad, because they eat only overcooked turkey. And turkey, everyone's like, man, I just eat it because it's traditional. No, no.
Turkey is delicious if you don't overcook it. Turkey is delicious, delicious thing. Okay, today's show is sponsored by 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 when only a few grams are needed per application? Modernist Pantry has a solution.
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Yeah, we got some more holidays. Simply use the promo code CI64 when placing your order online at Modernistpantry.com. Visit modernistpantry.com today for all of your modernist cooking needs. Tapioca Maltodextrin, uh, and Zorbit brand tapioca maltodextrin is an interesting thing. So basically, there's uh like a whole, you know, years of cooks who just say, eh, need some tapioca maltodextrin.
And yeah, you know, tapio. I'm like, what are you gonna do with it? And they're like, I'm gonna make the powder. I'm like, don't ask for tapioca maltodextrin. You need ensorbit from National Starch, which is very specific tapioca maltodextrin, which is dextr tapioca maltodextrin is you take tapioca starch and you break it down into smaller pieces, eventually you get down to a place where the starch m uh starch molecules are broken down to something called maltodextrins.
Enzorbit is derived from tapioca, but is have very its main purpose in life is not this the turning oils into powders, but it's a a bulking agent. It's extremely light. Like uh, you know, the the a pound of enzorbit is bigger than uh, you know, a pillowcase. It's huge, right? It's really lightweight stuff.
So it's a bulking agent. That's what it really does. And starches are interesting because they're a helix, right? A native starch molecule for it's been cooked out as a helix, and the outside of the helix is water-loving, and the inside of the helix, so it'll, you know, you know, water is fine with it. And the inside is uh oil-loving, right?
Water hating. And so what happens is you mix um enzorbit with a fat or an oil. That oil gets complexed inside the starch, right, inside the helix, but because it's not glomming on the outside, it retains a lot of its bulk density and it turns out to be a powder. Then as soon as you uh apply water in the form of your mouth, or if you try to make a powder out of something with water in it, which doesn't work, ding ding-ding-ding, right? It immediately dissolves and turns back into almost nothing.
So you take a very small amount of maltodextrin, which is relatively tasteless, and you make a powder out of an oil, and then it dissolves into the undermouth. That's how it works. But please don't uh try to make a powder out of an oil by just saying tapioca maltodextrin, because odds are it won't work. There's many, many, many, many tapioca maltodextrins in the world, and most of them won't do that, right? Mm-hmm.
Yeah. I don't care. That's what she's saying or so. I really I just I just don't care. Uh at least that that's what I'm reading out of this guest.
All right. Now, because I'm stupid, uh I didn't have my um I didn't have my thing open. So I'm gonna have to flail around here for a minute while I search for Oh, there it is. Wait, while I search for my questions for the day. And you know, I wouldn't have to search for my questions for the day, people, if you were to call in some questions, right?
Mm-hmm. Just saying. Okay. Uh that's awesome. Oh man That's awesome.
Okay. So, starting out. There's a caller. Oh, there's a caller? Hey, caller, you're on the air.
Oh, great, thank you. Um I have a quick question about getting kind of like a crust on a sour uh beer match. Okay. So I want it to have like a herb crust or some kind of other crust after it's finished cooking. How should I try to do that?
Okay. So there's a couple things. Um are you are you gonna use actual uh sous vide in a vacuum bag or are you gonna use low temp like in a Ziploc or something like that? Um I was gonna souvia in a vacuum bag. Okay.
Uh you m I mean you you're gonna have to um do it like a test or see what you feel. If if you actually uh put the herb crust on beforehand, you're gonna get uh quite a bit of the penetration of the herb flavor into the meat uh from the procedure itself, right? So the the the question you're gonna have to ask yourself is um you know, uh d do you want that much herb into the surface of the meat? And if you do, fine. Put it on beforehand.
If you don't, don't. Okay. The second thing is how long are you gonna cook it? Um uh in the bag. Yeah.
Um, probably about three hours at like fifty-six, fifty-seven. Are you gonna serve it? Yeah. Uh yeah, fifty-six, yeah. Are you gonna serve it the same day?
Um, yeah. Okay. So what I would do is is uh as soon as you pull the meat out of the circulator, right? I would cut the bag open, put the thing on a rack, and start the outside to dry off a little bit. You know what I mean?
Uh and let let it let it dry off a little bit and maybe even pat tall it pat it, and maybe even take a hairdryer, dry off the outside to to get some of the uh like the tacky moisture off the outside, then rebrush with oil or whatever you got, right? Uh and and then uh yeah, me like I would deep fry it. That's me. Because nothing's like, I'm gonna tell you, I I can't tell you. I have done bunches of racks of uh lamb, goat, whatever, and uh you throw that sucker in the deep fryer after it comes out of the bag if you let it dry off properly, and it's it's good business because it just puts an instant crust all the way around everything.
There's no kind of there's no problems with it at all. Do you know what I mean? It's just yeah, it's a good technique. So if you can deep fry it, deep fry it. Uh um, I don't have a deep fryer, but I I do have range or I probably have an induction burner that I could use to how many how many portions you make in?
Uh eighty. Ooh, yeah. You're gonna have a problem up because the problem is if you're doing eighty portions, um, you're going to um if you're doing eighty portions, you're gonna have an issue with um the oil getting really crappy if it's on a range 'cause it's just gonna keep going up and down and up and down and up and down. Do you know what I mean? Yeah.
Uh I mean I could set up like two or three hotel pans. Yeah. I mean uh I i is it a good oven or like a really hot oven? Probably yeah, I I can probably get pretty good broiler if I I'm in a broiler. I mean in in that case I might use a different thing from what I just said.
