Broadcasting live from Robertas in Bushwick, Brooklyn. You're listening to Heritage Radio Network dot coming. Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live on the Heritage Radio Network in the back more of uh Roberta's Pizzeria and Book brought to you uh today again, I assume by the Modernist Pantry. Is that correct?
That is correct. Uh we'll be reading their printers broke, so I'll be reading it, I guess. Oh yeah? Nice. You're gonna read it with with feeling with gusto.
I'll do my best. Yeah? But you do have a caller, I'll find one. All right. So uh anyone else who's waiting, call in two seven one eight four nine seven two one two eight.
That's seven one eight four nine seven two one two eight caller, you're on the air. Hi. Hello. Howdy. Sorry, um uh I'm I'm Tammy, I'm calling from Sydney, Australia.
Wow. I'm a bit safe right now. Cool. Hello. Um, I did have a couple of questions.
One about meat glue. Um, one about infusing truffle flavor, and one about MacGyvering Assouvede. Very good. You're not affiliated with the Today Tonight show, are you? No, no, unfortunately.
Um they're the ones in Australia. They're the ones in Australia who had the anti-meat glue thing. You remember that? Did you see that? Um, sorry?
Did you see in Australia Today Tonight Show is there they were the the people that had the anti-meat glue telecast. Did you see that back when it aired about a year ago? Weirdly enough, I saw it on your blog rather than on TV. Strange. Um, but what I was watching though was your um science and cooking lecture with Harvard.
Um very enjoyable. I now clarify all my liquid using A Gago. Um but uh what I did notice that you said when you were talking about your mokume ghana um fish was that there was a small amount of ammonia produced when you were using meat glue. Correct. And I was wondering about, you know, you said on the primer in your blog that um this dissipates before you eat it.
Now, does it dissipate like through cooking? Is it, you know, if you're dealing with raw foods, especially fish, is it really good to, you know, backpack it, take out the backpack and then wait it, or like is there any particular thing going on, or how does that work? That's an excellent question. So for those of you that don't know what we're talking about, meat glue is an enzyme that we use to bond different proteins together. Uh when it's doing that bonding, uh, a small amount of ammonia is produced in the reaction.
Uh and in fact, you can use the reaction as a gauge for how strong your meat glue is by dipping something like raw chicken into the meat glue and smelling it and making sure that you have that aroma, the reaction is taking place. Uh Mokumegane is uh a Japanese uh metalworking technique where uh different layers are laminated together and then sanded flat and have a wood grain kind of appearance. So a number of years ago I did a recipe with fish, different colored fish, they're layered together uh and then uh cut on a slicer so you get a wood grain effect with the fish where the very thin layers are glued together. Uh and that uh that recipe I put some salt and sugar so it's cured, but it's not cooked. And so when I originally did that recipe, I did notice uh the the aroma kind of of the meat glue because it was a very thick block.
I had overused the meat glue, and uh and so it was noticeable. And that thing had been in a vacpack all the way up until the time it was sliced. So to remedy that I used much less meat glue, uh this, you know, the subsequent times that I I made that recipe. And I also vaced it to compress it, but then cut it out of the vac pack and let it uh let it sit and all of the uh ammonia dissipate. Ammonia very volatile, right?
So it's going to dissipate. Uh you know, in fact there's uh baking powders that are based on ammonia that are used uh specifically for cookies. Uh and yeah and they they bake out over time. But if you put them in something that's super thick, right, or you don't cook it enough they taste horrible because the ammonia is still there. So ammonia is volatile we'll leave especially in a cooked item it's not a problem uh ever really but in the in the fish um I noticed you know that it was a problem.
Additionally I I've run tests where if you add a boatload of meat glue to something that's cooked in a bag that's never taken out of the bag that some people can detect something even on a on a long cooked uh braise. But it takes a boatload of uh of meat glue to do that. Cool. Um and then thank you very much. Um and the second question was I heard that truffles are really good in dessert and I really wanted to use the flavor of truffles in chocolate truffles like a joke.
Um so I was wondering what the best way maybe to infuse because I know truffles infuse really well into butter but then to make the ganache it's just chocolate and cream, right? So I'm not quite sure what the best way to go around that. You can use butter in a in a ganache instead. I mean I've done plenty of butter ganaches. You just had to find a butter-based uh or you you could infuse directly into the cream if you want to use cream, but I do pl plenty of uh butter-based work.
I mean, it uh the textures are gonna uh change so much, but I mean I've I've done plenty of butter, butter, and chocolate um ganaches you can infuse into, or you could fuse directly into the cream. A good way to infuse something like a truffle where it's expensive and you don't want to lose a lot of aroma is to infuse it in a vacuum bag. So that you yeah, right? Just put it in a vacuum bag, suck it, and then basically everything stays contained in there, and you're not gonna be volatilizing a lot of the uh aroma of the truffle. Cool.
I didn't think about that. Yeah. If you have access to a vacuum machine. If not, you could use if you if you have access to a vacuum machine. If you don't, you could uh, you know, use a ziploc or something like that.
