Today's program has been brought to you by White Oak Pastures, a five generation Georgia based beef and poultry farm determined to conduct business in an honorable manner. For more information, visit Whiteoak Pastures.com. Broadcasting live from Bushwick Brooklyn. You're listening to Heritage Radio Network.org. Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues.
This is Dave Arnold. You're a host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from Tales of the Cocktail in New Orleans, Louisiana. Nastasha, as always, is back in Bushwick, Bushwick, Brooklyn, or Bertha's Pizzeria, with Jack and Joe and the rest of the Heritage Radio gang. How you doing, guys? Good.
Good. Nastasia was just telling me how much she likes Brooklyn. Yeah. No, I wasn't. Really?
Were you actually saying that? Or is it more anti-hipster uh Mitrial? That was a lie. That was a lie. I said they're having their block party, and I said I wish I liked Brooklyn so that I could come.
Well, let's uh let's push their block party. When's the block party? It's on Saturday. You know what? We'll play the block party commercial on one of the breaks.
It's it's uh it's a trip. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Block party.
If you like going to Brooklyn and you like block parties, two things I actually detest, because I you're being outside in the daytime in like large groups of people. Like I detest when they shut down no offense to people who love it, but I detest like street fairs in New York when they shut down whole avenues, and then you like walk up and down and it's all the people. You hate that too, Nastasha, right? Yeah, I hate it. My friends love it.
I hate it too. Yeah, but it's it sucks. I mean, who needs it? I mean, I can go to a regular store and buy a pair of socks. Isn't that what they sell there?
Yeah, but the corn the corn I must is pretty good. Like the corn and butter and chili sauce. All the rapes. Yeah. Yeah, a rape of a fine product, bad name.
Yeah, okay. I I'll hand it to you on that, but uh Yeah. The shirts and the sets anywhere bad. Yeah, but uh all the all the people and then like I always need to we always need to move equipment whenever there's one of those things, and then you hit them and then the traffic is insane and all this other. Why doesn't anyone just set up a shop to sell Arapas and corn a real freaking shop and then you would know, hey, I want like a giant thing of corn dipped in butter with some spice sprayed at that thing and I could just go to the shop and get that thing is they have to pay rent at a shop, the you know.
The street fairly there's plenty of things that you have to pay rent for that people go and shop for and purchase. Why not corn? Yeah. How much how much is how much is one of those years of corn at the at the thing? It's a dollar?
Yeah, come on. I mean that doesn't cost them almost nothing, I'm sure. I guess the problem is that it's seasonal because you're only getting corn in the summer and then what do you what do you dip in butter for the rest of the year? I don't know. You know what I mean?
Like they don't want to move to like a c frozen ear of corn situation. Those things are always disappointing. The frozen ear of corn, you ever had that? No. You buy the frozen ear of corn in the supermarket and then you try and cook it and you hope it's gonna be as good as corn is w you know in like uh July, August, but it isn't.
No. No, it don't start. If you haven't started already, don't start now. How's New Orleans? I mean, I literally just you know, got here, checked into the hotel and then uh, you know, d started doing the research uh for the show.
But it's you know, like you'd expect hot as hell. Mm-hmm. Humid. Humid. And the cocktail people have already descended.
So for those of you that don't know, every year, right around now, uh there's Tales of the Cocktail, which for the cocktail industry is the biggest kind of it's the biggest event of the year. You know, alm like a a huge uh chunk of the kind of whatever you want to call them, cocktail intel intelligente, whatever the hell you want to call 'em, from all over the country, in fact the world, fly in here uh to learn from each other and I guess drink a lot. And uh they have it in New Orleans in the middle of the summer because no one else wants to be here, and only the cocktail people are dumb enough to come to New York in the mi uh come to New Orleans rather in the middle of the summer when it's a billion degrees and a hundred percent humidity. But uh the the advantage is hotels are cheap right now. Hotels are cheap here.
It's like a hundred bucks a night to stay in New Orleans right now. Nastasha, not a big fan. Not a big fan. Not a big fan. Okay.
Uh now, two oh, by the way, calling your questions live to 7184972128. That's 7184972128. I believe we still have an open line to take a caller in, even though I am using one to call in from my hotel room. Uh for yeah. First question from Fred.
Hey, Dave, uh Nastasha, uh, Jack, Indie Jesus, and all the rest, which by the way, just say Joe, you don't see all the rest. This is like this is like one of those situations, uh this is one of those situations like with the with the with the skipper and Mary Ann with the with the with the Gilligan's Island. Where all they had to do was say one last person, and instead they just say the rest. It's Joe. But but they might be on like back podcasts and they haven't caught up yet, you know?