I might leave them in the bag, let 'em cool down, uh, pull 'em out, dry them really thoroughly, then maybe like hair dry them, put them on racks, uh like over the top of a roaster, uh, and then just throw them into a s like let them basically cool down, way down. You know what I mean? Throw them into a screaming oven. But I I don't like I don't you know if the problem is if they're too down in a pan or if they're like sitting in a butt with a bunch of potatoes, you get a bunch of blonde spots around where they are. So I you know put on a rack to keep it up so that the air can get all around them in a screaming hot oven.
And then uh all you're doing is looking for a nice crust formation on it. And then you can pull it and you won't have radically overcooked the inside and some of your people might like it even more because it's gonna have more of a traditional texture on the outside. It's gonna have more of that like overcooked zone. So I you know, in general I call that technique sous vide for insurance, and by that I mean you've you've insured that the center of the meat is cooked properly and then you just focused on crust formation, and as soon as the thing is brown on the outside and crusty p you pull it and the inside's gonna be good. Great.
Um have a can I pre-sear it before I put it in the bag? I will. I mean, I almost always do. I don't know uh 'cause I think it's gonna speed up crust formation afterwards. Um but you know, I've run some tests.
Uh we run tests every time I teach a sous-view class, and typically the crust formation is marginally better in the one that's seared before and after, but I mean don't salt it beforehand before you cook it. You know what I mean? Um because that you know uh that's gonna um make it kind of cured. I think uh the searing beforehand, um I like it, but I mean it's a matter of personal personal taste. I I haven't done I know that it does speed the browning on the second sear, but I don't know by how much.
Do you know what I mean? Yep. Um speaking of salting, I was thinking about maybe trying to phosphate brine with it. Would that be a horrible idea? Or uh I mean the thing is is is it's gonna f you it'll hold more water that way, but you you're gonna go sous vide, so you're not gonna overcook it.
You have no reason to inject more water into it. Okay, and it's gonna firm up the meat as well as it's gonna firm it as well as uh increase water. So since you're going through the trouble of sous-viding it, I wouldn't uh I wouldn't phosphate it up. Okay. Great.
Well that was really helpful. Hey, uh good luck. Let's know how it goes. All right, thank you. All right, back.
Okay. Uh Teddy uh Teddy DeVico writes in, and his uh his blog spot dot blog is teen teen chef Teddy. But he's been writing it for a couple years. I wonder whether he's still a teenager. Yeah.
He has to change his uh he has to change his blog then. Anyway. Uh hey Dave and Nastasha, don't ask Satasha, she doesn't care about your problems, Teddy. Just me. Just kidding.
You know, you're not. Well, you're saying you don't care about his problems? Is that what you're saying? Okay, all right. I need help making sweet potato fries.
No matter what I do, blanch fry fry or just fry fry, the fries get too much color before they get crispy. I know this happens because of sweet potatoes, high sugar and moisture content, but I cannot figure out how to get around this predicament. Maybe a soak in acidulated uh solution uh first, then roast, then fry fry technique would work. What are your thoughts then for the help? Well, it's a true story, uh Teddy.
It's uh sweet potato fries, uh they get too much color to them, right? So there are a number of things that are done uh because basically because of uh thing called reducing reducing sugars in there that even more than the regular sugar which causes browning, the reducing sugars in it cause browning. Um, you know, which is i.e. not sucrose, but the you know, invert in it. Uh so uh there's been a couple of studies based on trying to get the sugar, total sugar content of the uh at least of the surface of the potatoes down somewhat.
And uh there's a study that was done where potatoes were soaked uh by themselves, you know, just in water versus in uh salt versus in um in uh my brain uh ascorbic acid, which is I think what you're thinking about to stop the browning from taking place, enzymatic browning from taking Whoa, something just flew into my mouth. Ouch. Um, right? Uh versus citric acid versus uh acetic acid vinegar. Interestingly, uh the most sugar was leached out of the um potatoes by soaking them in a dilute.
Excuse me. That bug really did me wrong, and that flew right in my mouth by uh soaking in um dilute vinegar. Um, right? So here's what I would do. Then a second way to get the sugars out is by blanching.
So I would soak these suckers, these potatoes is what I mean, in uh a vinegar solution after they've been cut for uh uh you know, weak vinegar solution for a couple of hours. I would throw salt in too, but just because salt is delicious. Uh and it also helps with uh with uh color problems in French fries, but I don't know why or how. Then um I would pull them out of that. Then uh actually, you know what, you might not want to put the salt because it might reduce the amount of sugars that are pulled out.
Yeah, interesting question. Don't know, I'll have to look at it. Uh then I would blanch them in water, uh, and that's gonna leach out even more sugar. Uh, and then uh I would go through the um two-step frying process. One at a lower temperature to do your cook through and to form the crust, pull it out, let it cool down.
Bugs in my throat, and then after that I would uh do the final fry to crisp it up. But you do have a tough road to hoe. I was looking this up, actually, and uh there's an interesting problem where someone was making potato chips and they did something completely counterintuitive. Uh they were trying to minimize uh oil uh into the potato chip, which is a horrible idea because oil is delicious in a potato chip, necessary and delicious. But they check this out.
They took the potato after they they had uh blanched it and dried it, you know, uh just dried it like in a on an oven or dehydrator, and they threw it into a sugar solution, sugar solution, like strong, like 23% sugar by weight, and uh two sec for two seconds, and then immediately they let it drain for three seconds and immediately fried it. And they said that it was good. They said that it actually uh they said it absorbed less oil, which I don't know why I'm interested in that. But uh the fact that it didn't brown appreciably or didn't scorch in the fryer when they were making potato chips is very interesting to me. The other way, by the way, and I doubt you have access to this because very few people do, to uh decrease the color is to decrease the frying temperature of the oil.
Uh, but the only way to do that is to what? He's 15, Teddy. Was or is, and he's a Taurus. What does that mean? I don't know.
When is Taurus? April. It's like me and your wife. Oh. Well, my wife, I think, changed because they changed all the zodiacs.
I did not change, I'm still Aries. Anyway, Aries. So, um. Okay. So uh, as I was saying before, I was interrupted by this astrological uh thing.
