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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 every Tuesday live on the Heritage Radio Network from Roberta's Pizzeria in Bushwick, Brooklyn from 12 to approximately 1245. Uh calling all of your cooking-related questions to 718-497-2128.
That's 718497-2128. Joined as usual in the studio with Nastasha The Hammer Lopez. How are you doing? I'm good. Yeah?
Mm-hmm. Good. Uh well, we haven't been here for a couple of weeks. Have a lot to talk about. A lot has happened in the in the uh last couple of weeks.
Uh well, the most important one being, uh, and I guess we'll talk about this more towards the end of the show, but we opened the bar. We're dax at Som is now open for business. And you can come to 13th Street and 2nd Avenue, where uh we've put our uh whatever it is, foot where our mouth is, money where our mouth is, whatever. Yeah. We're trying all of the techniques that for years I've been saying you can use in a bar or a restaurant.
And we're actually doing it and seeing whether it's working so far, I think it seems to be going pretty well. Yeah. Yeah? Yeah. You enjoy the drinks?
You've been there as a customer a couple times. Yes, they're delicious. Yeah? All right. Anyway, we'll talk more about that later.
Uh and that's the reason we didn't have the show last week. I apologize. We're gonna try to do the show last week on Tuesday, but it was our first day of friends and family. And uh let's just put it this way uh getting everything ready was uh what we say, a poop show? Is that the family way to say it?
Yeah. Poop show? Yeah. Yeah, poop show. Uh even though it was our friends and family who are very forgiving folks, it was still you know, it's still quite a poop show.
We've ironed it all out. Come, come, come to the bar. Um But the weekend before that, a week before that rather, uh, I was in Sweden, which I'd never been before. Very nice uh in Sweden. I was uh brought there uh by the absolute people.
The the the absolute vodka was like, do you want an all expenses paid trip to Sweden and then get to go to an ice hotel? And what are you gonna say to that? But yes. Right? So anyway, so I went and I found out something interesting that I didn't know.
Our friend uh the uh bartender slash uh writer in New York Times, Toby Chicken. Uh did you know he and he basically invented slash popularized the cosmo, the cosmopolitan? I did not know that. Uh I learned that, of course, you know, a a proper Cosmo, if there's such a thing as a proper Cosmo, a uh it's actually an okay drink, right? It's just you don't like Nastasha's giving her vegan face because she doesn't drink vodka drinks, so it's basically Nastasha's vodka slash vegan face.
It's actually, look, everyone has the gripe against vodka. It's fairly neutral in a mixed drink of vodka, so it's just a question of like, you know, anyway whatever, I'm not gonna get into it. A Cosmo tastes fine. Uh, but in order to make a proper Cosmo, you need uh absolute citron, which is why Absolute was talking about it, because the popularity of the Cosmo was coincided with the launch of Absolute Citron here in the US. But but the point of the story is is that you would never peg Toby for the Cosmo guy.
And by the way, I know there's a lot of argument as to who invented the Cosmo, like there's these people out in San Francisco that say they do it. I don't really care. Absolute vodka basically says it is Toby. So if they say it's Toby, I'm gonna go with that. In fact, Dale de Groff, another one of our friends who was at the thing at the time, did not dispute.
He actually probably made it more popular because he was serving them to Madonna and Madonna drinking them in public, I think that's was a major spur to its popularity. Oh, it was Sex in the City. I believe Madonna came before Sex in the City. This is the problem with you being a two-year-old. Sex and City was much later.
In other words, it's already a popular drink. They sex in the City chose it as their iconic drink because it was already a popular drink among the inset in New York City of models and types like that. Hmm. Two-year-old. She's not actually two, by the way.
Uh so anyways, you would not expect this guy to be the Cosmo guy because he's kind of a tall professorial dude who speaks uh, you know, in very measured tones and wears tweed jackets. Would you expect that from the Cosmo guy? No. Anyway. Uh last thing I'll say about Sweden uh is that I got to ride a dog sled.
I saw. Dog sledding's pretty awesome. Dog sledding. Do you know that they they don't stop to poop or pee? They just pee and poop whether like they basically shoot it out while they're running.
And then they also they don't stop to drink, so they just eat snow while they're going. Wow. And that there's no rains. It's not like Yukon Cornelius. There's no kind of whip or anything like that.
You just basically tell the dogs go left, right? And they all run. Anyway, dog setting. On to the cooking questions. I don't know how uh Joseph, I apologize.
I'm gonna brutalize your last name because it contains an umlaut in a position I'm not used to. But Joseph uh Peter, what do you think? Peter? I don't know. P-E-T-H-O-UMA peter?
Anyway. Writes in about meatballs. Dave, I'm planning to make meatballs this week and I'm trying something new. The meatballs will be around 3.5 centimeters in diameter. That's like an inch and a half for us in uh in inch land, right?
