Broadcasting live from Roberta's in Bushwick, Brooklyn. You're listening to Heritage Radio Network.com. Today's show has been brought to you by our good friends at TechServe. Visit TechServe.com for more information. Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues.
This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live in the back of Roberta's Pizzeria on the Heritage Radio Network every Tuesday, roughly 12 to 1245. Joined again this week by Nastasha the Hammer Lopez. Nice. Copyright issues. We're moving towards using uh Yeah, we have no issues.
We just decided to do this. Well, I you know I just want everyone to know that Jack is working on uh the some of the music you're listening to while you're waiting for me to show up. Right? Is that true? You're writing the music?
Oh yeah, that's always been mine, yeah. Yeah, nice. Shout out to Jack. Thanks. Uh but uh I also I brought you know, Jack told me to bring in some of my college bands.
We might hear some of that later, some of my college band stuff since there's no copyright issues with that. And uh Jack, I know they're not a sponsor, but can we listen to the Hearst Ranch grass fed beef song later on? You might have to wait until they sponsor, but oh come on, really? They'll be back soon. We've got a TechServe commercial for you today.
Really? But Hearst Ranch grass fed beef is like the best song. It's my fa I like sing that jam as I'm walking around the streets. I'll tell Brian that Brian Kenny. It's good stuff, right?
Yeah, it's awesome. You should have seen the face Nastasia made when she uh when I told her we'd be playing your band today. Oh, is it was it worse than vegan or similar to uh on par. On par with vegan face? No.
Yeah. Uh so uh another thing, uh, last week when I started the show, I was so out of breath that uh you could literally hear me gasping for air during the first segment. This time I'm a little more rested because uh I almost died on the bike ride over, which is part of the reason I was a little later than uh even normally. Uh for those of you that uh well, everyone who listens to the show knows that Nastasha hates hipsters more than almost anything else on earth besides good weather. And um, but you you might not know that Nastash and I both ride fixed gear bicycles.
Now, for those of you that uh you know are gonna cry foul that all that we're actually secret hipsters, we both ride folding fixed gear bicycles, which are about the least hip bicycles on earth. But uh today when I was demon pedaling down the uh down slope on the uh on the Williamsburg Bridge, I threw my chain. And uh for those of you a fixed gear bicycle, throwing a chain is uh is uh can be really dangerous because it can lock your back wheel and send you flying off onto the onto the thing. Anyway, luckily I didn't die and I didn't make it here uh on time. So uh well, no, I mean late, but you know, not dead.
I made it not dead. Yeah. Right? Good. Anyway, call your questions to 7184972128.
That's 718497 2128. I want to start with I had two separate comments uh in the questions today uh about a new circulator that's on Kickstarter called uh what's it called there styles? Namico? Yeah. Namico?
Yeah. Did you know who made Namico? Uh Weep. Why didn't you mention this to me? Why you knew this and you never mentioned it to me?
You knew he was making the circulator? I read it this morning. Anyway, so I went on the I go on the thing and someone's like, hey, look at this circulator. And I and I look at it, and it's like one of the creators is is BAM. First of all, we pop.
If you're out there, we pop. Uh we pop, we pop slash bam soupypot, uh, is is one of our former interns, worked with us at the FCI. We love Weepop. Weepop's good business. So uh Weepop, whose name is Weepop, which is the greatest name on all time of all times, decides that he needs a nickname and goes by BAM, which is not even partially as cool as Weepop.
True or false. Right. Yeah. Anyway, so uh Wee Pop is out there making a circulator, and two separate people, two separate non-Weepop people, have uh written to see what I think about it. And you go, it's look Namico, you can look for it on Kickstarter.
He they need an extra, I think $40,000 in the next how many? Like 14 days or something like that. Yeah. Anyway, they need another uh of like $50,000. They got $160,000 or so out of $200,000 that they need uh to get their Kickstarter money.
Uh but he's designed this uh this immersion circulator that looks a little bit like a shower head, it looks kind of like a wee pop design, right? Uh it's got one knob. Uh what is it do you can you find out what the price is supposed to be? Okay. Yeah, find out what the price is supposed to be.
Uh my one comment on it uh as opposed to the ones that I use. Uh it's you know, it's a little bit less powerful, it's 750 watts instead of a thousand, but it's made for uh home people, and good luck to good luck to Weepop, right? Yeah, yeah. Good luck. I mean, I love myself some weepop, you know.
Uh I wish that instead of coming out with a circulator, he would make some of the food products I want him to make, like weepop sickles, we pop corn. You know, it right? I mean, wouldn't that be great? You wouldn't want that? I like that he's doing this.
