Broadcasting live from Roberta's in Bushwick, Brooklyn. You're listening to Heritage Radio Network.com. Today's show is brought to you by Hearst Ranch grass fed beef. Available on the internet at HurstRanch.com. Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues.
This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from a Bertus Burz that we are in Bubba Ba Bubba Bushwick on the Heritage Radio Network every Tuesday from roughly 12 to roughly 1245. Nastasha the Hammer Lopez not with us today. Not with us. She is uh flying home as we speak. Her plane is being battered about in the turbulence over the Atlantic Ocean.
She took her little sister to Switzerland over the weekend. Hmm, Switzerland, huh? You like that, Jack? Nice. Nice, nice.
Anyway, call any questions, uh, cooking, non tech tech, anything, really any question. We'll take any question, right, Jack? To uh 718 497 2128. That's 718 497 2128. Now, uh, we don't have anyone yet, Red.
We had somebody call in uh when you weren't here, but hopefully he'll call us back in a few minutes. Because I said in the Twitter I said 1205. Because I knew I was late. Wow. I made it at 12.05.
I was here at 1205. Here, you know, okay, that's late. It's unacceptable. I realize that. However, I'm slightly proud of myself.
I made a a Dave Arnold fat lazy out of shape world record for biking from my apartment in the lower east side to uh Bushwick. 15 minutes flat. Yeah. Seems like the studio is impressed. Yeah, yeah.
Almost died. Uh didn't almost kill anyone, though. That's my main thing. It's like, you know, me, my safety, not as important as not endangering the safety of pedestrians around me. Okay, uh, so I have a bunch of questions from last week.
I have some Twitter questions coming in. You can uh unfortunately, since Nastasha's here, uh I can't really check the Twitter during the show, but uh we're at cooking issues. That's how you tweet us or whatever the hell you call it, uh whatever you kids call it. At Heritage Radio, and we can get it. Heritage underscore radio.
Does that work? Does that happen? That works, that happens. Nice. Okay.
Okay, so from a couple weeks ago, uh Rob Trapaz uh wrote in about processed cheese. Uh I want to make a cheese sauce using melting salts, which we'll talk about in a minute. Uh if I'm out of breath, it's because I'm out of shape, by the way. If you hear like a it's me trying to catch my breath. Anyway, I see in Modernist Cuisine uh they use whey protein concentrate.
Uh now, for those of you that don't know, Modernist Cuisine, we've talked about it. We've had uh all three authors, right, on the show? All three? Yes, we have. Uh not in studio, but we've had them all.
Two of them in studio. Two of them in studio, right? Nathan hasn't been in the studio yet. He should sometime. Yeah, next time he's in New York, let's uh twist his uh his arm, get him in.
Anyway. Um, you know, whatever. Most ambitious, uh biggest cookbook undertaking all time, I'd have to say. Probably all time. It kind of uh rivals back when uh, you know, the Pope used to, you know, uh have someone make the cistine chapel, and just didn't matter how much it costs or how much time it took, that kind of thing, only with a cookbook.
Anyway, uh so uh he has uh the the recipe they're talking about, there's a uh a cheese sauce. I think there's several cheese sauces in the modernist cuisine where they are basically using the techniques of processed cheese making to make better tasting higher-end things. Anyway, uh so Rob writes in, I have sodium citrate and whey protein isolate. My understanding is that the whey protein concentrate has uh the lactate sugars and the isolate has the sugars removed. What function does the concentrate have in this recipe?
And can I substitute, uh, isolate or simply leave it out? Uh other recipes call for Joha S D SDS2 sodium phosphate. What is it? What does it do? Where do you get it, etc., etc.?
Okay, look. I did a lot of research on processed cheese over the past couple weeks. It's a subject I haven't researched in a while, but uh I find it extremely interesting. Um Wiley Dufrein, by the way, my brother-in-law, chef of WD-50, loves himself some American cheese. Were you aware of that?
Did you know that? Loves American cheese and eggs. And he's not afraid to admit it. I'm not uh like letting the cat out of the bag like uh like I do with Nastasha, he will freely admit it. Um, take a sip of water, hold on.
And breathing. Breath. Okay. The way you make a processed cheese is you take cheeses and you add what's called a melting salt to them. And the melting salt is uh also called an emulsifying salt.
And unlike a normal emulsifier, which has one part of a molecule that loves fat and another part of a molecule of the molecule that loves water, and thereby makes it easier for water and fat to live together. That's what an emulsifier does, or air and water, or air and fat, etc. etc. Anyway, uh it's not really like that. What it is is uh it's uh sodium citrate is one, polyphosphates are another, and what they do is they actually make it easier for the they unbind the casein.
