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Cooking issues! Call it live at 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. It's Dave Arnold with Cooking Issues coming to you live every Tuesday on the back of our burden's Pizzeria in Bushwick, Brooklyn, here with Nastasha the Hammer, Lopez, and Jack and Joe in the engineering booth. How you guys doing today?
Hey. All on two hours sleep. Can you believe that? Two hours sleep. Yeah.
Well, that's why we needed a theme song like this one. Yeah, Jack is well, I like the fact that we have uh it's so stupid. Like I go into the crazy mode and then here I am back in normal normal mode. Nor anyway. But we have like uh we have two songs, which is awesome.
So we have the break song, and then we have the the the crazy, you know, get me going with no sleep song. We'll take more. Yeah. As listeners, we'll take more. Yeah?
I'm s um by the way, Joel, I'm I'm trying to get McGee to call in and and read the Myard stuff, but you know it for Christmas. It's er uh that's gonna be his Christmas present. If I can convince McGee to do that. Who? Joel.
Oh, well, whatever. I mean, like, you know, I can give someone a Christmas present regardless of whether they celebrate. It's not like it's not like I'm smacking them in the face. Like a gift is a gift. If someone wants to give, hey, look, anyone out there wants to give me a gift from some other religion, I am glad to accept it.
See? Me too. Yeah, right? Mm-hmm. What about you guys?
Uh it depends. He's like, no Zoarestrian gifts. Right? Well, what what what gift would you not accept, Jack? Is that Jack or Joe who wouldn't accept?
That was me, Jack. And I I don't know. I mean, are there like Scientology holidays? Oh. Yeah.
I think I think not. I think not, too. Like, I don't know. Maybe there's Scientology gifts. Uh well, there's there's always one Scientology gift.
Dianetics. Okay. Um we have a question in. Uh by the way, seriously, you can call any questions live to 7184972128. That's 784972128.
Oh, this weekend we had the the CNN thing went on. I cannot believe that Nastasha managed to not be on that entire half hour program. They never asked me. Uh they didn't ask Piper either, and yet he's on. You know why?
Because he didn't hide away from the camera. I did not hide. I was in clear view. Well, that's actually not true. You s rescheduled your flight back to the country to miss the cooking issues episode when they went through a lot of hoops.
You're like, yeah, have them come that day. Everything's fine. Oh yeah, I'm not gonna be here. They came the second time though. Yeah, but they'd already done most of the shooting.
Look, just people like people, she does not want to be on the camera. She's a crazy person. She's a crazy person. But not just for that reason. Many reasons.
Please call in and convince her that next time she should not hide from uh the cameras. But I thought it was good. It was fun. I like it's an expose. Speaking of expose, uh I was very happy with the program.
I enjoyed it. Um, which is unusual. I detest watching myself in any any form. But the um so CNN did a blog, and the blog post that they decided to do was on uh good liquid nitrogen. So they did like, I don't know, they put the liquid nitrogen, and then the internet trolls came out of their freaking caves and were typing all sorts of nonsense about liquid nitrogen.
So l first of all, it was all about that awful case we talked about you know a couple of weeks ago a month ago now, maybe, right? Where the this like you know, incredibly unfortunate, this 18-year-old uh woman in uh England was served uh liquid nitrogen to drink, which is a horrible and and unconscionable thing for a bartender to do, and she lost her stomach. And it's horrible. Uh completely awful, but also uh would never happen with anyone who's using uh liquid nitrogen properly. But you get all these like freaks on the internet who have no idea what they're talking about, and they just are slamming uh slamming me for using liquid nitrogen, saying things that are patently untrue about liquid nitrogen.
Like, for instance, this one person, and this I commented once to set some stuff straight, and then Nasasha was like, Don't comment again, just leave it alone, leave it alone, leave it alone. But here it's my radio show, I get to do what I want. So they this one person says, uh, whose by the way, their actual name is yeah, right. No, I think that's their handle. Oh, I know, I'm kidding.
Because any anonymous jerk sitting alone in their underwear can make comments on the internet like they're like they know what's going on. But anyways, so what happened is they they say, well, you know, there's always the possibility for human error, so there's there's no reason to do it. Which is, I mean, the possibility for human error using liquid nitrogen if you use it properly in terms of a of a customer getting hurt that way, like a horrible thing that happened in England, is roughly on the order of saying that if a chef was chopping onions in uh plain view of a customer, that they might trip and throw the knife through the customer's head. And and that if that happened, then uh you know, we should ban the use of knives in kitchens. It's simply ridiculous.
Like I cannot state in stronger terms how awful it is what happened in England and how thoroughly, thoroughly punished the person is who did that, and how freaking horrible it is that they that they did that. And and I also cannot emphasize in stronger terms that that is not a reason to ban the use of liquid nitrogen, and that people writing it on the internet simply don't know what they're talking about. And I kept on getting the gimmick crap. The guys, the guys who are against liquid nitrogen, by and large, are throwbacks, it seems, from their writing to like a very old school of thought where it they just think everything's a party trick. They don't, they're not bothering to pay attention.
Forget what I'm doing with it, or you know, anyone at the bar, anyone that knows me or is associated with me. If you look around, there are many uh many uses of liquid nitrogen that are they're not uh gimmicks, right? I'm sure there are uses of liquid nitrogen that are gimmicks in the same way that if you go to a benihana, no offense to the Benihana people, but if you go to Benihana, their knife use is a gimmick. Do you know what I'm saying? So, yes, a knife can be used as a gimmick, and liquid nitrogen can be used as a gimmick, and a knife can be used to you know cook, and liquid nitrogen can be used.
Uh well, it won't cook because it's cold, but you know what I'm saying, right? Is that enough? Elliot Pappanow tweets, please also ban fire. It's very dangerous. You know, he's right.
It is extremely dangerous. I've been burnt several times this year alone. You know, uh, but uh anyway, so that goes into uh uh we have a question um oh I don't have the person oh from Paul uh at American Meltdown. He says, I graduated from FCI back in 07. We didn't get to interact much.
I was in the last class of the old four phase uh culinary tech uh paradigm and there was no culinary technology stuff. Uh I had a question about well, we I was there, but I didn't wasn't teaching the the regular blah blah blahs, I guess yet. Anyways. Uh no, I did. Anyway, whatever.
Uh I had a question about liquid nitrogen. I own and operate the American Meltdown Food Truck in North Carolina. Uh we serve uh gourmet melts and grilled cheeses. I like grilled cheese. You like grilled cheese sauce?
You love, right? That's one of the few things Nastasha actually I can I can legitimately say Nastasha loves herself with grilled cheese. Do you like anything? First time I've heard her say the word love on the show, I think. I know it.
I know it. Is it because your mom didn't make grilled cheese that we have? Yeah, she did. Yeah? Do you enjoy things on your grilled cheese or do you like what kind of cheese do you like?
Uh cheddar. Well, that's the other love you have, Swiss. What was it? What was the second one? Cheddar.
Ch cheddar. It doesn't melt very well. You don't care? Don't care. All right.
What do you think about American cheese? No. Don't like it. Don't like it? Don't like it.
Uh you're patriotic, David. I'm not. Not patriot. I have nothing to do with patriotism. Do you know where American cheese was invented?