So Yeah, yeah. Alright, anyway. And remember, Indy Jesus is no longer part of our the old podcast. They might be catching up. Right, right.
But it's for so you know, Indy Jesus, because he hates Nastasha, has quit the shift that's on Tuesdays. So we m we might have to switch our radio show day to match up uh Indie Jesus. Sunday, no. Sunday night uh, Jesus works on Sunday though. No.
Uh-huh. Anyway, okay. Uh Fred writes in, I recently picked up a turkey roaster. It's a Hamilton Beach model 32503. Is it possible to beep frying one of those things?
How good is the temperature control? Thanks, Fred. Okay. So what we're talking about are these uh ovens that uh you well, kind of uh ovens. They look like giant crock pots.
Um this one uh I looked it up, it's 18 quart, which is I think one of the standard sizes. This particular model discontinued. Uh but they have a pan that you can pull out and wash out. You throw the turkey on top of a rack into the pan and you roast your turkey, and it theoretically it's faster. Also, it frees up your oven so that you can on Thanksgiving time use your oven for all the rest of the nonsense that you need your oven for and cook your turkey in this uh in this kind of basically this in quotes oven.
Uh it's kind of like you know, like a Dutch, it's like cooking it in a in a Dutch oven with its own its own heat source. Um and I think I mentioned on the show once or twice that I had one of those that I bought at a thrift shop from the you know, it was from the 60s or something like that, and I bought it in a thrift shop in college, and I used to bake bread in it. And I loved it. It was great. Uh smelled horrible because there was something wrong with the insides of it, but it still worked great, and it made great bread.
Um well, grape bread for for that. Great bread for a dorm room, let's put it that way. I mean, I don't, you know, it's not great bread compared to what our listeners think of as grape bread. Anyway, will it work as a deep fryer? It clearly gets hot enough to work as a deep fryer, and I looked up the wattage on uh uh on a on a representative one.
I couldn't find the exact one to find the wattage, but the wattage is somewhere in the area of 1400 watts. Uh and uh you know, you I doubt you're gonna find a uh fryer that plugs into a normal socket that's much higher than that, like maybe it would go up to 1500 watts, uh maybe a little bit higher. But uh none of the electric plug-in fryers really have uh as many watts as I would want them to have. Uh to because the key for uh frying is of course uh fast uh recovery. Now uh now the way that these things work is they're the pan uh that you put in the into it with the with the turkey in it rests on the plate that's actually doing the heating.
So you're gonna have some issue about uh some heat loss in between the plate and the and and the pan. But I'm mostly worried about stuff falling to the bottom and scorching on the bottom as the heater clicks uh off and on. I don't think the heating control is going to be very accurate at all. Uh but I don't think it's that necessary to have super accurate um heat uh for deep frying. But uh I think uh your main problem is gonna be uh scorching of particles on the bottom, because uh a fryer that's really, really good at its job isn't gonna be heating uh the electrical element's not gonna be the very bottom of the unit.
The element will be floating somewhat above the surface of the oil uh such that particles can fall underneath it and not scorch on the thing that's actually being heated. It's a better way to fry, especially doesn't matter so much if you're doing something like donuts because donuts don't throw off a lot of little particles. But if you're doing something like chicken in a batter and the batter is gonna fall off, those little bits of flour get burnt and are gonna get nasty against the bottom of the pan. That said, it should work. I do not think anyone will actually recommend that you do it because I'm sure the insurance on a fryer is a lot more and you want to make sure you don't uh have it overflow and uh ignite and or burn you or scorch you or anything like that.
So I'm not gonna make any claims to the uh uh safety of it, but I mean it should be able to do an okay job. Now here's the other problem. Uh 1400 watts is gonna be enough power for a small, small fryer to get up really hot really fast. But 1400 watts distributed over something the size of an 18 quart uh roasting oven is not gonna be that much power. And and in the end, so even though it's fairly powerful for what would be a home fryer, it's a lot bigger than what a home fryer would be, and so I think it's gonna be sucking wind when you throw stuff in it.
So if you were to heat it up to temperature and only throw a couple little things in, you might be able to get good results. But I would bet that if you really loaded it down with like, you know, like you know, a whole fried chicken or something like that, that the temperature would drop drastically and that you'd have some problems. But that's uh just my guess. If you um if you it is powerful enough for you and you just don't think the temperature control is good enough, you could buy a simple PID uh, you know, PID temperature controller and uh and a thermocouple and bypass the thermostat entirely. Just plug it.