The uh for Teddy. Alright, alright. Um, so uh vacuum frying is the other way to go. So you can reduce the uh temperature at which the o at which you can set the oil by reducing the pressure, thereby allowing water to boil up. Because water boiling out of uh of your product is what stops the oil from penetrating, right?
And and and things don't get crispy until the water is left, right? So you can uh reduce the temperature at which that happens by putting everything under a vacuum. Problem with that is is you need some hardcore equipment, and the other problem with it is is that what typically what happens is is you fry the thing under a vacuum, you then uh let the air back in, and whammo, all the oil is injected into the porous section of the fries, and so you get really greasy, soggy fries. So this happens with potato chips, although it's not as big a deal in potato chips, but it happens in French fries all the time, and you're worried about French fries, which is why vacuum frying can be difficult, other than the fact that it's very hard to do. Like the morons that do vacuum I excuse me, I didn't mean that.
The what's the word for moron that's friendly? Ninkam poop. Ninckam poop. The nincam poops that make kind of the uh consumer level vacuum frying situation didn't put a coal trap in between the fryer and the vacuum pump. So there's no possible way on God's earth that it can actually work as a vacuum fryer because it can't possibly recondense the liquid that it that it spews off.
Uh so the only way around that is to either use a cold trap or to use an aspirator pump that uh can reduce the pressure uh even when there's water vapor coming out of it all the time. Problem with an aspirator pump is is that if you make a lot of water vapor like you would when you're frying, think of the steam that comes out of a fryer. You're uh you're you're gonna you're gonna it's gonna start sucking wind and it's gonna get up to atmospheric pretty quickly. Anyway, but here's here's my question, Nastasha. And this is to you since you're the only one that's uh here, even if you know, only in body.
Uh the uh uh why don't they do this? Why don't they uh towards the end of the frying time ramp the temperature up and at the same time release the vacuum slowly so that there's always water boiling out of it until they reach atmospheric. Then they should be able to get most of the benefit of vacuum frying. Most of the frying will take place at a lower temperature, right? But uh uh, you know, at the end, when they're pulling it out of the oil, it's an atmospheric.
And so it's not gonna get that injection. What do you think? Yeah. Sounds good, right? But I would n no one in the literature has tried uh something like that.
I wonder whether there's a technical problem that makes it impossible. Uh anyway, apparently Nastasha's just slapped her watch, uh, which means that we are going to our first commercial break. Call your questions to 718-497-2128. 718-497-2128 cooking issues. I can think of younger days.
Everything a man could want to do I couldn't ever see more told how about the side can you a broken heart? How can you stop the rain? Oh, Al Green, welcome back to Cooking Issues. So the reason we played uh that song from Al Green is one of the questions I got anonymous was, Dave, what is a cure for a broken heart? And I thought that uh the Reverend Al Green, although he provides actually no solutions.
If you actually listen to the song, he provides no solutions. But they were taught maybe they didn't finish the sentence and it's like a broken or heart. He's like, how well how can you mend a broken heart? And the related question, how can a loser ever win? Mm-hmm.
Right. These are kind of related questions that Al Green asked. Maybe they were asking how to put together a broken heart of an animal that they were. Well, that's what I'm gonna have to I'm gonna have to assume. Look, I'm not an expert in mending broken hearts, but I am an expert in cooking hearts.
So I think I'll I'll shift it to the related question of Dave, how do you cook how do you cook hearts? Or why do you cook hearts? What do you mean weak? First of all, the heart is an extremely underappreciated uh culinary. I had amazing heart at my aelino.
Did you have it that day? No. What kind of heart? Pig heart. Yeah, pig heart is good.
With peppers and onions. Peppa peppers and onions. Peppers. Peppers. Sausage and pep and hearts.
Anyway, uh so uh it was good? So good. How do they make it every single day? I don't know. Was it was it was it uh all moist or was there some crunchy?
No, all moist. Almost, yeah. So that's a you know good way to cook heart. Hearts are delicious because they're uh and and for all you freaks who don't like fat, uh you're probably not listening to my show. But if you are, uh, you know, uh very, very lean and very kind of like it's got that really that kind of bloody taste, but without being kind of so bloody the way that like sometimes I like blood sausage, but some people don't like it because of the extreme bloody bloody flavor of it.
You know what I'm talking about? My you know what my personal favorite heart is? Chicken hearts. I love 'em. Chicken hearts.
You know, they're so delicious and yet like chicken hearted means like crappy. Like why would you why would you I mean they're so delicious? Chicken hearts. You like chicken hearts? I don't know if I've had it.
Oh my god. Duck heart's delicious, right? So good. Yeah, chicken heart is like slightly smaller than a duck heart, uh, which means uh I don't know, that they're slightly smaller, you can eat more of them. I look, I I love duck hearts, but I grew up eating chicken hearts.
Uh, and my favorite way is to is to see, you know, a giant skewer full of chicken hearts, god knows how you know. You know, think if you if I can get a skewer of chicken hearts, that means there's that many fools out there not eating the hearts of their chicken that they're eating all of those breasts and legs and not eating the heart. Um anyway, I just like it simply like roasted and then uh, you know, with like some chimicherry sauce or something. Stuff's just so good, chicken hearts. Anyway, uh you know what I we haven't done a lot of experiment with low temp hearts.
I mean, I've done it a couple times at home, but not enough to report. Mm-hmm. Hearts. Anyway, can't mend them, can cook them. Uh you know, but whoever's out there with a broken heart, time heals all wounds, mainly because you die at the end.
So you know, in other words, like that's what makes it tautologically true. Tautologically. Yeah, it's like it's like uh it's always true. It can't it can't be any other because uh we all have a finite existence, so it's always over at some point. Oh, heavy, heavy subjects here.