In England. Oh. Oh, in Switzerland, maybe. It's it was in Europe, anyway. It was not here.
It was invented, actually. No, it was invented by the Swiss. It's been the Swiss Nastasha. You know why? As a fondue.
Look it up right now. Because the book, the book which I downloaded somewhere on my computer is Processed Cheese Analogs, but I believe processed cheese was invented by the Swiss, which makes sense because of their love of freaking fondue. But look it up. Anyway, uh back to the question. I had a question about liquid nitrogen.
Blah blah blah. Uh I wanted to bring on some liquid nitrogen uh for a play on frozen grilled cheese. I don't know how you would freeze a grilled cheese, though. But anyway, we'll liquid nitrogen. I don't know.
I mean, like, but in other words, if you freeze the grilled cheese, it's frozen grilled cheese. I don't understand. But anyway, uh, I've had some difficulty with equipment. I found the place to buy the liquid nitrogen, and the guys will let me carry it off in a styrofoam box. As far as dispensing it, do I need a tank?
Uh, where would I get a tank to hold L in? I saw uh some one-liter ones at McQueenLabs.com. In my head, I have a tank with a hose, and I would put something like olive oil into a bowl and then squirt in the liquid nitrogen, and it would get the popcorn like frozen shapes, which is similar to the Dan, you know, Danny Garcia, the famous uh Spanish chef, used to make uh frozen uh olive oil in various ways. But he he actually did it exactly uh in the reverse, right? So he's it or would I pour some ladle some liquid nitrogen into a bowl and then pour the olive oil in?
That is what typically you would do. So in fact, I saw Danny Garcia once do the olive oil demo in a styrofoam box. And um when he's doing his stuff when he's when you're freezing olive oil, the trick is is that it breaks up into little uh pieces, uh like almost like couscous. So he, if you sit in the LN long enough, it makes this guy couscous like thing. If you want like kind of foamier, denser things, he used to emulsify different amounts of water in to get different textures.
The more water you add, the more it hurts your face, though, because the water hurts a lot when you put it in uh cold frozen like that, whereas the uh olive oil by itself doesn't have as high of a specific heat, so it can't uh actually uh damage you as badly. But anyway, he would put uh olive oil in an ISI canister, shake it up and then foam it into the liquid nitrogen, and the aeration would also make it less damaging on the tongue, provide interesting texture and get those popcorn like things. So that's how Danny Garcia used to do it. And in fact, I did that demo once because we had a whole bunch of liquid nitrogen and people wanted to see it. I'm like, alright, I'm now gonna pretend I'm Nanny Garcia because I hate doing other people's demos.
So I literally was like, I'm I am Danny Garcia, but not. Anyway, and so I did like because I had seen him do his demos, so I did uh you know, I did a lot a lot of those. I mean, not as well as he did. I'm not trying to say I was but anyway, I uh I did that. So um okay.
Uh so you don't if you're putting it in a styrofoam box, there's not much point in putting it into something. I mean styrofoam box is not so good. You gotta be careful when you have a styrofoam box because uh they can crack, and if they crack, they dump liquid nitrogen everywhere. So you want to make sure that if you do use a styro, it's like like something sturdy like a fish tub, and that you have it in a cardboard with uh duct tape around it so that it doesn't break. Um you can pour it into coffee carafts is the easiest way, uh, because you're not gonna be that uh, you know, you're not gonna be that efficient in storing it this way anyway.
Eventually you're gonna want to go get like a 35 uh liter dew or or something like that. Um you you ask, do I need a tank? Will the LN just evaporate quicker without one? Yes, that's the case. It'll just evaporate quicker.
And you know, the problem with styrofoam boxes, they also have a fairly large surface area, so unless you keep it capped all the time, you're gonna lose a lot. And when you pull the thing off, you're gonna lose a lot. But if you're getting a cheap price on it, it's an okay way to start out. Just be careful that it can't slosh around because things can slosh out of those containers and then get liquid nitrogen all over everywhere. And if you're not being cautious, especially if you're in a food truck, never let it get in a situation where the liquid nitrogen is above the head of a customer and you're serving down to them with liquid nitrogen because then you could get liquid nitrogen and you could pour it like you know, potentially into their eyes or in inside of a piece of their clothing where it could get trapped and cause uh severe burns.
You also want to make sure you don't have large amounts of liquid nitrogen inside of your truck unless your truck is completely ventilated to the outside so that you have no possibility of um what's the word I'm looking for? Asphyxiation. Asphyxiation. Nastasha's like, I don't know. Oh, and it was the British, not Swiss for American cheese.
It was British British for processed cheese in general. Look up processed cheese and melting salts in general. That's not American cheese okay well clearly at least American cheese was invented by the Brits but processed cheese in general I believe is invented by the Swiss keep looking so I've got 1911 by Walter Gerber in Switzerland that's wait wait wait that's that's that's processed cheese James L Kraft is the first who applied for a patent for the method in 1916 and then craft was the first to commercial commercially slice them keep them you know sell them sliced in 1950. So in the US in the US in the US in the US yeah yeah yeah uh the Swiss so Nastasha your precious yeah well what do you think American cheese is hello it's processed cheese made with cheddar duh hey by the way just so you know I've said this before on the show but this is what I do with my kids. I give them a prize anyone the first person who calls in I'll send you two dollars if you get this so what is going to be more likely to produce a better emulsified uh uh uh processed cheese product an aged cheese or a non-aged cheese first caller in gets two bucks I don't know how how am I gonna get two bucks paypal PayPal we'll PayPal you two bucks okay um now uh back on the thing uh we are in closed space being inside the truck but there are two huge ventilation hoods a service window and a large back door that can swing open uh I feel that has enough airflow but I could be wrong thanks for your time and response listen uh it could be enough airflow just make sure that there's no possibility that one of your workers is in there and it gets sealed like for instance when you're driving and if you're driving and they have a like a big tub of liquid nitrogen and you get hit it could dump over and then the entire styrocooler of liquid nitrogen is on the floor of your truck and it's sealed, and then you're shafted because you might have gotten knocked out and you can't open the window or something like that.
So the it any time you have liquid nitrogen in a vehicle like that, it has to be away from you, secure, and all the windows have to be open, right? That's what that's the rule. That's the rule we Nastasha's like, I don't want to talk to you about it. Well on the show, what are you talking about? There's no one else I can talk to.
Please. Okay. Um Tony Tony Harrian writes in from the mixing bar in Brazil. Hey, Dave, Nastasha, Jack, and Joel. Uh Joe.
I don't know why I said Joel. Crazy. Because I'm gonna talk about Joel later. Yeah. Uh salute from Brazil once again.
This Tuesday I've been invited to speak to a group of bartenders, media and industry people, uh, about the use of salt in drinks in Sao Paulo. They uh I want to go to Sao Paulo. I don't like Portuguese. The language or the people? Yeah.
But uh, do you don't like like European Portuguese or Brazilian Portuguese? But see, I like Brazilian Portuguese, but actual Portuguese makes no sense to me. It sounds like Russian. Is that why you like it? It sounds all crazy to me.