Okay. Um and my third question was about McGubburing a sous-vide machine. So there were discussions I had one really late, really one night, um, with my friends about how expensive so vede machines are and so on and so forth. Um and somebody suggested using uh modifying a deep fryer with a dowel setting and a really high quality tropical fish tank water pump. Right.
Uh would you recommend or dish or you know, not recommended, or you know, how how well do you think that would work? Um well fortunately there are tons of people out there that are selling um kits right now for doing basically what you really need is a temperature control. I mean, the the the pump, yes, you can use an aquarium pump. There's any one of a number of pumps you can get in the sub uh $20 range that will um circulate, right? The problem with a deep fryer, a couple problems with a deep fryer.
They well it depends. Like I don't know what kind of deep fryers you're you're looking at, but most of the deep fryers that they sell here don't have exposed elements. And if they don't have an exposed element, you're not gonna get very good heat transfer, so you're gonna get a lot uh it's gonna be hard to get uh you know nice steady um steady temperature. Do you know what I mean? You might get some porpoising or it's gonna take a long time to get up and be accurate.
Uh if you have something with an exposed element, great, it'll work fine. The problem I have with uh deep fryers or any contained vessel like that is you're really limited in the size of um size of of you know what you can cook. So you know what what you basically need is uh is uh a PID temperature controller. These can now be had for on the order of thirty dollars US, right? Um you're gonna need some sort of uh uh solid state or regular relay.
Again, you these now can be got got for like seven bucks. A um uh like a type K thermocouple for temperature measurement, uh waterproof one, that's another seven. So now you're at like uh fourteen, thirty thirty-five, uh a pump for um you know another twenty, now you're at fifty-five, and then um you're gonna need uh the heating element. Now a heating element you could really use anything. There's lots of really cheap immersion heating elements out there.
The trick is just not to electrocute yourself. Um I did a project once just for giggles where I, you know, walked up a bunch of stuff that I gotten on eBay and I bought a bunch of uh uh immersion coffee heaters, the really cheap, like you know, three dollar ones you get at uh you know at the local dollar store. And uh it worked. You know, you you want to try to get at least up to about a thousand watts of heating, which is what the you know standard commercial ones do. But um but you know, I stuck my hand into the uh into the water and 'cause there's a lot of leakage current out of those things because they weren't very well constructed.
Do you know what I mean? I mean, no one's expecting you to stick yeah, right. No one's expecting you to stick your hand into your cup of coffee. And so they don't care so much that there's a little bit of leakage coming out of the heater, right? But you care very deeply whether you get electrocuted when you're putting your hand into uh a water bath to pull out a uh a piece of food.
So that's that's something to look at. But you know, there are tons of I don't know in Australia, but I know here in the US we have a bunch of suppliers, and there's a uh you know, I know that there's suppliers in Australia because I've been thwarted by trying to buy something and found out it was an Australian website. So I know that there's people out there that um that are selling this kind of stuff. So you should be able to get everything all told working for under a hundred dollars. Now, um the other problem then is like trying to get a nice enclosure, and that's where a lot of the DIY projects that are out there are really kind of cool because they find like you know, you know, like with DIY stuff, there was uh there was a rage, I guess it's still a rage, to put everything into an Altoids tin, right?
Like projects that could fit in an Altoids tin. So the miracle Yeah, right? So the miracle is finding the cool box to put everything into, and I forget what it was. There's some acrylic box out there that is readily available that works really well with a bunch of off the shelf parts to make a circulator, but I can't remember what that box was. Um but you know, thank God for the internet.
Thank you so much, by the way. Hey, yes, I shall go and uh try that. And if uh I got electrocuted, um you'll know about it. All right, super. Thanks for calling in all the way from Australia.
So you have three calls. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Thanks very much.
Oh, wait, wait, we have another caller? Three who have been waiting. All right, caller. You are on the air. Hey Dave, how are you doing?
How are you doing? Pretty pretty pretty good. I'm actually now that you got a call from Australia, I'm calling from Moscow, believe it or not. Wow, this is awesome. This is great.
Moscow, welcome. And uh hey, great. Uh actually native New Yorker living in Moscow. And I have a question for you. Um I'm redoing my kitchen, and it's uh basically a a simple equipment question.
What do you get? What can I what can I what should I get in terms of uh of a gas burner so I can you know have some um you know enough BTUs to cook in a walk, for example. Or, you know, and of course the last question, and and I'm sure it's be your favorite is the espresso. I need an espresso machine, and what should I get? What's the water like in Moscow?
Um it's pretty bad. I use I'm gonna probably be using bottled water. Okay. So I mean uh one of the great joys of having a decent water supply is that you can get a plumbed espresso machine, which is I love instead of having to like constantly dump water in the back. I'm assuming you could probably filter or you know, the the problem then with also with with certain filtering techniques like reverse osmosis on espresso machines, you really don't want RO water for your espresso because it's too pure.