Wait, can you just comment on indie Jesus today? I I'm not what the show is not the indie Jesus show. We're talking about the uh the waiter here who is still looking like Jesus, came up and someone must have told him. I know he's not a listener, someone told him that we did it because he gave Nastasha the stink eye, but most people give Nastasha the stink eye because she throws off the I hate you vibe. He g he gives most people the stink eye.
Oh, really? Really? It's not us. So how the heck is he Jesus like if he throws a stink eye? Jesus doesn't throw a stink eye.
He needs to work on that. It ruins the look. Yeah. Anyway. Okay.
Uh uh follow up from Aaron. Hi, Nastasha and Dave. Uh we called in last week. Uh when I said I was still loving the show, I didn't mean to say I thought the show would turn to crap. I was just saying.
Um you answered a question of mine before with Harold McGee at that time. Uh I was blown away that I was able to get expert advice so easily, mainly from McGee, I assume, if he means it's expert advice. Uh and uh so anyway, so uh the question that was asked last week, uh I think last week or week before was on plating. And by the way, thanks for nothing for all you people giving advices to it, you know, for for plating, because we got zero responses on that, right? Anyway, uh the local library his local library is uh pretty well stocked with cookbooks, so you can get ideas there.
And he liked the response regarding uh thinking about the visual aspect slightly earlier during the preparation of the food. Uh I think the first time I think of the visual aspect is uh I put food on the plate. So it definitely should shift to earlier. I will definitely look at learning specific techniques such as canelling, and uh ultimately uh Aaron hopes uh that the standard way to get really good at plating is to turn out hundreds of plates of food under the guidance of a chef who has the expertise. Yeah, but it requires you work in a professional kitchen to do that, which is kind of a pain in the pain in the patoot.
Mm-hmm. Right? I can say Patoon on this, right? Yeah, anyway. Uh thanks for the follow-up, Aaron.
Uh okay, here's one for you. Howdy Dave and Nastasha, my 11-year-old daughter Sarabeth loves your podcast. I didn't realize we were a family show. I like that. Now we have to watch what we say.
Well, mean you. You're the only one that's dropped curses on this station. You talked about vaginal uh listen to yourself. Yeah. Listen to yourself.
First of all, I was talking about Lysol, which was an historical reference, and not anything to do with anything, and you just pulled it out apropos of nothing. Uh Jack, you know, can go over the thing, but I believe Nastasha's the only one that's ever cursed on this program. I've I've cursed. Oh, all right. Well.
I haven't, which is strange. Chris Young has too. He cursed? Really? Yes.
Oh, you potty mouth people. My 11-year old granddaughter uh granddaughter, my 11-year old daughter Sarah Beth loves your podcast. She wants to be a chef and go to culinary school someday. We listen to you all on the way to swim practice and back. Nice swim practice.
I wish I knew how to swim. You know how to swim. No, I I don't. Then the more I try to swim, it's like it's like uh you'd think, because I'm not exactly the leanest guy in the world, you'd think that I would float like uh easily, but the more I try and tread water, I I somehow corkscrew myself into the water. And actually, the more I try to tread, the faster I sink.
I mean, if you throw me overboard, I you know, I can I won't die right away. But uh, you know, I wouldn't call myself a swimmer. Anyway, my wife makes fun of me about it constantly. Uh, anyhow, uh Sarah Beth is doing her science fair pro now. You swallowed the bug.
No, I'm just sick. Thanks. Thanks for coughing on me with the sickness. Uh she's doing her science fair project called Make Mine Medium Rare, Heat Conduction and Steak. It's all about determining cooking time for beef steaks to get to medium rare, uh, medium and well done for various thicknesses of steaks.
Now, listen, you put numbers here, which are the normal numbers for uh rareness, i.e., medium rare is 145 degrees, medium 155, and well done, 170. Let me just say right off the bat, these numbers are like crazy wrong, crazy high. For me, medium rare is not a 145. Wait. I can't do my I can't do my math in my head anymore.
It's crazy. 57 is 135. So for me, medium rare is more like uh 135 Fahrenheit in that range. Uh and all of the temperatures that people register are typically above it, and I don't know why. But if you served me a hundred and forty five degree steak, medium rare, I'd be like, nah, not so much medium, right?
Okay. Uh, we are trying to find out what uh the relationship is between thickness of stakes and the cooking time to hit those temperatures, all other things held constant. We will be using three bonus cuts of meat one inch, one point five inches, and two inches thick. The bibliography uh reference for the experiment is from Harold McGee's The Curious Cook, pages 33 through 34. Excellent book, out of print, unfortunately.
I keep telling him to bring it back or give you know, put it on the web or some other kind of crud. Uh so here's our question. Uh, we are trying to decide the best way to cook the steaks to keep the only variable in the experiment the thickness of the steaks. There are two suggested ways to cook the meat boiling them in water or cooking them in a 300 degree oven. Which would be the best method to uh to use to control the temperature that the meat is cooked in to keep exactly the same for all three cuts of meat.
We don't have sous vide equipment or anything. We do have a gas range, convection electric oven, and pots to boil in, and a sixth grade science fair budget. Thank you for the great podcast. Okay. So sixth grade.
So here's here, okay. Here's the issue. A couple issues. Let's go into it. One, um, the relationship between thickness and to really get the relationship between thickness and how long it's going to take to get to a particular temperature when you're cooking at a particular temperature, uh, involves uh doing some differential equations, which is, you know, hey, look you, you know, when I was growing up, that was well beyond what they taught a sixth grader.
Who knows what they teach a sixth grader nowadays? Anyway, you need to know some differential equations for that to actually calculate it. Um, and then it's done uh basically comp you know you know on a computer that just does the iterations of and does it and find solutions for it. Um but roughly and and the shape of the meat that you use radically changes uh the amount of time it takes to uh for something to get up to temperature. So most things are modeled as either one of three things or something in between.
And those three things are flat slab, which is like a steak, right? Or uh cylinder, which is like when uh when you make like a roulade, or a sphere, which you know does a sphere, right? Now, uh, luckily for you, right? Uh, if well, I should say luckily for you, I don't know if you have an iPad. If you have an iPad or an iPod, right?