Although you don't want PID, you gotta switch it, turn it off of PID, which is going to be a very accurate temperature control. And for deep frying, you want on off. But most good PID controllers that you buy, you can turn them into on off controllers, right? Uh so a PID controller, like it's just gonna slowly get up to the temperature and not overshoot. You don't care if you overshoot a little bit, you just want it to get up there fast.
So as soon as the temperature of the oil drops, you want it to go on full blast. But then you can have an external control that can be very accurate and uh well as accurate as an uh on off or bang bang uh thermostat can be. Uh and that wouldn't add that much to the cost, but you might have uh a power problem. What do you think, Stuzz? Is that a good answer?
Good answer. All right. Um Colin, dearest y'all, could you revive uh this question? Are pressure cooked jams a good idea? So I had to go back, uh, I think it was in May and found uh Colin's question on pressure cooked jams.
A few weeks ago, um I bought a whole boatload of uh cumquats uh and made marmalade, and then they wanted he wanted to know could marmal jam in jam in general be prepared in a pressure cooker to prevent the loss of volatile flavors, because he realized that the smell that he was uh that was coming off of the pot was uh smell that was being lost, right? That's the theory, right? Uh and so basically he says, what I understand is happening is that the boiling temperature of the uh marmalade or jam solution increases as water is being boiled off, and that stopping at a particular temperature in a pressure cook uh sorry, stopping at a particular temperature when you're cooking a jam is equivalent to stopping at a particular uh hydration level or amount of water or you know, or the or the solids level that's in it. Uh, and that we add extra water to a jam recipe because the pectin needs time uh to cook and break out, um, and and there there you have it. Um so the question is, could he seal the mixture in a pressure cooker and cook the jam without losing uh water or volatiles and get an equivalent texture with improved flavor?
The boiling temperature will increase at the increase increased pressure, but do you think that will affect the pectin uh uh slash pro you know properties of the jam overall? I suppose there could be more thermal breakdown of flavor in a pressure cooker uh despite the decreased loss of volatiles, what are my thoughts? Okay. Well, if you're gonna do it this first of all, uh here's the here's the issue. If you knew uh I I have to do some research and maybe during the commercial break, I can look it up because I I forgot to look it up.
But you need what you need to know is the actual solids level of the uh jam that you're that you're shooting for. If the solids level, uh the bricks is reasonable, like in the on the order of sixty percent or or or or thereabouts, uh 70% even, then you could uh probably just add the ingredients to a jar in a pressure cooker, uh seal it so that even if you had a non uh uh a venting pressure cooker, which I don't like using, I like using non venting pressure cookers in general because they uh I think they do a better job with flavor, but if you're sealing in a canning jar, it doesn't make much difference. Uh and and pressure cook it uh at that higher temperature. You could conceivably get uh a product that will work. But you have to know beforehand what the solid level of the fruit pulp is, and uh then therefore calculate how much sugar to add to it, and you'd have to get it fairly accurate.
Uh that is all doable, and if uh I don't know, maybe if uh Jack or Joe has the time to research while we're talking the uh bricks level, B R I X level of uh jam or jelly, uh you we could do a ballpark estimate of whether or not it's feasible to just add all the ingredients, sugar, fruit, etc. into a jar and uh pressure cook it. But uh it I mean it might be possible. I don't know. It would be difficult because uh you'd have to make sure you got it right every time.
Does that make sense? Yeah, you have a caller. Oh, caller, you are on the air. Hey Dave, hey Jack, hey Stas, how's it going? Good.
This is Matt from this is Matt from Chicago. Howdy. Hi, I had a question about uh low temperature cooking of skirt steak. Um I tried it uh sous vide with a recipe I found on the web and it was as tough as had I cooked it for you know over a flame for hours. And I wonder if you had any ideas on how to uh get better results.
Give me the recipe that you used. You know, I don't remember. That's the problem. I think it was the one on the poly science uh website. How how long did you cook it?
Jeez, it seems like maybe two hours. Yeah. And uh so h here's here's the thing. So if you're cooking a skirt steak, uh I I like to do skirt steak uh low temp, but what temperature you cook the skirt steak to is entirely dependent upon how long you cook it, right? So if you're only gonna cook the skirt steak for a couple of hours, you're gonna need to go fairly high, like uh uh uh fifty seven Celsius, let's say, which is a good number, fifty-seven Celsius.
If you're gonna do it for like an hour or forty five minutes or an hour and a half like that. Then you have to cool it down and then sear it. Because the skirt steak is so thin that if you um if you were to try to sear it directly out of the circulator, just overcook and you might as well not have done low temp at all. Okay. Okay.
