Today's episode has been brought to you by Robert's, located at 261 Moore Street in beautiful Bushwick, Brooklyn. For more information, visit www.rebertispizza.com. You are listening to Heritage Radio Network, broadcasting live from Bushwick Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit Heritage Radio Network.org for thousands more. Cooking issues!
Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues, coming to you live every Tuesday from 12 to 1245 on the Heritage Radio Network in the back of Roberta's Pizza Willia in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Calling your questions live to 7184972128. That's 7184972128. Joined as usual with Nastasha the Hammer Lopez.
Uh and uh we're jackless today, right, Joe? He's in Puerto Rico. Jackson, Puerto Rico? What's he doing in Puerto Rico? Vacation.
Hanging out with his dad. Really? Yeah, right? Yeah? What we like just like me, do they have like family there?
Are they just hanging in Puerto Rico? Um, apparently Jack took the week off and then his dad's like, just come to Puerto Rico with me. Sounds a little fishy. Yeah. Sounds like yeah, you know.
Well anyway, I hope they bring back some good rum. I like Puerto Rican rum. You like Puerto Rican rum, Joe? You like Puerto Rican rum? Oh definitely.
Yeah. Nastasha doesn't care because she's not listening, but uh I'm actually trying to help Joe out, so Snippiness hear this hear the snippiness people. This is what I deal with on a on a regular basis. Like constant undercurrents of uh snippiness. Constant undercurrents of snippiness.
Do you like Puerto Rican rum? Yes. Yeah? Okay. Can you name a Puerto Rican rum?
No. Okay. Ronabuelo. Okay. Uh no, wait, no.
Uh wait, it's Ronabuelo. Is that the Puerto Rican one? Now I gotta look it up. Now I've gotten all confused. By the way, a horrifying news.
I was researching today, champagne consumption down worldwide 5% this year so far. Can you believe that? That is crazy. I mean, like I figure Nastasha and I have made up for at least that 5% drop, just us, just us alone. I mean, the champagne, I mean, not that the champagne industry needs a push.
Do you know the French drink half of the champagne in the world? Is that I'm told? Wow. I mean, I mean, it's from there. I mean, it's makes sense.
I bet you we drink well over half the world, you know, Zinfandel stuff. Yeah. You know? And I'm not just talking like white, I'm talking real Zinfandel. I bet you we drink well, well over half.
You go there, the French should have no idea what you're talking about when you mention Zimfidel. At least they used to. I haven't been to France in a number of years. But anyway, my point is is that champagne is one of the few drinks. This is my push for champagne.
Uh this show's not brought to you by champagne, is it, Joe? Who's bringing this show to us today? That would be Roberta's Pizza. Roberta's Pizzeria is bringing us the show today? They sure are.
And Roberta's served champagne, do they not? Yeah, I believe so. I think we got a bottle of Prosecco for the 100th episode, right? Alright, so yes. No.
Yeah, we might have. I look, I like Prosecco fine, but I love champagne. I love champagne, right? Any sort of sparkling wine. Uh, this is the kind of the one of the very few things that Nastasha and I can uh agree on is uh love of sparkling wines.
But uh maybe this show is part in part brought to you by champagne since they sell Roberta's pizzeria and champagne. Go drink it. It's one of the few drinks that is uh kind of always uh always apropos, right? Right. You know, graduation, what do you want?
Champagne. Like around dinner time? Champagne. What about after dinner? Champagne.
At a brunch? Champagne. Hmm. Cock cocktail thing after work? At your bar, champagne.
Any bar really, right? Yeah. Champagne. It's not a crack against uh you know our cocktails, it's just you'd rather just have have have the champagne. Uh a sad occasion you need cheering up.
Champagne. Yeah. So very few uh situations where champagne is not. See, people make a mistake and they only drink it around the New Year's time, as though you need to be celebrating something to drink champagne. And that's just not the case.
Champagne is always delicious. There are very few things I don't like. I like look, I will not have champagne with my bagels and locks. It's disgusting. I do not like champagne with uh cured cured meats.
In fact, uh I love them both quite dearly. They're two of the things that are closest to my heart. But I all you need is a little bite of bread in between, and you're okay. So you uh well, what happens is someone serves me a glass of champagne and a platter of cured meats. Typically, what I will do is I will take a couple sips of the champagne.
I will then have a bite of bread, I will then eat the entirety of the platter of cured meats in, you know, depending on the size. I can I can eat upwards of uh a quarter of a pound of prosciutto every two minutes. In that range, right? Finish it, have a couple of bites of bread, and then go back to the champagne. I think that's the way you should do it.
But uh, this is not only champagne. Uh I also really enjoy a good kava. Do you like kava? Uh huh. I like kava kava is actually my when I buy, I buy kava because it's actually inexpensive.
But if somebody else is buying, I drink champagne. Yes. Actually, I owe Nustacha bottle of champagne. No, just good wine, I think. Well, the champagne's good.
You don't like champagne, you want a red wine instead? No. No, champagne would be good. Well, what was it? Because uh you didn't know this.