Uh, there's someone that wrote a uh there's someone who wrote an application uh called Su Vash. Now it's five bucks. All right. And I have you know, this is how much I love the listeners here. I spent my own five bucks and I bought the application to look at it, right?
And Nastasha, you know that like getting five dollars out of me is like squeezing water out of a rock. You know what I mean? And even Moses had trouble with that. You know, Moses, right? Moses the Moses, right?
The first time God's like, strike the rock, and and he's because the Israelites are thirsty, right? Should I do this in like uh Jersey, Jersey Bible? Well, in a minute. So he so he strikes the rock, and then later on, got like like you know, years and years, years, years later, the Israelites are thirsty again, they've been wandering around for 40 years, blah blah blah. God's like, hey Moses, go to the rock, talk to the rock, and water's gonna come out of the rock.
So Moses walks up, he's like, last time I had to hit the freaking rock to get the water out. I had to hit it to get the water out. I'm gonna hit it again. Hits the rock. God's like, oh, oh, hitting the rock.
I said, talk to the rock. And so uh, you know, Moses is like, hey, you know, well, I thought, you know, if I'm gonna talk to it, I might as well punch it, hit it with a stick. It's gonna be better. It's like, hey, Moses, don't think. I said talk to the rock, and that's the reason he didn't get uh to lead the uh Israelites into the promised land.
How messed up is that? I like how he covered Jesus and Moses on the show. Hey, hey, hey, we're equal opportunity, old and new testament. We'll bring it. That's from Dave Arnold's Jersey Bible.
Uh so the uh uh stupid. Okay, so um, but you can download uh for five bucks, you can download uh the Sue V dash, and what it does is it actually plots on a graph. Uh you put the type of meat you're using, and the reason the type of meat that you use is important is because different fat level different meats have basically different uh uh specific heats, how how like how hard it is to heat them up to a different temperature, and also probably different uh rates of thermal conduction through them based on fat and all these other things. So you want to um you want you know to enter the meat, right? Then you can enter the shape of it, uh, which is uh, you know, usually like some form of a flat slab or a a s or a cylinder or a sphere.
Uh and uh and then and the other cool thing is this program can customize all this stuff. So there's there's a there's a a coefficient that's basically a shape coefficient that that changes the equations based on uh what the shape of the thing is, and uh a pure flat plane is uh is uh the coefficient is zero for a you know pure cylinder, infinitely long cylinder, coefficient one, and for a sphere, coefficient is two. Uh but uh in reality, right, the equations really only modeled for these kind of pure things, but in reality what they do is they're like, well, an egg is not quite as you know, it's not quite a sphere, it's more like you know, a cylind sphere. And so they're like, instead of it being a two, right, it's got a coefficient of one point eight. But the cool thing about this program is it allows you to dork with uh if you go to the expert level, you can dork around with the coefficients, and you can see how changing that coefficient changes the rate at which things heat.
But not to spoil it for you or anything, but the um if you double the size of a flat slabs we're talking now, infinite flat slabs, big steak. Uh if you double the thickness, the amount of time it takes to get it to temperature will be roughly four times greater. Every time you double it, it goes up by a factor of four because it goes by the square. I think they're asking how they should cook it. I'm gonna get to that.
I'm being thorough. Um geez. So uh here's the other here's the other bad news about it, though, is that uh in terms of the way the meat looks, and and when I say that, the way that the myoglobe and the proteins in it are going to get denatured, uh, which is what provides a lot of the color in the meat, it the way it gets uh denatured is radically dependent on how long it takes to cook the product. So what I would run a couple of different tests. Ovens aren't so good because um the size of the piece of meat in it, uh not just the thickness, but the size on how much moisture is coming off is going to affect the temperature, uh, how quick the surface can dry out because you're in a dry oven.
I mean, it's just the oven's kind of inaccurate. Boiling is unfortunately so kind of hardcore. I mean, you can do it, right? I would recommend getting this application to dork around with the different um the different factors to kind of look at them. Um but then I would I would go boiling water.
Uh, you know, if you want to try some lower temp stuff just as a test, you can do what I've said before, which is you can run uh uh hot water out of your tap, which is you know, depends on your tap, might be hot enough to cook a steak. Not up, you're probably not gonna be up to well done. But um you can do the other thing you can do is get a cooler and uh do some uh tests that way. But the only way to do a real scientific experiment where everything is kept constant is to have something in a rolling boil. And uh you know, uh if you're gonna use boiling water, that is a rolling boil.
And what that means is is you're not gonna want to uh put a big piece of meat in because if you put a big piece of meat in, you're going to um if you put a big piece of meat in, you're going to uh drop the temperature of the water locally to the meat. The other problem you're gonna have is you're gonna want to try to keep the meat so that it's uh even thickness all the way around, which is gonna be difficult for you because uh it's just gonna be difficult because the meat's gonna be moving around in the water. So and but it's gonna be extremely hard for you to do anything else, like bolt it between two plates with with you know thumb screws so you can get the thickness exactly the way you want. I mean, you could do that. I've done it.
It's dumb. I've done it, you know what I mean? But it is a pain in the butt. Uh you're you're gonna want to try to keep the thickness as accurate as possible because it is gonna make a big uh a big difference. So or if they're in the New York, New Jersey, Connecticut area, they can borrow my circulator.
I hear that. Yeah, that's a good offer. Uh but here's the other things you're gonna have to deal with is the how you're gonna measure the temperature on the inside, or you're just gonna do it by visual inspection, right? Um visual inspection, meh, meh, meh. You know what I mean?
Uh but on the other hand, temperature, meh, meh. You know what I mean? There's it's not so bueno. You know what I mean? Now, uh assuming that you're gonna be into this stuff, you can get uh digital thermometers now pretty cheap.
