Today's program has been brought to you by the International Culinary Center. Offering courses that range from classic French techniques in culinary, pastry, and bread baking to Italian studies to management. From culinary technology to food writing, from cake making to wine tasting. For more information, visit International Culinary Center.com. Broadcasting live from Bushwick Brooklyn.
You're listening to Heritage Radio Network.org. Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Aron, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live every Tuesday from roughly 12 to roughly 1245 at the Heritage Radio Network in the back of Roberta's Pizzeria in Buschwick, Brooklyn. Jack decided not to show up today because uh well, we had the fundraiser over the weekend and now he's just too big for us, right, Joe? Yeah, he's doing presidential things right now, I'm guessing.
Yeah, he's just, you know, he's like smoking, you know, tobacco rolled in hundred dollar bills and all kinds of crazy stuff over there in the Heritage Radio uh headquarters. But thankfully Joe is with us, and as always, Nastasha the Hammer Lopez. How are you doing? Good. Yeah.
Apologize that we were not able to do the live uh cooking issues uh with uh Harold McGee over at the Harvard because we just couldn't do it. We had to we let I mean that's all there was to it. We couldn't do it. We were prepping out. The class started as the show would have been ending, and that would have been uh that would have been a big poop show had we done that, right?
Mm-hmm. True. True. True. Uh so speaking of McGee, uh Harold McGee and I will be in London, and we're gonna go to the Prague Dale in Fanisham, where Nastasha and I went like a year and a half ago, maybe.
Yeah. It was two years ago? Two years ago. Two years ago. And uh it is well, okay, look, okay, look.
All right, fine. Geneva, New York, uh, is where all of our, when I say R, I mean the good old US of A, where all of our uh apples are stored. And the way you store an apple is by planting trees, right? So they don't just like literally store I mean, they also store seeds in liquid nitrogen like sperm banks, but uh a lot of people don't really believe in that because they think that the seeds might mutate over time, etc. blah blah blah.
People like to own the freaking trees, right? Then also, if you have the trees, you can see how they respond to various things. And the the reason that our tax money goes to it isn't because people uh the people who decide the tax money stuff think that you know we should have wide variety of delicious apples. They're more worried that some crazy apple disease is gonna come through and kill every apple except that one crazy variety that they saved, right? At least that's the original genesis, the reason there's money behind this project.
And so all of our apples are in Geneva. And uh Geneva, New York has the greatest collection of apples in anywhere in the world. But but the Brogdale in Favisham in Kent, England, an hour outside of London, is uh where they have the largest culinary apple collection. So the way they get around this is is there's a crazy guy, Phil Force Line, who used to go to Kazakhstan, which is where apples come from, and he would gather all kind of wild apples. I don't know how the hell he smuggled the seeds back into the US or went there when some crazy quarantine situation or whatever, uh because they have huge genetic diversity of uh different apple varieties, as well as other fruits actually, in this thing called the Tian Shen Fruit Forest, which stretches from China to Kazakhstan, uh and it's a huge, kind of apparently incredibly beautiful, awesome place, and one of the places on earth actually that I really want to go.
Anyway, uh so he went there and just collected a bajillion different kinds of wild uh you know, malice apple species, and planted them in at Cornell up in Geneva, and it's uh it just so that obliterated the Brogdale's collection in terms of sheer numbers. But Brogdale has the culinary apple collection to beat in the world. However, however, I'm extremely partial to the flavor of apples as grown in upstate New York. So we've been to the apple collection, but when we went to the Brogdale Apple collection, Nastasha and I, I was sidelined by the fact that they also have an incredibly awesome collection of pears. And actually, you know what we missed last time is uh there should still be a couple plums on the trees.
But see, here's what's but it's nut season, so they're gonna have all the nuts. In fact, we're gonna miss the nut festival. I mean, it'll be the nut festival with Harold and I there, but we're gonna miss the official nut festival by uh a couple of days. But the here's what's amazing about the Brogdale and why anyone that lives anywhere near London and uh doesn't or hasn't been to the Brogdale a bunch of times, honestly should be incredibly ashamed of themselves. They should just be, you know, you should be I I don't know, you should wear a hair shirt and a dunce cap and go into the corner uh and just you know beat yourself with sticks uh out of out of you know anguish that you've missed this huge portion of your life so close to this amazing resource and you haven't gone yet.
Would you say it's accurate? They could join you, can't they? I don't know, I don't know exactly what time I'm gonna be. Literally, say so McGee and I well for first of all. So the Brogdale, unlike us, where our pears are in Corvallis, uh, Oregon, and our berries are in Corvallis, Oregon, and we have uh our apples in Geneva, New York, and our our collections of germplasm are spread all all over the uh all over the country.
Uh the the English basically, can only grow stuff in Kent. Uh come on, no no offense. But you can take offense if you want. But anyway, so their entire collection of stuff is at this one place. So it's kind of one-stop shopping for everything, small fruits, and you know, the English, they know gooseberries like the nobody else.
They have like the gooseberry collection, but not the time of year. Anyway, uh apples, pears, nuts, plums, cherries, Kentish cherries. Anyways, so my point is is that uh I'm going to Temperate Fruit Paradise on uh on Friday. Uh like my plan my plane lands. McGee and I, we he's coming from California, I'm coming from New York.