So there's casein, which is the protein in uh in milk solids, uh, that causes cheese to bind together to coagulate. Uh and it basically resolubilizes the casein and allows the casein to become an emulsifier. So these emulsifying salts, these melting salts, uh, modify the casein and make it easier for it to be runny and spreadable and meltable, all that great stuff. Now, you might be surprised to note that uh older cheeses, the ones that you typically would assume don't melt very well, uh, actually need the least amount of emulsifying salts in them because uh their proteins are most broken down. It's actually young cheeses, the ones that you think would melt very easily, that in fact are very difficult to make a very smooth melted processed cheese out of.
Uh, and that's why uh to go back, uh Jack, are you familiar with fondue? What's that? Are you familiar with fondue? I am. Do you know what the cheese of choice for fondue is?
I don't. A Gruyere. Is it? Yeah. Why?
Well, grier is an aged cheese, right? So even though it's very high fat, and high fat cheeses uh melt very easily, also uh it's very aged, and so the proteins are break it up broken down more than they would be in a very young cheese. And hence, even though it's an aged cheese, it melts extremely well and makes a fondue. Do you know what else uh you add to fondue, Jack? No.
White wine. You know why? I don't. Ah, because it's uh the tartrate in uh from tartaric acid in wine that provides the natural emulsifying salt to make fondue super creamy and delicious. That's why.
Wow, I can sit here all day and say I don't know to most things you say. Well, you know, um well we'll do a different show where it's all stuff it stumps me. Yeah, exactly. Uh anyway, but the um but what's funny is is that actually the Swiss were the first people to have a patent on processed cheese, and one of the uh one of the ideas of why is because they or were used to using wine in their famous melted cheese fondue, and so they came up with processed cheese first. Something that's typically blamed on Americans, but in fact is a Swiss invention.
So uh whey, you can add whey to processed cheese in a number of different ways for different reasons. Uh depending on how much you add, it can have different effects. Whey is typically used as a water binder, and so it could probably hold water in when you're melting uh your cheese down. Um it's unclear to me because I don't have the recipe in front of me, and I know I don't own the Modernus Cuisine Cookbook yet, so I couldn't look it up. Um but uh it's probably there as a water binder and also to affect the meltability.
Uh little bits added of whey protein tend to uh increase the meltability of a cheese, and more additions tend to decrease the meltability of the cheese and also decrease the flavor because whey protein uh fairly neutral in uh taste. Now, as for that SDS said uh Joha stuff, that is just a different kind of emulsifying salt. Uh the one you're using, sodium citrate, was the first one that was used. Uh it tends to not be so great uh for um long-term usage, and it doesn't promote meltability as some of the phosphate salts do, but it's good to have around because it modifies uh the pH. So sodium citrate is gonna make things uh it's a buffer, but I think we'll make things slightly more acidic, whereas some of the phosphate salts are slightly more basic.
And the pH of the cheese when you're done is uh fairly important to the texture. Usually you want to be uh right around five, five point one, my memory serves me, uh, on the pH of melted cheese to get them right. Um I'm super interested uh in processed cheese. I saw an article where someone was making uh something that had the flavor of ketchup, but the meltability of cheese using a product I've tried to use once but had no success with called rennet casein. Uh basically completely constructed cheese analog with a different uh flavor.
Um Modernus Pantry is trying to get it, and when Chris Anderson gets it, uh I'll get it and uh play around with it. But it reminds me of an experiment I did years ago uh trying to make ketchup chocolate, which is texture of chocolate, flavor of ketchup. Um anyway, so with that, why don't we take a commercial break? I'll catch my breath and call your questions to 718497 2128. That's 718497 2128 cooking issues.
Pasture raised on a hundred and fifty thousand acres in central California. Sustainably produced, humane. And welcome back to cooking issues. So uh Jack, we're gonna do a giveaway today, true or false? True.
Okay. So our good friends at the Heritage Meat Shop, which is at the Essex Street Market in New York City on Essex and Delancey, are offering a free pork shop to uh the first listener that answers the trivia question you pose to them. Okay, here's the trivia question. So the last question I'm gonna answer from a reader uh is from Carrie Camill, and uh Carrie writes in asking about egg substitutes and cocktail in cocktails, and the first person who can call in with the name of a Colombian fruit that produces a frothy head on the top of a cocktail similar to an egg white without adding any sort of uh egg or other protein based stuff wins the pork chop. Well they can they can either call in, they can info at email well they can email us at info at heritage radio network.org.
They can tweet us at heritage underscore radio or call into the show. So lots of options. Yeah, come to New York. Or if you're you know, here's what you can do also. If you happen to live somewhere else, we'll hold it for you.
They're not gonna go out of business and not gonna go anywhere, and next time in New York, come get the pork chop. All right. Right? True or false. Uh probably, yeah.
Yeah, sure. Pork shops will be around. Yeah, they'll be around. Everyone people aren't gonna all of a sudden stop liking pork chops. I don't think so.
No, it's not gonna happen. Um, okay. So what that means, Carrie, if you're listening, is that your question is going to be last. But uh we do have callers on the line. All right, caller, you're on the air.
Hello. Hi. Hi, um I'm calling from Hearth Australia. Oh, nice. Um, I was just wondering.