Something like that. Cooked sous- vide, but not really sous-vide, because he says there's not going to be a vacuum seal so as not to destroy the texture. So, Joseph, you're not really cooking sous- vide, you're cooking low temperature, right? Sous-vide, it has to kind of be under a vacuum. And remember, I make that distinction specifically because the health department gets uh in, you know, gets all hot and bothered when you use vacuum here in the city, uh, but not for uh low temperature.
So I try to keep the term sous- vide under vacuum, separate from low temperature, which is temperature controlled cooking, or some people call it exact cooking, or there's a bunch of different terms people use. Anyway, uh I'm gonna cook them uh low temperature at 56 degrees Celsius, which is a good temperature for uh meatballs. If there's a high pork content, people might freak out. It's it's not gonna be a health issue, but it's just a question of what people want. 56 is gonna basically be a rare, you know, medium rare kind of uh a meatball.
So if you want it to be medium rare, it will taste great. It's just a question of visually whether you want it to look that way or not. Uh okay. Um I cook them for about 30 minutes. I would cook them actually longer if you want to tenderize uh the meat at those uh temperatures.
Uh see, when you're grinding it, you're tenderizing it, but in fact, you can tenderize the grounds even further. So we when when I do a hamburger, I'll cook it for several hours at uh 55 or 56 uh to really tenderize and cook the meat. Anyway, uh for 30 minutes, and afterwards the meatballs will be deep fried to finish them off at uh 350 degrees Fahrenheit for about two minutes. He's just like I am. He fries in Fahrenheit and uh fries in Fahrenheit and cooks in Celsius.
Crazy, just like me. Crazy. Anyway, uh go higher anyway. 350 is a little low, go like 365, and you don't need a full two minutes, although you can. Um I think this should give good results, and was wondering what you think.
Okay. Uh well when I cook meatballs, this is the technique I use, but you have to fry them before you cook them uh in the in the ziploc bags. And the reason why is otherwise they'll stick to each other. What you want to do is get oil fairly hot and you want to flash fry for like 30 seconds the meatballs, pull them out. Do not let them sit on a tray that will just break under their own weights at that point because you've heated the outside.
So you want to put them directly into a bag. I usually put them into a bag with butter, but you probably could cook them directly in your meatball sauce if you want. Uh and uh that's the way you cook them uh to stop them from breaking apart. Once they're cooked, they won't be as fragile. You could pull them out, uh flash fry them.
I I obviously would bag them in something like butter and not in the sauce if you're gonna do the flash fry afterwards, because you can't fry the sauce, it would be a nightmare. Another uh point, uh 56 is gonna be a little low for some of your customers. You might want to go a little bit higher, like 57, which is normally where I go. Uh and another point uh that I make other than saying cooking longer than the 30 minutes that you're cooking, is uh if you mix uh salt in and you almost always mix salt in with your meatball mix when you're when you're mixing it. Um, um it's the the the longer they stay when they're cooked, kind of the firmer they're gonna get, and the less you're gonna have that kind of a low temperature effect.
But on the other hand, the saltier and more delicious the meatballs will taste. So you have to kind of uh trade off how much salt and how much mixing, but you never want to make your meatball mix, you want to make your meatball mix right away fry it. Uh make your meatballs right away fry it and then put it in the bag, and that's gonna kind of give you your best results. And the more salt and the more kneading you do to your meatballs, the more they're gonna get firmly packed, like a like a like a sausage or like a puck, and the less they'll be like a hamburger. So it depends on how you want your meatballs.
Some people like their meatballs very loose, in which case you're gonna want to add m more uh more wet, more filler, less salt, less kneading, or firmer, in which case more salt, more more kneading, uh, and longer keep times. Does that make sense? Yep. Okay. Uh on to the next question.
Uh Naveen, our good friend Naveen from uh from Harvard, who was uh the TA, het T, I think, right? Yeah. Head TA in the uh Harvard's food science course, uh friend of ours and a uh vegetarian that Nastasha uh ruthlessly berates him for for no apparent reason. Apparent reason. What apparent reason?
He is the food TA. He's a food T, so what? Why can't he be a vegetarian? How's he able to taste all of the wonderful things that those awesome chefs who go up there do? Well, first of all, it's not about that.
It's about teaching like science and and cooking. And and you're there, there's not like they're making a lot of food for people to taste. Still science and cooking, and you only eat vegetables. I mean, I don't I don't see I don't I don't get you. All right.
I don't get you. You don't eat half half the things in the world you eat but you don't like. Yeah, I eat. Whatever. Anyway.
Uh Naveen writes in, it was great to see you at Harvard last year. Did we did a couple of lectures last year at Harvard? Several of the students told me how much they enjoyed your demos during the science and cooking class. Must have been somebody else. My demos were a poop show, right?