Oh yeah, he well, can't he do both? Can't he have weepop corn? It's pretty amazing that he came up with this so quickly. Well, he just rapid products does it doesn't, I don't think they it's not in production yet. Still.
Yeah, it's like a it's like a ra rapid, it's a you know he has I think rapid prototyping work on it. And we pop, aside from going to school for culinary, uh went to school uh as an industrial designer, currently living in Bangkok, and I thought doing tr like training, like stock trading. Yeah. Last time we spoke to him, he was doing stock training. Weepop.
Man of man of many pops, weepop. Love weepop. Okay. Uh so that's all I'm gonna say about Namiko right now, right? That's both questions I answered.
Mm-hmm. Yeah, okay. Uh okay. I suppose this is really a food issue rather than a cooking issue. Uh but I was curious to hear your opinion on the prospective large soda ban in New York.
Uh it seems Dave is a bit of a bubble addict, and while I know this might be more of a political issue, I figure it couldn't hurt to ask Pat. Uh well listen, Pat, uh and anyone else out there, you are welcome to ask us uh food and wheat uh issues as opposed to cooking issues, and uh we have no problem uh making pronouncements or uh getting political, right? Mm-hmm. I think it's uh oh, and by the way, what we're talking about here is uh Bloomberg has proposed a ban on selling sodas, sugarful sodas, uh larger than sixteen ounces. So in New York City, uh 20 ounce soda bottles would be illegal or to sell, uh sugarful ones, you could buy sugarless ones.
Uh and uh like big gulp well, heck no, big gulps I think are are still legal. But there's some sort of weird thing, like certain venues can sell it, like convenience anyway, there's there's all these kind of weird things. But restaurants wouldn't be able to sell sodas larger than uh sixteen ounce. And the the theory behind it is that uh i i you know their feeling is is that sodas are empty calories, a term which I detest. I detest the word empty calorie almost as much as I detest the word junk food.
Uh and uh because I think it's stupid, there's no there's no foods that are inherently evil. There are bad habits, right? There's no such thing as food that's inherently evil unless you add literal poison to it. Or somehow you're destroying the earth actively by eating it, you know, like on purpose. Like, you know, I don't know, or like, you know, that you're told that eating this piece of food will cause someone else to suffer in another country on purpose.
I mean, like there's no literally very few literally junk bad foods, just bad habits. Anyway, so rather than trying to change people's habits, right, rather than through education and habit changing, uh they want to stop New York City uh residents from consuming calories in the form of soda by literally limiting what can be sold. Think it's dumb. Uh what do you think, Nasasha? Have you thought about it at all?
No. What do you think? Wait, to be clear though, it's this is sugar sodas, not just carbonation, right? Yeah, but they're not gonna in other words I can go correct. I mean it's not anti-carbonation.
It's it's basically trying to make a stab against the rise in diabetes here here and across the country. What about noncarbonated sugary drinks? Uh I I'm not sure. I know that juices are exempt which are extremely high in calories. I know that like you know your 8,000 quart milk uh beverage from Starbucks is exempt.
You know, that has like 5000 pumps of syrup in it and you know has a billion and a half calories that that they call a coffee but isn't it actually a jug of milk. Like that one is is exempt. And people are fat and people do have diabetes, you know what I mean? On the other hand, uh I think this is an incredibly poor way about uh you know of tr of trying to fix it. It's it's it's on the order of, you know, I I don't know, i i it you know how they say you people are just treating symptoms rather than causes?
There're just treating uh like a simple symptom rather than rather than uh you know any sort of the of the root root causes. The problem is is that uh people's dietary habits in general are bad. And I think the reason why our dietary habits in general are bad is because we have this demented idea about food anyway, that there's these things such things as good foods, you know, or like like junk food uh versus like food that's really good for you, and then people all of you know, people feel that, well, I'm not eating healthy anyway, so I'm gonna go completely ape shit, and then they drink like eighty-five quarts of uh of soda and go and go horrible instead of just having everyone try to meet in the middle, a sensible diet. You know, like you don't try to try to be some you know ascetic vegan monk who only eats like you know half of a vegetable once every three days and consider that healthy, which I don't find that healthy, right? Or versus someone who pounds 85 Big Macs a day.
I don't consider that healthy either. You know what I mean? Like neither of those is healthy. Healthy is meeting in the middle, and I think uh, you know, the way to get us to start thinking that way isn't to put a ban on something, i.e. to make it more when you put a ban on something like that, you're basically making it more enticing to people.