Um I do at work I do uh sousheed lamb rum. And probably one out of ten come out really mushy after I uh reheat them. Uh so I cook them at sixty for an hour and forty, um and then chill and then reheat at fifty-four. And um after the vin it's been in the bath for about fifteen minutes, about one in ten come come out really mushy. I was wondering if you could uh help me troubleshoot that.
That's really odd. All the same muscle, the same exact muscle. Yeah, so it's all it's all the rump and it's just uh cleaned and um just been marinated in like olive oil, thyme, garlic, rosemary for a couple of days and then we roll it into a cylinder and then um yeah, cook it and then chill it and then reheat. And yeah, probably one in ten come out just like mushy as hell, like as if it's been cooked at like seventy-eight and you want to flake it but it's still like pink as. Huh.
Wait, well it's it's so when I think of mushy normally, uh in low temperature meats um that haven't been overcooked, right? I typically think of kind of a fibery pasty kind of a feel, uh similar to Yeah, so if you like it and for those of you that haven't done a lot of low temperature work, it's difficult to describe because you haven't overcooked it and the juice is still there, but it just turns to a massive fibers in your mouth when you chew it. Uh and yeah, that's it. Yeah, and if you know if and if any of you want to replicate this uh at home, buy a uh filet mignon uh piece, uh tenderloin and cook it at fifty-four four for like five hours, and then even though it's still rare, it's horrible. Uh and it's because it's gone mushy and typically and you s what's the maximum time it's spent in the in the bath?
Uh hour and forty. Yeah. Uh how big around is the roll? Uh probably one and a half inches. Okay.
So I would cook it at at what temperature? 60. Six sixty? Uh so one forty for all your Fahrenheit heads. Um so here's what I would say.
Um if you're dealing with uh meats that don't have a lot of connective tissue in them, typically um cooking any longer than the point of doneness is going to uh reduce the reduce the the the amount you're gonna like the texture of the meat. So that's why on a duck breast, for instance, I only cook a duck breast for 45 minutes because um if you cook it for longer, it may not adversely affect the texture, but sometimes it gets some of that mushiness that you have. Um if I'm doing fillet, I tend not to cook fillet low temp, but if I'm gonna do fillet low temp, um I'll cook it for like 45 minutes, even though it doesn't pasteurize it technically. Uh although some of the new programs out like the Sous Vash and the one that PolyScience had worked on, they'll write programs for surface pasteurization if you're not worried about the inside. But since you're since you've actually rolled it, you kind of do need to get all the way to the inside uh of it and kill it.
Is that why you're doing that length of time? Although you shouldn't need to cook it that long at that high to uh pasteurize it. Well uh Yeah, we're doing uh uh loin at 62 for uh an hour and twenty. So we just because we lowered the temperature when we changed to rump, we upped the time just a little bit as well. Still the thickness is still the same, so we just wanted to up it just because we'll it was in that for longer at lower?
Right. I I I would um I I I would try to decrease the time. It might be the time doing it. Um did you notice that the mushier ones had less uh kind of connective tissue or less inherent structure in them than the ones that weren't mushy? Was there any visual difference between them?
Not really. They were all pretty identical in um I mean like even the size it like didn't really matter like how thick or thin they were because obviously they're not all identical. Um even the you know, the small line, the bigger ones still had the same outcome didn't really didn't really matter on that. Right. I mean it could also I mean it's possible that the different cuts of meat have different pHs and that could be affecting it as well.
Like uh I know there's certain you know, certain uh pork cuts here we have called P S E pale soft and exudative, um and yep and uh we also have dark cutting meat on the other end of the spectrum, other end of the pH spectrum, and so it could be that you're having slight differences there that are affecting the water binding ability of the meat and that that could be affecting the texture, but I would see if cutting your time down something that's um something that's uh an inch and a half across should not take uh more than uh an hour max. So see if you cut down to an hour whether or not your problem goes away, and if not, we're gonna have to look at something like the actual differences between the individual cuts of meat. Right. You know? 'Cause it could be that you're just right on the edge.
Yeah, no worries. Yeah. But but plea I would please um you know, if you if you can't I don't know if like how much it costs to call, but if you can't uh call back, please just let me know what happens one way or the other because it helps me when I have to suggest things to people in the future. Just let us know uh whether or not that helped out. Also, is it true that in uh in the south of Australia people bike on the sidewalk everywhere?
Say what? Is it true that people in Australia bike on the sidewalks? I was told this by someone on the Twitter 'cause I was uh some sometimes, mostly on the road though. Yeah, that makes sense. On the road.
I was in Japan and people were biking on the sidewalk constantly. I was in constant danger of getting mowed down by people on the sidewalk. I'm glad to see that in Australia, most people ride on the roads. Roads. Roads and roads.
Yeah, I I watched the uh the today tonight that you have um been ranting about as well. It's pretty horrible. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
That thing's that's that show is that show is terrible. Is that thing still on the air? Coming from Australia. Is that still is that still on the air? They still have that show?