We're meeting at Heathrow and taking a uh train directly to Favisham. We're gonna I'm gonna throw away all I'm not even gonna wear clothes. I'm just gonna dress myself in fruit and then take that fruit because we're going to our good buddy Tony Canillaro and Rhea's wedding. Congratulations to them. Uh, you know, one of my favorite bartenders in the whole.
Yeah? Yep. Yep. Okay. Calling your questions live to 7184972128.
That's 7184972128. Joe, who's bringing the show to us today? Um, it would be the International Culinary Center. The International Culinary Center. I'm doing actually a demo with them uh tomorrow.
You coming to that thing or no? I'm gonna go there today to talk to them, but I mean I don't think our viewers care about the demo for Pepsi Pepsi Pepsi Co, right? Pepsi. Anyway, okay, questions. Uh hey Dave, Nastasha, Jack, and Joe.
Although Jack doesn't care about your question, Ron, because he's not here to listen to it. I'm just kidding. I'm just messing with Jen. Uh several shows back, we pop, we pops, you know, we pop soup, our intern, and the one of the current founders and designers, I'm assuming, of uh the uh Namako emergent circulator. Uh several shows back, Weep called to talk to you about the Namaku.
Uh Namaku and Namko. Co co, right? Coo. Coo? Yeah.
Coo. Okay. The emergent circulator designed for use in the home kitchen. Needless to say, I was extremely excited at the prospect of having an affordable low temp cooking solution out in the market. Recently, I was on the poly science website and found out that they now offer also offer a home version called the Creative Series.
And it's called like Yeah, it's all like Sous vide, and there's a Sous V creative and the Sous V Professional, and then there's the old metal one, so it's kind of confusing. But go on the website and you look at it. I think it's live on the website. I haven't seen one in real life. Anyway, hold on.
So the Namakoo will be a hundred and forty dollars cheaper than the uh Su V creative from Polyscience. Uh the heater in the Namaku is gonna have less wattage, 750 versus uh 1100. Although I really think Phillips is uh a thousand watts. The heater itself is a thousand. I don't think it's eleven hundred, but anyway, whatever.
Uh but the pump is uh more powerful uh in the Namakoo, ten liters uh per minute versus six liters per minute. The Namako claims it can actually get water to a hundred degrees C while the creative goes to ninety nine degrees C. I mean that's a meaningless stat though. I mean I wouldn't even pay attention to that. That's a meaningless stat.
You know what I'm saying? Mm-hmm. Like, you know, that's you know don't worry about that. Uh you're not gonna want to put these into anything other than water anyway. So the old metal ones with stainless steel.
Uh huh, let me finish your question first before I go crazy. Okay. Uh the rest of the specs, as far as I can tell, are about the same. Not sure if you had a chance to play with either, uh perhaps a Namakoo prototype, but I'm hoping you can give us your honest opinion on which one you would get. I'm not planning on getting one until the holidays, so the fact that the Namakoo isn't actually out yet will not affect my purchasing decision.
Also, I'm currently a student at the ICC, and I hear you'll be teaching a few classes this month. Is that true? I'm in level six, uh, which is the last level. It's the level that the students cook in the restaurant. So at the school, there's there's six levels.
The last two levels uh cook in the restaurant. So the you know, the first two you're kind of learning stuff, the third one more learning stuff. Uh fourth one, you're doing family meal for the whole school, and the five and six you're in the restaurant. Okay. Uh if you're around, I'll be sure to say hi.
I'll be the giddy Chinese guy with the sweaty palms. Thanks. Love the show, Ron Fan. So Ron, obviously not a if you have sweaty palms, not a good chocolate worker. Shouldn't work with chocolate.
Don't go into pastry, my friend. I mean, I guess you could, but I mean if you have sweaty pomps, it's gonna be difficult working with chocolate and pastry, correct? Yeah. I mean, there are certain people who are it's a known thing. Certain people have warmer palms and they have a very difficult time with things like chocolates.
Just a known fact. Anyway. Um, before I even get into this, uh look, We Pop is a friend of mine. I love myself, We Pop, and Philip Preston is a friend of mine, and I've known him for many, many years. Uh, and he's been very supportive.
So it's very hard for me to come. I you know, I can't I almost can't come down with any sort of recommendation uh on one versus uh the other because it's just it would be crazy for me. You know what I'm saying? What do you think, Styles? I mean, that's kind of like you know, Philip Preston has been gonna get one in December.
He's should be a good one. Which the Philip, the new one? The Namako? In December? Yes.
All right, I haven't touched uh I haven't touched the uh the new creative series yet, but I uh sent a note over to Philip and I was like, Philip, what should I know about the creative system uh as opposed to the other one? And his response was is that the this new one, the 499 one, is designed to have uh uh good control, very good temperature control, just like the uh the other one. Uh um have it be quiet, right? So I guess it's quieter for a home kind of situation, so the pump's not as loud, also not as uh not as you know fast, right? Uh less it's uh less demanding use, right?