You thought the singer of Cat in the in the cradle was Cat Stevens. And it's not, it's some other guy. Yeah. Anyway, okay. Who was it?
I can't remember. Somebody look it up. Okay. Uh uh Josh uh Whitlam writes in from Somerset. By the way, Somerset land of apple cider and cheddar.
Do you know that? Land of Apple Cider and Cheddar? Anyway. Uh it's kind of like where uh where all that comes from. Anyway, uh he writes in, it's the first comment we've gotten from the UK on liquid on the liquid nitrogen, the unfortunate thing happened with liquid nitrogen with uh uh the teenager who lost her stomach.
Anyway, uh maybe something more to discuss on the next show. I know Dave is uh talked about it on the last one. Crazy what one does uh we say, uh what does one do to stop uh party or group of people who clearly know nothing about uh the stuff they are trying to ban? Uh just talking about the uh liquid nitrogen attempted ban on liquid nitrogen. Um people are talking about putting a ban on something that resulted in a horrific accident once.
If they're so worried about it, then they should surely take the initial uh the surely best initial steps would be to install a certification system that qualifies the staff to use LN just like food safety, etcetera. The fault is clearly with the bar uh uh and a lack of incorrect training uh about LN, and I'm sure if they uh they know it and that we do everything to prevent it, a repeat of that accident in the future. Why isn't there a ban on cigarettes? The dangers are clearly spelled out to us that we still make our own choice about whether to smoke it or not. Rant over, love the show, Josh Whitlam Somerset UK.
Okay, well the what Josh, I agree with you i in in the vast majority of it, except for this one thing. And the big issue here, and this is the reason why uh this this incident in uh in the UK where this uh teenager lost her stomach after consuming liquid nitrogen, which is ridiculous. No one should ever serve liquid nitrogen to someone, but the the the difference between that and the incident that happened in Germany uh several years ago where a cook brought home liquid nitrogen and blew themselves to pieces, uh, you know, blew blew his hands off and and damaged his leg and was put in a coma and so is that uh in this case the uh accident happened to a customer, and the customer wasn't assuming, wasn't necessarily assuming any extra risks, unlike uh unlike cigarettes. Now, um, as far as the actual practitioners are concerned, assuming that they know all the risks, then I think you're absolutely right in your in your point. But the the issue is it is true, you should you should always take the utmost care to ensure that your customers are not exposed to any extra risks that they don't know about, right?
I mean, and so that's that's always the argument of why you need to put a label on the bottom of your menu that you're consuming something that's raw or undercooked. It's only if they don't have an expectation of uh uh of of otherness. So when you go to a sushi restaurant, right, it's assumed you're eating raw fish and that you realize that there's certain inherent dangers, or that if you order a steak rare that there are certain inherent dangers, although not much. Uh but anyway, and so the the question is here is it is the customer taking on a risk of which they uh aren't aware. But in the large part I agree with you.
Okay. Uh and Kang Ingber, longtime listener, friend of the show, uh wrote in and said he enjoyed uh the CNN broadcast. Thank you. I think they're gonna re-air that guy uh that re-air that broadcast uh sometime uh right before right before the Christmas. Right before the Christmas, said I was serious and fun in the right proportion.
I usually have it exactly exactly opposite. I'm usually ridiculous and serious in the exact opposite proportion of what's uh of what's uh reasonable. Okay. Uh number three, Ryan Santos wrote in and said an industry friend of mine just got an ultra low freezer. It currently runs around minus 118 degrees Fahrenheit.
I've never had something like this at my disposal. I'm curious if there are any cool techniques or applications with it. Thanks, Ryan. Okay, uh, I did a little uh conversion there, and minus 118 degrees Fahrenheit is roughly uh negative 83 Celsius. Now, what you're looking at here is you're in the range of an ultra-low freezer or a super freezer.
And um, here's the big here's the big deal. Now, the the these freezers, which are used in labs, but also in the storage of meats, uh store something at at what I've heard in the industry called below the eutectic point or below the glass transition uh temperature of the foods that are involved. Uh now let me explain what that means. So, first of all, you have to get in in your mind there's two there's two separate things that happen when something is freezing, right? One are two separate things you have to worry about.
One is the storage temperature at which you're keeping an item, right? And the other is the rate at which something freezes. Now, these ultra-low uh temperature freezers don't necessarily freeze things that much faster than uh you could freeze it using uh a regular freezer, right? For fast freezing, you need a blast freezer or a fluid bed freezer or a merging directly in a cryogenic liquid like liquid nitrogen or something of this nature. Right now, now the re the reason that's important is is that if you freeze something slowly, right, as you're freezing, large ice crystals grow.