Yeah, it's it's the worst. I need to make it to Australia sometime. Not to rant about that, but to have some of the uh grape produce. I'm especially interested. I know it's not Australian, but I'm interested in the uh New Zealand's the Porn Orange.
You know the New Zealand grapefruit, the Purman orange? A fantastic it's a fantastic piece of citrus. The try to get a hold of it. I think they grow it in Australia as well, but uh I think the problem with it is it has to be really, really fresh, which is maybe why it's not shipped out here. Um I know Australia is huge, so just because you know it's from New Zealand doesn't mean it's close to you, but um you're not gonna have the import problems that we do.
So you should try to get a hold of it. Fantastic citrus, uh both to eat and for use in cocktails. I've only had it once or twice, but delicious. All right, I'll look it up. Thanks very much.
Uh thank you very much for your help. And bye-bye. We uh we have another caller. Uh and um we also, before we get to that caller, we have a um a William McGee asking if the fruit is narangilla. Ooh, no um, that I believe that's a passion fruit.
Um let me look it up. No, it's not the one I was thinking of. Okay. Let me let me look it up. It's not the one I was thinking of.
I might have to give it to him if I I'm gonna look it up during that one up during the uh next uh commercial break, and then we'll see whether or not uh that's the it's not the one I had in mind. But it may be work. All right, maybe we'll see. So we have another caller on the line. Caller, you're on the air.
Hey, this is Johnny Clark from Memphis, Tennessee. Hey Dave, how you doing? I'm right, how you doing? I'm doing pretty good. I have a suckling pig, uh 20 to 30 pounds that I've cut uh down the back and taking the sides off with the belly attached.
And I had some questions about cooking it soothing versus uh conventional um time and temperature wise. And I wanted uh, of course, uh nice crispy skin. Oh yeah. If you have any um any advice for me, that would be great. All right, here you go.
So, first of all, uh you have a uh you have a good problem how to cook a delicious product, right? Um by the way, uh Memphis, one of those towns I have not been to. Can you freaking believe that? Oh my god. I know it's ridiculous ridiculous.
It's one of the great, it's one of the great, obviously one of the great uh barbecue towns uh in the country uh and great for so many other things. Music, it's just it's uh it's a complete travesty that I haven't made it there yet. But um I will someday make it there. Uh now here's the issue with a suckling pig as opposed to uh uh a larger pig like a full size hog. I'm gonna go I'm gonna go out here and uh hopefully I don't uh anger anyone, but um in general for hogs, uh for whole hogs doesn't apply to suckling pigs.
I I don't think it's necessarily possible to do the best job cooking the thing whole. Here's why. Not every muscle in a hog wants to cook the uh same way. Do you know what I mean? So uh so uh and I don't know I don't know why his name popped out of my head, but the famous whole hog guy, uh uh Mitchell, uh Ed Mitchell, right?
Ed Ed Mitchell. Um, he likes to cook the the whole hog. When he does it, what he'll do is he'll like machete the whole hog up after he's done, get little bits of crunchy skin. Uh and the fact that certain pieces of muscle are kind of pasty and overcooked, specifically the muscles without connective tissue like the loin, it doesn't matter so much because that's covered up by the sauce and it's massed by the fact that there's all kinds of cuts in there that are good after they've been cooked for for a long period of time. Um but that said, a suckling pig's a little bit different because uh it doesn't require as long a cooking time as a whole hog does because nothing in a suckling pig takes as long to break down as something in a whole hog.
So it's possible, I think, to get uh something that's pretty delicious all the way through without having to break it down. And also there's more fat and stuff, even in the areas that are kind of low connective tissue in a younger, in a younger it's kind of distributed better. Does that make sense or no? Yeah, but what I've done is I've cut uh the uh front legs off and then cut down the loin and left the loin in the belly attached, and I was gonna roll it up. So it's just one muscle, the loins that we're talking about wrapped up and uh BRT style.
Right. Well, but the bellies, the belly's attached to the loin. No. Okay, good. So they'll cook the loin at like I would do I would do uh low temp like sous vide.
I would cook that loin for uh I'd go low. It depends on your on your on your um on your your guests slash customers or whatever, but I tend to go uh you there are people out there cooking uh pork as low as uh fifty seven, but that's rare, pink, real pink looking, and um you're gonna have some people that'll balk. You know what I mean? I you know I was thinking 50 gates, something like that. Anyway, yeah, yeah.
So but if you take it up to 60, it's still pretty juicy, and as long as you don't cook it too long. Um very very few uh fewer people will balk at uh at 60. Do you know what I'm saying? Um and it's still good. You might want to run a test.