You're saying, oh, you can't have this, it's forbidden, so it must be good and fun and awesome. You know what I mean? I think the way to do it is to change the education, uh change the way we think about food in general, stop thinking about uh the you know what you know foods as being inherently healthy and unhealthealthy, think of habits as being healthy or unhealthy. That's my my feeling on it. I think this is an incredibly uh poor way to go about legislating health.
I think we shouldn't be legislating dietary habits. I think it's not the government's business in general to be le legislating my dietary habits. Um that's just my feeling. You have any thoughts now that you've heard me spew about it? I agree with you.
What do you think, Jack? Uh I think it's I think any effort is better than no effort, but I don't think it's gonna go through anyway, so it doesn't really matter. Yeah, it doesn't really matter. But in other words, like I mean, like an effort would be to try and help somebody this like it's also the there's these undercurrents, it's like really they're not aiming they're not aiming this legislation at you know the all the the thin uh rich uh um people who go to the gym eight times a day who live in the wealthier parts of New York. Let's be honest about it.
That's not who they're facing at, right? Instead, they're trying yet another social legislation against uh poorer people uh who you know don't have that much money uh and they're basically assuming that these people the only way we can help them is through legislation, because clearly, you know, we're we're not reaching them any other way. I d I in in general I detest any sort of social legislation uh directed at particular socioeconomic groups because it smacks to me of all the stuff that when we hear about it when it was legislated in the 1800s and the 1900s, we're like, damn that was racist and crappy. Do you know what I'm saying? And now we look at it now, it's like, well, we're just trying to help them be more healthy, right?
In fifty years, won't we not look back at it and say, damn, another, you know, another basic uh racist uh you know socioeconomic put down? You don't think so? But at least it got the conversation started, did it not? What? We're all talking about soda and portion size now.
Well we're but you know the th but look, portion size has been addressed by people like Marion Nessel for uh a long time. The question isn't I mean, portion sizes have definitely gone up. The question is, why does the average uh lower middle class uh person in another country who still has the means to buy an absurd amount of soda if they wanted to, right? Why is it that those people aren't buying huge sodas? Why is it that those people aren't getting fat?
And why is it that our people are, right? And it's it's a mental issue. It has you know it like it's like, oh, the portion sizes got bigger as though it was an elephant that suddenly started growing when in fact people are ordering the larger portion sizes. Do you know what I'm saying? It's like the So to try and to try and staunch the tide by saying, Well, no, it's it's the soda that's it's it's the soda that's to blame.
It's not the soda that's to blame. It's the fact that we're ordering larger sodas to blame. Burger King clearly is making money by selling larger sodas, and McDonald's clear is clearly making money by selling larger sodas, right? Which means that uh the the way that we purchase things is demented. No?
Well, one one last thing. I had to go to Long Island to see some friends, and it was really late, and the only thing open was Burger King. I hadn't had it in a long time, right? So I I pick a value meal and they say, Do you want a medium or large? So I'm like, you know, the medium.
And that medium drink was enormous. I couldn't even imagine what the large would be. Large is large. Right. You know what I mean though?
Like to to sell a you could swim in the large. Yeah, to sell a 32-ounce medium drink is just kind of ridiculous. They should at least regulate that. Well, I don't mean look, you don't have to drink the whole damn. Do you really feel only I I'm the only person I know who feels obliged to finish everything I order, right?
I mean, you're not obliged to pound, and first of all, unless you're with Nastasha, that 32 ounce cup has about 22 ounces of ice in it. You know what I mean? That's very true. Do you order your drinks without ice? Nice.
She says it's because she doesn't like the feeling of ice against her teeth. It's really because she's a psycho and wants every nickel's worth. I know her. She's cheap, just like I am. I really don't like ice in it.
But you're using a freaking straw on it anyway. What does it matter if there's ice in it? There's a collar. Okay, call listen, by the way, come beat me down on this, please. Please be beep beat the hell out of me on this.
Call her, you're on the air. Hi, uh, yeah, uh, this is uh James Ray. Uh uh love the show. Uh listen to it every week. Um the uh I have a question.
I have a vacuum reduction rig that I set up. Um I thought it would be less fussy or persnickety than a uh rotovap system. Probably is rotovaps are pretty persuasive. Um it's uh I mean basically I had to add a twenty gallon water reservoir to it to keep the water cool. Um whenever I get, you know, whenever I try to do something that's a little jammy, whenever it gets to a point where it could kind of get where I want it, it starts bumping, even though I've got the pellet in there that's spinning.
Um so do you have any advice that I could use in kind of reining this in? Is there a kind of a best practice that I'm missing out on here? All right, here's here's the here's the deal. One, uh the the the things that you've noted are known known actual things that some of them are gonna be very hard to get around. Um it takes if you if you just look at the numbers, right?