I think I I think I did actually I think I did sear it afterwards immediately. So Yeah. I mean you have to sear it afterwards really, or the texture's not gonna be very, very good. You know, but you know the uh go ahead. Yeah, the other way to do it is to cook it down near where you'd cook a ribeye, so like fifty-five, uh, for a long time, like uh nine nine, ten hours.
Uh or you know, e and then let it let it cool down again and then uh just take it and hard, hard sear it and that will actually warm up the inside and overcook the outside a little bit, but that's gonna give a really, really high quality tender skirt steak. Um if you're it you the alternative, right, is to sear it beforehand like it's a normal skirt steak and then just quickly throw it into into uh into like a uh a bag and uh let it let it come up to temp in in a circulator. The problem is your crust isn't gonna be that great afterwards. Yeah and it's really a good candidate but it it isn't a good candidate for the double sear I I take it. Or is it well you can't you you can I've done a double sear uh on it and what the advantage of the double sear is that um the second time you sear it it's gonna color and crust up really quickly.
Um but you know then you you might might run the problem that you you know something goes wrong and you and you um uh and you you know dry it out a little bit I if I would definitely not on skirt steak pre-sear it before you low temp it. Um because it's gonna cure through fairly quickly with the salt. I would definitely I mean pepper is fine or whatever or whatever marinade you want but I would not uh I would not salt it um until right before the second sear. Okay that's interesting. I I actually use um lime juice in my marinade and it just makes it absolutely delicious.
And and I usually just do it the standard you know just sear it in a real hot pan after it's marinated a while and don't even bother with low temp but I figured I'd try it. I've got a I've got a rig in my basement for for low temp cook here for Soused and I figured I'd try it because you know I'm trying everything sous vide now that I got the rig. Uh and some things have turned out really good but the skirt steak is one thing that did not and I was just curious if you had any thoughts so I appreciate it. Do this and you're gonna you're gonna love this. This is what this is the way that I actually cook skirt steak.
Right. I would do it the I would not sear it beforehand. Uh I would do your do your your marinade or whatever else you want to do, put it in the bag, cook it uh if you don't have the time, fifty seven for, like I say, like an hour or so, or like fifty-five for longer, like six, seven whatever hours, it's gonna get more tender. Let it cool down, and then you can even have it in the fridge, pull it out and do your hard sear on it just like you were cooking it normally, and what you'll just have is you can focus on that crust and you just have a much more tender skirt steak on the inside than you would with a normal cooking technique. Okay, I'll give that a shot then.
Alrighty, let us know how it worked. All right, thanks a lot, guys. We'll talk to you later. You have another call, Dave. What?
You have another call. Okay, Cowler, you're on the air. Hi, yeah, afternoon. How are you? I'm doing all right.
All right. So um I'm a bit of a home brewer and um I've been doing a little bit of shopping on modern at the modernist pantry, and um I've been I've been referred to you uh to a solution for a problem that I've been having. Um I've been working on making cream liqueur. Um and uh I've purchased some sodium caseinate um from the modernist pantry, and I I was initially under the impression that that might help me to combine my dairy with my alcohol that I've been producing. And it it's stable for a little while, but I'll let it sit out at room temperature for about six hours, and I put it next to a very small amount of already store-bought cream liqueur, and the store-bought cream liqueur remains stable.
However, um mine it it doesn't split uh per se the um the the dairy molecules from the water molecules. Um it just separates into layers as as a thicker um uh uh homogenized cream on the top and a more watery, less viscous liquid on the bottom. Um I'm I'm doing further research and I'm I'm finding out that uh glycerol uh monas glycer glycerol monosterate might help me out GSM um but I was wondering if you had any advice as far as to how I would implement the GSM if I were to obtain some and if I'm maybe using the uh the sodium caseinate incorrectly okay well I had I uh I mean I have a lot of uh experience with emulsified alcoholic beverages but not making cream liquors uh as such uh what what you're using actual cream well I'm start I I I did one batch with a little with a splash of cream and then I did another batch with a splash of milk um I also tried use making my own uh uh condensed cream and using condensed like uh you know with I I think I used malt malt powder a little bit of sugar and milk and a little bit of vanilla and I made like a condensed condensed milk and used tried to use that I thought maybe the sugar would be a decent buffer to help bind the dairy to this to the liquor um I don't know if maybe my alcohol content is something that might be affecting it. I'm at about 22% alcohol content. So I'm not sure if you're but you're you're um you're you're yeah so you're not curdling at all you're just getting phase separation.