I tend to do a lot of my pork at 60 just because it's actually still slightly pink, but what happens is when you do the finishing cook on it, especially if you pull it from hot and do the finishing on the outside, uh it tends to just be a little bit rosy in the very center, and people are okay with that typically. Um but yeah, they'll be okay with it. Yeah, and so uh uh m the pieces that have the skin on I tend to let cool off quite a bit um without unbagging it or taking it out of the fat or whatever I'm cooking it in, uh so that I can get a really long crisping time on the skin because I like to get the skin super super crispy and uh and crunchy, and I like to take a little bit of time doing it because I uh the especially with a torch, unless you have a really good torch, and by that I mean one that doesn't have any uh uncombusted gas hitting it. Um there's so much fat on the skin of a piece of uh pork that it can pick up some of that torch taste, and it's also difficult to not get scorch marks on it with a torch. If you have to use a torch to touch up pieces of the skin afterwards, it's gonna ruin your chinois.
But I recommend firing it or or if you have a piece of stainless steel mesh, fire your torch at the stainless steel piece of mesh and use that almost as a as a heating grill because uh um that like this the red hot mesh will combust the rest of the the nasty gas taste that you um would ordinarily get out of a propane torch. Alternatively, if you have a butane torch and a source of gas in it that doesn't have uh a lot of those uh you know those uh the the Mercaptins that they add to it to make it smell terrible so that you know if you have a leak, like some of the tobacco brands don't have a lot of taste to them, and then you don't have to worry about it so much. But I really prefer uh deep frying and or like uh shallow uh oil pan fry rendering of the skin just because it does a really good job and uh penetrates uh all the way through. If you need to render out some of the fat, I would do some of um although I don't think you will. I would do uh modernist cuisine's trick that they do with the duck breast, which is they buy a new dog brush, the kind with the bristles, and they hit it with the bristles to kind of uh allow the fat to render out.
But what I've done is I've taken some of the skin and I I submitted it for six hours at uh one forty. Right. And then I was going to uh scrape the fat and put it in dehydrator. Okay. And uh fry it.
Is that a good idea? Uh I yeah, uh at 140, I'm trying to think, um, so you want it to puff like a chicharron or you want it to still have a lot of bite to it? Uh I want it to crunch. Yeah. Chicharron.
Right. So typically when I do like pork rinds, um I'll uh I won't I don't low temp them. I I cook the hell out of them actually. Like uh because the what you're doing, if you want it to fully puff, like a like a chicharone style, like like pork rinds, like in the package at the store. Uh oh yeah.
Yeah, yeah. The the trick there is you need to render all of the collagen into gelatin, all of it. Uh and and I typically do that by boiling it in salted water for like boiling it in very salted water for like mmm sixty minutes, seventy minutes, something like that. Until it's it's uh shot and completely shot. And then uh I drain it and let it cool because one uh it'll burn the heck out of your hands, and two, um it's very, very fragile until it cools down.
When it cools down, the gelatin's gonna start to set up a little bit. Then I s once and then I put it in the fridge flat when it's cold, then it's got more structure to it. Then I scrape it, dehydrate it, and fry it, and it puffs up huge. And if you want it to not puff up quite as much, you don't scrape it as much. I'd be really interested to know what the texture difference is between uh cooking at 140 and cooking it the way I normally do, which is you know, at boiling.
Um I'd be very interested to know what the textural difference is because my feeling is you're gonna get you're not gonna have rendered out all the the collagen and so it's gonna hold together a little better. What happens in a pork rind is you dehydrate it just till it turns kind of flexy plastic like a shrinky dank from when I was a kid. How long to dehydrate? It totally dep depends on the on the dehydrator, but I I really honestly just do it by by eye, and it should it should feel it it goes from being a piece of skin to all of a sudden looking like a piece of plastic. And I would just keep like test frying little pieces, and once you see it one time, you'll know what's right.
And uh the the best way, honestly, it depends on how humid it is, but uh you know where you are, but um what I'll do is it's it's humid, yeah. I I I usually do I usually dehydrate it about uh eighty percent of the way um and then pull it out and let it sit overnight. Uh and sometimes it'll take itself all the rest of the way. It's very it's very hard to get it rehydrated if you've over dehydrated it. Um so that you really want to guard against over dehydrating because um tempering it back to the proper moisture content is just it's a bear.
You know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So I would just keep looking at it. Caliber uh dehydrator on the 12 tray or something like that.
Oh yeah. Um so if that helps about what do you temperature I started at 135. I started I'm sorry. Yeah, I usually start it at 135. I'll let it go for uh I'll get let it go for a you know a couple of hours, I'll look at it.
And then what you could do overnight if you have it is just turn it down to its lowest setting uh and then let it ride. It shouldn't over dehydrate overnight on the lowest possible setting, which is I believe 95 on the X caliber. But it's better you can always pulse dehydrate to get more of the stuff out, and once it's partially dehydrated, it's not gonna spoil on you. So you don't need to worry about spoilage. Do you know what I'm saying?
But uh parceling uh just what do you say? What's partial partially dehydrated? What do you mean? Oh, so in other words, like uh if you if you if you don't dehydrate it enough, what's gonna happen is you're you're when you fry a test piece, it's going to have like a little uh like a kernel on the inside that's not gonna puff up. Okay.