You know, it doesn't have enough minerality in it. So if you're working from bottled, you can retrofit a commercial machine to use uh bottled. I don't really know what's available in uh Russia in terms of uh equipment. But I'm uh what what level of espresso machine are you looking at? Yeah, I'm I'm willing to I'm willing to pay for a little bit here, but I I can definitely not do don't have the space to do like a whole pump setup.
Right. I mean, um there are lots of uh I mean so the the prosumer units Hello, you still there? Yeah, the prosumer units that are out there. Um I haven't had a lot of experience with them. I have experience with the smallest commercial uh units, which are like the single group guys, and they're fairly compact.
I don't know if you have the the space for them, but uh I mean they're good. I only have uh I only have mine's from the you know the 80s or 90s, 90s I guess because I know I don't have the money for a new one. Uh there having had a dual group espresso machine, the single groups aren't as temperature stable. I don't have a lot of experience with the newer uh like for instance one Ken Ken Ingber, our uh listener who's trying to get me to get the Brevo one I ha I don't have experience with that guy yet. I don't know how how good it is.
But you you know the things you're gonna be looking for are temperature stability. I mean you might want to go if you're if you're into like tricking stuff out I don't know whether it's still considered pulling a good shot but there are a lot of people have modified Sylvia's in a very small package ranchillios. I'm sure it's been superseded. But uh the espresso geek community uh they've m you know done a lot of modifications on on home machines to get them to pull a really good shot. It's just a little more fidgety than having a pro machine.
You know what I mean? Yeah no I mean I I I would do one of those single shot pro machines, you know like a restaurant uh style I might go for that but then I would need a pump, wouldn't I? Well a lot of the they have a lot smaller pumps. The the company that makes most of the pumps for the machines uh you know here is a company called Procon. And the reason the pumps are so big is because uh it's the same size pump uh it can handle literally gallons per minute even though you only need to put out like 60 milliliters over the course of 25 seconds or less really 30 mil you know what I mean?
So um so they they throw away a lot of their output and that's one of the ways that they regulate pressure. Procon knows that the pumps are oversized and so they built a much smaller uh pump unit. I don't know whether any of those have made it into the newer uh machines yet because the the big pumps are literally just way overkill in terms of size. They's just unneeded. Yeah the the other style of pump that's used is uh is a a vibrating uh pump.
Most of those are made by a company in Europe called Ulka. And uh those basically it's a little solenoid, crack, chak, chak, check, check, chuck, check, and you can hear them, the vibrating pumps, and they just go back and forth. The problem with those is that it's it's thought that their pressure isn't as even as the larger rotary procon pumps, and so some people have a gripe about whether or not it's possible to get the same shot quality with those. I don't have a lot of experience with them. I don't know that the argument that people make that they can't pull as good a shot is good or not, but those pumps are radically smaller.
And if if you have a problem with the shot of that, what you can do if they don't already do it, is put something called an accumulator on the back side of the pump, which is basically just a chamber of air. You could probably modify a soda bottle or something to do it, and uh and it'll just even out any sort of vibration by by having like an uh an air, you know, an air cushion there. Uh, right, it makes sense. Yeah. Um so you could go, you could go that way.
As far as do you have a Chinatown in Moscow? I've never been to Moscow. No, no, they do not have a Chinatown in Moscow. That's that's one of the things. I mean, I could probably get, you know, if I if I can get something installed, that would be good.
I mean, I I do go home quite a bit, so I can always pop down to Chinatown in the city. Yeah, I mean, because it's very simple and very cheap here to get a walk burner. You know what I mean? Like uh a ring, uh basically just a ring of fire that you hook up to uh a gas supply, and then all you'd need is uh an adapter to go to whatever the um common gas plumbing is that you have uh in Russia uh and you'd you'd be good to go. But those like are so cheap.
Now you could, I mean, I've never done it. I've never set up a uh a straight up walk burner, but I see them all the time on the streets here in Chinatown. They're just so cheap compared to trying to build that thing yourself. Because you'd have to bend the you bend the black pipe into a circle, drill all the holes, tap them, put all the nozzles in, and then get your gas, uh, you know, your gas supply screwed in. It seems like a big hassle, especially if you're gonna be home anytime soon, probably easier to get it that way.
And an adapter can't be that hard to to come by. When you're in the States, if you know what kind of piping they have in Russia, I don't. You could get you could get something McMaster car here probably sells an adapter, a metric pipe to uh to uh you know, a standard uh US pipe ta uh taper probably not that hard to to get stateside and then bring it back again. That'd be the way to go, I think. I mean i I mean if I if I was gonna go for something slightly more commercial like you know they had these you know the five the five burner you know gas uh gas tops right now where you can have the walk thing in the middle.