Yes. Yeah. Um I mean I'm guessing that I mean I don't I I've never researched like uh like Bailey's or anything like that, uh to see like what the fat content of Bailey's is. But if you're getting a phase separation, it just sounds like you need uh an emulsifier in there. Um you know, uh and you know what you're mentioning is uh you know isn't is an emulsifier.
The one that I I typically use in uh in the drinks at Booker and Dax is probably won't work for your application uh or it might is a mixture and this is not what the cream liqueur people use at all, but is a mixture of it's gum arabic which acts as a an emulsifier and Xanthan which acts as a stabilizer. Now you probably want to go to kind of a more of a hardcore uh uh emulsifier. When you get when you when you when the phase sep when you get the phase separation, if you just rock it back and forth, does it go back together or no? It uh I actually it does to an extent, but I think it's more of like the temperature that it's been sitting at for a while because all the ingredients I'm I'm mixing them sort of like the dairies just from the fridge. You know, I haven't gone I haven't been able to sit down and test it from letting the dairy sit out at room temperature.
I I also found that heat became a factor in uh the initial combination. Uh it was important that the that the dairy was warm in order to get the emulsification to work initially. Um and then once it cools down and it sits and it settles at room temperature for a while it eventually separates. Um and I can get it to come back together but then once I let it sit for about another half hour after, you know, uh spinning it back together, it'll separate again. I'll tell you what I'm gonna do.
I like uh this is an interesting thing. I should know I should know this uh just because of you know what I do for a living. So what I what I'm gonna do is uh I I'm gonna figure out what they do in the industry to make cream liqueurs and whether or not the what the fat level, if any, is of those things, and kind of figure out how they do it. Uh and then I'll come back pro probably not next week, because next week I don't know if I'm gonna be able to have the the radio show because I'm gonna be in the air on the way to um California, I think. But the week after that, I'm gonna come back and and answer that question, I'll give you a much more definitive answer, okay?
Okay. Um and uh if uh if by chance are you you are in the city right now, all right? I'm I'm in New Orleans, at Tails of the Cocktail. Oh you Oh, okay. I was under the impression that you were in in Manhattan or in New York City.
Um all right. Um well would uh would you would you be able to also I mean uh I know that you say you're gonna be going back on the air with these answers, but would there be any way you might be able to contact me directly? Uh it's possible. Give uh when you when you go off, give uh give Jack uh your info or maybe we could uh tweet it out or something like that. Alrighty.
All right. Uh thank you very much for your time. Uh do you um la lastly, do you would you think that the if I were to purchase some Glosseral Monastery, do you think that that might be a decent avenue to approach? I just don't I don't I don't wanna I don't want to rest say yes or no off the top of my head without uh really doing the research on it. All right.
Thank you very much for your time. Hi cool. Um, right before we take the break, right before we take the break, uh uh Joel uh Gargano writes in, who by the way is from New Haven, which is where the anyway, so Jack wanted to know does anyone want the Bluetooth, the the the music from my college days? And we got the first person in says that they like that. I wrote in a few months back about soy whipped cream.
Your advice helped, and I made some adjustment. It turns out that soft tofu coconut milk and some stabilizers uh works great right out of the siphon, the uh whipped cream siphon, but more importantly, I want more Bluetooth. This crap is heavy. Do we have a do we have a link to any of this anywhere? So, Jack, we have someone that wants the Bluetooth.
Wow. There it is. Right. So when you retire. Yeah.
Unfortunately, Joel, no Bluetooth today because it's only on my iPhone and uh we don't have it actually copied over onto the Heritage Radio um uh computers, so we're gonna have to go because enough of the cheesy jazz, no offense, I like jazz. Plus, he also wants pictures of me getting my face smashed in on stage, which I I don't think actually exist uh unf unfortunately. But uh, you know, he wants like stage diving picks and stuff like that. And then he he his suggestion is that we start a band where uh you know I guess he's gonna come in and start start a band with us where we write about my art reactions and agar agar clarification, and he wants to call it my art and the reactors. He's gonna let me have bass solos in every song, but he only wants to do it if we can get Indy Jesus to be the front man.
What do you think, Jack? We'll have to see. That's gonna be tough. He's in high demand. Yeah, Indy I'm sure every every band in Bushwick wants Indy Jesus as the front man.
Why wouldn't they? Yeah, right? I mean, even Nastasha would go to see Indy Jesus as a front man, and she hates hipster bands. Loves bands. Nastasha, by the way, like her one of her great lifetime skills is to be able to get into any any concert for free with uh and go backstage without having to perform any sort of awful acts.
I retired that. Retired, but it's like it's a you know it's a great skill. It's like I can shotgun a beer very well, also a retired skill of mine. I don't go around shotgunning beers anymore. Jimmy Fallon show.