But an easy way to do it is to get like a multimeter that has a uh thermocoupled thing, and then you can get very fine thermocouples. They're down to like I think you can get like a thermocouple for like sixty bucks, and you can get a multimeter that'll read it on Amazon for like uh or even just a thermometer for another like 30 or 40. Uh so I mean that's a hundred bucks. I don't know whether you want to go that far, but your average instant read thermometer it has a bunch of problems. It's too big.
It uh it's not very fast and also it has a high enough thermal mass in itself to drop the temperature that you're reading. So it can be problematic. Um I being helpful at all you're like not really you're not really helping her at all in our project. I gave her the name of the program to look at nostas yeah all right all right all right well listen uh if you have more questions uh come back there's nothing I love better than a science fair I used to like I don't know whether you you could probably guess this I had some butt kicking science fair stuff my dad's uh double E electrical engineer and he used to help me out on my science fair projects and one time he helped me calculate um uh like a bunch of a mirror array to get them all focused on the same point and he was showing me how parabolas work and all that and so we built a big mirror array that focused a hundred mirrors I found this mirror shop that uh gave me stuff that for almost nothing I was like but they don't need to be high quality I'm a little kid and I don't have any money. So like take these mirrors they're almost free.
And uh and I glued the mirrors like uh and then we were like you know lighting stuff on fire. So some other kid was coming with like with their little hot with their little parabolic reflect reflector hot dog oven and I walk in with like you know a four foot by four foot array of uh a hundred mirrors uh like four by four inch mirrors uh and with instantly light paper on fire stuff was awesome anyway I love a science fair so if you have any uh questions please write back and we'll address them. Yes? Sort of yeah sort of what is it that you want me to say that I didn't say? Nothing.
Just write back and let us know how deep it is. Yeah, jeez. Yeah. And look, uh, I'm not endorsing the program. In fact, it has some issues.
Like, for instance the the program CV dash, when you look at it, like if I change it from chicken to beef, it changes all my other settings. I was like, listen, I put the other settings where I want them. Why would you change it? Just because I changed it from chicken to beef. Come on.
Soogie dash. All right. Another good place to look for that. If you can do the differential equations uh for her, or like I say, if she's incredibly precocious, Douglas Baldwin has a uh an explanation of how the equations work on his website about Sue V. Okay.
Hey Dave. Nice. This is Ryan Santos. What's the best way to cook a goose sous vide? Uh looking to cook the legs to a comfy like Dunnness.
Imagine two different times and tents, but not sure what those are. Uh okay. So, yeah, with the with the goose, I break it apart. I'd uh, you know what you could do actually. I don't know if this would work or not, but I wonder whether you could roast the goose so that it looks awesome and then just not serve the legs.
Cut the legs off and then confide them separately. I don't know. I would cook goose like I cook a duck, which means uh 57 uh degrees is my go-to. And if it's a little tough, not for for no the breasts I'm talking, once you remove the breasts, cook them at 57 for no longer than an hour. Uh and you know, if if they're a little tough, you can do like 58.
Let them cool down, uh, hit with the dog brush a la uh modernist cuisine and then sear off the goose to render out some of the uh the fat, make it crispy and delicious. I would confide the legs uh in uh vacuum, I would salt them overnight uh and err salt and herb them overnight. Uh, you know, get rid of the excess salt, uh, throw them in a bag with their own fat, you know, just with what they are, uh, and cook it at regular simmering temperatures, like 85 and for a couple of hours, you know, until the bone feels free in the uh in the thing, and you'll know it's done. Let them cool down in their own fat. When they're ready to go, pull them out, crisp them up, delicious.
Yeah? All right, let's go to our second commercial break. I'm so in love with you. Whatever you want to do. So brand to spend my life with you.
Okay. Since we've been together. Love me. Be the one you come on to welcome back to cooking issues. Uh my schedule is totally thrown off today because uh we don't have a clock in the studio.
Nice. Anyway. Todd W Oh, let me get the second question uh from uh uh second question from Ryan. Secondly, I want to replicate Wiley, that's why they do frame my brother-in-law's around uh aerated foie gras recipe. I have a food saver and a vacuum box thing, but no chamber vac.
I'm curious if I aerate the foie base in a whipper and then in a vacuum box, if that would help get the aeration going. I've had success doing this with ice cream base to aerate the ice cream. Just wanted a second opinion before attempting this with expensive foie. Now I don't have uh his recipe in my head for the aerated foie, but I believe he uses foie fat. And uh you could probably use a substitute for foie fat like duck fat or something harder than that.
I forget what it was. I w you know, next time I ask him, I'll I'll uh I see him, I'll ask him, but they didn't test out all those recipes with like boatloads of foie because it would be really expensive. They tested with an alternate cheaper fat. Uh and I forget what it is. Uh I don't think it was butter because it doesn't behave the same way.
I think it was uh I think it was duck fat or maybe a mixture of duck fat and butter. But anyway, um the aeration that they get at WD or did, you know, um back when they had this on the menu uh with uh ice cream was like the stuff was so aerated that it was like ancient food cake. So if you can do that, you could probably aerate the foie. Um I would run a test with a cheaper fat just to see whether it bubbles up. You know what I mean?
Like do something with do it with duck fat or do it with uh butter to see if it aerates. It won't set uh the same way, but just see if it see if it aerates. Uh let me know. And next time I speak to Wiley, I will ask him what they use as foie substitute when they're testing out recipes so that they don't break the bank. Okay.
Uh Todd Bryant writes in. Hey there, I'm traveling abroad to Israel and Turkey. I'd like to go to Turkey. And Israel, but I'd like to go to Turkey. I've done a lot of studies on Turkish uh food stuff and I've had some Turkish interest.
Anyway, do you have any tips on how to bring back yummy and rare foodstuffs, meats, cured meats, cheeses, fresh or dried fruits, spices or liquids in my luggage without them being confiscated by the Cretans at Customs. Thanks, folks, Brian. Nastasha, you're a sneak. What do you think? I I don't know.