Of the the heat of fusion, which is uh what what it takes uh for you to um when you're melting ice, right? When you're melting ice for cooling, you get the heat of fusion per gram back. The heat of v heat of vaporization is a much higher number. Uh so to recondense uh water that you've boiled off, it takes uh an intensely larger amount of energy than it does to melt the ice. I think it's on the order, it's on the order of six times.
I forget the exact numbers, but it takes about six kilos of ice, uh, assuming per like perfect efficiency to uh condense one liter of water. Well, actually I've been able to I've got kind of something like a wart filler in there and I've got it hooked up to another uh pump that is pumping water through my uh my aspirator. So I've got and I've got a high end I've got the really kick uh a butt aspirator. Right. Um so it but it's but it's still kind of annoying like the whole thing, like I said, very fussy.
Like I mean I get uh every once in a while I get what I want out of it, but I kind of have to sit there and fiddle with it. Um how much how much ice do you have stirrer on it that I got before that was digital which was a huge mistake. Um but yeah so I yeah. Well you're you're chilling your aspirator water though, right? Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, I mean like 'cause I I set up a rig like that with a bunch of aspirators and a flowjet pump, which I might have talked about at one point like, you know, early on in the shit that I got I stole off of a um a meth lab website. You know, so it's not kind of as nice as the built together aspirators, but it kind of functions the same thing. And I tore through ice in that thing with the pumps, pour through it. Um bumping, um remember you're gonna like the the magnetic stir rod will beat down bubbles after they happen, but the bumping is happening because there aren't any bubbles in it. And all and you superheat it and then all of a sudden a large bubble forms and creates a bump.
So it's it'll it'll stop frothing like the the the spinning thing will s uh stop frothing on your initial boil out, or it'll help. But it won't help with bumping. What you need to do to help with bumping is to install a very, very fine and you're gonna as you get more and more of syrup, you're gonna need this a very, very, very, very fine tube down into the product with a needle valve and let the minutest amount of air in to initiate bubbles in the product as you're making it. And it's the tiniest, tiniest bleed of air. Uh and uh it'll raise your temperature a little bit because you won't be able to suck as good of a vacuum as you would otherwise.
Uh and but it's gonna radically it'll strip some flavor out of it, but you've already really reduced it quite a bit anyway, so a lot of the volatiles are gone. But it's the only way to really prevent uh massive amounts of bumping. In fact, when you're doing um hardcore reductions with of things like port wine, uh Madeira in a roto vap uh or orange juice or apple juice or whatever, when you get down to the last stage in a roto vap, you're constantly needing to bleed small uh like hits of air into the system to get it to boil again properly instead of like the instead of the distillation dying out and then and then bumping. So you don't even need to continuously let air in. If you just have like a little thing you can go and let a small amount of air in and it'll initiate some violent but non-bumping boiling uh after that happens, and then once it settles down again, give it a small punch of air again, you'll initiate violent but non-bumping boiling, and that's really the only effective way to get that last little bit of water out.
Cool. Okay, thanks a lot. Hey, no problem. Uh tell us how it works. All right, I will.
Cool, thanks. Um, well, I guess I spewed enough about the uh uh about the this the soda ban uh whatnot. We could talk more about it later. I look I encourage anyone to call and beat our faces in for this. But uh, you know, do it, do it.
Anyway, let's go to break. Hey Seltzer, been in my fridge so long. Seems that partial pressures made you taste all wrong. Hey, seltzer. Think I'll add a lemon.
Make you taste much better. Why don't you ID that track for us, dude? That is uh that is that is seltzer. Uh track that uh one of my college bands, Bluto did. I'm playing uh bass.
That was nineteen ninety, I think, nineteen ninety or nineteen ninety-one. So way back in the day when uh, you know, I was playing bass on a daily thing. But the concept of this is that you had a bottle of seltzer in your fridge, and you you drank portion of it, and then you let it sit there and it turned to crap, and and then you it tastes horrible like semi-flat seltzer tastes horrible, and you think you're gonna make it taste better by adding lemon. It's like who am I fooling? Who am I fooling?
This is horrible stuff. Hey, seltzer. Hey, seltzer. So clear and so cool. Now you taste worse than water.
Anyway, that's how the that's how the song goes. We could play that more eventually, right? Not today, but all the time. Yeah. Yeah.
It's, you know, it contains no curses, unlike some of my other songs. Uh anywho. So uh we're gonna actually Nastash, we're gonna have to have another break later so we can play our TechServe song. Give me some TechSurf song, Jack. Just say Texur Song.