Is there anybody to maybe just buy one of those and try to jack up the BTUs or is it just you know is that just for show? Um well I I haven't I I have to play with one. I mean the the thing about a walk is it uses a preposterously high uh you know um uh number of BTUs per hour it just dumps energy into the walk and that that's how it works. So a lot of the limitations in a particular burner uh have to do with how much gas is actually being supplied to it like how much gas can you supply to it and then can you combust it efficiently so you probably have to um I mean you you might be able to mess around with it like uh drill the orifice out bigger to get a bigger gas supply but then you'd need to figure out a way to get enough air to it and make sure that it's combusting uh efficiently otherwise you're just throwing gas away. You need actual more heat in there.
So if you were going you know you know what I'm saying? So you um I mean anything's possible to do I mean I'd have you you use regular natural gas there in Russia, right? Yeah, yeah. It's it's it's pretty it's pretty basic. Yeah.
I mean, um you know you can always up the up the b burner side. I mean the good news is I guess you don't need it to throttle down very low because you don't care about low heat outputs with a walk, so you can just have it the thing scream. Uh yeah, I mean if you increase the um the I mean if you increase the orifice, but you just gotta make sure that you have enough ability to to combust it. If you put too much gas through the small uh through uh smaller burners, you know you'll just see the flame jumping out, but you'll see you'll have a big unburned area before it goes out, and you're just basically pumping gas into the air. Do you know what I mean?
Right. No, that won't be good for the kids. No, but what you can do is uh if you if you can see if you can look up the size of a regular walk burner, you can get one of these things so it's all nice and finished. Rip out the old burner and throw a new one in. Do you know what I'm saying?
That has the real kind of you know, the fortitude that we you need. And this kind of stuff I've done all the time. Or I've added a couple of extra twenty thousand BTU, like I added a couple extra twenty thousand BTU burners in my salamander underneath so that I could have over and under fired uh salamander one time for a project I was working on. So you can always add more burners with extra knobs on it, and those things will combust great. You know what I'm saying?
So like if you have a space that you could drill in and add more heat, as long as you can get it kind of in a basic ring shape, you'd probably be good to go. Yeah, that seems that seems the way to go. Then it won't, you know, it won't be sitting out on the side or something like that taking up space. Bingo. So what uh uh in in terms of other equipment, if you were had you had your go-to equipment and you were gonna you know get something new, I'm happy to go esoteric, but you know, what would you do?
Oh, I mean, I mean you need a uh vacuum machine, circulator. I'd love to have uh if you're if you have a like a like infinite amount of gas supply, I mean I've always wanted to have a tandoor in my house, be awesome. You know what I mean? No, no, I I got that at the country house. I was thinking I was I was gonna put it in the ground there.
Yeah. Out of the old dacha. That's a that's a great thing for out there, putting it in the ground. Yeah, I mean, uh things uh I mean uh uh I have a Paco Jet variant. I mean I wish I had a real Paco Jet.
Uh you know, vacuum machine obviously is awesome. Circulator. You need it. Circulation type of the thing to go for if I was gonna go. Yeah, really good blender.
Like a Vitaprep, you know, next time you're in the States, bring one back. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, uh yeah, and and here uh here's a good question. Um, you know, in terms of buying because it's buying equipment is these things are just outrageously expensive here. If I was to buy things, you know, in the city, is there a place to go that you know that that does you know that does two twenty?
I need two twenty. Uh I don't, you know, and also poly science will direct drop ship you to the states at 220 unit, and then you could bring it in as a carry uh back, you know, uh without having to worry about it. But I don't know of anyone that does direct direct to the customer sell of 220. I mean, you could deal with the JB Prince or something like that, and they could probably special order it from you, but PolyScience would uh on a circulator would probably do that and Vitaprep. I mean, the thing that's killing you is the taxes and the importing.
You know what I mean? It's not the item itself. The Vitaprep knows how to make a 220 Vitapep. You know what I mean? Uh because I spoke to them about it.
And um, you know, same with poly science. I mean, that their stuff is you know, it's pretty simple uh for them. It doesn't cost them more to make a two twenty unit. Yeah, but by it's by its stateside, it shouldn't be that much of a price penalty here, maybe only like ten percent instead of two hundred or a hundred percent. Hey Dave, we got a few more callers on the line.
Oh, all right. That's cool. All right, David, thanks a lot. I appreciate it. Can't wait to try the bar.
Alright, thanks so much. Right, bye. Hey, caller, you're on the air. Hello? Hello.
All right, yeah, babe. I have finally acquired a circulator after putting that off for half a forever. And I'm getting ready to drop a leg of lamb in it, or at least Hello? Oops. Hello?
Phone is doing very weird things. That's alright. I still got you. Okay. So first and simplest question.
If I'm doing a cashmere type leg of lamb in the circulator, can I put yogurt on it before it goes in the bag? Or is the does that go wrong in some impressive way? All right. So you can um I have done kind of buttermilk. I haven't done yogurt in the bag.
I've done buttermilk. I mean, you're gonna get some um it's already curdled, so you know, how's it gonna curdle some more, right? I mean, but you might it might break, the sauce might break. Uh, but you know, the the main thing that you're gonna want to so when you're adding yogurt to something, and I have much more experience not with uh lamb but with chicken, like if you're gonna do like a uh chicken tikka, for instance. Um you know the the yogurt is but the acidity is basically there to uh tenderize.