I mean, just stuff it in the bag and don't say anything. Well, that's a helpful freaking tip. I mean, what's he what what do you mean? Well, okay, look. Obviously, vacuum bag anything so the dogs can't sniff it.
Yeah. Right? Uh, look unassuming. Yes. It you know, it you know, if you if you're if they're racist, it helps to be uh, you know, like look like me, boring white guy.
You know what I mean? That's helpful. Um, sad to say, but true. Um, I don't know, you know, I've brought some evil stuff back in. I haven't done it recently.
My sister-in-law brought an entire prosciutto back in her backpack. You know, but I think the dogs are much more hardcore now, and I don't know what the penalties are. Steingarten has an interesting thing about this. He just says what he has, he declares it, and usually they're just too like whatever to look at it. They just look at him and he pretends.
Another thing you could do, like with cheeses, is you can just say, hey, they're aged more than 60 days. Oh, yeah. I brought a cat on a plane that was one month old, and I told them it was eight months. And they were like, okay. Yeah.
You gotta know the rules and get around it. Look, no one's gonna look if you're going to Turkey, get celeb dun derma. It's not done term, that's the ice cream, but get celebrated the orchid powder. And you know, I don't know, it's not drugs. So you like tell them that it's not, you know, whatever.
I never get stopped. Almost never. On once in Germany, and I got hardcore hosed. But uh other than that, I almost never get stopped. Man, I want people write in, see what they think about this.
Now listen. Don't bring anything then that actually could cause an echo epidemic. Like, don't bring citrus fruit from someplace to the United States to California, and then you know, totally shaft a billion dollar industry because I don't want to give advice to help that happen. That makes sense. Does that make sense?
Anyway. Okay. Uh now, let me see what we got here. Okay. We got a c uh question in from Andrew, uh, who says, uh see, we should post a poll on the blog asking who listens to our show on a specific date, and we can even put options for live listening and potcast, and then that way we can figure out what's going on.
What do you think? Yeah, that's a good idea. We'll look into it. But anyway, the main reason he's emailing is that his pressure cooker is broken and it sucks, and so he's looking to buy a new one. I've read on your various posts on pressure cookers and modernist cuisine's chapter on them, and I'm still not totally sure what the best option is.
Uh, I know you like Coon Recon, which I do, uh, but modernist cuisine got me worried about the spring indicator becoming inaccurate over time. And there's also the matter of choice between a model with the large thing on top or the little pin. The all American, the all-American pressure canners what we're talking about. Looks good, but he's unsure whether the sterilizer or the normal pressure cooker is the better option. The sterilizer concerns me because the tube from the valve going into it and how long it is, and the manufacturer says it's not to be used as a pressure cooker.
What's up, Sus? I'm in the middle of the collar. There's a color. Alright, let me finish reading this and I'll go to the collar. On the other hand, if I was to go to the all-American pressure cooker, how practical and safe is weighing down the weight valvey thing?
What I want out of this is the best possible option for both canning and pressure cooking, and cost matters uh in so much as I want only have to buy one thing and what size should I get. Okay, qua I'm gonna answer that in one second. Caller, you're on the air. Hi, David Nastasha, it's Ken Angbert from Situit, Massachusetts. Hey, how you doing?
Long time no speak. Long time no speak. How are you? All right. Uh, two things.
One, I came back from France a couple of weeks ago and uh brought back some foie gras and truffles and had relatively little difficulty, but a friend of mine who brought back more or less the same thing, but also brought back a sausage. Uh the dogs were all over the uh sausage and then the customs people opened up everything and if I looked into it a little bit and it turns out that there's no uniformity. It's uh very much discretion at the airport so rules in one place will have no bearing on anywhere else. And you're coming into Logan? Uh I was coming it well actually it turned out we were both coming into Logan although they were moving on.
Right. Is Logan still pretty hardcore? Uh well I I had to uh assure them that everything was cooked and sealed as if it were in a can and they were skeptical but they let me through but I looked into it around the country. It's uh not uniform at all. Right and I you know I've had an issue actually the only time I've gotten hammered was with a sausage so it's interesting.
I mean maybe and I'm assuming the sausage wasn't vacuum packed down so it had probably more residual smell to it. No, it was it was uh from an open air market that you couldn't pass by. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So I mean uh obviously minimize stuff that the dogs can smell and know how to talk a good game and be prepared to lose everything, right?
Well uh yes and also you need to declare everything. If you if you if they catch you uh you're in trouble. You mean yeah if they yes right so say you're bringing some foodstuffs back but just pretend that it's all legit and then if they catch you with it being illegit you could just say you didn't that this is a misinterpretation, is that what you're saying? Yes, the Steingarden approach sounds right to me. Yeah.
Very good. Uh I I have another question though. Alright. Uh it a fairly simple one I think, which is um I you know I I cooked a turkey for Thanksgiving and according to various charts, it should have been in the neighborhood of five hours, and it was done in about two and a quarter. And other people have the same uh same result.
And what's going on is is it that the steam from the uh um from the stock underneath is steaming it and just cooking it much much faster? Well, what was the cooking technique? Uh uh roasting um I roasted it like 325. Um, but I poured, you know, uh a couple of quarts of stock into the roasting pan at the bottom. Right.
I do that as well to stop from scorching. I don't know if that's going to accelerate it or not. Uh when they the the numbers for how fast it's going to be done was based on open cavity bird. Yeah. Huh.
It was it was a nine 19-pound bird, and uh it should have been by charts about five hours or so. But it's all every year it's the same thing. I I don't want to uh I don't I don't I want to time it properly. I wind up using some chart and it's always done two or three hours early. Well those charts are always horrible.
They're horrible. They're based on like bad, they're based on you know bad stuff. We should get like one of these guys like Doug Baldwin or something to actually figure it out based on like circumferential measurement of the turkey's breast and then approximate the gap, you know, the internal uh void. Right. Um I wonder whether the stock's gonna make an appreciable difference.