Because it's not meant to run all day every day like ours do, which isn't to say you can't do a 72 hour cook, but you know, the the way these things are treated in professional kitchens is crazy. They're running twenty like almost twenty four seven sometimes. Uh you know, all the time. Uh so the current one's not designed to run all day, every day. It's got a lower cost, uh, you know, 499.
So I don't really know actually what the Namaku is coming in at. Is it really $170 dollars cheaper? Is it really $320? I don't know. I don't know.
I mean, it's hard to say. Also you never know if it's going to be sold at William Sonoma. What William Sonoma let there's a retail price and then William Sonoma is going to give you a deal or something like that. So it's very hard to say what the price is going to be. The the new poly science is going to have the same safety system as the old one did plus a float uh which I never was a big fan of float uh the float things.
People like so the float is basically in there so in case your water runs low the float drops and turns off the circulator. I've never been a giant fan of floats because it just seems like it's another thing that can fail as opposed to having uh the strap on there's a there's a strap on. There's a there's a strap on uh um thermometer, you know a temperature sensor on the heating element itself such that it goes over temp it will shut the equipment off. So I guess Philip uh I guess enough people wanted a float plus that safety system but so he put it in. Um and uh it's gonna it has a smaller pump than the than the $800 one so it's gonna have a reduced capacity.
On the note of capacity by the way capacity is one of those things that you can't really ever listen to what anybody says unless they're extremely specific about what they mean by capacity. So your capacity is gonna be limited by the wattage there's two things that limit your capacity one is your ability to circulate water. Uh that is rarely the limit uh except for in very large tanks or in viscous fluids like uh oils which I wouldn't necessarily be circulating with these guys anyway. So the the the pump output is not usually the limit on your capacity. Usually the limit on your capacity is the wattage.
Uh and that said, also when you're judging capacity, the question is not how many liters of liquid, it's how many liters of liquid plus plus plus product at what temperature in a vessel with what kind of insulation. So there's there's so many uh there's so many variables, but the the physics are what the physics are, and you can figure out uh how much uh wattage, roughly wattage you need with some back of the envelope calculations. So for me, the main the main thing is when I was talking to Weepop, the the new circulator, uh the Namakoo is uh, you know, it has a smaller capacity and it's designed to have a smaller capacity at 750 watts. And their feeling is is that's enough wattage to get away with most of the things that you're gonna want to do in your house, but they opted to have a more powerful pump. Whereas Philip was like, I don't care about the pump, uh, but I want to keep the same wattage.
Because I don't actually know why uh why the Namakoo, why they took the wattage down to 750. Weepop told me once, but I can't remember what what his explanation was because not I mean it could have been uh fitting it into the package because it's a very thin stick package. The Namaku also is very small, right? Yeah. And we haven't played with it yet.
I mean, small is good because small means it takes up less space in your bath. Anytime you can take up less space in your bath, it's probably a good thing. Um just because that space you can't be cooking products in. Um so that might be an advantage for the Namaku, but really I hesitate to make any recommendations until I play with them, uh play with both of them. Uh I will say this, uh, it is an extremely exciting time uh to uh be a cook because now almost anyone, you know, look, it's still expensive, you know, even if it's $350.
It's not like I'm gonna go out, you know, you're not like you're gonna go out and buy like buy them like their potato chips or pretzels. But it's it's in the realm of things that many, many people buy. I think it's a huge there's a huge price difference between eight hundred bucks and uh four hundred bucks or three hundred and fifty bucks, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's big difference difference.
I mean Nastasha might actually consider purchasing one instead of other uh uh yes. I said you might consider actually purchasing one. Yes, yeah, we'll leave it at that. We'll leave it, we'll just we'll just leave it right there. Um that's pretty much I mean that's all there is to say about that, yeah?
Yeah. All right. When we get it, we will tell. When we get it, when we get it, we will tell the pros and cons of each. Uh one if you know me, uh my one of the main problems is is uh I'm gonna find it difficult to lie.
So, right? I mean, like that's unf you know, it's I I I mean I can lie about many things, but not about recommending equipment. It's just a weird thing. And uh, oh, and I know I'm not teaching a class this week as far as I know I'm doing you're doing CV next week. Souve it intensive?
Last week of September. Is that next week? No, two weeks from now. Oh, so I will be in uh I will be doing it my c is the class full? I don't know.
I don't know if you want to come here spout off some crazy stuff. It's not actually, it's actually the best course that we've ever taught. I mean, like not the best, but it's good course for people who want to learn low temperature and sous vide. I'm uh I'll put it this way. I'm proud of what we do in the course because we can we can do things that are very difficult for you to do in either a home or a restaurant kitchen just for time and space reasons.
Anyway, so I guess we're teaching that in a couple weeks, last week of September. So that's when I'll be in there, Ron. I'll be in tomorrow, but I'll be dealing with the Pepsi people. Okay, should we take a first one? Signing books, yeah.
Signing books? What books? Anyway. Coming right back with cooking issues the morning by James. The International Culinary Center is a proud sponsor of the Heritage Radio Network.org.
The ICC with locations in New York and California provide cutting edge education to future chefs, restaurateurs, and wine professionals. We're proud to claim Dan Barber, Bobby Clay, and David Chang among our honored alumni. This is Dorothy Cann Hamilton from Chef's Story. Check out our ICC website at International Culinary Center dot com. And welcome back.