Big show. Anyway. There is a group of them who are inspired to do more research into cooking-related science projects as part of a spring class that they're doing. So I was wondering if you had any ideas for them, which could be free uh RD, RD for you. Well, this is actually a complicated question.
I'd have to think of what would be kind of appropriate for an undergrad to experiment with the kind of level of cooking that level of cooking equipment that they have there at Harvard. I mean, there's a ton of research that I would love to do that involves lab equipment that we don't own, but not cooking. And uh, you know, some of the similar uh stuff that uh, you know, Ariel, our friend Arielle's doing over in uh at UC Davis with um checking how food reacts and doing qualitative tests on food. For instance, she's working on what happens to lime juice as it's stored over time. There's a whole bunch of tests like that that I like running.
Um I don't know. I'm gonna Naveen, I'm gonna have to give that some thought. And also, if anyone out there has any interesting projects, maybe email them in to us, right? Mm-hmm. But uh Naveen, I'm gonna give you more thought on that.
I'm gonna come back to you next week with some uh good ideas. By the way, speaking of RD, uh one of my former interns, Liz Button, who has um a restaurant in uh in North Carolina, came into the bar last night for research. You like that? That's nice research, huh? Going to drink?
Yeah. That's some good research. I like to get that research job. Anyway, uh, okay. We have a question in, uh actually without a name, so I'm sorry, I don't know who you are.
But uh says, hello, Nastasha, Dave, Jack, and Carlos. Jack actually not here today. Not here. Lazy. Just kidding.
Just kidding. Uh one. My wife and I are gonna be in New York City for the week of March 6th for our honeymoon. Wait, so are you already married or are you gonna be married? Did you take a delayed honeymoon?
Probably delayed. Everyone does delay too. Really? Why? They don't have the money, they don't have the time.
Wait, so they want to get married on particular date, but they don't have the money and or time. You think it's more money or more time usually? Time. Time? They don't want to schedule the wet the wedding for when they have time.
Right. Okay. I'm just trying to understand this. Because you gotta remember, uh, when I had my honeymoon, I was like three years old. I was twenty-four, and I had nothing but I had no money, but it's not like I was gonna make money in the next couple of months after that.
And I did you go? And I had time. Went to Italy. Italy. Uh anyway, uh it was like 17 years ago.
Anyway, uh we're going to hit Roberta's for lunch on Tuesday. Roberta's honeymoon. Anyway. Uh asked for Indy Jesus. Oh yes!
You have to get served by Indy Jesus. He's stoking the fire, right? Actually, he's stoking the fire, but he's like indie motorcycle Jesus now. He's got like the Greek fisherman's hat that like you know, motorcycle dudes from the 50s and 60s used to wear, you know? You know what I'm talking about?
Looks he looks he's in rare form today, Indy Jesus. And he just Indy Jesus decided before he came to work today what the temperature was gonna be outside, because he's got like a sheerling jacket on. He gets outside, it's like a million degrees in New York today because of global warming. He's still wearing the warm jacket just because of the look. Anyway, love that, love that.
Anyways, please get served by Indie Jesus. And uh yes, you can actually watch us tape our show if that interests you. If you're here between 12 and 1245, if you sit in the outside area, you can watch us tape the show. Uh okay. Uh and he imagines uh our secret operation will be up and running by then.
Yes, it's the bar the secret operation is the bar, and it already is up and running, so we can talk about it. Anyone can call in any questions about the bar right now they want to at 718-497-2128. Uh and we're planning on hitting a couple of the Momofuku properties while we're in town anyway. Uh that means our project. Hopefully, the milk bar cookbook inspired uh my actual and next first question.
What is the deal with glucose syrup? What I understand is that is it a mix it is a mix of water, glucose, maltose, and other longer chain maltodextrins. Sounds like the ratio of those determines the sweetness and the viscosity and the total solids content, which are all important to uh prevent uh fermentation. Um I guess fermentation you means of the syrup. I've got recipes calling for DE40 and DE20 glucose syrup, but at the store I can just buy normal corn syrup uh or more expensive clear corn syrup, which seems to have vanilla flavoring at it.
Uh uh any idea what the likely dextrose equivalent of these things in the supermarket is. Uh I already have a big bag of dextrose and was meaning to buy a bunch of endsorbit anyway. Can I just mix up some homemade glucose syrups from powder dextrose, maltose, and malso dextrins? Are there standard ratios for the different DEs? I think that it is more community to stock powders and sticky syrups, but does anybody actually do that?
Okay, here's the here's the problem. There's a lot of terminology, uh a lot of terminology issues. Um it's gonna be very difficult for you to make glucose syrup from powder just because the bricks uh level of a uh well, it it's really silly to call it bricks, but the solids content of of those uh glucose syrups is upwards of 80%. They're extremely stiff, extreme you know, so you you you're not gonna be able to make one of them without applying heat, probably. Uh you're not just gonna be able to dissolve it and and make it.