Like like Portuguese from Portugal sounds all crazy to me. And like Brazilian Portuguese sounds like Portuguese to me. Anyway. Uh, okay. Uh the project is called Mentes Brijantes, Brilhantes, brilliant minds, and is produced by the Brazilian cocktail site, Mixology News, to promote the uh promote the exchange of ideas within our cocktail scene.
My presentation is pretty much all set up, but it'll be awesome to include any hint or pointer from the cooking issues team. Uh, I know from the episode you did with Tony Canal that you use uh or Tony C, as they say, Tony C. Do you know that in America when you pronounce the ball players, the dead famous uh Boston Red Sox ballplay's name, that they literally even like I was talking to my 93-year-old uh my stepfather's father, my stepgrandfather, whatever, you know, who's Italian, Adonisio, right? From Boston, and it sealed anyway. So he he even says canigliaro.
Canigliaro. That's what the Bostonites called him anyway. Whatever. Simon's gonna start calling uh Tony Tony Canigliaro. What do you think?
I like it. You like that? Mm-hmm. Tony Canigliaro. Anyway, that you use salt in a few drinks at Booker and Dax.
In fact, we use them in most drinks in Booker and Dax. Anything that has um any form of fruit in it, really, coffee, chocolate, anything like that has uh uh salt in it. Sub threshold, sub threshold. Uh, but would love to hear more of your experiences with it. I'm going to use the drink uh the search for delicious to exemplify how salt can help bitterness in drinks.
Participants will get a glass containing uh china, put a mes, uh, and orange bitters, and we'll gradually add lemon juice and salt tincture. The salt tincture is gonna be at 100 mils of uh water and 15 grams of salt, which is roughly what we do, right? Uh to see how it changes over time, um, tasting the drink at each step. Uh I know it's a bold cocktail, uh, but it's pretty impressive. How a few drops of salt and ass, it can really change this drink.
The workshop is based on the article I wrote for Mixology News a while ago. Of course, it's in Portuguese, so it's useless to me because and I I hate Google Translator. I'm sorry. Sorry, Tony, I can't stand the Google Translate. Do you like Google Translate?
It's awful. It's always wrong. Always wrong. Um any pointers, ideas about the use of salt in drinks and its effects. Appreciate it.
Uh, I'm sure to mention a lot about you guys in the seminar. Cheers, Tony. Okay, so first of all, um, I was not aware of this word, but here's my favorite new title in the world. Maybe this is what you should become instead of uh error apparent. Maybe you should be chemosensory psychophysicists.
I think that's a real It's real. Yeah, I know, but uh people earn that. You think? Yes. You think that's like an earned title?
You can't just like it's like it's like everyone says, I'm an architect. Did you go to architecture school? Did you pass the test? You know what I mean? It's like so you think it's like that?
You have to actually pass a test? I do to be a chemosensory psychophysicist. It's got the word psycho in it. Yeah. Well, you can stick with that.
Psychophysicists. Like, what if it's just psychophysicist and not chemosensory psychophysicists? Can you be that? Sure. Okay.
Uh anyway, so like very, very clearly, the uh people who are the top of their game on this are uh P. A. Breslin and uh G.K. Beauchamp. And they're they work for Monell out of Philadelphia, and they've written all of the good articles on salt and bitterness.
And some of the good ones you might want to look at, but a lot of their like classic work was done in the late 90s. And so you might want to look up salt enhances flavor by suppressing bitterness. And uh another good one is salt taste, which is a chapter in a book. That one came out in uh 2008, and that's uh a good it's good because it's a um it's what's it called? It's a it's a a review, a review section.
Anyway, so the interesting thing is, and uh by the way, while I was researching this to get some more uh information, I learned some uh extremely interesting things. So everybody knows that um I guess everybody doesn't know this. Uh uh if you present something that smells sweet with with something, that uh it makes everything taste uh sweeter. So, like in other words, if I give you banana aroma and sugar, it tastes sweeter than if I just gave you banana aroma alone. Does that make sense?
And if I add uh certain things, but if if I ask you to evaluate and then things have different synergies. So typically if you add salt, salt masks bitterness. So it like if you add salt to it, bitterness level is reduced. Typically, if you but what's crazy is if I ask you to rate it there's very recent scholarship that that when you just have someone rate a single thing like sweetness, they could all make sense. But that if you actually say, for instance, in sweet, if you're gonna do a sour and salt together, if you ask someone to rate the wow, someone just tossed a pizza on someone's chest, it was awesome.
Sweet. You see that? Yeah. It's like we we watched the the kind of like dining room here, and there was a there was a pizza chest toss. Anyway.
Grease on cashmere. Yeah, grease on cashmere. That's a good band. Anyone out there, you're welcome. Grease on cashmere.
That sounds like a lot of like remember that band Lubricated Goat? No. Yeah. Someone look up whether see see see whose album was circus peanut. I think it might have been lubricated goat.
Um great bad names, family show. Okay. So uh back to what I was saying. So but if you actually tell someone, okay, now rate salt and and and sour separately, they can. They can rate it.
But anyway, in general, salt is extremely complicated. So the way so the way the way it affects your taste. So the way it affects your taste is uh is very dependent on concentration. So when you add salt, for instance, like some people add salt to coffee, when you're adding salt to things uh uh in low concentrations, you s so okay, look I get so I get so like all over myself. My head's going at like a million miles a minute that I can't I gotta slow down, slow down, slow down the head.
Okay. If you take uh bitter and a bitter component and let's say a sweet component and you have them together, the in a drink, the bitter component and the sweet component will mutually suppress each other. Does that make sense? Right? So it'll taste both less sweet and less bitter.
But if you add salt to that, right, even fairly small amounts of salt to that mixture, what ends up happening is uh the salt suppresses the bitterness, but also undoes the uh undoes the suppression that the bitterness did to the sweetness. So it tastes even sweeter. So it tastes like the bitterness is going down and the sweetness is going up. Even though actually what's happening is you're unmasking the the you're unmasking the bitters no longer masking of the sweetness. And this is like really super interesting work that like Beauchamp and Breslin did uh out of Monell.
And like everyone should, everyone should kind of kind of read that. But just in um in very kind of uh round terms, in the article salt enhances the flavor by suppressing bitterness. Uh he says our data shows that in addition to adding desired saltiness to food, salt potentiate flavor through the selective suppression of bitterness and perhaps other undesirable flavors, and the release from suppression of palatable flavors such as sweetness. The desire for NACL and other salts and foods as diverse as often bitter vegetables, oily foods, and meats may be due in part to their ability to suppress unpleasant flavors. This may explain why it is difficult to make low sodium foods acceptable.
That's a quote from that article. Another interesting thing that uh Beauchamp in his uh in his what's it what's that thing called? A review article. Uh gives a really interesting example that you can smack your friends across the face with subhold uh subthreshold salt, right? And I've said this a million times on the air, but I've never said it so succinctly, and that's why these are the smart guys.
Uh this is in salt taste. So Nastasha, does bread taste like the average loaf of bread? Does it taste salty? No. No, it doesn't, right?
So I would call that subthreshold salt, right? Uh and so but when you get Tuscan bread, it what? Tastes good. It sucks. Everyone knows it sucks.