It wasn't retired. It hasn't been retired. I didn't shotgun a beer at the Jimmy Fallon show. You won you asked if you could. Remember?
I was joking. Joking. Plus, they only have by the way, for those of you who don't know, we're on the Jimmy Fallon show, and one of their sponsors is Bud Light Platinum, which is basically Bud Light where they add some extra booze to it. It's like straight up, they add extra booze and they put it in like a a blue bottle that looks like kind of like a Saratoga water or a tiny bottle. But you can't shotgun out of a bottle, Sci.
It's a show that you know about. Yeah, yes. A a a joke. A joke. Although I am quite good at it.
I'm retired. Anyway, uh okay, so why don't we go to our first commercial break? Come back with more cooking issues. Oh my god, I don't seem that far away at all. Where'd you go?
Love you back at the LMO. Got a real real real way to go. Sister, hold on the day. Why don't passes is a hundred and forty six year old multi-generational family farm that works in cooperation with nature to produce artisan meat that is safe, healthy, nutritious, and good to eat. Without fail, we ensure that our production practices are economically practical, ecologically sustainable, and that the animals are always humanely treated.
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Yeah. Well, I I guess he's not the he's not the front man, but he's the lead guitar. That's his band. Is his is his twin also in the band? Yeah.
That's why they're called Brothers. Oh, yeah. See, it's hard for me to hear over the telephone. I can't hear anything. So we got we got Weepop Soupy Pot slash BAM on the phone?
Yes. Hi, Dave Intack. Hi. This is Weep. Weebop.
What's up? How's how's everything going? Going well. So for those of you that don't know what's going on, uh We Pop Soupy Pop, aka for the rest of the world, Bam. Uh just got his Kickstarter uh fully funded, and they are making a uh relatively low cost, simple to use at home, immersion circulator.
Uh and uh what's the cost of this sucker? Uh it is three fifty-nine. Three fifty-nine. All right, three fifty-nine. And uh, you know, I don't know, go on the K I don't know how how do you buy one of these suckers.
So right right now, Kickstarter campaigns closed. Uh so you just go to shop.namiku.com to pre-order one. Now what what's your ETA for actual uh units? ETA for um by Christmas. And I'm just gonna give Yeah, we we have a lot of demands we're gonna give priority to um the Kickstarter people.
But um we're we're still working that out. It should be the same batch. All right. So uh uh I hear that you have uh something to discuss over the cooking issues airwave regarding this. Oh silence.
Sorry, sorry, I guess. Yeah, silence cut off. So I guess not. No, I didn't I didn't hear you. Oh.
Uh you you had you you told me you wanted to speak about Ziploc bags. Oh no, um so yeah, we have we have a lot of emails uh coming in, you know, people being concerned with Ziploc bags. And you know, I I feel like a lot of people still have uh issues with cooking in plastic. So what what we've been doing? Specifically zip zip ziplocks though, as opposed to uh you know you're not getting any calls in uh with questions about cooking in uh sous vide cooked chill bags, right?
You have people calling with questions on on the um the wisdom of using ziploc bags uh for cooking low temp, right? Right. Yeah. Uh and well here's here's m here's my my thought. And the reason I guess is because uh on your Kickstarter uh campaign video there is a uh a picture of someone putting food in a Ziploc to um to do the the cooking with uh with your device.
What's your device called again? Uh the Namiku. Nami coo. N O M-I-K-U. NAMI coo.
Yeah, NAMICU. So um feeling on Ziploc bags. Uh I think I might have told the story once, but I you know I can tell it again. Uh I was doing the Martha Stewart show uh and then they they decided to just have like a bunch of like tech fools on. So uh you know Nathan was on via Mirvold was on via you know uh he wasn't actually on they they showed you know she did a tour Martha Stewart did a tour of his uh his lab there and they had uh Grant Akus was on and uh and I was on and uh so I was talking to Grant backstage Grant Aiket's of course from a Linia I was talking backstage that he was getting um a lot of flack from S.