You're gonna have to heat it and then um take it to a certain temperature. The answer for which temperature, which I'd have no idea. Uh you're m you're better off they last basically forever. So you're better off buying uh a pail of it from like modernist pantry if they sell it. I don't know if they sell it.
They say they'll stock any dang thing. So, you know, you should go get it. So and for those of us that don't know what we're we're talking about, glucose syrups are a very unfortunately named thing. Glucose is uh obviously a simple sugar and it is sweet, right? So sucrose is made up of glucose and fructose together.
It's a uh you know a disaccharide and and and that's what it is. Um glucose starch, by the way, is made up of a repeating long, long repeating chain of glucose units. When you break down starch, you break it down into like starch, maltodextrins, and dextrins, which are you know longer, like shorter uh numbers of glucose units glued together, right? All the way down to maltose, which is a sweet sugar, which is two glucoses, right? So sucrose is a glute, glucose and a fructose, maltose is two glucoses, and then you break it all the way down to glucose.
Uh now glucose uh unfortunately is known by glucose and dextrose. I don't know why they can't just have one name, but they have two, right? And the dextrose equivalent of a glucose syrup is the percentage of sugars in not that are glucose, because that would be or dextrose, that would be too damned easy, right? It's it's the percentage of the uh things in it that are uh what's called a reducing sugar. Glucose is a reducing uh sugar uh because uh I guess because of the aldehyde unit on the end of the of the thing.
But anyway, so it's all very complicated. And and different um different sugars, different things with different DEs, right? Because they have different sugars in them. Uh certain words, something can have uh uh contribute to the dextrose equivalent, but not contribute to the sweetness, right? So nothing makes any damn sense.
There's no direct relationship between sweetness and dextrose equivalent or or anything. Dextrose equivalent, typically though, I mean not typically, always, the lower the dextrose equivalent, the less sweet the product is. Okay. And also, uh the lower the dextrose equivalent, basically, the less broken down it is. So the higher the dextrose equivalent, the more it's been broken down to glucose, and typically the sweeter uh it is.
Okay. Now, uh the reason I think it's silly that they call it glucose syrup is because uh it's not very sweet at all. You know, I mean it's it's hardly sweet at all. I use it all the time in things like ice creams. I use DE twenty glucose syrup when I want to take an ice cream and I want to uh get the texture right, but I don't want to uh have it sweet because it's really not sweet at all, a DE20, uh, compared to uh normal sugar or you know, a a very sweet corn syrup.
Uh so I'm not being very helpful. I wouldn't use ensorbit. Uh ensorbit is a particular kind of malto, and so the reason it's the composition of those things is basically they take starch and they break it down into various soluble things like maltodextrin, maltose, dextrins, and and glucose. Uh uh ensorbit is gonna be an expensive way to try and uh make it. You you could instead of trying to make a syrup, try to get the recipe by adding straight powders, but it's gonna be really complicated.
I wasn't able to find anyone that does that. Uh, but I can look more and see whether I can come up with anything uh for uh uh next time. Does this make any sense what I'm saying? We have to go to a break. All right, one second.
One second. And uh the last comment is the show is great, guys. Thank you very much, appreciate it. And Jack is doing an amazing job with the music. We'll see how Carlos does today.
But how about bringing back doing it to death and bad bad whiskey for one more show sometime? We'll think on it. Thanks so much. It's a rocky little regular one my job you to play. You know, messing this is lasting out the two box full of views.
I've got a rocking pneumonia. I need a shot of rhythm of loss. I think I call it on the ladder, sitting down by the rhythm reviews. Rockin' in two by two. Well, if you feel it maggots, you get your lover and reel and rocket.
Roll it over and move over. Just travel around the real. And welcome back to Cooking Issues. Calling your questions to 718497-2128. That's 718-497-2128.
The uh the Beatles version of uh of that song, huh? What do you mean that's George? You said it was the Beatles. Yeah, yeah, I know, but it's George singing it. Okay.
Yeah. Uh so uh obviously I like the Chuck Berry version better. Nastasha probably likes the Beatles version better because she's a beetlehead. What do you think? Beatles, Italy, that's all I think about.
That's true. Uh my question is: how do you get a rocking pneumonia? Like, in what sense is pneumonia rocking? Like you like, you try to breathe, you can't because your lungs are full of fluid. Like, what's what's so rocking about an pneumonia?
I think the least rockin' disease. No, I got a rockin' pneumonia. I need a shot of rhythm and blues. From rock music, he would prefer rhythm and blues. But rock and roll comes from rhythm and blue, it doesn't make any sense.
Okay. Makes no damn sense. And like nothing is less lung clogged than rock and roll. Think of a think of a more saying his lungs are clogged with rock and roll. And be rock and roll is non-clogging.