You're just being ornery. Suskin bread has no salt and it sucks. And so that shows you kind of the incredible rounding effect that salt can have on something, even though it's below uh threshold. And that in fact is the exactly thing what Beauchamp says. Uh he says, I think it's a he, I don't know, maybe woman.
She, he, I don't know. Um that consider again bread and bread products. The salt in these make up the single largest source of sodium consumed in the U.S. diet. I did not know that.
Uh I did not know that. Yet we typically do not perceive bread as salty. Bread without salt tastes insipid or bad, like Tuscan bread does. Uh that's emphasis is mine. Uh when salt is added, the flavors enhanced without making the bread taste salty.
Thus, salt when added to food must have functions other than adding saltiness, and then goes on to explain uh what they are. Wow. Wow. What? Those guys are necessary to make it.
They can't see. You gotta say what's going on if you're gonna make a couple. Well, first of all, it's raining cats and dogs here. It's like the day you'd never need sunglasses in in Bushwick, and uh two of the three of the group are wearing sunglasses. Yeah, and like, you know, major, like, you know, leaning back, and then you know, I had to actually use this interesting, I had to use the women's bathroom today before the show.
Uh, and by the way, the Robert's people apparently love women a lot more than they love men because your bathroom is you've been to the men's bathroom? Yeah, men's bathroom, hellhole. But not just because it's filthy, because men are filthy, just it's like laid out like I don't care. I don't care. I don't care.
So your you know, your legs are smashing into this thing. I don't care. You know? So the so the door's gonna clock you in the head. If you know, who cares?
You're a dude. You know what I mean? The women's like, you know, you could turn around, you know, you can wash your hands, the spigot's not like, you know, like half a millimeter off of the what? What? But anyway, so the reason I went into the women's bathroom, I was given specific okay because apparently uh uh a couple had gone in there and they were finishing up last night's festivities.
Whoa. Yeah. Yeah. So it's not it's not that they're like that in the morning, it's still nighttime for them. Uh we'll see when Indy Jesus isn't around all hell breaks.
Ha ha ha ha! Boom. Oh, that's a good one. No, geez, that's good. That's good business.
All right. And two, uh, just to break it down the line for you. For example, this is a quote again from uh from these guys. For for example, subthreshold salt levels increase perceived sweetness and decrease perceived acidity. Whereas subthreshold sugar concentrations make a food taste less salty than it actually is.
And in very weak concentrations, salt might actually enhance the flavor of acids because it's not linear. It changes whether it's subthraled, super threshold, and how much. So the answer is there is no answer. You like that? I like that.
Nastasha loves uh there is no answer. Oh, you want to go to our first commercial break? Let's do it. Is that for me? Yeah.
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Today's program has been brought to you by S. Wallace Edwards and Sons. Edward's Suriano hams are aged to perfection for no less than 400 days, and hickory smoked to achieve a deep mahogany color. The Edwards name is well known for its world-class aged and cured meats. Their exclusive hearing and aging recipe produces a unique flavor profile that enhances the quality characteristics of Berkshire pork.
Optimum amounts of pure white fat marbling contribute to a flavor that's a delicate, perfect balance between sweet and salty. For more information, visit www.suryfarms.com. Ooh, reverb. Uh we have a caller, yeah. Yeah, caller, you're on.
Caller on the air. Yeah, hey, Dave. Mark Jensen here down in Lexington, Kentucky. Nice. Hey, man, I've been listening to you guys, Nastasia, Jack, Joe.
It's been a dream to let uh get all this information over the radio. It's fantastic. Thanks for listening. Thanks for listening. What do you got for us?
All right, this is apropos, because I'm also a food truck owner, and this also can kind of uh has something to do with Portuguese cooking. So here we go. I'm doing a Macau style pork chop bun tomorrow for a gig. And of course that has some kind of Portuguese influence and Chinese influence. But my big question is, I'm gonna coat this in a starch and then deep fry it after I marinate the pork chop bun after Marinate the Pork Chop.
On starches, what do you think lends to a more crispy crust if I'm just really powder coating it? I'm not gonna do a batter. Yeah, I mean you know, it's uh everyone has their own feeling. First of all, you're gonna you said you're gonna souve it and then like bring it they're gonna be thin enough that you're just gonna fry from cold after they're after their uh low temp. Is that what you said you were gonna do?
Exactly. Okay. Exactly. Um I mean, I think there's a couple of things you're gonna look. Everyone has their own view about uh kind of what's going on.
But the issue with any kind of skim coat is that you're you're you're unless it's dry, it's hard to get like a real crunchy surface on it unless you know I I need to do more research on it. I've I learned here at Roberta's they do uh uh chicken that's a variant of a kind of a well-known restaurant that was closed at the time but is open again called Pies and Thighs, and they literally take it out of their brine, throw it into flour, and then fry it. So apparently, like everything I learned, because when I learned it was you know, you'd make a pellicle, uh, you know, you dry it real real so to get adhesion, and then you do uh flour liquid flour fry, which is not what you're looking to do. But these guys go directly into the the starch from wet. Were you gonna go into the starch from wet or no?
Uh I was thinking about patting it dry at least. Yeah. Right. All right. Uh but but not a multiple coat.
I'm keeping it thin. Uh and I was leaning toward uh a corn flour, uh keeping it in the kind of Chinese tradition, but uh that corn exactly is is old world, but right. I mean, you know, I've done I've done uh rice starch batters and they're they're you know they have that a certain flavor, and in fact some people even if would put uh you know, but you you can't in your application, but they they put some uh uh you know cowl in there, some some basic stuff in there to to alter it or or baking soda even. But you know, Nils uh Norrin always used to use uh water chestnut uh flour. And he swore by water chestnut flour.
Uh now not chestnut flour. The the storeroom used to make that mistake all the time. Water chestnut flour. And it was it was good, but that was what he always used to swear by. Uh, you know, and I don't know which one of the countries over there that he was working in where he picked it up.
I don't know whether he picked that up in China, I don't know if he picked it up in Singapore, I don't know where he picked it up. But that was that was his go-to for when we when we used to do the whole uh fish, the whole striped bass, and he wanted and we would pull it out, we would only let it you know dry off for a second. He would always dust it in um water chestnut flour. And I have to admit, it was better in my rem in my memory than when we just used you know plain uh wheat flour or any of the other kind of uh normal normal starches. You might want to look at a modified starch like crisp coat uh or something like that, and it's not gonna be too expensive in the um in the quantities that you're using, probably, at least you know, unless you're gonna do it forever.
I think you can get that stuff from modernist pantry. Uh, but you know, that stuff it you know, when it's designed to form a kind of a moisture barrier so that it uh you know crisp coat, hence its name crisp coat, but it could be added also to other starches, so you don't need to use exclusively that. In fact, in industrial usage, they use it only at around I think around 10% usage ratio versus other starch, but it definitely is built to increase uh uh adhesion and crispness in the uh in the in the coating. So you might want to look into something like that. Interesting.