Tech Surf song. Yeah, tech. Is that yours or someone else? Not a song. It's actually a commercial me and Joe did.
It's uh it's great. Yeah, it's awesome. You'll see. I'm looking forward to it. Uh hi all, longtime listener, love the show.
Uh experimenting with making my own sausages and would now like to know how much fat to add uh to a mixture and what type. First, I do not know how much fat is in the cut of meat I'm working with. I currently use beef chuck, uh, but would like uh a way of testing any piece of meat. And second, how much fat should there be? I realize it's a taste issue, but uh how much would you use?
And lastly, for religious reasons, I won't use pork. What type of fat is best to use to increase the total fat content? Thanks a lot, Justin in Israel. All right. Well, uh, it is a matter of taste, but there's a lot more fat in sausage than you think.
You want anywhere between uh I think 30% fat total content to one third fat total content, and sometimes even uh more, right? But that's the range you want to hit, about one third fat. But you hit the nail on the head, uh Justin, when you said it's very difficult to know how much uh fat is in um a product. Now, I consulted my uh the professional charcuterie series by uh Marcel Cottensaw et al. Which is this lunatic old French series with like these three lunatic old French dudes with the tall like rooster chicken head hats on, like on the front, like you know, surrounded by plates and plates of meat with that weird half French smile.
You know what I'm talking about? That Frenchy half smile thing? Anyway, uh, and uh, you know, i They mainly are using uh pork, obviously, but uh they kind of reinforce what what I was saying, which is you want about one-third uh fat in the mixture. Now, when you're making sausages, the important thing is the fat should be uh hard, relatively hard, because you don't want it to render into nothingness as the sausage is cooking. That's why when you are using pork, if you're gonna supplement the fat that you're using, you typically supplement with um back fat, because back fat is hard, it grinds nicely, it doesn't have like a lot of sinews, and you can get it in kind of big chunks.
So that's kind of the sinequan non of sausage fats. In beef, um, I would probably for added beef fat, I would probably use um you know the like like the cap of fat that's trimmed off of the outside of uh a rib, standing rib, you know I'm talking about. Like I would use something like that that's pretty hard, uh, that's gonna withstand kind of uh you know chopping and cooking, and that also tastes good. Uh some people I I think use kind of suet, which is the kidney fat, but it's kind of weird and dry, and it renders actually quite well, so I wouldn't use something like that. I think I would stick to the type of fat that you would find uh on on the cap of let's say a rib roast or something similar.
Um, uh I looked up uh I found on the on the interwebs uh that uh pork shoulders are approximately uh 75 to 25, and I think chuck roast, uh which is I think what you said you were using, I can't remember, roughly similar. So I would supplement with a little bit of fat. If you're using like a really fatty kind of chuck, I would substitute a little fat. But the classic, you know, Mid East fat to use, uh, especially in uh you know, kind of Muslim applications, would be lamb. And in fact, they raise in the Middle East, which I would love to have access to, have never tasted it, special fatty lambs that have fat that is used to make delicious sausages and cured meats.
In fact, they have a fatty lamb with a fatty lamb tail, where they cure just this extremely fat tail and eat it almost like you would eat, I think like a lardo, but I've never had it. So I I can't really uh say anything about it. But I I would definitely um I would subs I would add some fat to what you're using. Let me see what you what you said you were using again. Yeah, chuck.
So if you're getting really fatty chuck that's untrimmed, I mean I don't really know of a test to test how much fat is in the meat proper. I mean, I guess it's theoretic theoretically you could weigh it and then do a volume situation, figure out the density. But the best thing to do is just look on the interwebs and try and find what the fat content of that cut is. It's really also going to depend on the specific marbling content of the meat. Uh so it's difficult.
If anyone has a test, or I'm gonna I'll try and look maybe during the week if I have time to figure out a good test and talk about uh next time. But I would substitute in a good hard fat. If you have a nice fatty piece of chuck, I would assume it's about 25% fat, and you're gonna want to add more to get it up to that one third number, right? Uh or use lamb or duck fat, I think works uh as well. I've made sausages with duck fat because duck fat can be pretty hard sometimes if you get the the good part.
What do you think, Stuff? It's a good answer. Alright, Justin, good luck with that, and give us a give us a holler back. Uh okay. Mike writes in greetings from Taiwan.
Love the show. Whenever I download a new episode, it's like an old friend coming to visit. Thanks for all your hard work. That's nice, right? Uh here's my question.
I am a spice freak. I have traveled a bit through Malaysia and Sri Lanka, lucky. Uh, and always head to the spice markets to see what's available. The quality and variety are incredible. I inevitably fill half of my suitcase with spices, and then I'm left wondering how to best keep them in my Taiwanese apartment.