It's a non-clogging situation. For him it is. Yeah, whatever. Not ever. Anyway.
And it's and the Beatles are saying that their lungs are clogged with rock? Give me a break. Just give me give me a big big give me a big bad break on that. I do not hate the Beatles. He Dave thinks the Beach Boys are far superior to the Beatles.
I did not say that. What I said is well-known fact that at the time there was kind of like a rivalry of who could be more of a badass. And when uh Pet Sounds came out, everyone was like, oh my god, Pet Sounds, like the most important blah blah album, blah blah blah. And then Sgt. Pepper came out, and then Beach Boys were like, no.
Yes. Basically, that's the that's the rock and roll history in a nutshell on cooking issues. 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 and only a few grams are needed per application? Modernist Pantry has a solution.
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Visit modernistpantry.com today for all of your modernist cooking needs. Alright. Now listen, I love Ferron. All props to Ferron. Love Ferron.
All props. But my problem with the texturus line of ingredients is that they don't say on them exactly what they are. So it's hard to sub other things out for it, and it's hard to develop recipes other than the recipes they've printed. So for instance, Ferrand's gel an, it's just called, I don't know if it's called, like gel in or something like that. It's a mixture of two different gel ans.
I mean, I happen to know what it is. It's like 25% of the uh of the stretchy high ACEL stuff and 75% of the low ACEL, non stretchy stuff. But I mean it that's my one issue. I wish that they would just tell you exactly what's in it, exactly what's in it. Because people would buy it anyway.
You know what I mean? It's not like they'd have to worry. It's not like people would go. You know what I mean? But they he should just tell you exactly what's in it because it's only going to foster better research by cooks.
That's my only gripe. Would you agree or disagree? Yes, I agree. She hasn't really she hasn't listened to what I'm saying. She just gonna she just agreed.
Yeah. Yeah, but we're doing a show right now. We're doing a show. Anyway. Um I had another uh question about modernist pantry, but I forget.
Anyway, they seem like good people. Uh what? Good people. Good peeps. Good people.
Okay. Uh yes, I'm an idiot. Okay. Okay. Matthew writes in, hey y'all, pork shoulder I called in about last week.
Of course that's three weeks ago now. Came out insanely good. I'm glad. I went for 58 degrees Celsius for about 34 hours. I brined it in a basic salt and sugar brine for twelve hours before cooking.
Seared it in a cast iron grill. Griddle sear it seared it in a cast in a cast iron grill? On a cast iron grill, probably. Right? A or a grilled pan, maybe.
I'm not sure. Uh, and circulated it with uh olive oil, a bit of reduce vermouth and aromatics. My girlfriend said it was the best meat she ever tasted. Well. I'm not Nastasha, you are you are a messed up individual and this show is not gonna go that way.
So I'm just gonna skip on past that. My girlfriend said she was the best meat she ever tasted, uh, so that was good. One thing that surprised me was that the meat was not as pink as I expected it would be at that temperature. It had slight rosiness to it, but not in medium rare appearances I anticipated. Uh that didn't really matter as it was incredibly juicy and tender in a good way.
Okay. Uh two things. One, when you cook something at uh at fifty-eight for only a little bit of time, like an hour, uh it's gonna be very uh it's gonna be very pink. When you cook for a long time at fifty eight, it's gonna be rosy, but you're gonna lose uh some of that pinkness. That loss is also gonna be enhanced by the brining.
I think the brining uh is gonna firm it and also give you that color change a little more towards the other side. So if you wanted to stay rosier, I would not brine it, but then you won't have the same flavor, right? Or not cook it as long, but then you won't have the same texture. So I just don't think you're gonna get uh that color. Also, Bruno Gusot, I mean I can't even know where this came from because this is pulling out like information he gave me like you know, eight years ago or something like that.
But uh says that if you were to store that package uh in very low, low temperature for a long, long time, the rosiness would come back. Weird, right? Mm-hmm. Anyway, uh he told me that a long time ago. Of course, I've never run the test because I don't store uh unfrozen meats for a long, long time, which is not my uh not my thing.
My question today, however, this is going back to what Matthew was saying, is about pork shanks. I'm gonna be cooking about 30 pork shanks for an upcoming event I'm doing. I'm leaning towards circulating them. I'm hoping if I max out my bath size, which is purportedly 30 liters for the sous vide professional, I can do them all in one batch. I plan to brine them overnight, sear them, and then circulate them similarly to the pork shoulder for 34 hours or so, but at a higher temperature, maybe 65.
Do you think this is a good time and temperature strategy? My goal is for them to be super tender and delicious, but not necessarily falling apart like a traditional braise. The second part of this question is on deep frying them post braise. The location of the event does not have great ventilation. I'd like to deep fry the shanks as far ahead of the guests arriving as possible so that if I smoke the place out, uh it happens when people aren't around.