Do you think that uh crisp coat is something that is put into say wandra? Wondra, uh, you know, I've also never done a lot of testing with frying with wonder wondra is is just like uh it's it's uh agglomerated so that it dissolves uh you know uh easily uh and there are some people who swear by wandra coatings in their in their frying, but uh I used it only once or twice in tests, and I you know my feeling was that it had a weird taste but it could have been something else I I really didn't give it enough of a test to to say that I love it or or I don't and for some reason I never got in the habit of keeping Wondra around for gravies because I you know I just feel like it's not necessarily and by the way I'm not a like an it needs to be necessary kind of a guy it's just I just never bothered it never bothered becoming a part of my my pantry but there are people who swear by it have you ever tried have you ever tried it or do you like it? Hello I'm still here me no I'm not a wonder guy either uh it's just that's something that's down here in the south more uh and I was wondering since you meant mentioned crisp coat that maybe that was part of its uh profile yeah no no it's it's just uh I mean like in other words like what they do to certain starches if you look up the natural national starch which is a starch company that I like to go to a lot uh they you know they have a lot of agglomerated starch products for instance like i wondra is the is the starch equivalent of ultra spurse versus ultra text so you know it's prehydrated um the all well those are prehydrated ultra spurts and ultra text I don't really know how wondra's done but the one's agglomerated so that it dissolves easily and doesn't clump up and the other one's a pain in the butt. Mm-hmm gotcha. Well I may check into that water chestnut flour and we've got some good Asian markets here and I might be able to source that.
Yeah and I'm I'm I'm just doing it off the top of my head so you should uh when you do some research on it let us know what happened. Send us a tweet or something. Excellent. I shall, man. Thank you, everybody.
I appreciate it. Alrighty, good luck. Why is my iPad shut down? It's crazy. I hate that.
Okay. Oh, by the way, we got a question we have uh Jack, we're okay over there we got another caller we got another caller. Caller, you're on the air. Uh, yeah, Dave. Uh, a couple questions about pressure cooker stock and then one about sweet potato fries, if I'm not taking up too much time.
Now it's ghost, do it. Um, okay, so when I make pressure cooker stock, which you got me started on and I'm having outstanding results with. Okay, if if I just don't open the lid on a coon recone do it during after the last extraction, however many I'm doing, is it sealed enough to just be canned and like room temperature stable for a day or two? All right, that is an excellent question. Uh excellent, excellent question.
And um okay, so if you were to if you were to uh when you bring it up to pressure, like just do a couple of ch ch vent to get all the extra air out, and you've done it a couple of times, I I would say I would I would be okay with it. I've not not done the studies because if you look at actual pressure canning, um, they're very, very clear that you need to purge the entire thing from with air and then uh have it be full steam before you start your timing on it for being canned. But I think the reason they're doing that is because they're they're cooking it for a bare minimum amount of time and they don't want air trapped in next to the food particle, which is going to slow heat transmission and therefore gonna slow the rate of cooking. I think that if you're doing a stock for long enough that it's probably not an issue, and at the outside and all the air and everything that's in that head space are uh are going to get fully um you know fully you know pressure cooked. Um now i if you're gonna reheat the stock, remember the stock is not uh like it's not really cannibal straight I mean i it is I mean if you if you if you do it long enough if you follow the procedures it should be long story short I don't know whether I can feasibly recommend it to you but I do it.
So it's it's not FDA approved but should probably work. Yeah, yeah I mean I actually do that 'cause like a lot of times you know what'll happen is and and you know the like Harold McGee and Ruleman got into like a little bit of a thing about ruhlman saying he just leaves regular stocks out on and then just reheats them which is what everyone used to do in the old days. You know, they'd keep a soup going for a whole week. And I did that during the blackout here uh when we had Hurricane Sandy but um but you know that the uh me you know many times I will have the pressure cooker going and I don't want to you know it's late at n it's late at night I want to go to bed. I've made dinner and now I'm making a stock out with the bones that I had left over from the prep out at dinner and I'll leave it overnight and then put it in the fridge in the morning and I don't really feel bad about it.
Uh yeah because I I'm uh well hey I want to do exactly what you just described and also on Thanksgiving I mean you know I'm just running out of space for everything and if I could just run the last pressure cooker with the turkey stock and set it in the garage and forget about it until I need it again I mean that's that's just very helpful. Yeah I would not leave it forever. It's I wouldn't consider it 100% yeah I'm talking twenty four forty eight hours max just enough to get you know get it done and out of the way if I'm getting ready for a a a big family deal. Yeah and I'd say reheat it too. Oh oh yeah well uh reheating is pretty much the same with anything I would do with it would be going in something hot.
Like I I make grape gravy with a fairly dark uh butter and flour boo and you know that when the stock hits that gravy, it's uh when the stock hits that root it's about three hundred and fifty degrees or something ridiculous. Right, right, right. A and and and and and then you boil it from there. So I mean so so so reheating is definitively part of the program. Yeah, I mean I mean most things that are gonna develop would be heat labile anyway if you're gonna you're gonna reheat them.
I mean again, like I just feel very hesitant to say it's okay on the air and yet I do do it. Okay, well that's that's sometimes maybe it's as good as you get. Yeah, yeah. And well you got a second question you said? Uh second second stock question.
I've been run doing some double and even one triple extraction, which just came out fantastic. Um based on the method you described a month a month or two ago where you you know, just keep pulling, you know, you you run the pressure cooker, uh let the pressure come down, take one batch of bones out, put the next batch of bones in and run it again without ever cooling it off. Right. Um how many times can you do that before something weird happens? Jeez, I know I don't know.
I've never done more than three. Um but I figure there's gotta be a a diminishing marginal return. I think, you know, it's been years since I it's been years since I've done side by sides on that, uh or like or kept a little back and tasted it, but I bet you that you're not getting much after about about th two or three. Three uh three three on chicken bones, probably three. Uh but mean it really makes a fantastic stock, doesn't it?
I mean that triple stock is crazy. I made I did a triple extraction um on some beef bones for food here a while back and it was just amazing. Yeah, I mean that's r that it's like you know, people no one makes it anymore because you know, if you were actually gonna do it it's it's cr if A it's would be expensive in a restaurant setting, and B, it would take forever if you were doing it in in kind of a standard way, but you can do it so quick and just the depth of flavor on that stuff's nuts, right? Oh, it's I mean it's just it's just unbelievable. And also it's ad advantageous for me that the stronger I can make it, I can make soup and dilute and dilute it back out a little bit so it it it improves my storage efficiency since my freezer is permanently stuffed.
Yeah, right. I mean, I got that technique from uh James uh Peterson. Uh I forget which one of you know, he was, you know, one of my favorite cookbook writers back in the in the day. I guess he's still writing, but uh, you know, I think that's where I that's where I picked that one up like a long time ago. The the not from the pressure cooker, but just the idea of a triple stock in general, uh as opposed to as opposed to doing a lot of reductions, because he was one of the early people that I can remember saying that uh you know, he preferred uh, you know, th three like more heavy duty uh bone to water ratios rather than uh rather than you know making a weak stock and reducing it, which is what most people do, and I think it's not as good.
And you know, and he kind of railed against that uh, you know, a long time ago, and and I I kind of took that to heart. I think most people use too much water in their stocks, period. Well, when you well, when you're trying to make a living selling it, it's just a different scenario. I mean, I I don't really care whether my batch of stock costs twelve dollars or fourteen, but I mean if if you're in business, that can be if it's been making money and losing it. I think it's exactly right.