Large ice crystals themselves can be damaging. So you have very uh small number of ice crystal nucleation sites, and they form relatively small number of relatively large ice crystals. More importantly, those ice crystals are being formed uh by water leaving, typically, leaving the cell matrix of the food that you're freezing, dehydrating the cells just like you were dehydrating them, and forming crystals in between the cell bat in between the cells of the meat. So you're increasing the amount of moisture that's it's in between the cells, you're dehydrating the cells, concentrating uh bad things that can go on, and causing large crystals that can puncture the cell membrane, which all means that when it thaws, it will leak out, uh it will leak out its fluids and you'll have drip loss and the normal things that you associate with damage due to slow freezing. If you freeze extremely rapidly, one you get small ice crystals, you get a bunch of ice crystals, and if you freeze quickly enough, you can get ice crystals on the insides of the cells.
And so you don't have as much uh dehydration of the cells, and the structure of the meat or or produce remains intact. And so that's what fast freezing can do for you. Now, here's the other thing. A lot of times people quote the freezing temperature of a food. Food doesn't in fact have a one single freezing temperature.
What happens is as you start approaching the initial freezing point of a food, water will start to pure water, will start to crystallize in the thing. At a certain point, uh you're gonna reach uh a situation where let's say you have let's let's make this very simple. Let's just say we have salt and water. All right, so it's not food anymore, it's salt and water. If you have just salt, sodium uh chloride, and water, what happens is as you chill it, uh their ice crystals will start to form, and as ice crystals form, what you're left with is more concentrated salt water solution.
That concentrated salt water solution has a lower freezing point. So the temperature goes down a little more, and then you have an even more concentrated, and it goes down and down and down until you reach the point where salt can no longer become more concentrated in the liquid. You've reached what's called the eutectic point. It's a point at which uh the that temperature is the lowest that that system can get and still have them remain together. At which point you freeze out solid water and uh sodium chloride crystals, right?
So it's frozen out solid. That's the eutectic point. In real food, there are a bunch of little eutectic points where things freeze out, right? Once you get below and any point during that freezing curve, there's still some liquid water in there, right? And what that means is that as temperature fluctuates in a freezer, that liquid water will melt and recrystallize as the temperature fluctuates, and so ice crystals will tend to grow over time and make your food crappier over time.
So there's quality loss there. Additionally, that water that's in there is super concentrated with regard to enzymes, acids, salts, and all those things that can carry on chemical reactions. So even though the temperature is a lot lower, so the chemical reaction rates are a lot slower, the concentrations are increased a huge amount, and so awful reactions can take place in your freezer. Once you get below the eutectic point of the last thing that's gonna freeze out, there's still actually what's called bound unfreezeable water. And that unfreezeable water is the unfreezable water that's next to things like hydrocolloids or next to things like protein.
And uh the reaction between the uh water molecules that are right at the surface of those things and those molecules themselves prevent the water from actually becoming a part of the crystal ice lattice that's around them, and so you have unfrozen water even below the last eutectic point, right? So the next thing you hit there is called the glass phase. And when you hit the glass phase, which is that low temperature there, everything stops moving around, basically. I mean it moves, it bounces from a thermal standpoint, like the molecules are moving around. But the water molecules stop moving physically and stop undergoing chemical reactions.
For all intents and purposes, at that point, the product is stable. Enzymatic reactions are stopped. Oxidation reactions are stopped. All the reactions in it that are uh related to food quality stop. Ice crystal growth and uh uh and remelting and changing stop.
So once you freeze something fast and accurately using a different technique other than that low temperature freezer, you put it in that low temperature freezer, and it stays good almost indefinitely. Like it basically doesn't move in quality. And Mark Ladner at Del Posto has one, he freaking loves it. He loves it. He originally got it, I think, because uh they were buying super frozen tuna.
It's called super frozen. They were buying super frozen tuna, and that stuff stayed like super primo uh in there. I mean, like no oxidation, no nothing. It was just beautiful, beautiful stuff. Uh, and so he used it for that, but he's also used it for uh to store really, really fragile, I think things like mushrooms, I think things like truffles in a much better state than they could be uh stored any other way.
So it's an awesome find. Uh and it's one of those things that I wish uh I had. Uh Harold's on the phone. Okay, so listen, Joel, we have calling in for you to read an excerpt on the Myard reactions from his most important book on food and cooking, live from California, Harold McGee. Hey Dave.
Hey, how are you? Hi, Harold. So uh so this was a specific request. The person, uh Joel, who wrote uh one of our theme songs that we use here on the show as a thank you for writing the theme song, wanted you to come on air live and read a section from on food and cooking. The Myard reactions on Myard Reactions, yes.
So you uh you prepared to do this? I am I have a question though, because uh that paragraph does refer to the previous paragraph on caramelization. Should I just allude caramelization or should I start there? Hmm. Hmm.
The more the better. Yeah, the more the better, I think. I think just go for it. This is by the way, the first reading we've ever had on so you know give it some feeling, Harold. This is like our first reading ever.
I'm very excited. Well, you know, it's a first for me, too, so I'm I'm a little nervous. I'm not sure I'm gonna do this. I'll I'll give it a shot. All right, beautiful.