And so you're looking at kind of uh a tenderizing effect that they have. And I I some people love the texture of um and let's go back to buttermilk because I have the most experience with it. Buttermilk uh poaching in a bag. The problem with it is, especially on a very, very long cooking time, is that uh the meat can tend to uh mushiness, especially because you're not gonna overcook it when you're using a water bath. Does this make sense?
Yes. Yeah. So you're gonna want to guard against uh mushiness in the meat on long cook times with with uh with acids in the bag. That said, you can have really, really spectacular, very soft uh meat results that some people really really like. It's just it's a question of whether for you personally it tends to get to the mushy side.
All right, and and the uh you have do you have any guidelines on like at what point it's likely to really start going soft? Um 24 hours, 48 hours. Yeah, 24 look on a leg of lamb, uh okay. So I mean the the inherent problem with a leg of lamb is that the leg has so many different muscles that all want to be treated differently. This is why leg of lamb is very difficult um piece of meat to have it all come together um at the same time.
If you cook uh a leg of lamb for uh 24 hours, there will be some muscles in the leg of lamb that are delicious, the ones that have more collagen in them, right? And then uh and more connective tissue in general. Uh and then there are other muscles, ones that in the leg of lamb that are good with a very quick grill, let's say, those ones are going to taste uh fibry if they're cooked for 24 hours. That said, sauce can make up uh for a lot. You know what I mean?
And so it it's it's a question of of what you're gonna try and and shoot for. I mean, look look, in the end, your result is probably gonna be better than uh what most people can attain anyway. But what you should start doing when you get the circulating you start playing with it like you're doing is really focusing on kind of the um minutia of what the textual differences are when you cook a piece of uh meat that long. If you have the time, which you know, I don't know whether anyone does. I mean not now, but ever later, get like a the same piece of meat, put it in five bags, and then cook it for cook eat you know, cook each one, drop one in that you know, put one in, then you know, eight hours later put another in.
And so you can get a feeling for what a couple of hours here or there can do when you're cooking a piece of meat over over a long period of time. And it's really worth the experiment to do it. Do you know what I mean? It is. Yeah.
On a related question, um very closely related, some portion of the chicken that I get in the Costco multi packs. Right. Turns out to be absolute rubber. A particular particular piece of the chicken? Yes.
I mean like you know I don't know if you're a cocktail shopper or not, but you know they they sell six still um six vacu pouches of of raw chicken breasts and out of a each vacuum pouch has two breasts so you're buying twelve breasts in one you know in in one package. Right. And like on some random basis some number of those are like seven times tougher than others. That's bizarre. And uh presumably they're all being cooked in a similar fashion and you you repeated this enough such that it's not just uh like you know one got cooked uh improperly or something like that.
You I I've had this problem at least five or ten times. That's very odd. Is it substantially different size the one that's tougher? Uh they may be bigger. I mean it's it's one of those um it's it it's tricky to tell because I usually split them widthwise so um like when I'm grilling them hot that I can get the inside and the outside done at the same time.
Let me ask you this does it taste better? Well, the texture is so funky you almost don't get to the taste if that makes any sense. Yeah. And you bite it and it's just wrong. Really yeah, because you know, older birds are radically, radically tougher, but I doubt they would sift some older birds in with the regular younger because it doesn't make economic sense for them to do so.
But older birds typically will taste much more like chicken. You know, like I went, um, you know, if you go abroad to a place that slaughters their chickens much older, they're all much tougher, and so they can be hard for us to eat because we're used to a tender chicken, and yet the flavor of chicken in them is is greater. You know what I'm saying? Mm-hmm. And and and that's why a lot of old French recipes work lousy with American chickens.
Right, exactly. And and you know, why our soups are so bland, you know what I mean, compared to like because you get a real stewing hen, you know, then you get a lot of flavor out of one of those things, but you know, they're kind of tough as nails to chew on. Uh, but I wonder whether it could be an age thing. Um I mean, it's possible that it's uh I mean, ca Costco, I'm sure Costco is like, you know, getting regular factory farm uh chickens and that they're not gonna be there's not a lot of variance, you know. This is the basic I mean it's foster farmed chicken.
Right, right. And you know, there's probably not a lot of variance in in age or or and I wonder whether it could be uh like a pH thing, like a slaughter pH thing. I haven't done enough uh research on tenderness in chicken versus uh slaughter stress, for instance, um to to know uh kind of what happens. I mean, there's a lot of research obviously on slaughter stress and uh excessively soft, drippy meat for pork, right? But um but uh I don't really know of anything on chicken.
That's interesting. I'm gonna hopefully maybe someone's listening that has had this experience and has done some research. Uh I would be very curious if anybody has an opinion, because I mean it's it's it it's you know, if you put you think you need six breasts for however many people you're feeding, and then four of them come out just two of them come out really funky, it really just sort of scrambles your plan. Weird. Yeah, hopefully someone will uh call or write in with uh an explanation because I'm curious.