After frying, I plan on letting them cool on racks and then heat them up in a cider agro dolce glaze. Ooh, more time. Uh glaze just before serving. Do you think they can hold next page? Well, for a couple of hours after deep frying and before serving.
Obviously, they won't be as crispy, but my only alternative would be to use the crappy broiler in the household type oven present at the event to post sear them at service time. Uh okay. And he says he would have called in this question, but uh hopefully, as I answer this question, he's eating Lulo in Cartagena, which is good. Lulo is the amazing fruit that they eat in Colombia that makes great drinks. Anyway, I hope the Lulo is delicious.
Uh I'm sure it is. You know, I can now find frozen Lulo in New York. I bought some. It was okay. It wasn't.
I bought my local supermarket, had like a package of frozen Lulo that I guess got shipped by mistake from Columbia. I don't know. But it wasn't as good as the fresh. I mean, it would probably make an okay drink, but it wasn't great. Anyway, so uh, first of all, 65 Celsius is I think too high.
I think you're gonna want to do 62 or 63 Celsius. 65 is a little bit over, and it's the point where you're gonna get a lot of contraction and you're gonna get uh a lot more moisture loss from um the muscle. I would do six, I think 30 34 hours might be okay. You might want to go like a little bit longer, and I would do it at like uh 62, maybe 62 in that range. That's gonna give you a nice not pink, really uh nice texture uh if you cook it for 34 to 48, okay?
Uh but 65 seems a little high to me. Um and it won't fall apart. These things will never, though they'll get mushy, but they won't break apart like a traditional braise. And the reason why is because the collagen, even though it gets soft and it turns to gelatin, doesn't melt out of the structure, so it doesn't literally fall apart because it hasn't lost its structure. The structure's just gotten soft.
Okay. Uh as regards frying them post braise, what I would do, you can you can pull them out of the bag. I would pull them out of the bag, give them a quick fry before the people come to develop a little bit of a crust on the outside, and then I would uh throw them into a uh I would throw them directly into the sauce in Ziploc bags and keep them warm in your circulator. That's what I would do. Uh because you yeah, you're gonna lose the crust, but it's gonna soak up the sauce.
I wouldn't keep them on racks because look, it's not the crust that's most important on something like a braise, it's the kind of sauce and the integration. So I would let it integrate with the sauce. I would just put the crust to give you a little bit of variation between the outside and the inside. Um anyway, that's that's my that's my opinion. The other thing is is if you're going to uh cook it this way and you want it to taste the most like tender meat and not like a traditional braise, I would do the low temperature on the stuff without a sauce at all.
And without salting it, although if you're gonna brine it, it's gonna be brine, it's gonna have salt in it. But if you want it to taste the most like f like fresh, like fresh pork, but only a shank and cooked, then I wouldn't salt it at all, and I would just add the salt and everything else went right before you fry it, and then bag it with the sauce and the sauce will soak in. That's up to you. But if you are gonna cook it with a sauce in the bag, then you're gonna have to hyper hyper reduce that sauce. Or otherwise when the meat gives up its juices, it's gonna taste poached, which is I don't think what you're looking for.
Another thing I'd be very careful of is if you're gonna max out your bags, uh your your if you're gonna max out the size of your circulator, right? You're gonna have a problem because w you could possibly have a problem because all of the meat is touching each other and in the center, it's gonna take a long time for the uh meat to get up to cooking temperature, right? So if it's sitting there for and it takes a good five, six, seven hours for the center of the of the packages of meat, because there's no circulation there, to come up to temperature, you could have a problem with uh lacto uh lactic acid bacteria growing in that bag. Probably won't kill you, right? But it's gonna smell terrible, and you're gonna get puffed up bags.
And this is what happens all the time when people uh pack their circulators too tight and they're cooking at a low temperature uh for a long period of time. So what's the remedy? Uh there are several remedies. One, don't pack it too tight. Uh the second one is to uh take a pan of uh a pot of simmering water and put the bags in for like into the simmering water for like 35 45 seconds, right?
Uh when the meat is still cold, and uh and you're killing the bacteria on the outside without doing too much overcooking, and then put them in the circulator bath, and then you've killed all the bacteria on the outside, and you're not gonna have a problem, right? Make sense? Mm-hmm. Anyway, uh so those are my uh those are my comments. Uh what do you think?
Do you think I need to say anything else about that? No, I don't think so. No? Should we go to our second commercial break? Okay.
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718-497-2128. And the house that Jack built signifying that Jack is back in the studio, people. What's up? Howdy, how you doing? So I take back my laziness comments.
Awesome. Oh wow, really? I missed all that. I was, you know, when you're not here, I rough you up. That's how it works.
Oh man. Even though I wasn't here last week, so like You should hear what we say when you're not here. Oh, on the radio. Oh man. Oh, we're gonna have one of our listeners is gonna come in on on uh in the week of March 6th on a Tuesday, and hopefully gonna be served by Indy Jesus.