I think it's and but the funny thing is when people at people at home who can afford to do it that way, like they're emulating the restaurant practice, not necessarily best practice, you know. Well, it's just it it that's just because it's just the most common idea out there, but you've you certainly helped me out on it a bunch. Oh, well, thanks very much. Um and then completely different question. Um I absolutely love sweet potato fries.
My wife doesn't like the texture I get, and that they're just a little too limp. This is there some little magic powder from Modernist pantry that would at least help that problem. You know, I've never uh I've never had the luck on the surface of the sweet potato. Uh, you're talking about the surface or the interior? I've never had luck on the surface.
I've gotten the interior nice, but I've never had the luck on the surface. Well, I would I I I would try anything that even might get my wife to eat them because they're about a hundred times better for you than regular French fries in terms of vitamins, if not calories. Well, I you know, the you you could go the only way I've ever done it where I thought it was like really good, I cheated and I battered them. Okay. You know what I mean?
And then if you do like a like a light batter on them, you can get them crunchy as all get out and then have the sweet potato on the inside. So you don't so you're doing like egg white and cornstarch? Uh I know I didn't do I did uh I you know, I last time I did it, I did it in weight, like everyone's gonna hate me now. I did it in two thick of battery. Usually I only do one kind of batter, so and I'm not a fan of like really like kind of light stuff most of the time.
So I do what I do for fried chicken, which is like a flour-based, like, you know, pretty hardcore, crunchy uh flour and buttermilk. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Uh but, you know, I'm not saying you should do that. I'm just saying that, you know, that's that's what I do.
But some sort of whatever your favorite crispy coating is. I'm not a fan. I'm again I'm gonna get I'm gonna get nuked on this. I'm not a fan of tempura batters. I think that I've had what is supposed to be very good tempura that other people say was good, and to me, it's not as I understand that everyone loves it.
It's just not what I love. Do you know what I mean? Uh yeah, I mean you know, sometimes you just like something or don't. That's right. I mean, I I prefer a harder, uh harder uh texture, and I think tempura also goes off too quickly, especially on something high moisture like a sweet potato fry.
Listen, one of the problems with sweet potato fries is is i i it's virtually impossible with that high sugar content to get that crunchy kind of coating because you're not lacquering it. Like when people make sweet French fries that are like like shatter on the outside, sometimes they're sweet and they but they're almost like lacquered from the outside. But it's it's so hard because of the way moisture absorption goes into the crust to get that crust to stay normal on just a sweet potato fry. I would love to hear somebody else's technique of doing it, but I bet you could do it with just uh you know a fairly good uh starch dusting, like maybe Chris Coat or something like that without going full batter. All right, Scott uh Chris Coat, it's called.
Yeah, crisp coat. You could give that a try. I mean, hopefully someone will tweet me into the uh my Twitter account and say what they do to make their uh sweet potato fries crunchy. But I'm not looking a lot of people out there who like sweet potato fries, they like them even though they're not crunchy, but it sounds like your you know your wife wants them crunchy, right? Well, yeah, yeah, she's just she's just very specific about texture of a lot of things, and sweet potato fries just don't work for her.
Yeah, yeah. At least I haven't I'm having trouble making one that works for her. Yeah, I'm sure you'll get it. I mean, like just meaning like, yeah, I mean, I I like 'em, but uh you know, I fry them hard just the same way that I do deep fried okra, which is pretty hard crust. So, you know, but you have to like that sort of thing.
Oh, I mean, I I dislike fried food, unfortunately. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you know, fried fried frying is a good way of cooking. That's the way it should be. Oh.
But anyway. Uh but yeah, those are those are my three for the day. All right, well, listen, tweet us in and uh let us know how it worked out, alrighty? Thank you very much. All right, thanks.
Uh Ken uh Kenningberg wrote in uh basically calling us uh calling not not you because cut me, Wussy said, Hi Nastasha Dave, enjoyed the Thanksgiving show. Uh Dave is cutting corny's corners with his turkey, it seems to me. If uh mom and stepdad are docs, then Dave has access to equipment. My suggestion boning the turkey laparoscopically. Uh like like I hate like uh they don't let me my mom wouldn't even give me a prescription for quinine to make drinks, so I have to pay like retail price for my quinine sulfate.
So, you know, it's they don't they don't steal stuff. They're too honest, these guys. Anyway, uh I was in New York City and planned to have a drink at Booker and Dax uh and be an audience at one of your show, but instead found myself holed up in Park Slope for the duration of Hurricane Sandy. Another time. Happy Thanksgiving, Kang Ingber.
Uh so by the way, the turkey was delicious, delicious. Did I talk about this already? Have we already had a show since Thanksgiving? Turkey was really good. Uh it was, I think the best no-tech turkey I've ever done.
But and and anyone can do it. So, like to recap what I did, uh took the turkey, it was a 23-pound turkey. I inside out boned it. So I ripped all of the uh I ripped all the bones out from inside without cutting the skin in any way. Uh then uh I had my mom make oh, and then I brined it.
Now, one of the advantages of boning it before you brine it is that you can fold the turkey up into a small little package and put it even a 23-pound per uh turkey in a fairly small amount of brine. So I put that in a brine uh for a couple of hours, you know. My typical brine, which is uh no measurement, it's make it taste salty like the ocean, and then add enough sugar until you can just barely taste the sweetness. Uh uh my mom started making the stuffing. She put the stuffing into the oven, covered so it wouldn't lose its moisture.
We pull uh pulled the turkey out after a little bit, let it dry, form a pellicle on the skin so that it was nice and tacky, you know, got the inside all rinsed out. And remember, when I inside out boned it, what I took out all of the internal bones and I took out the thigh bone on both sides. I left the the last arm bone in and I left the wing joint or last leg bone in, rather, uh, the drumstick bone, and I left the wing bones in for a little bit of structure. Uh, then I took the stuffing out uh when it was like scalding hot, like you know, of the full oven temperature, and then jammed the first thing I jammed was I jammed it into the thigh so it started cooking the thighs, right? Uh and now we're cooking from the inside out, and then jammed it in, made it look like a turkey again.
Uh, and now the advantage of the hot stuffing is I'm not gonna poison anyone, and it's gonna speed the cooking and it's gonna cook the parts that I boned out, like the thigh very quickly in the same fashion that it would the other breast meat because it's getting hot stuff in contact where you wouldn't normally get it right away. Threw the whole thing into a 450-degree oven, I think, or 400 or something, for like an hour and a half, two hours. Well, uh butter and salt on the thing. Thing was good turkey. Good turkey.
Anyway, so Ken, even though I was cutting uh corners, uh, it was uh good turkey. Uh and I think I might do it again that way. It's so much easier than the than the aluminum uh than the aluminum skeleton. Although Nastasha likes to see me. And more traditional.
Yeah, well, kinda, yeah, I guess it is more traditional. I guess anything's more traditional than what I was doing. And you all the stuffing has that awesome flavor from being in the turkey. And well, all inside out boning also has the advantage, which everyone should take advantage of, of now you have all the bones, which while it's while it's uh what's the word I'm looking for? Brining and cooking, you can make a turkey stock right away.