When you if you over dehydrate it, it'll burn and just not puff up as much because there's not enough water to expand it anymore. So uh you know what what I usually do is is I don't let it dehydrate. If I'm gonna go to bed, I don't let it dehydrate when I'm not there because I don't want it to over dehydrate. But as long as you've started the dehydration process, you've reduced the water content of it enough that you're not going to get microbial spoilage in it overnight. So you don't need to worry about it.
And then, you know, the next day, if it if you know it hasn't kind of tempered out and become even all the way through, if you fry a piece in the morning, then you can just dehydrate it for another hour or so, and usually that's enough to to get it in the right in the right state. The real thing, like I say, is just to guard against over dehydrating. Okay. I appreciate you. Hey, hey, tell us how it works out.
I will. Thanks, Dave. Have a good day. You too. Hey, Dave.
Yes. So William McGee followed up and said maybe the correct name is Lulo. Lulo! Ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding. I have to also give a shout out to Andy Melka, who who also answered Lulo.
Can we give two pork chops away? If Andy Andy's not in New York, but if he comes, yes. We we will give the two pork chops away. There you go. Two winners on the pork shop.
So I can now go back and uh answer uh Carrie Campbell's question before the end of the show because we have two correct answers. Let's take a very quick break before that. Alright, quick break, come back uh 7184972128. That's 7184972128. The following is a message from the Heritage Meat Shop.
Are you tired of just hearing buzzwords? Do you want to actually take part in the food revolution? Then come on down to the Heritage Meat Shop. Located in New York's historic Essex Street Market. On the corner of Essex and Delancey.
We have rare breed pork, beef, poultry, lamb, and goat. Not to mention charcuterie that'll make you squeal. All raised right by the right people, so you know they'll taste right. Try the meat that over a hundred New York chefs ache for. Come to the Heritage Meat Shop and pick up some revolution today.
For more information, visit Heritagemeatshop.com. And welcome back to Cooking Issues. Okay. Uh so actually, before I go into Kerry Campbell's question, uh at something apropos of the of the pork, uh, we had a Twitter question in that uh from Ryan Rogers saying, uh, does removing uh the membrane from ribs prior to smoking uh or souvy, should you remove the membrane either before or after? What we're talking about is on the bone side of ribs, there's a uh kind of a membrane.
You know what I'm talking about, Jack? That membrane that the kind of like you can see yeah. Hey, Ryan Rogers, I went to college with. The same one? Fairly certain.
Wow, cool. Is he a good guy? I believe he's a chef in Kentucky now. Nice, nice. Well, do you like that membrane?
I actually happen to like it. Yeah, I don't mind it. Yeah. Well, I'm weird, I'm a bad person because it would like the both of us, we're bad people. Uh because all the people who know what the the what they're talking about, they tend to say to remove it for textural reasons, uh, because most people don't like it.
Uh I would remove it beforehand. Um I haven't had that much experience with leaving it on, but uh, versus not, I've never done the side by side, but everyone who removes it say they remove it to get better penetration of rubs and or spice. So I'm assuming that if you're going to add smoke, uh that it's better to take it off earlier because you're gonna get better penetration through it than if you uh didn't in terms of flavors and things like that. Fairly easy to strip off, strips off the same way that the membrane strips off of a skirt steak. So I would say remove it uh beforehand uh beforehand.
The other question was um uh should you do, I'm assuming you mean low temperature. Should I do uh Boston butt uh boneless or bone in low temperature? I would say take the bone out. It's just here's why. As much as everyone I know loves gnawing things off of the bone, um, the bone is really helpful as a protectant when you're cooking normally, but I don't think it's going to give you any benefit when you're doing low temperature because the whole point of low temperature is you're not going to overcook the meat anyway.
And in terms of presentation and sliceability, you're going to want to get that thing out of there so you can roll it. Uh it's also going to take less long to cook. You're going to get more accurate temperatures in the center. Um if you are vacuum bagging it, you're not going to pull any of the weird blood things out of the bone. If you pull the bone out, uh gives you a chance to trim some of the cartilage things away.
So I would definitely take the bone out. Uh that's just that's just my feeling. Um, let's take some cocktail questions. Uh we'll do we'll do Carrie's first because she's uh here uh is you think carry is man or woman? Carrie Camel.
I don't know. I think just Campbell. Carrie Camel? I was called Carrie. Camel?
Car no, Carrie. First name Carrie. First name Carrie. Carrie. Carrie.
Anyway. Um question for the podcast. I'm looking for a substitute for egg white to use in a pisco sour type drink. RGM will not allow egg whites behind the bar, but I am looking for something to give a drink a similar mouthfeel in foam. Gum syrup, maybe.
Uh, can I make syrup with egg white powder? Uh thanks. P.S.D. Mind sharing your recipe for the coriander syrup. Here's the recipe for the coriander syrup that we use at the bar.