Okay, we have a question in from Paul who says, uh, for ethical dietary reasons, I've been baking croissant with margarine. They turn out very nice, but I'm wondering if I can get something closer to authentic if I adjust the fat in the uh quote in quotes, because it's not butter, butter block. The two main problems uh I think I face is that one, as far as I can tell, it's impossible to get unsalted margarine. And two, I'm guessing margarine I I am guessing margarine has a higher water content compared to butter. Uh secondary issues could include uh altered melting point, issues with saturated fat or trans fat content, etc.
I'm wondering if it might be possible to approximate something closer to unsalted butter in water content and reduce salt levels by making a mixture of margarine and vegetable shortening, or pro or possibly trying to match the water content by evaporating moisture from margarine, but likely increasing the salt levels on a per volume level. If it matters, the dough is relatively wet, uh moderately enriched with a small amount of fat and some sugar, given a very quick mix with low gluten development, but then spends 12 plus hours in the fridge for a rise and a developed gluten and flavor. Any thoughts, thanks, Paul. Okay. So um yeah, here's the thing.
First of all, you know, you have to be making sure anyway that you're using a margarine that has uh um that if you if you if you don't want the butter, I'm assuming you don't want any I'm assuming you want vegan, right? That's the assumption. Right. And so uh, you know, there are I'm and I'm therefore I'm sure you're aware of the fact that many margarines contain um milk, um actual milk in the f for flavor in it, milk products in it for flavor. Uh some are artificially butter flavored, and I'm sure you can get just a plastic fat without the flavoring, but blow.
Uh right or wrong. Right. Yeah. Uh okay, so here's the thing. Uh I did some preliminary poking around.
It's been a long time since I've researched uh margarine because I do eat dairy, and so I'm a margarine, I'm a I'm a I'm a hater. Right? I'm a hater. Uh but the the the key thing, uh I don't know. So uh margarines, I guess, can can have different uh different water levels in it.
But the the key thing about a margarine, so butter is what butter is, right? It's uh but it's butter fat, right? From cream. Uh and the recipes that we have are written around the properties of butter. So butter is actually less than ideal for certain things.
For instance, if you're gonna do uh if you're gonna do uh puff paste and you keep you have to keep the dough temperatures relatively proper, otherwise the butter gets too hard relative to the dough, right? Because butter isn't necessarily the best uh actual physical form for everything you're gonna do. So when when you make a margarine, you get to choose a lot of the exact properties that make it important for so there's there's table margarines, right? And those are meant to spread uh mostly like butter. And with the the main characteristic that you're looking at, other than like the nowadays they're much better at it, like margarine used to taste really just Christ awful because they couldn't deodorize it properly, and they're just tasted of awfulness.
Because the way you make the margarine is you press like any old crud, I mean unless it's specified, but you press any old crud uh and you extract oil from um you extract oil from things like seeds and soybeans, whatever, usually with some crazy solvent, uh, you know, some sort of like light petroleum fraction, which you then get rid of. You're then left with uh oil plus gum and sludge and oil breakdown products, which are uh like one of the things they can do uh with um so if there's too many free fatty acids in there they add uh lye to it and that and that turns it into soap and then they wash the soap away so there's and by the way none of this I'm against I'm not saying I'm against that I'm definitely pro you know that kind of a technique so then they uh they wash away all the impurities and then they de usually deodorize it and when they're gonna make margarine they sometimes do the deodorant deodorant step at the end. So then you're left with these raw inputs that have various different fatty acid profiles and then they hydrogenate them to different levels and different amounts and different ways to obtain um different uh properties of fat. And the most important property of fat other than the taste of it is and and how it crystallizes, how a particular fat crystallizes because that really uh affects its properties quite severely but the the you know the other really important thing is called the uh SFI which is the uh what does it actually stand for? Jeez solid fractions index I think or solids anyway.
So what it is is it's it's a a chart and you can see it and it's how much of a given fat is liquid at any given temperature because because the fats are not one unitary uh type of uh thing they don't have a definite melting point right that's why butter gets softer as it gets warmer it doesn't just instantly melt it gets soft it goes from hard to soft to uh melted because there's a range of different uh uh you know compounds in there that have different melting points and so the there's the where that curve the melting curve is and then there's the slope of that curve determines uh over what temperatures fat is is plastic, is is workable. So the good news about margarines uh is that they can choose that exact profile for baking. And the profile they choose for baking is different depending on the application that you're going to use. So they make ones called baker's margarine that are specifically designed to not be too hard so they don't rip through uh layers of your of your product, but also not to melt at all until you are uh baking with them. So uh, you know, and and there's different ones depending on exactly how the dough is supposed to work.
So, you know, in the in the very industrial scale, they'll have a different one for a puff pastry than they will for a Danish or for croissant because they work slightly differently. Uh so a lot depends on you the the idea being not to tear the dough when you're when you're rolling it out uh and and what you're looking for. But the most important thing with those margarines is that they not melt out into the dough and cause adhesion of the layers to themselves before they're baked out. Like that's the key thing. So there's that in conjunction with the not ripping.