All right. Caramelization. The simplest browning reaction is the caramelization of sugar, and it's not simple at all. When we heat plain table sugar, essentially just molecules of sucrose, it first melts into a thick syrup, then slowly changes color, becoming light yellow and progressively deepening to a dark brown. At the same time, its flavor, initially sweet and odorless, develops acidity, some bitterness, and a rich aroma.
The chemical reactions involved in this transformation are many, and they result in the formation of hundreds of different reaction products, among them sapporganic acids, sweet and bitter derivatives, many fragrant volatile molecules, and brown colored polymers. It's a remarkable change and a fortunate one to the pleasures of many candies and other sweets. Even more fortunate and complex are the reactions responsible for the cook and flavor of bread crusts, chocolate, coffee beans, dark beers, and roasted meat. All foods that are not primarily sugar. These are the Maillard reactions after Louis Camille Maillard, a phonemic who discovered and described them around 1910.
The sequence begins with the reaction of a carbomolecule and an amino acid. An unstable intermediate structure is formed, and this then undergoes further changes, producing hundreds of different byproducts. Again, a brown coloration and full intense flavor result. MIARD reactions are more complex and meaty than caramelized flavors because the involvement of the amino acids adds nitrogen and sulfur atoms to the mix of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen and produces new families of molecules and new aromatic dimensions. Hell yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Nice. How are you doing over there, Hurl? I hear you're coming to the Museum of Food and Drink Fundraiser. Yes, yeah. I'm gonna fly out to the East Coast this coming weekend and we'll be sticking around for about 10 days.
So yeah, really glad about that timing. Actually, it's not a fundraiser, I'm being correct. It's it's just a thank you for people that already signed up for membership, but or who have been involved in the past. We're excited. So wait, can you what do you have a second?
You want to talk about this recent stuff on uh on cooking uh sugar crystals? Or do you have a second or no? Uh I've got a couple of minutes, yeah. Yeah. So actually the the passage I just read about caramelization uh has been somewhat superseded.
Uh because in that paragraph I say, you know, when when you make caramel, what you do is you heat uh sucrose crystals, which are solid until they melt, and then uh the melted sugars uh start to undergo these other reactions which turn them brown and um develop other flavors and so on. And that's that's still basically true. But uh very interestingly, uh I think it was 2010 that these first results came out. A carbohydrate chemist at Hawaii was trying to figure out why it is that nobody's agree on the uh precise melting point of sucrose, which is crazy. You know, table sugar is such ordinary, familiar stuff.
It's used in so many different things. It's a solid, it's pure, and so it should have a very well-defined melting point. And yet, when you look in the literature, there are dozens of different melting points, and they're kind of in a range, but uh, you know, not precise. And she wanted to know why it is that the uh melting point of sugar was so hard to measure. What she discovered was that technically speaking, sugar doesn't have a melting point, which is amazing.
That is that um if you heat sugar and you melt it, and you've then uh uh let it solidify again and then try to melt it again, the melting point that you get uh the second time around is lower. Uh that is, it takes less heat to melt the sugar after it's been melted once, and so on and so on. So the more often you melt it, the lower the the melting temperature becomes, unlike, for example, water, where you know the melting point is 32 degrees Fahrenheit and it doesn't change. And so what she discovered was that uh every time you heat sucrose, and that includes keeping it at room temperature, it's actually degenerating, it's actually degrading. So the sucrose molecules are slowly breaking apart into first its constituent parts, which are one molecule of glucose and one molecule of fructose, and then those sugars uh break down into other things.
And what she discovered is that process is happening at a significant rate, even at room temperature. And certainly if you heat it up to enough to melt it, you're accelerating that, and that means that what you end up with is a block of table sugar that in fact is uh no longer pure and yet's progressively less pure the more often you do it. And so I looked at that and I thought that's really interesting. I wonder if I could uh caramelize sugar, solid sugar, just by keeping it at a you know moderately for hours. And so I put some sugar crystals in the oven at about uh I don't know two two twenty something like that uh which is way below the the melting point of sucrose took them out after they were in there for overnight and sure enough they turned brown they're solid but they'd caramelized now why did but you also had an effect where the inside liquefied do we ever figure out why that happened why it changed why it was differently affected on the inside of the crystal than the outside I I don't have the the equipment to uh you know to determine why exactly but I have theories and my theory is that um so these are the big sugar crystals that you can buy you know in in Chinese groceries uh they're you know like uh half inch long and and quarter inch thick like and um I don't know exactly how they're they're manufactured but I'm I figure it has to do with you know the kind of thing that they do when when you make ice cubes, uh they the crystallization happens, the solidification happens kind of from the outside in, and you end up with at the core of the crystal, uh just as you do with uh with an ice cube, a lot of stuff, you know, dissolved gases and and impurities of various kinds.
I guess is that there's this little pocket of impurities at the center of the sugar crystal. They uh hasten the breakdown of sucrose molecules. And so the the caramelization begins there and proceeds uh furthest there. And so it's true that I've I've got some pictures on my website of um sugar crystals of that size that uh are liquid on the inside. They're solid on the outside still, but they've got liquid caramel on the inside and you crack them open and the caramel leaks out.