I don't know, but I will look into it. Okay. Alrighty? Good enough. Thanks.
Take care. Hey, thanks for calling in. All right. Quickly back to Andrew's pressure cooker problem. Uh look, the American pressure canner, uh, I love them, and they're the only way to go for big, big things, and they go up to higher pressures than other things.
They can make it up to like a you know 22 PSI, which I don't really think is necessary. But I think they're a pain in the butt because you have to seal a bunch of uh hand knobs all the time to make sure that they're not leaking. They're made out of all aluminum, which means that you have to take care of them when you wash them with detergents, and some people don't like to cook acidic stuff in aluminum or you know, basic stuff in aluminum. Um, so they need protection. Uh they tend to take up more space in the kitchen.
Uh I like it because it's very accurate and I can run experiments with it, but for normal cooking, I don't use it. Um the um I would use the I Coon Recon is great. I don't really care. I mean, like the spring, I don't know if it actually loses accuracy over time or not, but the spring is almost free. You can buy a bunch of springs if you're worried about it and replace it.
I have the one that has the spring right in the center that goes up and down, and I've used it for you know f you know six years or something like that, and I've never had a problem with it, other than I broke the handle off of it and uh I shattered the plate on the top. Uh and so it's kind of weird looking, but the thing still cooks like a demon. Uh you know, I had to replace the gasket once. Uh I would stay away from uh you know the the models that um vent because I think it uh kind of reduces uh the taste profile. I'll get the biggest one that you can.
Another thing is like some people will sell you two pots and then one lid, which you can go back and forth. But I mean I like the Coon Recon. I mean, they don't they don't pay me or anything, but I like them a lot. Uh and I haven't had a problem with them kind of going uh going south on you. I mean I just haven't.
Uh there was I I read uh some uh QC problems, quality control problems with Coon Recon for a little while, but I think they have that thing, they have that thing fixed. So I would go for it if you have the money. I've never needed anything else. In fact, when I have to work at work, I bring my home pressure cooker in rather than using the crappy ones that they have there. Just saying.
Not saying that they're crappy, the ones that they have at the FCI, I'm just saying that they're crap. Okay. By the way, my son thinks crap is a curse. Yeah, it is when you're young. Whatever.
Okay. But not for an 11-year old, we're okay. Yeah. Okay. Okay.
Uh, and we'll round out on this. By the way, he has the best sign off for us ever, which is keep on keep being awesome. You like that? So nice. Anyway.
Okay. So, my other questions uh are more about your personal views on subjects, so if you need to sacrifice them for someone else's more tangible questions, that's cool. Well, I won't. I'm gonna end with them instead. I was wondering what your views are on the waste involved with sous vide or low temperature cooking.
I often feel guilty about throwing out Ziplocks after only using them for a few hours, and I'm slightly horrified at the thought of what a restaurant that employs the method must go through. A bit hippie ish, but I can't help it. Alright. Uh it is it's look kind of an issue, but on the other hand, I mean you can reuse the Ziplocks. Nobody does, because it's a huge hell mess to uh clean them out and they're all goopy, and if you're gonna save them for a long time, it's a nightmare.
I'd have to do a a calculation based on total final usage of materials uh and resources in terms of like the less amount of energy it takes to cook using that way versus an oven, the less you have to evacuate your kitchen because you're using low temperature instead of using uh something that uses it burns up a lot of gas. I'd also have to figure out how much plastic wrap I'd have to use to wrap the stuff afterwards if I wasn't using Tupperwares or something that seals itself. So there's all sorts of things, uh, but it is uh uh something that um I should probably think about more than I do. What do you think, Stuz? Yes.
Yeah, she's like, I don't care, you're too late, I'm not gonna give you anything than one-word answers. Only one-word answers for you at this point. Anyway, my other question is what we're gonna end on. My other question is about your views on using MSG in cooking. Many chefs know and actively say that MSG hasn't been found to have any negative effects, yet they will still go out of their way to include MSG-rich foods in their dishes rather than go for the pure stuff.
Now I know that in some cases these foods give complimentary flavors, but there are other cases, like Hester Blumenthal using seaweed and a shepherd's pie, where the ingredient is purely for its umami boost. Okay. Alright. It's very interesting question. Look it.
I don't use MSG. I just never got in the habit of it. But I do use a lot of MSG stuff, and uh I am one of those people that happens to know because I've read all of the studies and don't use crazy post hoc ergopropter hockey theological stuff. This is a separate question. If you had read the question or even listened to it while I was speaking, you would see it's a separate question.
The question is, uh, why do chefs not use it even though they know it's safe? And I think there's a couple of reasons. I think mainly it goes to perception. I think uh, you know, when you're a chef and you're cooking something, you have to not only cook to what you think is right, but you have to cook to what your customers think is right, or you're gonna alienate a lot of people. And the high-end people, right?
Uh there's a whole group of kind of farm to table, like, you know, as you said, hippie-ish people who won't consume MSG on principle, right? And so then to put that in your dish cuts off an entire group of people from uh from using it, right? For from enjoying your food, and it injects a level of controversy into your menu that you might not want to inject in. You know, it's just, you know, unless you unless you're like Dave Chang, who's like, you tell me foie gras bad, so every menu on the every menu item is gonna have foie gras. Shut up.
Like he does, he can do does stuff like that. He'll make points. But you know, unless your point is to make a point about it, you don't want to alienate someone for something that you can do in some other way. Especially if you haven't grown up using it as a spice, you get around it in other ways. In other words, like there's things that like uh there's things that you believe in that you don't do yourself, or there's things that you're not willing to go to.
I don't know. Your point, I think, is that maybe they feel a little dirty using it. Even though they say it's okay, that they feel a little dirty doing it. And maybe you're right. It's an interesting question.
I have to think about it, and you know what I'm gonna do? Gonna go buy myself a package of MSG cooking issues.
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