Um water content, I wasn't able to find the app mean so oh, so I looked this morning, trying to find anyone that sold uh these varieties of uh margarines to the public. Like I looked on Amazon for Baker's margarine, and I couldn't find it. I could I Chet Baker, the musician, had a song called Margarine. I was able to find that. You can download that for 99 cents.
But I wasn't able to find less than 50 pounds of baker's margarine and no one that kind of sold uh to you know, just to you know normally to us. So if anyone out there knows a source of baker's margarine, um I I'd appreciate it. And so uh if you want me, and they're technically highly superior products. They just, you know, they also add a lot of other stuff like you know like oils and whatnot. Uh I mean, sorry, like uh butter, fake butter flavor and whatnot.
Uh now, as for your question, I wasn't able to find the optimum water content uh for uh the margarine. But uh and and there there's a there's a question as to what the optimum water content is in a dough like this, because after all, it's the water vaporizing uh, you know, and and in the thing as it melts that is causing the expansion to break the different flaky sections of the dough apart. Uh in addition to you know, in Croissant, obviously it's also leavened. So uh yes, and I know I've known for years that people want and they love the the low water uh European butters, for instance, like in the supermarket, you can buy plough or this kind of thing. But I never have actually done the test of how important the water content is.
I'm loath to suggest adding although you know what? Crisco makes some flaky freaking stuff. Although when I'm making pie crust with uh Crisco, it's a different kind of flaky and there is a lot of fat melting in because I'm not a believer in hyper cold uh everything when you're making pie crust. I follow the kind of Jeffree Steingarden through Marion Cunningham uh pie crust recipe of hand rubbing and not worrying about the temperature too much. And no one complains about my pie crust, but you do get some bleed out of the fat into the into the fat uh into the flour in that.
And so and I use lard for that, which you could act, you know, which is actually more when I use lard, it's actually colder because lard's much more difficult to work with than uh shortening is. But when I use Crisco shortening, uh it you know, it it works. So you know what? It might work if you really want to lower the water content, beat some crisco into the margarine, like roll it in, like, you know, whip it and then flatten it and make it into a block. It could work.
But I mean uh most margarines, I think, are rocking in around the twenty percent water range in that area, seventeen to 20, and most butters are also in that same range. So I d you know, I doubt you're gonna have uh I doubt, I doubt, I mean, I doubt you that the water is an issue, but maybe it is. Uh what I would recommend is not obviously melting the margarine uh to try and get the water out of it because then you're breaking the emulsion, right? Right, fair. Mm-hmm.
Okay. Uh what do you think? Is that a valid answer? Yes. Did I give anything of use?
I sometimes I can't tell whether I've said any freaking thing useful at all. I just can't tell. Uh okay. Uh Michael from Oakland writes in again, and now like making and now I feel bad. He's like, hey guys, welcome back from uh Columbia.
Following up on the Lucama question from a few weeks ago. Again, I make a cocktail with Lucama, was looking for an easier to locate substitute, something I could find in a local market, specialty market, or Latin market. You asked me to tell you whether I was concerned with taste or feel or something else. It's the taste I care about. Thanks for looking into this.
And so I don't have a decent. I don't have a does anyone out there, please help us out. Help us out. Get us a good source of Leucoma andor Lucama substitute. Because the closest thing I have is canistel.
Because I never actually worked with Leucima directly. I work with canistel. Delicious, right? That's good product. Yeah.
Uh so I've never uh had to source it. So someone help me out. Uh help us out. Help us out with that. Let's go to our second commercial break cooking issues.
This one's called the paper jam. Erotic. But erotic. But erotic. But erotic but erotic but erotic but erotic erotic erotic got Stitcher?
Heritage Radio Network is on it, so get it. Stitcher is an award-winning provider of news and talk radio for your mobile phone. Stitcher Smart Radio, the smarter way to listen to radio. Are we back? We're back with cooking issues.
Um Joe, do you remember did we answer the question about raw milk safety last week? Or two weeks ago? Oh man, check that out. I'm gonna I'm gonna answer another question in the meantime. Uh greetings, Nastasha Jave, that's me.
Uh, Jack and Joe. Uh, from Kevin Scott in San Jose. By the way, San Jose visited San Jose where our other the sister school is for the ICC. And you it is almost impossible to find anything to freaking eat in San Jose after midnight. You know what I'm saying?
You ever mean do you ever go hang out in San Jose? No, you're a you're a Southern California. But my college was near there. It's in Stanford. How close is that to San Jose?
Pretty close. Closer than San Francisco. Really? Yeah. But no, I never ate there.
Yeah. Anyway, apparently, like somewhere there's like the late night taco stands that are supposed to be good, but no no one could point us out. They're like, man, yeah. So, you know, I was starving one night in San Jose. So, Kevin, if you can hook us up with the next time I'm in San Jose where I should get good food after midnight, I would appreciate it.
Because the sit there's like eight billion people in San Jose, right? It's like a giant freaking city. It's huge. Huge. Huge.
Okay. So there's gotta be good late night eats since it's not possible for there not to be. Anyway, uh Kevin writes, I'm thinking about buying a new three-liter uh tabletop centrifuge for random mad science food hackery. What should I be looking for? Refrigerated or not?