Wait so you think those big crystals are are formed not from a single nucleation site out. You don't actually think they're single crystals you think they're formed like ice cubes and multiple nucleation sites uh that's my guess. But like I say I don't I don't know what the manufacturing process is exactly. So yeah I don't know. You have time for you have time for you I don't know.
I have no idea I've tried to grow crystals on strings, you know, for my kids and I've never gotten a crystal even approaching what you can buy in a store like that, not even approaching it. And I I'm not talking like I'm not talking like uh like uh I waited a day or a week. I'm talking like three weeks. You know what I mean? Like like long waits.
And um but that said I didn't put it under in into for instance like a heated atmosphere with force evaporation. You know what I mean? I just had it out on the on the counter, and presumably at some point the solution, I mean it'll eventually evaporate, I guess, 100%. But I mean, I I did not have any luck growing big crystals. And I I tried a bunch of different things too.
I tried Hello, you c you're cutting for a second. Are you there? Uh yeah. Yeah, yeah. You tried to.
Yeah, yeah. We lost you at uh you tried, and then you were about to say what you were trying. Ah, okay, yeah. So it it seems to be part of the problem is the viscosity of the sugar solution. It takes so long for molecules of sucrose to get onto the surface.
So I tried things like uh, you know, adding uh ethanol alcohol to the to the liquid to thin it. The solubility of sugar and and ethanol is not that great, and I thought that would that would be pretty good, but it didn't work. I had lots of different things, and I have no idea they might make those big beautiful crystals. Yeah, yeah, well that's something for us to look up, I guess, for for next time. Yeah.
Yeah. You have uh you have 30 seconds because uh someone wrote in with a question that I actually you mean you're an expert in most of these questions, but uh specifically on this one. Do you have a second or no? Sure. All right.
Uh this was uh from Brett Adams saying, uh on the theme of Mexican food, I have a question about dry roasting chilies, which also applies to whole spices. Most recipes begin by roasting dried chilies, hydrating them, then blending them into a sauce. The dry roasting is supposed to help bring out their flavor. My two-part question is what is it about dry heat that makes the ingredient more delicious? And B, if I'm going to be cooking the chili later when it's in the sauce, won't the flavor boosting aspect of heat happen then, or is there something particular about dry roasting the individual ingredient first that doesn't occur when it's part of the sauce?
The only thing I would guess is that the higher possible temperatures in a non-wet situation. I mean, I know that you've studied this. Yeah, that's exactly it. Uh the the uh various com the chili or whatever spice it is you're using are in a spice concentrated, and so you apply heat to that immediately gets way above the boiling point, and you start to get caramelization reactions, browning reactions. The aroma compounds react with each other uh because you're at such a high temperature.
If you uh if you hydrate them and essentially steam them or mill them or anything like that, then you get a completely different set of reactions, and they're they're not as extensive because the temperature is much lower. Right. But it's one of these other things where people it's like it's seem they're not it's not a better or worse. It's a it's a it's a different situation. I mean, like I know that if you take coriander and you dry roast it, you lose uh some of the citrusy things that can be nice.
I mean, so in other words, I I tend to use like a combination. I know when I'm making liquors, I'll tend to use a combination of uh untoasted and toasted spices when I'm doing it just to accentuate the different kind of components, right? I mean, it's not a not a better or worse phenomenon, just a different thing, right? Yeah, yeah. And same is true in in Indian cooking, for example.
You use some spices, uh you you you use uh a certain amount of the different spices, but you use portions of them at stages in the cooking, and then often the very last step is to fry some spices very quickly at the very very end and then pour them on the top. Right. Or whatever it is, fizzles away and you end up with uh all these different layers of fragrance. All right, well, as always, Harold, thank you so much for calling in. A pleasure to have you in the show.
We're gonna take our first commercial break. We'll be right back with Cooking Issue. You're listening to Andy's Biscuits by Pamela Royal on the Heritage Radio Network.org. Like what you hear so far? Support the network and become a member.
Membership helps us bring you the best food radio in the world and gives you access to thousands of dollars in discounts at the sustainably minded businesses that support us. To become a member, visit Heritage Radio Network.org today. My name is Brandon Boyd, co-owner of Roberta's a super duper awesome place. Robert is a very, very, very, very proud sponsor of the Heritage Radio Network. We're also super awesome.
Thank you, Heritage. And welcome back to Cooking Issues. Alan Sternberg wrote in. That was fun though, right? With McGee?
Yeah. That's fun. Unprecedented. I think he's never been on the show before. Oh, I'm precedent having him read aloud.
Yeah. Yeah. Next time we'll get him, we'll get him a landline so he doesn't cut in there. Like that was uh, but that was awesome. I I've never heard him actually read aloud from the uh on food and cooking.
No. He's like, the thing is you gotta know Harold people. Like Harold, Harold is always a measured man. Right? True or false.
Like I Well, not always. Well, I mean, you know, well, when it comes to food, he is. Yes. Like, in other words, like, Harold is one of those few people, and this is why I love him so much, is that uh Harold will never talk out of his nether parts. You know what I mean?