So then you can get your gravy base done, and then you can take and deglaze the uh pan that the turkey comes in. Remember, like everyone, I hate I hate it when I see a turkey in a roasting pan and the sides of the pan are coming up over the side of the turkey, and I know that the underside of that turkey is that like nasty blonde, like flabby blah. You know what I'm talking about, Stas? Yes. Do you hate that?
I do. I lift lift your turkey up, people. Lift up, be proud of your turkey. Lift it above the the rim of the pan. Anyway, uh, and so we got the gravy, and the gravy was done, good, bueno, bueno.
So it's uh it's all around uh a good uh a good a good thing. It's all good. Um so uh um on pressure cookers again. Uh Tom Fisher wrote in and said, Hope you enjoyed your Thanksgivings. I'm looking into getting a Coon Recon pressure cooker and was surprised at the number of sizes available and the small difference in price.
Uh is there any reason not to just buy the eight and a half quart stock pop but instead go with the smaller units. We went over that last week. Uh, you know, a similar thing. I don't I don't think it was Tom, though. Uh no, just get the eight and a half quart.
It's good. Uh see how you like that, Stas for a short freaking answer. You like that? You're still going on though. What do you mean?
What do you mean? Yeah, of course I'm still talking. What? Go to the next question. Okay.
Uh okay, Marty from Eagle Rock writes in, Dave et al. First, I think Katamaro Tempuro, which is like an ongoing thing we're talking about, the thing that solidifies oil uh in Japan. Uh Ketamara Temputo is uh I don't know how you actually pronounce it. Is derived from castor oil. I think that's how you pronounce it though, because it's like temputo or like tempura.
Anyway, uh at least that's what the ingredients page from S. C. Johnson's translates to. Uh and then there's the Thai Castor Oil Group whose primary product is cooking oil solidifier. The internet does not lie.
Um I've been looking up uh castor oil and I'm trying to figure out what the heck is in this stuff. Uh and I got another person saying castor oil in on my Twitter account. Uh I think it was uh Clef's. Uh anyway, so the um the thing is I still can't figure out what the hell it is. So if you take castor oil, uh it's like semi food gray, but tastes bad.
It comes from the castor plant, which if you don't process it right can poison you with ricin, which is like a toxin anyway. But the uh if you hydrogenate it, it becomes a uh car um castor wax, and castor wax has a very high melting point, and I think that it you can use it's a castor wax that's a solidifier for the oil because you do it in hot and then when it sets, it sets solid. It's used to harden um uh underarm deodorant yeah so it's like hard like a like a carnual wax but I can't really figure out what's going on but anyway uh Marty's uh second question is are there any well is first question second comment are there any consumer level reusable products out there for low temperature cooking whenever I cook stuff I always end up with a pile of plastic freezer bags I'd love to experiment more but my inner hippie keeps chastising me so I don't you know this is really an issue there are some bags out there um and you can reuse them but it's just so gross that no one does it you know what I mean it's just it's just nasty uh I you know I'd like to say that there's some sort of like you know paper like on papyotte thing that you could do uh but I just don't know that it's the case and like they the bags just tend to degrade over time. I haven't used any of the thicker uh there there are a couple people out there who are making very thick bags that are the equivalent of uh you remember those Nastash remember those pencil cases you get when you're a kid those like yeah they're made that were made out of vinyl these aren't made out of vinyl because that's gross but I I haven't had had time to really really look into them but it's it's really something I'd like to put out to anyone who's listening to the show to think about maybe some alternative like that that doesn't require a constant source of new bags. I mean obviously there is cooking in in broth and cooking in stock low temperature by using uh the the actual circulator to circulate the products there's cooking in jars but it's just not it's not the same you could notice there's lots of things you can do but it's just not the exact same thing.
Like you can pack a jar 100% full with product screw it down and throw it into a bath and it'll work but it's not the same, it's just not the same as doing it in in a bag. You know what I mean? I I don't know of a good solution, but I would love to hear uh anyone's uh good solution. By the way, uh castor bean oil, hydrogenate castor oil not only used a solidify, but another castor uh oil product. Zinc uh ricinulate is the is this is the anti stink in uh antiperspirants.
Oh I don't know why it absorbs uh it absorbs the stink, but apparently apparently it does. Um, are we gonna get kicked off the air so now? Oh my god, and I have so many questions. I have not gotten to. Uh Charlie Chang, I know I have some questions on Twitter.
I'm gonna have to get those next time, I guess. Uh Joel, uh, did we did not get a text back from McGee, right? Uh let me check. See if we got a text back from Harold. If we got a text back from Harold, then uh we'll run an extra 30 seconds or something.
Do we get one? Anyway. Um I also have a question that I'd like to spend more time on from Stan Below, so we'll get that next time, or maybe get it on uh the Twitter uh all about uh different kind of gelling compounds and and uh interested in making vegetarian gummy bears using gel and there actually is a brand new patent on that. We'll have to get into that next time. Uh one thing I will shout out, I was you know, I'm constantly amazed at the amazing information that's available on the FAO's website, which is the Food and Agricultural Organization of the UN.
And they have so many crazy publications out there on like how to grow shrimp in Thailand. Like this is crazy. You can go on there and I I just I spent probably I don't know, stupidly, probably spent two and a half hours last night when I should have been sleeping reading like the FAO's documents on seaweed production. It's not even that it's like super scintillating, you know, it's not like anyone else here would like be like, oh boom, it's awesome. But I like I can't help free information like that.
You know what I mean? I know, dude. Isn't that weird? Anyway, uh, so we did not get it in, right? Nope, no answer.
Yeah, no answer from the McGee. All right, he's sleeping. I know. The poor guy's sleeping, he's in uh, what's it called? He's in uh the California.
Uh so uh Joel wrote in and said, uh just listen to the podcast. You made my uh effing holiday. Thanks for playing my song. Ever since I picked up a copy of On Food and Cooking nine years ago, I become obsessed with the reasoning for everything I do in the kitchen. As a cook, I would uh tick off my chefs because I'd explain why their white chocolate uh ganache wasn't working, or how starch types differ in short grain rice and uh works better in pudding because they don't retrograde like long-grain rice does.
Well, like, you know, most long grain, obviously tie black sticky is uh is uh anyway, whatever. Uh now running a kitchen myself, I make sure that all my cooks question everything they do. I teach methods, not recipes. I promote discovery, not uh uh conservative French technique, although I do like that stuff. I mean, when I went to Danielle a bunch of years ago and they presented me with like the whole fish and crust, even though it's overcooked, I was like, I love it.
I just uh because I love I mean it's you know it felt like you know, felt like old school anyway. Uh we listened to the podcast during prep. Crew gets into it. Uh we have one caller. HRN is seriously awesome, cooking issues awesome.
Keep it up, Joel. Thank you, Joel. Uh we got a caller, caller, you're on the air. Dave Arnold. What's up?
This is Jeremiah Bullfrog, how are you, sir? Um, I'm doing awesome. How you how's Miami? Good, man. Nice.