Take uh 150 grams of uh fresh coriander seed, put it into a liter of water, blend it in a blender, and um uh one kilo of uh white sugar, uh bring it to the boil, toss in a bunch of crushed red pepper, stir and keep tasting it. Uh you know, turn the heat off. Uh stir and keep tasting it until the spice picks up to the level you want. You need a bit of spiciness in the back end of that thing to uh have it uh work correctly when we use it similar to like a ginger ale, then put it uh I would put a fine course chinois, like a coarse strainer, inside of a fine chinois and dump it through that. Uh the course chinois will catch most of this stuff, and the fine chinois will catch the rest, and it allows you to strain it one time, let it cool, and you're good to go.
Okay. Um so anyway, uh what can you use? Well, it you can make a drink uh to do an apisco a pisco style drink, might be really interesting with Lulo. Lulo is a South American, I I think of it as a Colombian fruit, and they use uh the juice of it constantly, and it makes an amazing uh kind of creamy head on the top, foamy head on it, just from the hydrocolloids that are naturally in the Lulo. So you could look for fruits that naturally want to foam up when you're doing a sour-style drink.
Lulo is also acidic, so it would it also it's kind of a cool green color. Um green or yellow depending. But you can uh it's really uh it's really interesting, so you could do something like that. If you wanted to use po I mean powdered egg white, unfortunately doesn't taste uh so good. Um I've done side-by-sides with uh pasteurized egg white, uh powdered egg white, uh my you know, my pasteurized egg white and um and regular egg white with Kenta Goto from Pegu Club years ago.
And the fresh egg white was better. Uh if your GM would let you use pasteurized egg whites uh in the box, they're they're not as good, but they're not I mean, whatever. I don't even know if they're gonna GM's gonna let you use that. Um you can pasteurize your own egg whites in an immersion circulator, or uh you can use gum syrup and it's gonna add some of the body to it. Um what I would do is make a call-up TIC gums, and they have a bunch of uh kind of really high quality foaming agents that you can use that they uh and if you call TIC gums and tell them what your problem is, um they have a product for you.
The one that we use that I've used for making kind of creamy heads on things is called Ticoloid 310 or 210S, and it's basically gum arabic with a little bit of xanthan gum in it. And if you want to increase the the foamy head nature of it even more, you uh you could dope it with a little more xanthan. You just don't want to add too much xanthan because it can add kind of a snotty, slippery mouthfeel to it. The commercial fake egg white foamer, uh looked up one of the ingredients uh for it, and um it's got an emulsifier, polysorbate 80. This is Fees Fee Brothers, uh potassium sorbate and some sodium benzoate.
Uh, but it lists its main ingredient as propylene glycol, which is an antifreeze. Uh it's hard, it's it's it's used, it's food grade, but it's you know it's not like fantastical. I I don't love it. But I think they probably meant is propylene glycol alginate, which is uh which is uh kind of a modified uh alginate um that is used as a as a beer head agent in beer, uh and it's it's not natural, but it's it's neutral and uh it is a f a foaming agent to increase the stability in the head of beer, so if you shake it, it's gonna uh stabilize the bubbles that are formed. And you could use something like that, but uh it's kind of horrible.
I would just get to pure propylene glycol alginate that doesn't have any kind of weird flavorings or anything in it, but it's gonna if in used in large amounts, it's gonna probably have a slippery kind of a feel to it. I don't know that you're going to uh enjoy that so much. Does that make sense, Jack? Sorry, yes, it does. I was away from the mic there.
Alright, that's okay. Don't worry about that. Okay. Um now uh have another cocktail question in from Hayden Lambert. Uh on how do I remove the color from homemade tonic water?
It has to be super low tech. Well, when I make tonic water, uh, it doesn't have any color because I don't use the bark uh, you know, the what I forget that I always get the name of the tree wrong. It's like Kinchona or something like that. Uh but I don't use the bark of the tree. Uh I use uh quinine sulfate uh USP, which I get from a uh a chemical house, um, which is what you know what the big folks use to make tonic water uh industrially, quinine sulfate.
Um it's a lot easier to dose, but it is expensive, and if you want to make it from bark, you gotta make it from bark, and it's gonna be um yeah, it's gonna be kind of colored and probably cloudy. Now, uh you're not gonna get rid of the color through any normal uh filtration technique like um coffee filter or whatnot, but you should definitely put it all through a coffee filter so that when you carbonate it, you're not gonna have a lot of crud floating around, which is gonna stop your ability to carbonate well. If you want to remove color, the only thing I know that strips color out that's really low tech is charcoal filter, but it's it's gonna have to have malt like activated charcoal like a Brita, but it's gonna take a long time and be aware that the uh activated charcoal won't just be stripping color, it'll also be stripping flavor. So I don't know uh what the affinity of uh activated charcoal is to uh quinine or to the other flavors that are in there. So um it's unclear to me what what will happen, but I know there are some people out there who actually filter their bitters through Brita's uh to kind of clear them up a little bit, but I mean it it's gonna have a radical effect on flavor.