Like, he always thinks about I've heard I've heard people ask Harold some crazy nutbag questions. And he's never, he's never like cra like he's never like, what the hell are you talking about? Which is not what he sounds like, obviously, you just heard him. But like he's never like that. You know what I mean?
He's like, he's saying, I love that guy, he's so measured. Anyway, gladly he's glad he's coming to the uh the museum event. Okay, Alan Sternberg writes in on Kimiek, which is spelled Q I M I Q. Dumb, right? Q I M I Q.
I think it was invented by an Austrian. Teamic. And Carbonation. Uh I've recently been introduced to the product Kimique. Their corporate chef demoed it at the culinary school where I work, but sadly I couldn't attend.
I now have several containers of it to play with and wondered your thoughts on the product. The blackberry Merlot Sorbet we made with it set beautifully and held shape at room temperature for damn near forty-five minutes, even while the texture softened. By the way, my son thinks damn's a curse. I'm like, meh, you can't say it, but it's not really a curse. What's your thoughts, Des?
I agree. I guess I think when you get to maybe be a junior in high school, you could say it. Yeah? Yeah. Especially dam on its own without the without the without the without the cut.
Yeah, like it seems to me it's like, you know, you know, it's right up there with root and tutin in terms of strength. Uh anyway. Second. Uh I've also been interested in carbonating a sphere or sauce. The ideal end product would be a plated element that wouldn't release the bubbles until it's in the mouth.
Any tips would be useful. Okay, Alan, let's take the second one first, since I'm much more of an expert on uh carbonation. So the issue with carbonation is um if you're gonna put it into a liquid sauce, the carbonation uh is gonna is gonna leave. That's all there is to it. So if you spherify it, what you what ends up happening when you spherify a s uh um a sauce that's carbonated, is that you develop a CO2 pocket on the inside of the sphere.
Now eventually, right, you'll reach an equilibrium uh at whatever the uh equilibrium v vapor pressure of the stuff is on the inside. So if you could create uh a sphere like alginate in a reverse sphere spherified situation or something that uh actually was strong enough to hold up to it, right? Then you could do it, but you'd probably be talking somewhere in the range of 35 PSI. And I don't know whether or not an alginate envelope or a pectin envelope, pectin wouldn't do it, but like whether one of those uh or a gel-an envelope could withstand that kind of a pressure. Now, if you did it right, maybe you could, in which case you could just uh set you know a a coating of uh alginate or gel an around the outside of uh a spherified thing.
You'd get an air pocket in it, but the air pocket would equilibrate, I mean, the uh not an air pocket, a CO2 pocket. It would stay there, and then it would stay carbonated for a little while. I mean, it's gas permeable, so you'd lose it eventually, but it would stay for a little while. Uh and obviously it would be fine if you then stored that for a while in a carbonated container that was pressurized, then you could store it indefinitely until you're ready to serve it, right? As long as you can pour it out of the bottle.
That wouldn't be a problem. Uh but that is gonna happen. If you really want to lock the stuff in there, you're gonna have to go the route of heavy gelatin. So if you set a carbonated product with heavy, like heavy carbonation, I'm talking heavy, like 80 psi, right as the stuff's going to uh set, which is around room temperature, then you can get uh a prickly feeling in the gel that you've formed. It's not a sauce, but the problem is it's more of a piercing, like needle-like carbonation, less I'm poking nostalgia, I'm saying that so that that can have the effect in my head of the piercing needle-like uh carbonation.
But um, it doesn't feel the same as a soda. It feels more like pop rocks. You know how pop rocks has that kind of piercing feel to it? Has more of that piercing pop rock feel. Um you can't freeze stuff that's carbonate.
If you freeze a bottle that's carbonated and the bottle doesn't explode, when it unfreezes, it will be carbonated again, but the freezing itself will force the CO2 out, and the CO2 will only be present in the unfrozen section, although at a very concentrated rate, because as I said, when you lower the actually, I guess I haven't said this, when you lower the temperature, you increase the solubility of the CO2. Anyway, back to Kimique. I've never used chemik. I assume it's uh pronounced chimique. Uh, and it comes from, I went on their website, chemic is a word creation.
Like if you have to do that much explaining about your product with the name, then the name is dumb. Yes. Kimique. What does it mean? Kimique.
It's a word creation stemming from the words quick and milk, demonstrating how quick and easy the product is to use. But uh what it really is is they take this is how they make it. I looked up H A M A Food Service is the company that has the patents. And whenever you find out what a product is, you really want to know what the hell's going on. You find the patent literature on it.
So if you go to H A M A Hama, I guess food service, go to their patent. They have a patent on the technique they're using. Here's what they're doing. Because on the on their website, they say stuff like, we're coding each and every milk cell with gelatin. What does that even mean?
Milk cell. What does that mean? Is that meaning? They mean my cells? Do they mean casing my cells?