We don't have a Costco here in New York, so I don't I can't go test it myself. That's that's actually terrible because other than this little problem, they're they're really nice. Um and then uh one more question back to the lamb. Um I got a little package of TPA of uh TPA from um of meat glue from uh your friends at uh uh your sponsors uh that I haven't even opened yet. Right.
When I do this leg of lamb, can I TPA it back into its um shape after I sear it? So could I see open it up, sear it, and then bow it up with TPA? Sear it sear the inside with meat glue? Yeah. Uh with transcutaminase.
Uh sear the inside. It's interesting. You you can, you're not gonna get as strong of a bond, right? And the meat isn't going to, unless you put like a lot of force on it with plastic wrap or a vacuum machine, it's gonna be hard to get it to conform properly. Does that make sense?
But it does. It can be done. Uh you know, cooked meat will glue, just not as strongly. All right. So I can I can I can roll it back up and actually uh get it to at least sort of stay.
Yeah, and remember to uh uh tightly seal the meat glue and put it back in the freezer to store it after it's open. Okay, and so I did not notice what it didn't freeze it, though. That's very helpful. All right. All right, thank you very much.
Uh, thank you very much. Thanks for calling in. You welcome back. All right, caller, you are on the air. Hey Dave, it's Mike from Denver, Colorado.
Hey, doing all right. How you doing? Good. Well, uh, my question is it's kind of twofold. We make a lot of half-hazard pickles at home.
Kind of like throw cabbage in, sprinkle salt, cabbage salt. Right? And uh you know, I'm curious if there's a bulletproof because some of these we stick in the back of the fridge and you know, you figure them out a month later, you taste them, they're a little funky, you know, but you know, who knows whether it's actually safe. You know is there a I've heard of a five percent salt solution. It's generally safe.
Uh you know, and beyond that, you know, if you do a kimchi or something like that, will it actually keep indefinitely? Uh you keep it for a year in there. Oh, that's a good question. I mean, uh indefinitely is a long time. I mean, the the these things tend to um reach a peak and then can be kept for a long time afterwards without them becoming unsafe.
The question is, do they taste as good to you? Do you know what I mean? So so basically, you know, what you're trying to do is get the salt level, and I don't have it at the at the tip of my tongue because I always just kind of go and look it up when the when the time comes. Is it's you know fairly easy to calculate roughly the um the salt level uh that you need based on for instance the weight of cabbage that you have, right? And then uh pack the stuff together as long as it stays submerged, right, so that you're not exposed to a uh a lot of air, uh, and the salt level is high enough, and then when the lacto uh lactic acid bacteria start growing in there, you're going to have enough uh it's the combination of the acidity and the salt that prevents nasty crap from growing in there uh over time.
And it'll stay basically, yeah you could keep it a year. Uh you know the question is is it going to taste as good after that uh year is up. Now I like to rather than having to submerge things, I'll do a lot of vac pack, not to do a quick pickle but a vac pack to do something like a kimchi. Uh then you can see the bags inflate with carbon dioxide. It's great.
And then you know you don't have to worry about air getting to them ever because they're in a sealed bag. But that's not necessarily uh viable for home, which is why they people tell you to weight the stuff down uh or you know put a plastic bag with water on top in it to wait wait weight the guy down. Um but uh you know and another thing you could do to if if you're having problems with funkiness, I mean th a lot of the issues it sounds like you're using a wa you know wild uh you know whatever happens to be around your kitchen is what you're inoculating the um the product with you were well I like a I like a funky pickle. That's how I kinda why I'm curious about it, you know funky pickle I like that. But if you in other words but if you want something like that's consistent then you can just save some of your pickling liquid from your old batch, right?
And then after you mix in the salt and stuff slop in. I mean so like I have a brand of sauerkraut that I like, right? And so a lot of times I'll cheat because I know I like that brand of sauerkraut and when I'm working on something I'll save that sauerkraut juice and I'll dump that in along with the salt to my cabbage to kick start the uh you know the particular uh cultures that those guys use I happen to like it. So if you get a result that you happen to like then you can back slop it into your next batch and you're guaranteed to get that same kind of a uh a funkiness assuming that you don't get a contamination it's a robust enough starter culture so you can get it going. But in other words that same thing that that they do with with the sourdough you could do with a pickle in terms of starter culture like that.