In fact, there was a there was a company a number of years ago, and their main uh their main that well, their their only product was uh it was some take on uh on Grey Goose but I forget what it was was it was a charcoal filter so that you could go buy the like the world's cheapest crappiest vodka and filter it through this thing like like four five six times and turn it into an actually not unpleasant neutral vodka and it had a picture of a guy with a fur hat on like wasted out of his mind. You ever seen this Jack? Oh I haven't uh and so someone gave it to to me at the French culinary years ago and uh it was like an ex-alum and he you know he said uh hey you know uh can you know would you ever like I was like no I can't I can't advocate taking cheap vodka pouring it through a filter and and then drinking it so that like frat kids can uh get crunked up for cheap. I mean that's just not what I do for a living, you know I'm not against it. But you know but it's not like kind of it's not my shtick.
Do you know what I'm saying? But that said we used it all the time to take cheap liquor and kind of uh kill it so that we could use it in tests at the school without having to spend out for expensive uh vodka when we were doing infusion work. So it definitely does strip flavors out and we used to put uh bourbon through it to see what would happen and it strips not all of the color but some of the color and in fact it's filtration that strips the color out of aged rums when they turn them back to white again. Really? Yeah.
Yeah. What do they taste like the bourbons and rums? They just uh they just kills them a little bit you know what I mean it just deadens them up you know uh I mean I was never I mean in vodka like taking away that that hospital swab uh nose is a is a good thing but in most other situations um you know, it's not necessarily not necessarily the best. Uh okay. Uh Marty with Eagle Rock writes in.
Uh this isn't to elicit Nastasha's vegan face. Don't worry about it, she's in airplane now anyway. Uh I've recently made the decision to keep vegetarian at home, and I'm trying to create a mix that will serve as a base for things like patties and meatballs. I like the flavor and moisture level of the garbanzo, lentil, onion, crimini, dried porcini, roast eggplant, pearl barley mix. Jesus, that's quite a mix.
It's a mouthful. That's a mouthful. I can't believe I got that out in one breath. It's only because I did it later in the show when I've caught my breath. Yeah.
Uh but it lacks the elastic resistance of denatured meat. I thought soy flour might help, but nope. I would also like to come up with a vegan meatball that doesn't dissolve in marinara. Any thoughts, Marty and Eagle Rock. Okay, here's what I would do.
Um in order to get like an elastic situation, you're gonna need a gel that's gonna bind together. I know you tried soy protein uh you know, powder, but what you might not have tried is getting proteins. For instance, if you want to go vegan, you can't use casein, but you could use soy. Uh you know, you could go to something, you know, like a tempeh or one of those things that everyone uses or texturized vegetable protein, but you might be able to get some soy and then add some transglutaminase to it. And um transglutaminase works on soy protein to firm up things like tofu, and so you might be able to get bonding between soy protein in a patty.
And uh you so if you want to go vegan, you have to get uh a transglutaminase that doesn't have any casein added to it or gelatin. And so you're gonna have to use uh transglutaminase activa, uh which is made via Ginamoto T I. The TI is the enzyme only with maltodextrin and doesn't have any casein and doesn't have any um uh gelatin. It's it's vegan product. Uh and that one, if you mix it in a slurry with uh with uh soy protein, um sh the soy protein, once it's solubilized, should bond to itself over the course of about four hours.
So you would set you would make the patties, you would uh set them in the fridge for four to four hours overnight is even better, and they should firm up a lot more and then not break apart when you cook them. Right? That seems like a good idea to me. Seems like it would work. Uh and you know, then you don't have to use any sort of awful uh, you know, fake meat crap, which you know, most of those things are horrible.
Um Jack, how much more time do I have? I hate to do this to you, but it's time. Oh man. I didn't get to answer all the questions. A recurring theme on the show, I'd say.
All right, listen. E.T. from Reed College. Name something interesting about Reed College. Oh man, I don't know.
You you ready for this? Yeah. Yeah, it's important. I heard someone Portland. They have the world's only nuclear reactor run entirely by undergraduates.
Oh my god. Wow. Yeah, it's like simultaneously, I'm like, oh my god, I wish I went there. That's awesome. And then I'm like, holy crap, they have a nuclear reactor run by undergraduates.
I know it's crazy, right? I mean, like, you know, Portland, like the more you learn about Portland, the cooler it is, except for they don't people only bike, they don't walk. This is what I like about New York City. It's a walking city. I can see people.
I bike, but I also like to walk around. Anyway, E.T. answered from uh an alumna alumnus of Reed, answered the question we had weeks ago on Orchada. Uh next week I'll read E.T.'s answer. Uh we'll talk about eels and tobacco and Seiji Yamamoto and how he uses a compressed air gun to do ikajime on eels, probably after my Ikajima post goes up uh next week on the blog.
Uh, a couple other questions I didn't get to. Well you we didn't get to you, but you we haven't forgotten, you will get 'em next week. This has been cooking Issues. 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.
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