A Johnson Wax a family company which is I believe the people that make the Ziploc bag uh and uh basically they yelled at him because he had a video on the web where he was using a Ziploc to do um to do his low temperature cooking. And uh and I I think it's really strange that they have a problem with it or that anyone has a problem with it because the Ziploc bags are rated for reheating uh in a nuke right I mean it says right on it that you can reheat uh stuff in them in a nuke. The issue is um like a Ziploc bag and I I could be wrong but I'm not is made out of uh polyethylene and uh uh you know and food food food grade obviously polyethylene and uh it's the same stuff that um uh most plastic wrap is made out of polyethylene and uh what it can't do is get anywhere near the boiling because boiling point of water, 100 C because it the it gets very very soft there and that's very close to the melting point. However, it works fine uh in the 50s and I never really take it above the low sixties ever because I I don't have a need to Celsius that is. But in that range uh they are perfectly fine and I d I can't understand any argument uh uh against using Ziploc bags uh for cooking low temp at those temperatures so long as you aren't assuming that you're preserving something for any length of time because you haven't put a vacuum seal on it, so long as you're not heating it uh above uh any other uh you know uh you know uh above in the sixties somewhere I can't see any argument whereby cooking in any form of plastic would be okay and not in a Ziploc under those uh circumstances.
Um do you know what I'm saying? Yeah yeah so like um the food food savers and a lot of you know side sealers that are on the market they're they're using the same kind of material and somehow somehow those are being like promoted or used with uh you know like the Google Supreme or whatever. Right well I just cook chill bags like even cooked chill I mean polyethylene is a good choice and I'm having a little trouble hearing you but polyethylene is a good choice for um for food applications just because it it doesn't have to have plasticizers in it uh and it doesn't react with food uh very much. Usually those bags that were rated to higher temperatures will have multiple multiple plastic layers uh and so that they keep their uh integrity at at at higher temperatures. Uh but again again like most of this is completely moot because we're keeping our temperatures very much lower than is ever going to be a problem uh when we're using low temperature cooking.
So I just I literally except for the fact that Johnson S. C. Johnson Wax doesn't I believe it's S. C. Johnson Wax does not want to uh have any sort of liability from saying you can cook in their bags as opposed to you know reheating in a very specific way because they don't want to assume that liability they just say you can't do it and then that that them saying you can't do it is just getting promulgated on the uh on on the on the on the web and and by people.
I mean I don't really understand any other sort of argument. I would love to hear from somebody what that argument is, but I haven't heard uh I haven't heard any good reasons. Yeah. Um th thanks for the mention last time on uh heritage radio. So our Namiku is actually 750 watts.
And uh some people have been saying oh that you know that's too low, whatever. But then I think I think for the purpose of um maintaining perfect temperatures I think seven hundred and fifty watts is way more than enough. What do you think? Well that was the one question I had when I talked about it uh on the air was uh I mean like what was the reason you went seven fifty instead of the full thousand that uh most of the other companies are using well that's just the uh uh the type of heaters that we're using and um for for the size that we're able to get it down to um we we've matched it up with seven hundred fifty watts. We've had some uh one thousand watts prototype however but um it doesn't it doesn't make it doesn't make much of a difference like how fast like you can you can heat the water.
Well what size bath were you testing on the relatively the same uh just just the re regular um I think the twelve twelve liter like fence yeah I mean the the ones where like the you know the the the the thousand watt uh circulators start crapping out uh any time you go above a normal full size lexan uh and then they start they start sucking wind. Um so I mean I I think it what just what you're doing by any by you know any sort of power limitation what you're doing is you're you're m um you're you're just uh capping the upper size of the water bath that you can reliably heat with it. Um you're also capping the recovery rate of it when you drop a large uh food load into it. So the for instance you know you you simply can't maintain easily any temperature it also depends on the temperatures you're trying to get to. It's a lot easier to get uh you know a water bath up to fifty five Celsius let's say than it is to get a water bath up to eighty five Celsius let's say because you're there's a lot more losses to the atmosphere because you the water wants to go off uh a lot more as vapor at those temperatures and so you're having to put a lot more energy in you're getting you know you know it's proportionally uh a higher temperature relative to ambient and so you have to drive it harder because you have higher heat losses out of your out of your uh your vessel so um a normal thousand watt circulator in a in a large lexan that's you know uh higher than the one that I normally recommend, I can't really get it to go above about fifty-five, and I can't ha it doesn't really drive an accurate temperature at those levels.
Uh you know, when you drop big loads into them, and so I only recommend using giant bass like that with a circulator for reheat where the temperature isn't as accurate, uh the temperature uh the need for accuracy isn't as high. So i you know, if you were cooking a smaller uh in a smaller vessel, like a half lexan, let's say, then I'm sure 750 watts is fine. But uh my question would be is is like how would a 750 perform in a full size lexan versus a thousand watt? I don't know. I've never I've never done it.
You know what I mean? So I can't tell you. Um I mean, but th those are just my concerns. I would bet for the for ninety percent of the people, if you were gonna work at home, very few people at home need to drive anything bigger than a half lexan. Right.