Oh okay. And are you putting in uh salt via the raw weight of the cabbage and not the water? Uh yeah I mean like you know a lot of the old recipes that you don't even add water to them. You know, they just kind of will will liquid out over the course of the first you know day or so and then uh and then you can press them. Or yeah I mean you you want that when you're calculating salt levels uh for uh to prevent microbial spoilage right um you you're you're calculating on the final weight of total product and then what percentage salt is that right not the percentage of the brine uh because you know imagine if you had even the most concentrated brine that you could possibly do in the 30s percent right and then you were to put that you know teaspoon of that into a ton of cabbage you haven't added any salt right so it's always best to calculate uh salt on weight of total product water plus cabbage and that way you know exactly where you are and you're never going to go over and you're never going to go under you know I like my you know I like salty stuff so the stuff that I do is probably always pretty safe and you can get a feeling if it becomes acidic also remember the acidity is helping you and you're gonna have to have a lower salt requirement if your acidity level is high enough.
You know it's it's a it's a it's a multiple thing. If there's no acidity you need a much higher salt concentration. Do you know what I'm saying? Right. Yeah.
Is there a is there a good reference for that I'm sure I'm sure there is I don't like again I don't have it off the off the tip of my tongue, but uh, you know, I like any one of the agricultural extensions in the in the universities, they put out uh a lot of good pickling advice and s and they'll usually give you both a salt level concentration and a pH uh concentration uh you that you can deal with. Uh I don't have like a website I can send it to right away, but you know the it's it's out there, and usually the ag extension guys are very conservative, so you don't have to worry about it. They're not pushing the envelope of what's safe because otherwise they'd be in big, big trouble. And so their information is usually reliable. Cool.
I'll look into it. All right, thanks so much. All right, thanks a lot. All righty. So should we take a uh break or do we have another caller?
Uh no, but that's we're almost at the end here. And I have to read this because today's show has been brought to you by the Modernist Pantry supplying innovative ingredients for the modern cook. Do you love to experiment with new cooking techniques and ingredients, but hate to overspend for pounds of supplies when only a few grams are needed per application? Modernist Pantry has the solution. They offer a wide range of modern ingredients and packages that make sense for the home cook and enthusiast, and most only cost around five bucks, saving you time, money, and storage space.
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Pop rocks. Fans of cooking issues that place an order of $25 or more before next week's show, we'll get a free package of these exploding delights to play with. Simply use the promo code CI74 when placing your order online at ModernistPantry.com. Pop rocks. Hey, so uh can I can I have a couple minutes, Jack, or are we uh we're rushing out of here?
We've got like five minutes, maybe. Alright, cool. So uh met one of the guys who was on the initial development team of Pop Rocks at one of the classes I taught, and uh, you know, Mikey didn't explode, that didn't happen. But uh the way pop rocks are made is that uh uh uh CO2 is put under very high pressure in the molten sugar. The sugar sets, uh, then they release the pressure, it explodes into little pop rocks thing, and inside of those uh frozen those uh sugar granules are residual high pressure CO2, and that's what gives Pop Rocks its uh its thingamajig.
And although Mikey didn't explode, he did say that they put a whole load of pop rocks into a truck that developed a leak in transport, and it did kind of blow the side out of the truck. Don't know if it's true, but that's what he said. All right. So let me rip through the email question so that no one can say that I didn't pay attention to my email uh people. Um Elliot Papineau, who we uh spoke about uh his knife work, uh knife sharpening the other day, ordered a walk-in horse strop, followed our recommendations and bought a strop, see whether it's nice.
His strop, Nastasha, made out of horsebutt. Horsebutt. Horsebutt. Uh also got a uh a shout out from um Dan Main in the UK, who works for uh DoveBid, which is a company that uh I've always seen, but I've never ordered. Makes me more nervous to order off of like a real auction site than it does to order off of eBay.
But he sent us some links to uh a tablet press, which I desperately want a tablet press. If anyone wants to lend us a tablet press, uh he can do it. But uh check out DoveBid for all of your uh for all of your biopharma needs, uh, which again we have them, which I don't really understand why we all have so many, but we do. Uh also Tom Fisher and Lansdown Pierre said uh he really uh loves what we're doing, and he realized last week when we were answering our questions that he loves what we're doing, and that the amount of knowledge we squeeze into a 45 minute show is incredible. Well, thank you.
Thank you very much. Uh and he's basically says uh he was going in the way back machine to last year when Nastasha was against her best judgment trying to make a pie crust with Crisco, and I said that lard is the only fat to use in such situations. Can lard be used in place of vegetable shortening in any recipe calling for vegetable shortening? Are there certain dishes where vegetable shortening is needed? And is it a one-to-one substitution by weight?
The difference in uh vegetable shortening and lard is that um lard is typically a lot softer than vegetable shortening. So it's more difficult to work, and you're gonna be in certain situations where you need the hardness of a crisco, uh, otherwise your product becomes completely unworkable. That's why I tend to work very cold when I work with lard. Also, if you're using natural lard uh that's rendered out, it has like a liquid and a solid portion, it's much harder to use, but tastes much better than uh hydrogenated lard. Hydrogenated lard, the one you buy armor in the store, armor brand hydrogenated lard, is uh still more plastic than Crisco, more s softer rather than Crisco, but uh much harder than real honest to God lard.