Hot hot and sunny, like we like it. I've got a burning question for you. All right, what's up? Um trying to uh emulsify powdered spices into brine. Right.
Is there a trick to uh getting it keeping it from separating? Uh okay. Like how thick is the brine allowed to be? I mean, the thing is I don't know that it's gonna. I mean, you could do like the typical th thing.
I mean, emulsif, you're not really emulsifying the spice, you're you're actually stabilizing it. So like the classic thing would be to hit it with some Xanthan, but then it's gonna be kind of snotty. You know what I mean? Right. Think like if we're doing pickled cauliflower.
Right. Like half sour style in like a five percent brine. Oh, brine, not like brine, brine like serving brine. I got you. Uh yeah.
So I mean you could do a like a gel like a light gel-an fluid gel, depending on the salt level. The problem with brine's is the salt level is so high, like I've had no luck making fluid gels with kimchi liquid because it's just it's just too it's just too strong. You know what I mean? They so it might not be able to do like gel and whereas xanthan would work in something like that, which is why they do it in uh in salad dressing, but like really freaking light amount of xanthan. I've done a bunch of tests with just very, very, very light amount of xanthan.
Uh, you know, like less than a quarter of a percent or add a quarter, you know, one quarter, one percent or less, less. Right. So break out the uh break out the drug dealer scale and and just keep it real light? Yeah, and let it hydrate for a good like twenty, thirty minutes before you uh make uh add or de you know, add anything more to it so that you make sure it's in you wanna get there's a there's a point at which you can stop it from settling for let's say like thirty minutes. You know what I mean?
So which is more than enough for service. You know, are you doing it for a shelf or for service? Um, I mean we're gonna put it up as a preserve and then you know, seven to ten days pull it out and use it. Right. So but then like just like a couple of quick like back and forth and it'll it'll come back.
Do you know what I mean? Right. You think I should hit it in the um in the vita prep? Yeah, you should definitely hit it in the vitaprep, and you should do it if i uh are they la are they lactic fermented things or are they um Yeah, super super lactic. Oh, you see, you might have problems because uh like some lactic acid bacteria can ferment xanthan, but I don't know.
Uh you might have to add it afterwards, like to the brine. I might have to think about it. I've never tried to stabilize a uh like a pickle brine. Uh I mean salad dressings I've done all day every day, and the brine because I don't have to think about it. But I would try it like a low I would try a low amount of xanthan.
I would pull the brine out, uh, add the xanthan to it, and then add the brine back and stir it rather than doing it beforehand because once it's really fermented out, it's not going to keep fermenting because they've you know that they've done their best and the acidity is already low, so it's not going to get a lot more you know sour, especially if it's already gone. And so then uh I think the Xanthan will be okay at that point. Whereas if you do it earlier, you you might run into I don't know if those bacteria eat Xanthan, but I know some do. Right. Um also on the same token, we're doing um we're doing pressed juices, and I was wondering what are like some commercial tricks to keep the juice from you know separating when we bottle it up.
Uh oh, you because you want it to be you want it to stay whole again, like those guys usually add some form of pectin. So uh, you know, to to things like that to stabilize it. Um you can add other things, but I think they usually use some form of pectin to stabilize it. Like they add like a functionalized pectin. I I don't have the pectin stuff in my head.
Piper does. Shoot me a like shoot uh shoot it to the to the cooking issues Twitter and I'll force Piper to write down what it is that you're supposed to use. Cool. And then do you think like um ultra s ultrasonic homogenizer would be cool for that too? I don't know, man.
Because the thing about it is is that, like, yeah, that'll that'll make things last longer, but break by breaking down the particles, but they they're not so good at breaking down like certain solid sizes, so it depends on what's floating in there. Like I've like I've had good luck doing emulsions with that, like making milks with it, uh, like you know, like duck fat into duck stock and making like a milky duck thing, but I haven't had uh a lot of luck just like making a juice finer. Do you know what I mean? But I mean your results may vary. Like everything else, like when you're experimenting with a zillion things, like you if you have like early success with one thing, or if you really love something, then you keep working at it till you get it right, and if you don't, you just don't follow down that line.
So, like I never got into like, you know, hitting seawater with my ultrasonic homogenizer to see what happened, you know what I mean, or or anything like that. Right. And I remain unconvinced. Do you have one? No, I don't, but um, you know, give me a reason to go get one and well next next time you're in the city, stop by to uh stop by and uh I'll let you uh use mine, see what you think about it.
Awesome. Thank you, Dave Arnold. All right, brother. Um, on the way out, I got one more thing on the way out. Don't you want me to don't you want me to read from uh Britt Adams?
I would, but it's so good. Jack, do I got like two minutes? Do I got two minutes? Do it, do it, do it. Do it, dude.
Okay. Uh listen, Brett, like I'm gonna answer your question uh next week on spices and uh you know why you uh you dry roast spices because it requires a longer answer. But I'm gonna read the other thing you said about how like sometimes uh this makes us happy. This is feedback that I like. I had both a question for the radio show uh and a quick story to recount that all of you, specifically Dave may appreciate.
Regarding the latter, I first became aware of Dave and cooking issues a few years ago when I was searching online for further information on a tortilla making that wasn't fully covered in a Diana Kennedy cookbook, who's a great cookbook writer. Uh uh, I stumbled on Dave's blog uh post on nickstamalization, learned a ton, and have been a regular listener ever since. Thank you. And I've had a few delicious cocktails of Booker and Dax last time I was in New York. One particular part of the post that stood out to me was how the process of nickstamalization releases bound niacin in mature corn.
Uh, which is why when Europeans took it but didn't take over the Nixomalization, they got Pilagra. Uh anyway. Um, okay. I later recounted this to my roommate who is both a nurse and an avid home cook. L uh this last summer, um, this roommate spent three months at a refugee camp in South Sudan volunteering for Doctors Without Borders.
One day he was eating lunch with the man in the charge of the food rations for the camp of fifty thousand plus people, and the rations guy brought up that they were likely going to have to switch the rations from sorghum, which you know I've never experimented with a lot. Anyway, to May's. Uh my roommate, remembering what I had told him, asked if he had heard of nixtimalization, specifically about its ability to r uh release digestible niacin, which, as I'm sure you can guess, is a big deal in a refugee camp. The director had never heard of it but was intrigued, went away to do some research, and later told my roommate that they had been uh begun learning to nixtimalize the corn for the rations. My roommate left shortly thereafter, so I have no idea if the full switch to maze was made, but I think it's pretty cool that your research in a kitchen in New York, uh, through somewhat random events could possibly have a very significant uh positive impact on the other side of the world.
Thought you'd like to hear that. I do like to hear that, uh, Brett, but in fact, uh it's your uh it's your paying attention to it. Uh I paid attention to it when someone else said it, and you paid attention to it when I said it, so it's it's you paying attention to it and remembering it, and that's how all good things are learned and all good things are transmitted by people paying attention, tucking away information and tastes in their head, and making the world a better place. Cooking issues. I'll see you in the special shout out to Plexophonic, whose submitted theme song is not able to be used for legal reasons.
This is I'll see you in My Dreams by Plexiphonic. You've been listening to Cooking Issues. Still I feel the thrill of your job. 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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