Should I keep them chilled in the freezer or refrigerator, or will condensation affect the spices much like it does coffee? I already know that buying whole and grinding to order will help maintain quality and increase the longevity of product, but would welcome any other advice. Okay, look. Like everything else in the world, everything depends. Things like leaves.
Spices that are leaves, fresh leaves, right? You can freeze them, but the problem is is that when you freeze them and thaw them, they're usually damaged by the thaw procedure, and then enzymes in leaves break them and turn brown. This is why uh like tender leaf herbs are very not very good when they're frozen. So those typically, even though they're not the same as fresh, are gonna be best kind of lightly dried. Once they're lightly dried, the enzymes aren't gonna work anymore.
Then you can freeze them. Any case, uh the problem with coffee, coffee is very like a dry, dry good that's gonna be ruined, especially due to the kind of the brewing process and what goes on by water and condensation. So you definitely don't want to have coffee go in and out of the freezer because condensation will form. If you are gonna do this on an extended basis, purchase a vacuum machine, and even a home vacuum machine is gonna be good for this kind of thing. Vacuum the products down so there's not a lot of external moisture in it or oxygen, and then when you freeze it, you're gonna have less damage uh due to freeze sauce cycles in your freezer.
The main problem with uh keeping things in the freezer in terms of quality is freeze thaw, freeze thaw, freeze stuff, freeze thaw, right? Uh and so I would say that long-term storage, I mean, I have to buy a lot of my leaf spices like curry leaf and things like that, frozen here in New York because that's the only way they come in. Or key for lime leaves. Uh I buy them frozen because that's the only way I can get them. Uh, and you too can store your your products that way.
If you need to, I would recommend vacuum packing and getting all of the um air out. Even if you're going to store them on a shelf. Vacuum packing once, even though that vacuum pack is going to get rid of a little bit of the aroma, is going to be a good long-term storage uh procedure because you're not going to have uh any spices that might be damaged by oxidation or anything like that, uh, which is going to keep them more intact. Fridge is generally not. Meh, yeah, fridge.
Meh. What do you think, stuff? Yeah, bridge. Because like stuff can grow in the fridge. If there's if there's water in it, I wouldn't store it in the fridge.
If there's not what, I mean, you know, it's like meh, you know? Yeah. No? Anyway. I hope that helps, Mike.
Let us know, uh, let us know what you got there. And you know, and I generally don't like the home uh uh vacuum machines, but I think for that kind of a thing, it's it's probably adequate. This is my feeling. Uh someone call me and tell me I'm an idiot. Uh you know, I usually am, right?
Uh Michael Natkin from Herbavora's uh wrote in and said, uh I've got a question for you guys about making cultured butter. At uhterra in New York City, Matt Lightner served a washed rind cheese cultured butter. I figured out how to make it at home. It's easy enough. I take one pint, 467 grams of good organic cream, 25 grams of a rind from a funky cheese.
I used Calgary Creamery Red Hawk. Fancy, expensive. Uh mix, let's stand room temp till it thickens and the cream tastes funky. Took about a level uh 14 hours for me. Refrigerate overnight.
Uh you actually, and it's important to refrigerate overnight. Uh when you're churning cultured butter, if it's warm, it just it's just a freaking nightmare getting making butter out of it, uh, just so you guys know. Churn, drain, knead, rinse, voila. Ah, I would not I would not rinse it. I don't know why you're uh I love the taste of the whey in uh you know the buttermilk that's in uh butter.
So like when I'm making my butter, I usually under, I usually under knead it, and I usually don't rinse it at all. I'll knead it in the thing and then squeeze out just enough to keep it, and I love the taste of it. It will not keep as long. Uh and it's not good for cooking at that point because it's not good for cooking because it's got more water content in it, but as a something you're gonna spread on bread, I love it with a little bit of the extra buttermilk left in. So I wouldn't over knead it and I wouldn't rinse it.
This is my feeling. But that's not his question. His question is, how do I know this is safe? I'm eating it and it tastes great and it seems fine to me, but I'm a little leery about serving it to other folks since I don't really have the knowledge to say that leaving the cream out for 14 hours is okay. Of course, people do it with making creme fresh as well, but is it safe?
Uh P.S. I took uh Dave's advice on hitting up Corinne, our knife friends, you know, Salari San for a carbon steel knife and the DMT two-sided diamond sharpening stone. Took a chance on the 70-30 bevel, and I'm not finding it too hard to sharpen accurately, though greed is more challenging than a traditional Western or a traditional Japanese knife. I'm loving both the knife and the stone, and it's easier to have a razor sharp edge every day with this setup. Well, thanks.