We have to check his schedule. Right? Anyway. Uh Ken Ingber, long uh long time listener, Ken Ingber, writes in and uh says that uh he's asked me several questions about the uh new uh coffee machine, the Breville 900XL, which I say I've never tried. He bought one and and he likes it.
So maybe we'll get to try it someday. I don't know. You know, Dave Chang and uh and uh Christina Tozie from Milk Bar, Breville loves those guys. Like, if you walk into Milk Bar, uh Commissary, right? Uh it is basically it's like a Breville factory.
There's like so many Breville things there. But uh again, I have no I have no comments, but uh Ken seems to enjoy his he's writing in this is a long term. Someday I will try one and I will give my review on here of the new. But I think I think they're going to stop by the bar this week. Brevel people.
Yes. And we'll give you one. Well, look, the the gig with the Breville thing is that uh it was apparently designed by a uh like a barista, like an award-winning barista to be good for what they want. Again, but you know, my problem is is that and it's the same problem we we lost that sponsor that time is because if I don't know whether a product's good or bad, I won't say whether it's good or bad. No, you'll just say that's probably bad.
That's not true. But look, those guys, I'm I'm not gonna mention any names, but those guys who stopped being our sponsor after I started wise cracking made marketing claims that did not make sense to me. Right? I mean, I mean, you know, I I do have my limits, Nastasha. Anyway, uh okay.
Have an interesting question in uh from uh Julie Madras of what how do you think you pronounce that town in Wisconsin? Beloit? Mm-hmm. Beloit? It's not Belois.
Hopefully not. Hopefully, hopefully it's not pronounced like the actual French is pronounced. Really? Yeah, I guess not, right? Beloit!
Anyway, uh Julie Madris writes in I have been looking forever for a website that could show me all of the fish that are skin fish. Uh now pay attention, skin fish. My mother has allergies to shellfish and scale fish, and we find it very hard to get straight answers from the grocery stores, seeing how half of them are not uh what's it, half of them are not manned like it used to be in the meat department. So in other words, there's no one there to tell you what's going on. So I thought it would be right, uh I thought it'll be uh right to you with your knowledge about food to see if I can enlist your help.
We try very hard not to give her something wrong, and she just loves fish. All right. This is an interesting uh question. So uh off the top of my head, before I did any research, right? It seems to me that it's actually not the scales.
I'm gonna let's ignore the shellfish, because shellfish you know what to stay away from. So the question is scale fish versus skinfish. Now, m nine I've my right off the top of my head, for me it says 99%. It's not the actual scales, right, that is the problem. It's just that scale fish are the problem, which means that all fish that uh in that same group are the ones that cause the problem.
And sure enough, that's the case. Uh most fish allergies, right? Fin fish allergies, are uh alert uh allergies to certain uh proteins, parvalbumin, certain parvalbumins that are in in the f in fish, uh, and they cause a um uh an allergy because your body develop or some people's body develop a specific antibodies to them and they have allergic reactions, okay? Now, here's how the world uh works. Uh basically you gotta look at the evolutionary chain.
So you go keep going back in the evolutionary chain uh to the point where the first fish developed those proteins that they're uh that your mom's allergic to, and then any of the fish that branch off from that, she's probably allergic to, right? So it turns out that uh what she's most likely allergic to is teleost fish, right? And teleost fish are uh fish with what's called ray scales, uh, and so they're they're they're scales, normal, normal scales. So all you need to do to find out whether or not uh you should stay away from it, most likely, is to look and see whether it is a teleost fish. Now, what's a non-teleost fish?
Eels, lamp rays, sharks, right? Like any cartilaginous fish, right? Typically, not gonna probably be probably be a problem. Uh anything that's not uh part of that group. Now, there's also most likely a bunch of teleost fish that are okay.
I just don't happen to know what they are. And for the research backup on this, I found it uh an article that's called uh Quantitative Eliza for determination of fish in foods by uh Christian Fest and Christian Plassen, 2007, uh, where they were trying to figure out uh ways to measure with an Eliza test uh to look for these uh allergens that are in food. And um basically what they say is that the uh allergic reactions are strongest for taxonomically closely related species, right? Uh, due to the major uh allergen in fish, which is parvalbumin, and that accounts for over 95% of all uh allergens, uh fish allergy. Uh uh it's basically 95% of the allergies uh related to fin fish are because of this uh protein, right?
And so parvalbumins are found in great amounts in the white muscles of lower vertebrates uh and lesser and higher vertebrates. Um anyway, so that is uh that so just look up and see what kind of uh fish you're dealing with, and you shouldn't have a problem, right? Nastasha's like that makes no goddamn sense. No, no, no, no, no, no. So Nastasha, I'm gonna have to look up from your email for a minute because we're gonna talk about the bar now on the way up.