Any manufacturers to avoid? Swinging bucket or fixed rotor. I'd like to be able to try out things like making nut and vegetable butters, tomato water, and clarifying stocks and juices. Our tabletop model is going to have enough oomph to handle this range of things. And while I'm asking questions, have you ever experimented with meat stock clarification in a centrifuge?
I can imagine being able to get a beautifully clear stock, but is there flavor loss? I don't know if you uh I don't uh if you don't know, I can do that experiment myself once I've acquired my centrifuge. Okay. What should you be looking for? Refrigeration is nice.
Um I I mean I love having refrigerator on my centrifuge, but that said, and there are some products that it's very it's very helpful to have, but it it adds a l it obviously that you need more power and it's a lot more space and the unit is a lot heavier. Uh so if you know if you don't need the refrigeration, if you don't want it, um you can get a much more compact system without refrigeration. So and there are ways to get around the refrigeration. For instance, uh putting your buckets in the freezer before you load them so that they're cold, um the x XY XYZ. The your product does heat up quite a bit uh in a centrifuge as it's spinning, and it's because of the incredible friction um that's just generated by the by the you know this thing spinning around in the air.
It gets quite warm. So we're talking the product that goes in pretty close to room temperature can come out at body temperature, really at the end of like a 15 minute spin or something like that. So if you have a product that you um where the temperature is critical, for instance, butter or spinning cream uh in into this kind of butter mass, which is something that Wiley does at the WD-50 or has done, um, then uh refrigeration is probably a good idea. Another thing is because of the immense friction, uh centrifuge can chill very, very rapidly. So one of the advantages that I think of having a refrigerated unit is um you know, we'll do juices when we're doing juices.
I usually blend uh you know whatever fruit it is in a vita prep along with the enzyme until it's slightly above water water uh the body temperature. That means the enzyme works almost instantaneously and we can spin right away. I don't have to wait for the enzyme to break down stuff at lower refrige temperatures. Now, if you have a refrigerated centrifuge, um it chills that product as it's spinning extremely rapidly down to refrigerator temperatures just because there's such good uh heat transfer because of the immense amount of uh of uh airflow that you're getting across the uh buckets when you're when you're spinning. So refrigeration, if you can afford it in terms of space and in terms of money, then um I would get it.
I mean, that's that's that. Um whether or not any manufacturers to avoid, I really only have experience uh with uh Sorval, larger Sorval units, and with uh what was that Japanese one? Do you remember the name of that? That thing was awesome. No, I don't know.
That thing was amazing. I love that thing. I know that thing was awesome. Uh or uh and the the one in Japan, which I can't even remember, was a Japanese manufacturer, and I don't think it's shipped here to the US. But the awesome thing about that, other than the fact that it was awesome, it was very compact, right?
It had a plexi top, and there's some American there's some manufacturers here that are uh I forget who like CentriVap, I kind of forget who makes those, but uh there's a couple manufacturers with plexi tops, and they're kind of fun because you can get a uh uh a strobe tack and shoot on the thing and then you know see the product as it's clarifying. It's not really necessary, but it is fun. But the awesome thing about that Japanese one was that the it the buckets, the aluminum buckets had stainless steel thin inserts that went into it that you could just use over and over, and they're just really nice unit. And really quiet, smooth. Anyway, so I'm most of my experience has been with Juans.
Uh and the Juan is nice, is a nice unit, but it's they're older because the company's out of business. It was bought by Thermo, which makes still makes a lot of centrifuges, and then uh and then the company was retired, the brand name was retired. Uh Wiley uses a headache. Uh he seems to enjoy that. And uh I think Tony uh Corneliaro in uh England also uses a head itch and he likes it.
Uh I think Hedich is out of Germany. Uh but you know, all these guys, uh here's what I would I would say. Uh I wouldn't avoid a manufacturer uh in a in a new centrifuge. I would avoid certain types. So um I don't think you need uh as I look here here's the other thing.
So the question is fixed rotor versus uh swinging bucket. Fixed rotor is going to be better for uh things like pea butter uh and and whatnot just because of the way layers are formed in a fixed uh angle rotor. Uh however, uh you know, most of the fixed angle rotors, you first of all you can put a fixed angle rotor into a three-liter bench top thing, but you're not gonna get three liters out of it. You're gonna get a much smaller yield. And to buy a unit that can do three liters that's fixed rotor is gonna be a much, much larger unit, and you're talking a lot more money.
For bang for buck and most uh useful all around, uh go with the swinging bucket rotors because that's the clarification machine. It works fine on uh nut butters. Uh we've d how you know how many how many you know things of nut butter have we done in uh in a like countless? Countless. Too many.
Too many. Uh nut milks, uh things of that nature. Uh I've never actually done the pea butter recipe, but I think that that uh when Maxime Billet came to the school, he did it in our centrifuge and it seemed to work fine. Um but the fixed angle rotors are good for certain they're good they're good for certain things. Uh and I do do some fixed angle work.