That's very nice. Um okay, so the wash rind cheeses uh typically the ones I looked up uh use a bacteria called brevi bacterium linens. Uh so if that's gonna culture it, if that's gonna be what's culturing the uh the buttermilk, right? Typically that's not what you would have uh to culture cream. You would use a lactobacillus would be in there to culture cream.
Uh hopefully you're also getting a lactobacillus in there. I looked up uh, you know, I looked up the kind of the characteristics of wash wine cheese rind cheeses and the Brevi Bacterium linens is typically has a lower acid, i.e. a higher pH than normally cheeses would uh of that of that type uh without that bacteria. So you're talking about a higher pH uh situation. In cultured buttermilk, or in cultured uh cream rather, that you're gonna turn into butter, uh, the safety val the safety of it um is is because of the acidity that's being caused by the uh lactic acid bacteria as it cultures.
Um I looked up some studies in general, and uh what you want uh to make sure that nothing is gonna be bad is that uh you want the pH to go low lower than four point six uh within uh about six hours, which is the limit for uh toxins from um uh staff stuff to start growing in it. Um I wasn't able to find whether or not uh the Bravi Bacterium Linens has its own sort of way of killing uh things like staph or listeria or or or uh E. coli or things things of this nature. I mean I wouldn't freak out over it. You know what I mean?
Like I wouldn't flip my lid over it. I'm I'm I'm gonna try to McGee is re Harold McGee has researched all this stuff. I need to talk to him anyway to see whether or not we're gonna go taste mangoes again this year. Uh but I'm gonna try to remember to hit him up on that because it's it's very uh it's very interesting uh question. Uh anyway, so apparently I don't I don't know that much about it.
Right? Sorry about that. Uh okay. Uh Paul Peterson writes in and uh says, Do I have any thoughts on patented cuts of meat? And he's talking patented cuts of meat, and he's talking about the Vegas strip steak.
So why don't we take a break and we'll come back and talk about the Vegas strip steak. 7184972128. That's 7184972128. Man, I need a new computer. I guess I'm gonna have to go to the Apple store.
What? Don't go to the Apple store, go to TechServe. What's TechServe? I thought Apple Store was the only choice. No, you're crazy.
TechServe is so much better than the Apple store. They're New York's original and still the best Apple computer, iPod, and iPhone store and repair shop. Plus, the store is really cool. You gotta go check it out. They're located at 119 West 23rd Street.
Well, that settles it. I'm I'm headed to TechServe. TechServe is a proud sponsor of Heritage Radio Network.org. For more information, visit TechServe.com. That's T E K S E R V E dot com.
What? Go to TechServe. I love that. Give me some what? What?
There you go. There you go. Nice. Nice. Strong.
Strong. Okay. Uh we're remiss. Uh acephalopod on Twitter asked this about eight million times and is getting irritated with us for recommendations in Tokyo. Now listen.
Uh the sad truth is that Nastasha and I didn't get to eat out as much. Who you really want to talk to is Mark Ladner because he spent every day eating out. Now, those of you that read the blog, um by the way, there'll be a new blog post up as soon as this is over. I'm just waiting for the YouTube video to load up on Ikajime. And I know I said I wasn't gonna write super long posts anymore, but it's a long freaking post on Ikajime.
I just couldn't freaking help myself. Anyway, I couldn't help it. So it's coming up as soon as uh maybe during lunch I can get it up. Anyway, uh so those of you that read the blog know that uh that Nastasha and Mark Ladner and I went to Jiro's uh sushi and it was good, but I wouldn't spend 350 on it. What about you, Stas?
Yeah. Yeah. Mark, on the other hand, the next day went to Sushi Sawada and said it was the best sushi he's ever had in his whole freaking life. True or false. It's because I wasn't there.
Well, there's that. That means uh so yes, so it was even better because you weren't there, but he said that regardless of the company that it was the best sushi he'd ever had, right? Right. Right. Um what did you think of the sushi place at the at the Sakiki Market, the Iwashi place?
I thought it was good. I thought it was really good. It's a good place, also fairly well known. That you could see that on our blog actually, and there's a couple comments on the on the cooking issues uh saying where that restaurant is. This is sad, and Mark agreed with me too, and normally I like it's hard.
I don't want to recommend because they're our friends and everything, but the the Japanese, traditional Japanese restaurant, the Park Hyatt, I thought was pretty good. I ate there twice. Yeah. I thought it was really good. And Mark Ladner from Del Posto loved it, right?