What do they mean? It has no meaning. No meaning. This is the problem when you have like someone translating from their non native language into the whatever, anyway. It looks like an interesting product.
But on their patent, here's what's actually happening. They're taking skim milk and they're putting skim milk through a very uh specific temperature uh regimen, adding a very specific grain size and bloom strength of gelatin to it, holding it at a uh a very specific temperature until it uh swells the way they want it, they hydrate it by bringing the temperature up, holding it at a s for a certain length of time, and then introducing a specific amount of light cream to it, 15% cream, right? They then uh homogenize it and pasteurize it so it fills in like parmelot containers so they can stay at room temperature for a year, shelf stable. That's what it is, right? So, what's happening here, and if you want to know why that makes a difference, uh you want to go.
This is the most I love it when I find people like this. Dr. Bernard Cole's home page. Uh, here's what Dr. Bernard Cole has to say about himself.
He's from some South Africa. I have a doctorate in food science from the University of Pretoria. I am a retired, I'm retired from full-time employment after spending 30 years in gelatin. I am willing to assist anyone who could benefit from my many fields of experience in gelatin. And this is his website, and his website is just a list of like interesting and cool facts about gelatin.
He's in South Africa somewhere. But it's like inside gelatin somewhere. Yeah, he's like totally set in gelatin. He's like, he's like, you want to know about gelatin from pigs? Got you.
You want to know about gelatin from cows? Got you. Got you. Gelatin. I do it.
Anyway, so he's like, he's like sitting there, he's like, I don't know what he is, 70 something. I don't know. He's sitting there, he's like, I'm retired. You got gelatin problems, I got answers. He's like, you know, whatever you want to know about gelatin, he's got.
But anyway, he has a page on what uh gelatin does in dairy situations and in general, right? So so what what gelatin is doing is uh and this is why it leads to all the cool stuff that Kami can theoretically do, although I've never used it, right? Gelatin uh is a great uh foam uh former, foaming agent, which is why it's used in marshmallows, okay? And it can emulsify it uh it helps in in emulsifying things, right? Um it also is really good at stabilizing things like ice creams, which is why in your sorbet, uh although you did it in a sor in a sorbet, but it does works in ice creams uh as well.
Of course, it wasn't ice cream because you used Kemique, which is milk-based, so boop. Uh so boop. Uh right. Also, uh it uh it protects uh uh dairy-based systems from curdling when acids are added. So you can add lemon juice and white wine directly to Kamique or vice versa, and you don't get curdling.
And it's because uh, you know, if you read uh further on into uh Dr. Cole's uh webpage, it's because um the gelatin interacts with the casein micells and prevents them from uh aggregating and coalescing, breaking and falling out. So so it it does that. Um it has a lot of cool things that uh it also helps to make uh oil soluble things more soluble in dairy systems, right? And this this is basically explanation, and and he links to a bunch of uh uh research papers on it, but at leads to uh the main things that Kimi claims that they can do.
They're acid, alcohol, and bake stable without breaking. So I actually I'd like to get a hold of some so we can make some cream liqueurs, even though I don't really like them. I have people asking me constantly about the cream liquor. In fact, we've answered two or three questions on cream cream liqueurs here on the on the stuff. So maybe we can make some Baileys that won't form the what's that?
What's it called when you mix roses, lime juice, and baileys in your mouth, and it's disgusting. It has a name. Is that the cement mixer? I don't know. I think it might be the cement mixer.
Disgusting, disgusting. You know, no one over the age of uh 21 plus 15 minutes should ever consume one in their life. Like you're allowed to consume it in the first 15 minutes of your bar binge on your 21st birthday if you're here in the US, but at no other time. Um they say that it it reduces butter fat because it's got a higher viscosity. Another thing Dr.
Cole pointed out is that the viscosity of cream increases greatly with added gelatin, and so uh it can make it seem like there's more fat in it. I don't really believe in replacing fat with things like gelatin because I just believe in adding the freaking fat. But that's me. I hate whatever, anyway, okay. Uh it can replace flour, starch, or roux partially uh because of that.
I mean, so it's got a lot of a lot of cool, a lot of cool stuff. Uh it stays free sauce stable, uh going through sous vide. So a lot of cool stuff, but I I have not used it, but I thoroughly enjoyed reading Dr. Cole's website on gelatin and related products. All right.
Uh and see, very quickly. Uh Steven Silva wrote in I think I'm not sure whether we talked about this last week or not, Stas. We might have. I feel like we might have that man's writing with a dull pencil. Who's writing?
There's a man outside writing notes in a notebook with a dull pencil, and it's bothering Nastasha because presumably she's thinking about the noise that it's making as it's going across the door. He's reading a book on Rauschenberger. Are you a Rauschenberg fan? I don't know much about it. And Rick Bayliss is here.
I'm this is not Rick Bayless we're talking about, it's another guy. This guy looks for all the world like imagine the guy from Mad Men who's not Don Draper grew a beard. It looks like not a live strong sweatshirt. Yeah, if you can imagine what's that guy's name? Do you know the guy's name from Mad Men?