Again, like m all of my recipes that I work with are built around that centrifuge and around its capabilities. So I spend most of my time thinking of recipes uh that uh that fit within those parameters. So there's many things I'm sure that you can do that you know you can't. Now on stock, um I've never clarified uh stock in uh in regular stock in a centrifuge, and I'm assuming that to do it you're gonna require a lot of G's unless you do things like break down the gelatin in it or add other fining agents to it. And then I'm assuming you'll be able to do it.
But your question is is that you're not sure if there's gonna be flavor loss. There is always flavor loss in a clarification step. Let me be clear on this. There is always, always a flavor loss in a clarification step. The centrifuge by far is the least uh impactive uh technique to clarify that I've ever used.
So um, you know, agar clarification strips out certain things, and uh centrifuge strips out certain things, but things like agar and gel and clarification strip out a lot more, egg whites strip out a lot more. Uh and how you clarify also uh determines how much is is uh stripped out. So I mean, even within the something like the centrifuge is is what I mean to say. So for I'll give you the for instance. Uh we do gin and juice is one of the recipes we do at the bar, and uh we clarify I used to clarify grapefruit juice using freeze thaw with agar.
So you you know you you use two grams per liter of grapefruit juice, you set a light agar gel, you freeze it for you know tart overnight, and then you let it thaw into big pants. And so, you know, we used to do you know uh leaders and liters and liters. Like remember that time we did like for for the MOMA? We did a party for like 1500 or more people at the MoMA, and we it was just like gallons and gallons. We filled all we took every hotel pan in the school and filled it with frozen grapefruit juice.
And max ans, remember that? Yeah, we speak some right. Yeah, and your yield is lower, but the grapefruit juice you get from that technique, uh, freeze thaw is extremely clean and sweet because uh a lot of the the the bitterness of the grapefruit is stripped out, which is I guess Noring. And it's stripped out uh in the agar clarification process. So when you use when you make gin and juice using agar clarification, freeze thaw or quick, you do not need to add any simple syrup at all to the recipe.
Okay. When you do uh centrifugal clarification on grapefruit juice, where we use an enzyme to break down the pectin, and then uh some very light fining agents, kiesel salt, and chitosan, which are designed for wine clarification, uh, more of that inherent bitterness remains. Some of it's still stripped, it doesn't taste like fresh grapefruit, you know, like like you know, whole grapefruit juice, but it uh much more remains such that I do have to add a small amount of simple syrup to that recipe to get it to work. Uh and so, yes, there is a stripping of flavor. Sometimes that stripping of flavor is good.
For instance, I wouldn't want the full bitterness of grapefruit juice in my gin and juice because I think it would be overpowering with the gin and with the carbonation because we carbonate it all. So uh there's always uh flavors that are removed. Sometimes it's a good thing, sometimes it's a bad thing. Um with the stock, you know, uh whenever I clarify stock, I usually I'm doing a bunch, and so I do regular freeze thaw clarification on stock, just water it down so there's not too much gelatin in there. But you like I say, you could use a fining agent in in uh in conjunction with uh an enzyme called Coralase, which breaks down uh Coralase breaks down uh gelatin.
The problem with uh you and we've done tests of breaking down the gelatin using just uh meat, meat, you know, protease stuffs, basically, you know, papayene and other things that you can get as meat tenderizers. Uh the problem being that when proteins are broken down into very small fragments, uh, some of those fragments can turn bitter and unpleasant, the small polypeptides. And coralase is an enzyme that's designed specifically to break down gelatin into flavorless uh polypeptides. So it breaks them down in such a way that they don't cause bitter and off-flavors. And that stuff is freaking amazing.
Unfortunately, like you take jellied stock, hardcore jellied stock, you add a couple of drops of coralase, and the thing melts out. Just melts, it just melts, even if it's cold, boop, gone. And then you can reduce stock. We've done ridiculous things like take a gallon of stock and taking it down to you know, like just like uh almost until it's solid and it doesn't set when it cools off. So we use that for like these incredibly intense kind of beef uh stock uh things.
It's amazing. But anyway, I would get a hold of Coral Ace, except for I have not been able to. So if Chris uh you know if Chris at Monitors Pantry can get his hands on some coralase enzyme, I would buy the hell out of that. We met him. Yeah, we did.
We met him uh what was it again? Sunday, Saturday. Oh, yeah, we did the Heritage Radio. Have we talked about that yet? Sort of.
Sort of here, you think about what to say about that because I think I got one more question I got to hit before we before we get kicked out of here. Uh, and here it is. Confused in Houston. Co. Confused in Houston Miles writes in uh dear uh Nastasha, Dave, Jack, and Joe.
I've been researching hydrocolloids. You know? I've been researching hydrocolloids and in particular methylcellulose. Since there are a bunch of different kinds of this stuff, how can one tell which is right for a particular purpose? For example, if I wanted to make a hot melting jelly, which type of methyl cellulose would I use?
And what about for stabilizing a foam? Thanks in advance. Okay. This is a great this is a great thing, and uh uh uh a great question. And a lot a lot of this goes back to uh some original problems I had with uh recipes uh printed online uh and also with uh Faron's Texturas line.