And and you don't normally think of like, you know, Park Hyatt having like a really good, especially Japanese, and it was really good. I thought it was really good, what's the name of it? Koko way or something like that? Uh no, I don't remember. Look it up.
We'll see if we can look it up in time. Um, you know, I highly recommend going to Sakiji in general uh and just like try checking out all the stalls around it and uh just getting little bites bites to eat, buying fruit if you have the money, if you have the freaking money to buy fruit at Sakiji. Um what else did we eat while we were there that was really I mean go go to go to the chef's district street if you're a cook. Right. What else?
Anything? Oh, we went to Muranta San's Kaiseki restaurant, the Tokyo version of it, and I spoke to Dave Chang about it. He's like, ah, crap on the Tokyo version, he doesn't give a crap about Tokyo, you have to go to the one in Kyoto. But the presentation was great in the one in in Tokyo, but you know, I don't know. Anyway, those are my thoughts.
Sorry I'm so late in giving you that information. Okay. Uh Nastasha Dave and Jack, I have an odd question. While I was calibrating my circulator, I instinctively changed it to Celsius. Then I thought about it more.
Generally, recipes are metric because they're easier to scale, better to control, and more accurate, right? But from zero to a hundred uh degrees C, right, to the tenth, because most circulators are accurate to the tenth, there would be one thousand gradations. And from 32.0 degrees Fahrenheit to 212 degrees Fahrenheit, there would be 1800 gradations, meaning a higher degree of accuracy. I switched it regardless because most of the info out there is in Celsius slash metric, but for some reason, it seems that Imperial measurement might be better in this instance. Am I crazy?
Is it so little of a difference? It is easier to keep it metric because everything else is in the kitchen. By the way, uh the homemade circulator I have is running great. Thanks for the great podcast. And then you cut off who wrote it.
I don't have who wrote it. Anyway, we'll get it. Uh so here's the thing. No, you are not crazy. The Fahrenheit, and I've said this a long time, is a uh like it's uh it's a finer gradation.
This is why when I'm talking about the temperature outside, I always talk in Fahrenheit because you know, like, oh, it's 20 degrees out, it's it's great. What? It doesn't make any sense. Like Celsius degrees don't make any sense to me for the climate. Like I like a climate where like, you know, like zero is really, really, really, really cold, and like a hundred is really, really hot, and a hundred and twenty is really, really hot, and minus twenty is really, really, really, really cold, but all those things happen.
That's like a wide range. For climate, I use Fahrenheit. For deep frying, I use Fahrenheit. For baking, I use Fahrenheit, right? Because 375, it's beaten into my head like like nobody's business.
You know what I mean? But for sous-view work, I use Celsius. So I myself am of two minds. The Celsius scaling in temperature doesn't make a difference. And there's no reason why freezing is better thought of as zero versus thirty-two.
And there's no reason that boiling is better being thought of uh as a hundred versus two hundred and twelve. There's simply no reason. There's no better or worse with the scales, and uh there are more gradations without using tenths uh when you're talking about degrees in Fahrenheit. So uh, you know, it's really, you know, it's it's your choice, and I use them both. That there unlike uh decimal systems for scaling, there is no advantage to a Celsius, there's no inherent advantage to a Celsius degree, except in keeping it consistent, and if you're doing conversions back and forth using uh formula, for instance, if you're doing like ideal gas law computations or things like this, it's helpful to use Celsius because it scales to Kelvin, and then Kelvin can be used in ideal gas laws and stuff.
But if you're not doing that kind of stuff, it really doesn't make uh uh uh you know an iota of difference, right? That's chip. Hey Chip, that's my thoughts. Um before we leave, because Jack's gonna make us leave uh very soon, uh, giving a shout out because a listener wrote in uh Sarah Valentine from Brooklyn, but not from Bushwick. So probably not maybe not a hipster, right?
Hopefully. Anyway, she wrote in saying that uh wow, nuts. Well, there's also the Williamsburg Hipster. What's worse, a Bushwick hipster or a Williamsburg hipster? Williamsburg.
Whoa! Where do you live, Jack? Uh whatever. Okay. Uh so um Sarah Valentine writes in, friends with our uh, you know, our longtime listener buddy Ken Ingber.
And uh Ken has gotten her and her husband into sous vide cooking. They bought the uh and low temperature cooking, bought the under pressure, except maybe someday they'll buy weepop soupy pots uh uh circulator. But uh here we go. Said wants us to give a shout out, and this is our first actual shout-out like this, right? A shout-out for Ken Ingber's birthday on July 2nd uh before our next show.
So this is Ken Ken Ingber's birthday shout out from Cooking Issues. See you next week. 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.
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