The the his partner, the older guy that was sleeping around with the lady in the thing. It's that guy plus a beard with a Rauschenberg book and a hat and a live strong sweater. Right? So now you you picture what I'm a dull pencil. And an NFL pencil.
Yeah, and I'm watching Rick Bayless eat his lunch, which is always nice. I love the Rick Bayless. You like the Rick Bayless? I've never met him. Never met.
He's a good man. Good man. Okay. Uh Stephen Silva wrote in on lactic acid and meats. Could you please review the concept and prevention of lactic acid buildup when cooking meats at low temperature?
We sear any meats that we cook over three hours to prevent it, and it is 99% uh prevent uh percent effective in eliminating this issue. Just wondering if you have any updated thoughts on this. Uh by lactic acid, uh I'm assuming you mean uh lactobacillus growth, uh bacterial growth. And I think the fact that you're preventing it means that you're probably following uh the steps that you're saying. You're pre-searing the meats and you're not crowding them in the bath.
I think that uh a vast majority of the people who are having problems with uh blow off and lactic acid and nasty flavors in the bags are crowding their baths too much. In other words, they're trying to put too many things in the bath. Uh that's what I think is happening. Uh that's that is my guess. Uh okay.
Uh we have ooh, we have uh Joe, what's the question here? I'm looking at these two pictures of two vita vita preps. You gonna give me the question? L Joe? Yeah, I'm here.
Uh so it's basically let me let me pull it up. But the question is uh which would be a better uh Christmas gift of these of these two uh the Vitapep versus the Vitamix 750. What's better for home use? And uh this is Jacob, and he's looking for something that will blend kale into soups or drinks without leaving a whole lot of chunks. All right.
Uh well here's my here but first off, I think they will both they will both work. For a long time, the uh the top end uh Vitamix was exactly the same as the Vitapep, the exception being in terms of its motor and its capabilities. The nameplate was different, and the main difference between them was the warranty. So you know, the Vitapep, if you used a Vita if you used a Vitamix in a commercial setting, uh your your warranty was void, right? Uh so the Vitamix had a much longer warranty for home use, right, and cost less.
The Vitapep had a much shorter warranty, but c and cost more, but was uh certified for use in a commercial kitchen. And that was the main difference. They since you changed them. So if you look on the web at a classic Vitapep versus uh the Vitamix 750, you'll notice that there's a different uh pitcher, blender pitcher style. Uh the older style, they by the way, here's what's really messed up.
Unless you're working with a bar boss or one of the really large pitchers, both those pitcher styles will work on either base. So you can swap them out. The new Vitamix 750 base pitcher is designed to be wider than the old one and shorter. And the advantage of that is it fits underneath a counter. If you have like uh if you have uh cabinets over your counter, you can fit it underneath, okay?
Uh and uh whereas the old Vitapep, one of the big pains in the butt about the Vitapep in the house is it does not fit under counters. It hits it right at the blender top, right? Uh the other problem I have with the old Vitapep containers is is that if you don't have the plunger in them, they don't form a very good uh vortex 100% of the time at the base of the pitcher unit because they uh it's too choked up, it's a little too narrow. The newer pitcher style that they use, which again I say you can use the same pitcher on either unit, is wider at the base and so allows for more kind of uh mixing. There's not as much of a choke up point, more similar to a blend tech blender.
Now, here's the downside of the new size pitcher. The new size pitcher holds the same amount as the old one. The old one is better at blending small amounts of ingredients because it's got a smaller base. So the old one, your minimum blend amount was in the area of 200, 250 milliliters, whereas the new one's gonna take more stuff, more product in your blender pitcher to uh adequately blend so that the blades are adequately engaged with your product. If you're only blending larger quantities, that's not going to make a big difference.
If you're blending smaller quantities, that could make a difference. I would suggest in general investing in the small size pitcher to go with it in case you're gonna do a lot of work with hydrocolloids and situations where you're gonna be blending 200, 300, 400, 500 milliliters of product at a time. So I would what if if it was my life, right? What I would want is I would want the new style pitcher and a small pitcher. Now, to the units themselves, I do not like the knobs and switches on the Vitamix 750 as opposed to the old school Vitapep.
The old school Vitapep uh like switches, this little flap switches, feel awesome to me. The newer ones are a little thicker, and they maybe think they feel a little more robo, but as Tristan said about my favorite jigger, they feel a little more play school because the switches are a little bit bigger. And also the knob on the uh on the Vitamix on the home one is a round knob, and it doesn't have the the paddle interface, like the the old knob has a flat thing on it that you can spin. And um in my mind, no one has ever equaled the awesomeness of using the interface controls of the Vitapep. Uh but uh so sorry that I couldn't be more helpful on uh on that because there's pros and cons for each of them, and I'm sorry.
Uh uh go uh my apologies again go out uh to uh stand below. We will I promise on eight stacks of bibles, I will answer your questions next time. Cooking issues.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 heritageradio network.org. Thanks for listening.
Timestamps may be off due to dynamic ad insertion.