Now the products in Texturas they're all they're all good products, they're all high quality products, you know. Uh but the problem is is that they don't necessarily tell you what's in them. So for instance, in Ferron's methyl, uh in Ferran's uh gel an it's just called gel an. It it's not just gel an, it's a mixture of two different kinds of gel an, high acyl gel N and low acyl gel an. That's I guess some sort of compromise that you can use to make fluid gels, but also uh has a somewhat gelatin characteristic when it's used as a gel in its own right.
Uh and I'm pretty sure uh it's been a billion years since I've used his gel an, but I think it's basically uh 25% of the uh high acyl gel an, which is the stretchy weird one, and 75% of the low acyl, which is the brittle clear, you know, one that's good for fluid gels. So on methyl cell, uh, I used to know it one time and I've forgotten what is the what they're actually using in that. Now uh there are many different producers of methylcellulose. Methylcellulose is uh one of the few unnatural hydrocolloids that we use, and by that I mean the methylcellulose does not occur in nature, it's a it's a derived product from uh cellulose, uh, you know, from like you know, manufacture of cotton and things like this. And um, so they're not naturally occurring, but they're not that doesn't make them evil, it just means they don't occur in nature.
Um but there are a zillion different kinds. There's straight methyl cellulose, there's hydroxyprobe methylcellulose, there's there's a there's a bunch of different ones. Uh the ones that, and there are several manufacturers of it, the ones that I use and have used are manufactured by DAO. And DAO, DAO's brand name is Methocell, right? Yeah, M-E-T-H-O, I can't spell that out.
S-E-S-C-E-L, Methocell. And they those are the ones that most chefs write their recipes around. Dow Methocell. The good thing about Dow is that Dow has online, or at least used to, and if they don't, I can email or put on my thing, uh, a bunch of uh uh technical documents on exactly what they all do. Uh so any recipe that you get, you should try to convert it into the type of methyl cell that you want.
The interesting property that you allude to with uh methell that it has is that it's one of the very few things that as it's heated becomes a gel. Gels as it's heated and melts as it's cooled. This has led to a lot of people, including Wiley and Ideas in Food, and you know, Nicholas Curti would have if he hadn't died before he figured out what methell was, try and make things like hot ice cream, things that uh things that uh are solid when they're hot, and then you put it in your mouth and it melts. Kind of an inverse thing of ice cream. The problem is I think it's a fundamentally flawed idea making hot ice cream because like I can go into it later.
I don't have time to go into why I think hot ice cream is a fundamentally flawed idea. But uh, so it's very interesting product because of this way that it sets as it's heated, and it's because it becomes less soluble as it's heated, drops partially out of solution and forms a gel. Uh now, there's wide variety of uh ones in the methyl cell line, and not all of them form good gels, but they're arranged in the order of how they gel. So the mo the hardest gelling one, but it actually you know squeezes out a lot of water, is uh the S G series. And those are stands for super gelling, and those hard gelling ones also gel at the lowest temperature.
The next series up, and it's very, very, you know, you know, not that hot, like a like 120 Fahrenheit or something like that, starts gelling. I forget the actual numbers. Uh the next is the A series. So those are the two ones that are mainly used for gels in things like noodles that set when you squeeze them into broths and all those things. That's what those things, those things excel at that kind of um application.
And they're used for that. The uh other series, uh I I don't really use the K series that much, but it's a higher thing. The series other series that I use, the E series was discontinued. The E series is good at film forming, and so people are making crackers and biscuits out of them. Although I don't particularly like Methell E series.
Uh, but the one that uh I use the most is the F series, and that's the one that you use for meringues and for whipping. So that's the one that's a good whipping agent. Okay. So the SG and the A series are the ones that you use for gelling, and the F series is the one that you use for uh like those meringues that you dehydrate and and they stay nicely. The other thing to worry about on methacel, Dow bran methell, is the uh number that is after it.
So there's F50, for instance, is the one that you want to use for uh whipping things. The F50 is, and all of the numbers after a methyl cell are uh a measure of the viscosity of the product as it's made. So 50 is it's in almost in arbitrary units, but it's a certain concentration of methyl cell, has 50 times the viscosity of water at a certain concentration, blah blah blah. Okay. So there's F50, uh, but there's for instance, you can get one like SG 16M, right?
And here's what's freaking confusing, and I'll leave you guys with this because they're gonna kick us off the sh off the air in a second. But here's what's confusing they use a sun combination of Arabic and Roman freaking numerals, right? So SG 16M, right, is actually uh an SG super gel with a viscosity of sixteen thousand because the M stands for thousand in uh in Roman numerals. They also have some C ones uh that are like seven hundred, and so it's very confusing unless you just remember you gotta choose the series you want, and then after you choose the series you want, you gotta choose uh the viscosity that you want it to be. And the viscosity is gonna determine also how hard the gel is gonna be at the end, because it's probably a longer uh they're probably longer you know units, so they're probably a harder gel, and also the viscosity of the stuff as you're as you're working.
I hope that helps! Cooking issues. 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. You can like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter at Heritage underscore radio.
You can email us questions at any time at info at heritage radio network.org. Heritage Radio Network is a nonprofit organization. To donate and become a member, visit our website today. Thanks for listening. Get it straight.
Vicious Vicious Fat. Oh, you dare
Timestamps may be off due to dynamic ad insertion.