But yes, uh one-to-one substitution uh is is best. And lard in biscuits is fantastic. Uh lard in uh I've never tried lard in in uh in a cookie instead of butter, because I use butter in a cookie. But anyway, yes, you can use lard. And referring back to my question last week about extracting fruit juice with a centrifuge, I noticed most brew supply companies sell peptic enzyme pectic enzymes.
Wikipedia seems to be saying that it's uh used for the same person as pect uh same purposes as Pectinx Ultra SPL, breaking down pectin when making fruit juices. Can this be used in place of or to complement ultra SPL or am I barking up the wrong tree? Well, there's similar enzymes, but all the different uh pectinase enzymes that you can buy have different kinds of activities. Um and so even nolozymes, the people who make pectinex ultra SPL uh have a range of different ones that have different kinds of properties and different kinds of activities. We use Ultra SPL because that's kind of like the most kind of shotgun one they have.
It doesn't just take out uh pectin, it takes out hemicellulose and a bunch of other stuff. So any of these enzyme concoctions are kind of multiple uh enzyme brews that have various effects. Uh and I use that one because it's it works over a wide range of pH on a wide range of substrates. Uh you might be able to find one at a home brew that it works really well. I'm not uh I'm not sure.
Uh you know, you're not barking up the wrong tree. It's just, you know, we have a lot of experience with Pectanex Ultra SPL, and so I tend to go to that one, and it's not that expensive for us to use because we buy it in bulk. Make sense? Mm-hmm. Makes sense.
All right. Uh last in from Alvin uh Alvin uh J. Uh Schultz in Houston, uh, who apparently was on uh Top Chef uh something. I saw him, I looked him up. It was on Top Chef something.
Anyway, uh thanks for all the info you share with me via cooking issues. Also, congrats on Booker and Dax. I sent a bartender friend of mine in there this week and he was blown away. I hope to stop by during the uh international chef conference this year myself. Please do.
I have some questions about shopping for my first rotor vap. Because of my limited funding, I'm stuck with hunting through eBay ads. Anything I should be aware of in eBay auctions for rotov apps. How do I properly clean one that may have been used in a lab? Do rotovaps generate leak over time via worn seals, etc.
And what is the cost to restore one that may have such problems? I know Dave likes the cold finger style condenser. Does he just run those with a dry ice alcohol mix? Uh I also have uh liquid nitrogen in my home kitchen, 30 liter. Nice, huh?
Liquid nitrogen in home kitchen? Nice. Uh would it be better to use that for condensing? How long will a cold finger fill with lit uh nitrogen before it uh last before it boils off? And lastly, I see many auctions like this and substitute in some uh you know, kind of off brand rotary evaporator.
For a rotovap uh under a thousand bucks on eBay. What's the catch with this seemingly Asian manufactured rotary evaporator? Thanks for your help. Uh also I've ordered from your sponsors at modernistpantry.com, and they're great, extremely fast shipping and nice usable packaging. Just wish they'd give a bigger discount for buying by the pound.
All right. Well, I'd stay away from that crappy uh, you know, uh roto vap that's really cheap uh because I've used even name brand rotor vaps that aren't the good ones in the past, and they're leaky and they stink. And if you have a leaky rotor vap, it's gonna be very hard to get a good flavor in it. And yes, they do tend to leak over time in their seals. New rotary seals, it costs about 50 bucks to buy.
You just want to get everything clean and make sure that the thing doesn't leak. If the glassware is etched so that it can't form a good seal, like it's scraped too much and etched, you're gonna have a problem. But most of those problems with leaks can be fixed. But a leaky roto vap is the first reason why you're gonna lose flavor in a rotovap. I do favor a cold finger condenser, but liquid nitrogen get eat gets eaten at a ferocious rate in a it's so a man every liter that you distill is gonna take probably seven, eight liters of liquid nitrogen in a cold finger condenser.
So you're gonna be tearing through that 30-liter doer. That said, that's a really good way to do it. Dry ice is gonna last you a lot longer. I don't use dry ice because it's hard for me to get dry ice in New York City. I have to take a cab and go to a place and then pick it up and then come back, blah, blah, blah, because I don't own a car, etc.
etc. So if you're in Houston, you own a car uh and you have access, I would use dry ice in a cold finger because it's gonna last a lot longer. Uh and I would you can get one on eBay. That's how I got my first one. And um you can fix most leaks.
You want to make sure that nothing nasty went through it. You're gonna want to clean it with a vi with like you know, Alcanox or some really hardcore glass detergent, bleach the hell out of it, even though it's probably more of a uh just a poison in it than a bio biohazard. It's probably gonna be more of a poison issue. But just clean the ever loving hell out of that son of a gun because I don't want you to be sucking in a bunch of carbon tetrachloride or crazy poison stuff. Poison cooking issues.
Oh you dead rat. Thanks for listening to this program on the Heritage Radio Network. You can find all of our archived programs on Heritage Radio Network.com, as well as a schedule of upcoming live shows. You can also podcast all of our programs on iTunes by searching Heritage Radio Network 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. Got me.
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