He's upsetting you. Why is he upsetting you? Why is he upsetting you? Why Ken is our Ken is our good friend? He says, it looks like Rebel's giving you your own 900 XL.
Right. And I was like, yes, but I didn't want to say that they're giving it to us 100% because it's not for certain. And then you said, Dave is right, stop reading your email. And I was like, Well then don't email me in the middle of the show. Wow.
Wow, you see, now, Ken, you now you know what I have to deal with on a daily basis. It was right on Ken's side. Oh, squarely on Ken's side. Look, a listener, look, a listener is just like in a restaurant is your customer. They're always right.
Right? Am I wrong about this? Anyway. Jack's not answering. J Jack's not sure.
We have a lot of different listeners on this network. Anyway, I'm coming down quir squarely on uh on uh Ken's side on this one. Anywho. So let's talk about the bar for a minute. All right?
Mm-hmm. So what what do you want to say about the bar? Nothing. It's a great space. There's usually a wait, so make sure you get there early.
Or call or uh can we call in advance? Can you call in this show up and put your name in the water? Our bar manager is Tristan Willie, who is at uh you know, Death and Co's uh sister bar, Morie Margot, and also at PDT. Uh and he's having a uh a great time, I think. We have um we're we're we're pulling out we haven't pulled out all the stops yet.
We still have some stops left to pull, you know, i if you were using organ terms. We still have some stops left to pull. But uh right now we have um four carbonated things on the menu and uh I think we do a pretty good job of carbonating. I don't have I'm not I haven't put on my new carbonation system yet. First of all, I'm building a new one that's gonna be like it's gonna be really good.
Let me just put it this way it's gonna be really good. I was gonna say, it's the Cadillac of Carbonation Systems, but that makes me look bad because it's better than it's like the Maybach. It's the Maybach of co uh was that good? Is that what they're called? That really expensive car?
Anyway, a really good carbonation system putting in. For now, though, we're using um old school bottle carbonation, uh, the same as everyone uses with the carbonator caps, the liquid bread carbonator caps, just because that's the best system uh that I've used so far. Uh the system that I've built, my first generation system that I built is maybe 80 to 90% as good as that, uh, but has the advantage of being a la minute. But until I'm a hundred percent as good as the bottle or better, I'm not gonna use it. Does that make sense?
Um we have a uh finally a legally uh a legally roto vaped uh product on our menu. We have the uh horseradish which goes into our lady of the night, which is a really I think it's a good cocktail, um, which also has it's basically a clarified bloody merry, but just you know, everything's clarified. The Worcestershire's clarified, the tomatoes clarified, the sriracha is clarified, and then we use the horseradish distillate. So we have rotovap, we have the uh centrifuge, we're figuring out how bar prep works to have all of those things prepped for a bar. It's kind of halfway between a kid's prep and a bar prep.
But it's pretty interesting, and I think we've ironed out um most of the kinks as far as service goes. So uh I welcome any questions on kind of flow at the bar or how it's working or what we're doing. And we're liquid nitrogen chilling almost every dang glass, right? That's the bartender seem to enjoy that, right? People seem to enjoy it.
Oh, and we have the red hot poker on the menu. I've never had a red-hot poker. The red hot poker, for those of you that don't know what I'm talking about, is basically a it's a poker that is red hot. It's a uh a stick that I build that uh heats up to about 1500 Fahrenheit, and you plunge it into a drink and the drink catches on fire. And I've used them at the SCI before, but they've never been on this long this often before.
So uh we're really putting them through their paces and seeing how to make them make them work. I streamlined it. They now cost less than a hundred dollars for me to make a piece, and so hopefully uh we can uh the bartenders don't seem to mind it, right? No. No, not anymore.
No one's gotten burnt. Mm-mm. Anyway, uh it's a lot of fun. So come in, have some red hot poker drinks, have some uh have some liquid nitrogen chilled glasses but most of all at Booker and Dax at a new bar we're just trying to make delicious cocktails we use a lot of tech but really the tech doesn't matter it's all about delicious cocktails on a final note now that I have that thing uh started up and I have a all of a lot of a little about a lot of other things in motion I'm gonna try to get the the blog back up and running again. Nastasha's giving me my whatever face she has two faces the vegan face slash vodka face is a face of kind of disgust like she just stepped on a roach whereas uh whereas this other lake is a look is a look of eh whatever you know whatever right that's the blog starting look but I gotta figure a better name for it anyway uh it's good to be back sorry about the two week wait uh be back next week sure thing cooking issues uh thanks for listening to this program on the Heritage Radio Network you can find all of our archived programs on heritageradio network dot com as well as a schedule of upcoming live shows you can also podcast all of our programs on iTunes by searching heritage radio networks in the iTunes store you can find us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for up to date news and information thanks for listening you got my head all twisted and I guess can't get it straight
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