And and that and that's correct. That's why that's why we've designed the Namiku to um work with you know pots of any size from uh three quarts and up. So we we actually uh that was the the size that we had in mind and um seven hundred and fifty watts is more than adequate for those purposes. You know, anything anything bigger than um than the the lex band, then you know you're going uh a little bit overboard. Well for for for a house, yeah.
I mean you know you by the way, we pop w uh it you know you're in Bangkok now, right? Uh no, I actually I'm in San Francisco. I think uh and you're coming here soon. Yeah, yeah, I am. But I might not be able to do that.
So uh we we've We because Weepop is a product designer, but also went to the French Culinary Institute and and worked with us. So he knows that we can over st very easily overstuff a full size Lexan, but this isn't designed for that, it's designed for people at home, right? Right. So when are you gonna get one for uh for us to play with? Uh as soon as possible.
Uh we're about we're about to go into um production in China. I leave uh I leave San Francisco on August first and uh we'll we'll be in China for a long time until um we'll we'll supervise everything until delivery, basically. All right, well well listen, congratulations on the new product, and I might just miss you. I think I fly out when you fly when you fly back. When you get back in the country, uh you know, come and come and say howdy.
We love we love ourselves some weepop. We will. Yeah. But yeah, for for anyone out there who's never been to a Booker and Dyke Staves bar um in New York City, you need to go. Because not only not only that um the cocktails are amazing, if you take your dates there, it's gonna feel the deal.
Uh uh. Hey, check this out. We for those of you that don't know, Weepop was our very first caller ever into the radio show. Ever. Is that true?
And yeah, We Pop, very first caller of all times. And uh from Bangkok, by the way, and uh and you know, uh for those of you that go to the bar, we have uh uh Thai basil drink on the menu, but I don't know why they call it Thai basil, because you know we're actually gonna make a holy basil uh drink uh coming up soon, because we have a a regular Italian glove style basil drink that we really like, but we don't want to put two basil drinks on the menu? Because that's weird. But if we put three basilics on, and it turns out Nastasha grows a boatload of holy basil in in her backyard. What about that, We Pop?
That that sounds great. Yeah. We're just gonna call the drink Holy Basil. Holy Basil. That's what we're gonna call the drink.
What do you think? Sounds good, right? I don't know what's in it yet. We gotta get the basil and play around with it, but it's gonna be there. Don't worry about it.
We're gonna have like we're gonna have three basil drinks. We're gonna go basil crazy for the uh for the midsummer push. All basil all the time. Anyway. Alright, we pop, listen.
Have a good time in China building your product. We can't wait. Congratulations on the new venture. Alright, thank you so much. Bye.
Alrighty. Alright, so let's take one more quick break and come back with a little more cooking issues. It's from Bushwick Block Party on Saturday, July 28th, from noon to midnight. Saturday! Saturday!
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We got a one o'clock, so. Alright, cool. So uh I only have one last question, so I'll take it right now. Uh Brian writes in Hi guys, gals. I saw on Starshef that you guys use grade C maple syrup at the bar.
What does it taste like? I want the smokiest, earthiest, funkiest mushroomy syrup that there is. When I googled around buying some, I saw that it's only for commercial applications. I also saw that they may have changed the rating system so that grade C is now grade B. Also the Canadian rating system is different.
What's the and where can I get it? Thanks again, Brian. All right, Brian. Uh, what I did was I called up the maple syrup uh producer and said, Hey, listen, can I have some grade C uh maple syrup? I know you have it.
And he said, All right, don't tell anyone, uh, because I guess he didn't have a label for it or whatever. A poured it into a quart, you know, container, uh, you know, a quart uh maple syrup container, just slap two B's on it, which was the code for C grade, and uh, and and I bought it at the at the regular price. Now, uh, those of you that didn't hear anything before that we say the C-grade maple syrup is basically uh maple syrup when it starts its rhyme at the beginning of the season is the lightest and kind of least uh has the least conjunctor, the least kind of flavor in it, and then as the season progresses, it gets more and more conjuncts and gets darker and has uh kind of more and more different different flavors. I like the grade C but it can be a little weird. It doesn't necessarily play nice uh with other ingredients the way uh that B does.
I mean, I've I I use B in cooking at home, I use B on pancakes, uh, I use B in drinks, and I think every bartender I know uses B in drinks. Uh C was a little rough on some of the drinks that we tried it out. I like it. It's really intense, but it can almost go metallic in certain uh in certain applications. But it's definitely something you should try to uh have around.
And uh hopefully that helps. This has been cooking issues. Oh, you got me on the screen. Thanks for listening to this program on Heritage Radio Network.org. You can find all of our archived programs on our website or as podcasts in the iTunes store by searching Heritage Radio Network.
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